Valve has announced that it will transition its community-based Greenlight games programme to a new way of bringing more games to the store that requires less oversight from the company.
Steam Greenlight has been allowing developers to submit games for community feedback since August 2012. Games that receive enough votes are reviewed by Valve staff and then make it onto the Steam store. Despite having been around in relatively the same form since it launched, the company has always maintained that it wanted more of an open marketplace approach ultimately.
Under Steam Direct, this is exactly what the company will have achieved, as developers will be able to submit games directly to the store without needing to go through the community process that saw the majority of games never make it on sale. For Valve, this means far less direct interaction with the process of putting indie games on the store.
On the upside, there will be far more games available, and on the downside, there will be far more games available – think about finding a game in the hundeds of thousands available on the App Store or Google Play. Valve, however, says it’s developed an algorithm that’ll show you Steam Direct releases based on the sort of games you enjoy playing, rather than making you wade through a list of ‘latest releases’ that include everything.
None of these changes are quite ready to roll out yet, and pricing for developers that want to submit games isn’t set in stone yet either – Valve’s currently considering a fee of between $200 – $5,000 per game submission.
In a community post, Valve said that any games currently going through the Greenlight process would continue to do so, and that any that don’t make it can be re-submitted via Steam Direct once it launches. That will require paying another fee though. Any devs that paid for Greenlight but never actually had a game make it through can claim a refund.
The transition is expected to take place “in the next few months,” according to Valve.
Related: Valve quietly beta testing DualShock 4 support in Steam
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Happy about the changes? Think the store will be overrun with low quality games? Let us know in the comments below
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
