Steam Greenlight has its days numbered, and Steam is now taking thins into their own hands with Steam Direct.
Previously, Greenlight was a way that allowed players to vote in the games to get onto Steam, very often involving indie developers. The new system however is a lot simpler but might cost you a pretty penny.
Getting your game in under Steam Direct will set you back between USD$100 to USD$5,000 (Valve hasn’t quite decided exactly how much) and you will get to put your game on Steam.
The idea here is that if you plan on selling your games, the fee won’t impact your profits. But if you’re selling a game which you are unsure will make back your investment, it does sound risky.
If your game doesn’t sell, Steam keeps the fees, but if your game does sell a lot, Valve gets a cut of sales past the cost of the fees. Not sure how Steam sales factors into the profits though.
But it does help keep Steam from being flooded by more uh, shoddy games, many of which are already in the system. But the end goal is still to connect users to games they might like so maybe this isn’t a bad thing after all, even if it is taking cash from devs.
