what are you talking about? :)

Things like this http://store.steampowered.com/app/273770/
If you look, the developer has never had a game on Steam before and didn't get greenlighted.
It's publisher however has.
The publisher abused an opening to get the game on Steam, when the game is clearly a piece of garbage.
Greenlight was desined to weed out crap like this and instead it has created holes where crap like this finds its way in.

That has nothing to do with Greenlight, publishers with a good existing relationship with Valve have always been able to submit their games directly skipping Greenlight completely. However Valve do seem to have been a lot more lax about who can put what on Steam lately :(.

As for why publishers have all the power instead of the developers, it's because most of the time a publisher provides funding for the developer to work and in doing so are able to strong arm the developer into relinquishing all rights to the games they make for them, once the developer has completed the game it almost always belongs entirely to the publisher for the publisher to do what ever they want with it. Fortunately though that's starting to change now that crowd funding is opening up a new source of funding to developers and publishers are no longer the only way to get the funding for development.

But if a pre-existing game gets purchased by a publisher regardless of quality they can skip Greenlight. Everytime a game is Greenlighted a publisher is also Greenlighted.

Opprinnelig skrevet av RecycledDoom:

But if a pre-existing game gets purchased by a publisher regardless of quality they can skip Greenlight.

Yes, AusSkiller just explained why.

Everytime a game is Greenlighted a publisher is also Greenlighted.

No. You have misunderstood something. I am unsure what exactly you mean by it but you are most certainly wrong about this.
I suggest you read AusSkillers post again.

I reread it. I think I might be being unclear. Let me try once more.

Take Skyscraper Simulator for example. The game on Greenlight was submitted by Libredia who arn't the developers. Sure maybe Libredia (the publishers) own the games rights, whatever, it got greenlit, thats fine.

Other than Bridge It+, every game after Skyscracper Simulator that Libredia published, has not been on Greenlight, and also shares no developers with it's previous titles.

It looks to me like the publisher of Skyscraper Studios has been buying up titles elsewhere that are garbage and pushing them on steam.I feel they've been abusing the acess they've been granted on Greenlight for 2 games which they had nothing to do with.

There are on ocasion developers in their publishing catalog who've released other games on steam. However most of them are also Garbage and if you look at the other publishers those developers are with, a pattern seems to emerge.

You seem to keep using the word 'garbage' to describe games that you don't like.

I do agree, to a point, with the OP. It's a loophole that publishers have found and used. Unfortunately, there's not much use in complaining, because this is Valve's decsion. I also can't fault Valve for this, either. After all, if they start forcing publishers through Greenlight, they risk losing some big name clients that would have otherwise come through.

A publisher with a relationship with Valve will almost always be able to skip Greenlight, no matter the quality of the games they provide; whereas a developer that has a couple of really good titles (subject to opinion, of course) will probably still have to go through GL for their future games, or at least until they've really made a name for themselves and have developed a similar relationship.

Just how that relationship is developed, I don't know. I would imagine it's based on money. In that regards, I would imagine a publisher with games you deem lousy is still somehow generating enough profit for Valve that they are getting the okay access to continue to skip GL. And if Valve is profiting on these "so-called" lousy games, that must mean somewhere, somehow, people are buying them, so perhaps there is a market that believes they are higher quality than you personally feel.

All you can do is worry about the games currently in GL, and voting on them appropriately. Whatever Valve does on their side of things in deciding what gets through, that's Valve's job to figure out.