Valve is killing its Greenlight program and replacing it with the new Steam Direct. The new program aims to help filter out the bad games that are submitted into the company's platform.
One common complaint for the Greenlight system was that there were a lot of crudely-made video games. They were able to get pass the voting system because of trolls and power in social media. Now, Valve aims to prevent such games from polluting their portfolio.
Independent developers will now be able to immediately get on the Steam platform without having to rely on votes. However, they will nedd to pay a small fee to Valve.
Valve's new Steam Direct program replaces the voting system with the payment and additional paperwork, The Guardian has learned. The company also includes new features such as user tags, streamlined refunds, discovery queues and more to help both the developers and the customers.
There is no exact figure for the Steam Direct fee. Developers, depending on their team size and project, will have to pay between $100 and $5000 which is considerably less than what large studios are paying for console licenses and such.
Valve's new policy and program will help filter out the bad submissions in Steam by discouraging developers to submit subpar titles, BBC News reported. In addition, Valve will also have a team to check the submissions before they can be put onto Steam even if the developers have already paid their publishing fee.
After jumping through all the hoops, the game will be available on Steam just like the other titles. Users will still be able to see them in their discovery queues and they can leave user reviews as well provided that they have already bought the game.
Developers will have to think twice if they want to submit a game via Steam Direct. The fee will just be one of their obstacles as they will still be scrutinized by Valve's teams.
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