So I've gor a few questions:

1.) How high exactly is this entrance fee?
2.) How much time is approx. left for contract details? Weeks, months?
3.) Will the game still be pushed to official repos such as the Arch one?
4.) Is it possible to release the game and still forbidding selling?
5.) Did you calculate/respect time and money into fixing bugs caused by steam as well?
6.) How is bonus content being handled? I am pretty sure not everybody likes to cooperate with steam laws. (KarBoys stuff would be a very good example)
7.) Is there a list of things that we need to fix to get it on steam?
8.) Is steam team allowed to delay a release or even delete the game without our acceptance?

Kind regards,
Anachron

This question is answered in the Greenlight FAQ
It's 100 USD.
They go to charity, because they are meant as a barrier for non-serious spam-projects, not for Valve to to make profit.

I don't know. Those who were successfully greenlit know - and they are not allowed to talk about it.

Yes, Steam would be an additional platform for distribution, I think all of us realize that Steam is not that popular on free platforms and partly even frowned upon - so it would be stupid to neglect classic ways of distribution.

What do you mean by that?
We can NOT forbid selling (GPL-2 license permits selling), regardless if we release or not.
We can however decide on the price on steam ourselves and steam does indeed allow games to don't cost anything at all.

I didn't calculate anything, but yes, of course an additional, officially supported, distribution platform would also mean additional issues.
That's one of the reasons why somebody that is willing to seriously maintain the steam version of Hedgewars (over years) is needed.

You raise a good point.
The current DLC would probably not be available in Steam in its current form in order to prevent possible copyright issues with user-created content.
Maybe we could make it possible to use user-created content using Steam Workshops.
Although I don't know how copyrighted content is handled there. Whether we have to moderate that or not.

Nope. As I was saying in my post, we'd need somebody to first take the time and effort to create such a list.
As far as that is possible at least, since there's that Non-Disclosure Agreement thing forcing secrecy about the details.

With steam team you mean the company behind steam, Valve?
Again I have no information on this (and there might be none because of above mentioned NDA greelit projects have to sign).
However I'm pretty sure Valve reserved all the rights it could :P
Also consider that Warsow still hasn't had a release even more than 2 years after they got successfully greenlit.
It's pretty save to assume that delay is not exactly what they had in mind when they got on Steam Greenlight :p
That delay is probably forced on them because they don't fulfill requirements as defined by Valve, see the quote in the main post above.

PS: Maybe someone could volunteer to help Warsow with finally getting their steam release - that way they could collect insight and experience with regards to the Greenlight process.

if someone donates $100 or part of it and want it to go to money for Greenlight how they no that it will be put towards that

There would probably be a dedicated donation thing for it.

However the money is the smallest problem.

There is no point wasting 100 bucks on putting a game on Greenlight, if none of the important questions/lists are answered/done and if there is nobody having the time, skill and motivation to make a Steam release actually happen and to maintain it.

What's interesting to me from your investigation, sheepluva, is that it seems way easier to get a game onto Android or iOS or Apple iStore than onto a simple distribution network for Windows/Linux games.

Wild. Normally mobile and apple have a reputation for being the restrictive and controlling platforms.

Yeps.

I guess one of the reasons is for Valve that it's important that all games work smoothly together with steam overlay and their community features.

And I can imagine that Valve wants games to have some exclusive features (achievements, trading cards, etc.) that the same games won't have if downloaded/purchased elsewhere (especially for free-of-cost and non-exclusive games).

The Google Play Store and the App Store don't have really have any competition within their respective Operating System, so they don't have to care as much about software offering additional value if distributed over them.

Also Valve didn't create Steam to push hardware sales (SteamOS machines are rather new and rather niche), so I guess they want to make sure that all software in the steam store profits them in some ways.
Unlike the mobile app stores, their priority is not having a library as big and as inclusive as possible in order to sell more hardware.
So instead they have to make sure to get something out of every title distributed.

That's my theory at least.

The reason can't be quality control, because a lot of shit does make it into the Steam Store and is actually sold there.

Oh no, not that Steam bullshit again!

Putting a free software game onto Steam is an ethical problem, because Steam itself is (based on) proprietary software. Plus, no matter what you intend, you indirectly promote Steam. Probably not that much, because Hedgewars' user base is not huge, but attempting to become listed on Steam implies that the developers are perfectly fine with proprietary software.

