In a bid to open up Steam more, Valve has decided to call it a day on its Greenlight submission system in favour of what it calls Steam Direct, which allows developers to pay a fee to get their game published on Steam. Valve has asked several sections of the gaming world about what they think is a suitable fee and it has received figures between $100 and $5,000.
Valve explained in a blog post why it decided to stop the Greenlight programme:
“Thus, over Steam’s 13-year history, we have gradually moved from a tightly curated store to a more direct distribution model. In the coming months, we are planning to take the next step in this process by removing the largest remaining obstacle to having a direct path, Greenlight. Our goal is to provide developers and publishers with a more direct publishing path and ultimately connect gamers with even more great content.”
Valve’s motivation for moving from the Greenlight system, apart from “removing obstacles” are pretty obvious, dating back to its launch, it has been plagued by fake games and, in more recent times, has been abused by developers trying to make their games more popular.
Steam Direct, which will launch in Spring, will be open to all developers to submit their games. New developers will be asked to complete digital paperwork, personal or company verification, and tax documents. The fee mentioned earlier in the article will be used to deter spam content being submitted by developers and the fee will be required for each game that a developer wants to submit.
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