Steam Direct is soon to replace Steam Greenlight as a way for game creators to publish their games, and Valve announced on Friday that there will be a submission fee of $100 per game.
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Back in February, we reported that Valve was planning on phasing out Steam Greenlight in favor of the new system, but at the time, they weren’t 100 percent sure what kind of fee would be associated with publishing games. They tossed around some numbers that ranged as low as the chosen fee and as high as a whopping $500, but they wanted to receive some community insight into what everyone thought an appropriate price would be. Many people voiced their thoughts that the price should be lower rather than higher to avoid blocking out indie game creators from submitting their work, and while Valve was initially lingering around a $500 fee, they were talked down to $100.
The system Steam Greenlight uses charges $100 as well for publishing games, but it’s a one-time fee to publish as many as the creators want. Despite there being a fee for each game published under the new platform, there is a chance to recoup the investment. Valve keeps the money only if the game’s revenue doesn’t exceed the publishing cost.
“So in the end, we’ve decided we’re going to aim for the lowest barrier to developers as possible, with a $100 recoupable publishing fee per game, while at the same time work on features designed to help the Store algorithm become better at helping you sift through games,” the Valve post on Steam about the new fee read.
The post also indicated that Valve will keep working to improve the Steam Curators program, groups of organizations and individuals who help provide an extra set of eyes when it comes to the selection process in order to make sure that the games deserving of recognition are seen by users. The Curator initiative wasn’t receiving quite as much attention as Valve would like, though, so they’re making some changes to make sure it’s used to its full potential.
“We’re expanding the kinds of content that Curators can create, allowing them to provide more information to players who are thinking about buying a game, and improving the tools to allow them to easily manage all their recommendations,” the post reads.
Some of the changes they plan to make include allowing Curators to connect content they’ve created from other platforms such as YouTube, creating personal lists of games, and making it easier for Curators to grab pre-release copies of games.
The post closed by saying that they were confident that the changes made to the platform will benefit both players and developers, and they’ll have an update soon on the transition from Steam Greenlight to Steam Direct.