Am I the only one here who sees the implications here?

This is the main problem I have with this idea.

Additionally, there are other reasons why I don't think putting Hedgewars on Steam is so great:

Well, I doubt that.
Has this ever been proven right? I mean, the assertion that putting a software on Steam will lead to a significant popularity boost. Especially for a free software like Hedgewars?

So what? Steam is not the only software manager out there. This is not really convincing in why Steam should be treated specially.

There are many other chatting programs out there. This is not a reason to support/promote a single proprietary program for this particular use case.
Also, Steam has an API (Steamworks). I don't know much about it, but from what I know it does not exactly friendly for Hedgewars. Basically I'd say Steamworks is totally off-limits for Hedgewars.
There is also Steamworks SDK, from what I have gathered this seems to be a C++ API. No sign of this being free software. Instead, restrictions, restrictions, restrictions.

Here I found the Steamworks SDK Access Agreement:
https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/sdk_access_agreement

Fun fact: If you would actually agree to this, then reverse enginieering this thing is forbidden.

BTW: Is the chat overlay thing even entirely based on Steam itself or does it require cooperation from the software (read: must use Steamworks)?

Again, Steam is not unique for this feature.

I call bullshit on that, because this is completely ignoring all the package manager softwares found on many GNU/Linux distributions (Zypper, RPM, Pacman, …).

Oh, you were talking about Steam only?
Well, there is a simple explanation: Steam, Google Play and iStore all have something in common: They are all are / are based on proprietary software.

To summarize:
The popularity benefits are dubious, the likelyhood of Hedgewars ever actually ending up on Steam is quite low, and even if, it might take years, and you indirectly promote a proprietary platform.
I really don't understand all the excitement about Steam.

I agree.
Although I don't see much of a promotion there.

However I want to make one thing clear:

I am perfectly fine with the existance of proprietary software.

And regardless of that I fully support the freedom of users to make their own choice about what software they use, no matter what I think about it.

PS: Considering that Hedgewars has an iOS/Mac/Windows release as well as Xfire support, I guess I'm not the only one that is fine with being compatible to proprietary software/interfaces.

EDIT

It does not necessarily require the SDK. Apps started from Steam with overlay turned on will preload steam's overlay library which will hook itself e.g. into the opengl viewport.

That's why the overlay already works with Hedgewars, although not without bugs.
E g. our game seems to steal most input, so you can't actually type anything in the overlay. (That's my limited experience anyway).
Another bug is that steam will think that Hedgewars was closed and reset the steam status message when the first game is finished/quit and the game engine (and with it opengl and steam overlay) closes.

Honestly, I don't think it'd be worth it. When I started that thread years ago I didn't realize all the hoops you'd have to go through, especially the entrance fee. And, I've had no problems using the Steam overlay when launching Hedgewars from Steam.

I'm not saying I'm against it, I just don't really think it's worth it anymore. However, if you do manage to get it on Steam, then please consider adding Achievements .

Wymrsum is open source and it on steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/370070

http://andrettin.github.io/

also Evolution RTS is on steam it open source and free on steam unlike last on i mentioned http://store.steampowered.com/app/291150/

Teeworld is also free and open source and on steam and free http://store.steampowered.com/app/380840/



It will be worth it you reach out to a whole new group of people and also pontanly ones that might want to help contribute to the game



FLOSS games on Steam:
- Destination Sol: http://store.steampowered.com/app/342980
- Tales of Maj Eyal: http://store.steampowered.com/app/259680
- CaesarIA: http://store.steampowered.com/app/327640
- Evolution RTS: http://store.steampowered.com/app/291150
- HyperRogue: http://store.steampowered.com/app/342610
- Uebergame: http://store.steampowered.com/app/391780/
- Endless Sky: http://store.steampowered.com/app/404410/



what do you think now

I think that I'm not a fan of quadruple-posting, that's why I merged your four consecutive posts into one :P

And sure, interesting, I'll add some of the links to the original post later.
However it doesn't change the fact that if there is nobody willing to take on the task of doing it - it's not going to happen.

even if you dont want to get take the time to start geting it packaged on steam now just Having it on Greenlight so it can get votes and u can get the ability to get on steam store in future if you wanted to. when someone ready to start doing work get working for steam that whay u dont have to Waite for to get all the votes u need

Hello, I just joined to add my two cents.

