Unigine's Superposition Benchmark pulled from Steam Greenlight

January 17, 2017 | 10:30

Tags: #benchmark #digital-distribution #greenlight #steam-greenlight #superposition

Companies: #steam #unigine #valve

Game engine maker Unigine has announced that its upcoming gaming benchmark, Superposition, will not be coming to Valve's Steam platform, despite having enjoyed considerable success over the last three months it has been on the Greenlight list.

Launched as an easier way for developers to get their software up on Steam, Greenlight serves as a pre-release interest-check system: Developers pay $100 to activate Greenlight on their accounts and then upload videos and screenshots of their upcoming games, with Steam users voting on whether or not they would be interested in seeing the game's full release. With enough votes, a Greenlight package gets listed in Valve's Steam storefront for real - but not everything is eligible for the process, as Unigine has discovered to its cost.

Unigine's Superposition Benchmark hit the Greenlight platform three months ago, and by late December last year had received 1,787 positive votes - around 96 percent of all votes - making it one of the most popular items on the list. This week, though, the company announced that the software would not be coming to Steam after all - and pinned the blame firmly on Valve.

'The first announcement in this year, unfortunately, won’t be very cheering. Superposition Benchmark was excluded out of the Greenlight [programme] after three months of active voting,' the company's Steam post explained. 'It was #1 recently, but was declined by Steam moderation team because ‘benchmark’ is not kind of software that allowed to take part in Greenlight at the moment. Well, this is the unpleasant surprise for us as well, but those are the Steam rules.'

The FAQs for Greenlight do indeed make clear that the service is only for selected software types: games, animation and modelling, audio production, design and illustration, photo editing, and video production. Despite their popularity among gamers, benchmarks clearly fall outside these categories - though you'd be forgiven for not realising this, given the long list of benchmarks Steam users can browse and install: Futuremark's 3DMark, PCMark, and VRMark, Geekbench 3, Catzilla 4K, the Resident Evil 6 Benchmark Tool, and Valve's own SteamVR Performance Test all appear following a cursory search for 'benchmark', but Superposition will not be among them.

Unigine has indicated that it plans to launch the Superposition Benchmark as a standalone application some time this quarter, with more information available on the official website.
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