Valve has officially shut down Steam Greenlight after five years of operation. They made a post about it over on the official Steam community page, where they announced that the last batch of Greenlight games will be reviewed and some will be accepted to move on toward a release on the Steam store, while others may be rejected. Games that are rejected still have an opportunity to get through onto the Steam store by going through the Steam Direct process.
Greenlight started back in August of 2012 and while it may be no more, Steam Direct will kick it into gear starting June 13th next week.
The opening of Steam Direct will see developers capable of putting down a recoupable $100 – the funds can only be recouped after the game has surpassed $1,000 in sales. If the game does not sell over $1,000 worth of product, the $100 will not be recouped.
Valve details the process of how Steam Direct will work, letting game developers know that it will be a lot closer to the likes of how it was way back before Steam Greenlight was a thing, where developers will submit their games and Valve will take it through an overseeing committee who will play-test the game to ensure it has no malicious content, works as intended, is appropriate enough for the Steam store, and that it meets their quality standards.
The post mentions…
“A new developer will simply need to fill out some digital paperwork, including entering bank and tax information and going through a quick identity verification process. After completing the paperwork, the developer will be asked to pay a $100 recoupable fee for each game they wish to release on Steam. This fee is returned in the payment period after the game has sold $1,000.
“As we have been doing for the past year, there is a short process prior to release where our review team installs each game to check that it is configured correctly, matches the description provided on the store page, and doesn’t contain malicious content.”
New developers that have never used Steam Greenlight or has no games on Steam will have to wait an additional 30 days as Valve goes through an additional checklist of procedures to make sure new devs are legit.
Basically that’s how it will work. I’m curious how this will differ from how Valve used to do things before Greenlight was a thing? It was left up to their discretion to determine whether a game deserved to be on Steam or not, and their discretion didn’t contain opacity for public perception.
In fact, it doesn’t sound like Steam Direct will be open to the public, which is a real shame because it means we no longer get insight into what could be coming to Steam. But maybe there will be section where gamers can take a peek inside to see what Valve is curating for the store?
It’s impossible to say right now if this process makes putting games on Steam easier or harder, but we’ll most definitely find out on June 13th.