The most compelling reason I'd want Hedgewars on Steam would be to have an easy and consistent channel for releases. Today was again the day when there was a 0.0.1 version difference between two oh-so-great Linux distributions (Ubuntu LTS and Fedora) where naturally there will be version differences as the packages are maintained differently.

Even after the relatively easy hassle of pulling 0.9.21.1 from Trusty backports for the Ubuntu machine to get the same version as on Fedora 23, we're still behind as the latest release which as of now is 0.9.22. Also it hasn't been a long time when a packaging bug on Fedora prevented me from playing at all as the game kept crashing and it was completely out my or the developers control.

It has always been a pain to play with friends because Windows users will download the latest from the website which is fairly normal for them and Linux/BSD users are almost always behind and very unsynchronized. Usually we end up compiling from source on Linux just to get a game going.

Steam solves this for everyone who just want to play and it solves it in a cross-platform way for the three major platforms (Windows/OS X/Linux).

As a gamer, I'd rather just install Hedgewars from Steam than the distribution package management as it will also automagically show my Steam friends I'm playing something without forwarding the command through the Steam client.

If Steam as a target is something that will never be met, having better backwards compatibility would be my biggest wish so playing would be possible even with reduced features.

Heh. I think you'll be sadly disappointed if you think Steam will improve the situation w/ Ubuntu's LTS fail...
We have no intention of taking over distro packaging. If the distros are unable to maintain timely packages, steam will not help with this.

I'd suggest a bug against Ubuntu requesting better backporting of game packages - they shouldn't use the difficult-to-discover and slow-to-approve backports mechanism - I see no reason why the new releases for any games should just be automatically applied as a special game process - they aren't system-critical.

Also... The maintainer of the Ubuntu packages, Locutus, does have a PPA that is promptly updated. He's also worked w/ Fedora in the past. Filing bugs against both distros probably the best way to get this moving.

And finally, if you really want up-to-date and can't rely on your distro, and don't want to do your own build, there's always the option of running the win32 build in wine :/

Why would I be disappointed? Steam does fix packaging when all platforms are in-sync with the versions when you - the developer - make a binary release there.

Distro packaging does not matter at all as long as Steam has a single version for each of the supported platforms (Win/Mac/Lin) and that is the only way it would work on Steam anyway.

I'm a very distro/build sawwy person myself so I can figure this out when I need to, possibly do the build myself. The masses that supposedly would use Linux or play HW are the ones that really need consistency and Steam is the only feasible platform currently that can provide that.

Ubuntu LTS was just an example. I don't think there's many distributions that ship the latest version all the time. I bet if you take the top 10 distributions of Distrowatch and compare the versions, you can't get even half of them to work together and the other half don't even have HW packaged.

I strongly disagree Steam wouldn't fix this problem. It has its own runtime (in good and bad) that stays consistent between any distribution so you just build "for Steam" and then forget about distros.

Steam complements distro packaging and makes HW available to a much larger audience in a convenient way.

If there are real issues Valve imposes that make it too troublesome to release on Steam (like forcing you to slap achievements on the game), I would completely understand not doing it. There are horrible "HW clones" sold on Steam and I just returned yet another yesterday because it was buggy, laggy and had a horrible UI. That's when I remembered HW exists again and went through the hassle to get the same version for two distros.

One more thing you could do to help the version consistency problem is to build a static 64-bit Linux version of HW that's downloadable as a .tar.gz from the web page. That would at least help the Linux<->Windows/Mac situation.

lol. Using a proprietary software because the packaging of your GNU/Linux distribution is outdated. That's frustrating.
As nemo said, the most obvious fix would be to make the distributions update their goddamn packages in time!

If you just care about Steam because it distributes software then you might consider some alternatives, at least. It would be irrational to limit the view to Steam only. I don't care about Steam just because it supposedly is “cool” these days.
I have heard of 0install (http://0install.net/), what do you think of that?

