Steam’s Greenlight Axing Could Be Great For Gamers, But A Bitter Pill For Developers

For over five years, the method of deciding the indie video game titles that would go on Steam was Steam Greenlight. Since it’s basically a popularity contest, it was easily gamed, which prompted the retailer’s parent company Valve to announce that it would soon be replaced. Now, the new system called Steam Direct is being implemented, which could potentially lead to better games for consumers. Unfortunately, it could also cost developers an arm and a leg.

One of the main complaints with regards to Steam’s old way of judging which games receive the green light and which will not is the fact that it’s less about the games and more about the marketing, PC Gamer reports. As a result, it becomes easily manipulated and could prevent truly excellent games from getting the attention that they deserve.

In order to fix this problem, Valve announced a few years ago that it would be replacing Steam Greenlight that would allow for a little more fairness when it comes to approving games. As a result, Steam Direct was born, which comes with its own set of problems.

It would appear that Valve’s idea of fairness involves money since the new system now involves fees that could range anywhere from $100 to $5,000. For the average indie developer simply struggling to survive while making their games, this would undoubtedly have a rather crippling impact. As such, following Valve’s announcement of Steam Direct, many indie developers freaked out, Polygon reports.

As game design Robert Yang put it, the substantial fee would effectively shut out developers who are still in school and can’t afford the exorbitant asking price to put up their games. Even the offer to pay developers back once the games are already on Steam will still prevent a certain segment of the indie community from submitting their titles.