And yes, Ubuntu sucks. I left Ubuntu precisely because of its horribly outdated packages.
LTS is even worse, as this is “Long Term Support” and many packages are intentionally out of date because of fears that it might break something somewhere. If the newest Ubuntu is already plagued with outdated packages, then an older LTS release is always worse. This is by design. You should NOT use LTS if you want up-to date packages.

But as far I know the current Ubuntu package is up to date.

You are so missing the point here.

I was unaware they had their own runtime:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime Indeed, here it is.
Of course, steam greenlight would not be necessary to build for a runtime. Just would require incorporating it into our build processes and tossing the binary on the site. Then if you wanted to launch it with steam, you could.

As static as can be binary build (SDL1 can't be statically linked) is a good step towards easier cross-distribution/OS play and would be much appreciated if offered besides the Windows and Mac downloads.

Steam opens up the game to a larger audience who are not aware of Hedgewars and moreover it makes installing as easy as with a package manager for Windows/Mac folks, it's a convenience.

Steam is also the distribution method for SteamOS making Hedgewars available to people who buy boxes with it pre-installed.

Well, static linking is hardly necessary for a binary build. The binary build on windows includes all its own DLLs - the usual solution to that problem under Windows.

sheepluva stripped SDL 1.2 from the dev sources, but there are still some bugs to resolve so might come back.

If the steam build interests you, you're welcome to come by IRC and help.

Hows this going, there are some news??

Any updates on this matter?

I have just found Teeworlds (a free-software game I have played many hours) on Steam. I think it is a great idea, and makes the game more accessible (Steam is growing as a game platform). So I just thought... "what about Hedgewars?", which is my other favorite. :-P

Thanks for your hard work!

Well, there's been a few people asking for it, but so far no one volunteering to do it ☺

So, no, nothing has happened so far…

The question will be how to get the money to buy the Greenlight suscription fee. Btw you can always post a game concept in Steam, to show the game progress there..

really wish this would get on steam

It would be great if this happened.

this is one of the reason iv suggested it be on steam and you will get many new players

anyone else

At least a game concept should be posted in Steam, this will allow more people to know about the game itself.

i agree

this would do alot maybe it would get team17 to care about linux and there game more come on guys
not that we need to do anything to help them as hedgwars is the better game but check out this post on steam of people that want it on there http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamlug/discussions/2/617329150699464139/

hope this moving softly and ended with clear sky on it,,,

Related: Steam Greenlight will be discontinued and replaced by Steam Direct in near future.

See this post on the steamcommunity for a link to the announcement and some little FAQ.

......

I went to the link to check on current status/comments again... and noticed it's a 404 now

What happened?

This game deserves much more players but it's hard to realise the existence of this game. Steam and mobile platforms are popular now. So game developers should consider this.

How to donate for this?

Look at to Teeworlds:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/380840/

Well, if you feel like donating, sheepluva and I have bitcoin addresses in all our comments.
As for steam, if you read the discussion, it pretty much takes someone willing to step up. There was some enthusiasm last month on this front. Don't know how far they got. There's also the problem that Steam greenlight is being cancelled effectively blocking FOSS from that platform.

It seems Greenlight has been replaced by "Steam Direct".

See the Announcement.

Yes indeed, good news.
This thread therefore becomes mostly obsolete.
What's still valid is that Hedgewars on Steam is not going to happen or be supported by us until there is somebody serious stepping up to the task of maintaining it.

well untill its on steam i will not be playing hedgwars as much as i used to
and http://store.steampowered.com/app/700480/ was just added to steam 2 weeks ago and it is open source

this is one of the big reason im pushing for it to be on steam

How the hell is it open source?

Microsoft Allegiance? Wrong link?

Microsoft Allegiance was not a wrong link here is the source code https://github.com/FreeAllegiance/Allegiance

Im back here, and this time i have serius intentions to bring it to steam, i had permission past time and was able to publish on Greenlight past time, but was not able to get it aproved.

Now my idea is to make this possible, if you can help me understanding whats needed for achieve it.

Please publish this game on Steam as the supertuxkart team did, you will obtain more developers and more users because it will increase the popularity of the game.

Here are the instructions: https://partner.steamgames.com/steamdirect

Read my comment above

I do know how to publish on steam, what i need help with to compile a version that is steam exclusive and change its license usage and other steps.

You don't have to recompile the game.