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I’m more than aware that most of the Gaming world is having their eyes focused at E3 2017 at the moment. Even so, I couldn’t help to notice that it appears as if Valve has closed down it’s Steam Green light service. Well, I don’t know if I’m one of the few that has noticed this…But since I haven’t heard a word about it until today, I decided to write about it. Anyways, this is what Alden (Steam employee) had to say about the matter:

“In this post, we’re going to talk about closing down Steam Greenlight and the transition to Steam Direct.If you haven’t already, it’s worth reading the last few posts we’ve made recently about our philosophy, some changes to address bad actors, and some upcoming improvements to Steam Curators system. These posts introduce and describe the subtle, but important, shift in the way the Steam Store is designed, and who it is designed for.” – Alden, Steam employee via Steam’s blog

Alden also added the following about Steam Greenlight and Steam Direct:

A look back at Greenlight
“Steam Greenlight launched on August 30, 2012, at a time when we realized that we weren’t able to predict which titles players were really interested in. Up until that point, a small team here at Valve had been hand-picking games to invite on to the Steam platform, and almost every day we would hear from players wondering why awesome new game X wasn’t available on Steam. The more this happened, the less confident we became that our own tastes were accurately representing the tastes of everyone using Steam. Greenlight was introduced as a way to help our team figure out which games players most wanted, by having those Steam users vote. Almost right away, we saw an incredible variety of games being submitted and voted on, which made it clear to us that there are far more distinct tastes and interests among Steam players than we had realized.”

Steam Direct details
“The goal with Steam Direct is to provide an understandable and predictable path for developers from anywhere in the world to bring their games to Steam. With that in mind, we’re making the process as easy and streamlined as possible. 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.

Additionally, brand-new developers that we haven’t worked with before will need to wait 30 days from the time they pay the app fee until they can release their first game on Steam. This gives us time to review the developer’s information and confirm that we know who we’re doing business with. Developers will also need to put up a ‘coming soon’ page for a couple of weeks prior to release, which helps get more eyes on upcoming releases and gives players a chance to point out discrepancies that our team may not be able to catch.

Steam Direct will launch in one week, on June 13th.” – Alden, Steam employee via Steam’s blog

Say good-bye to Steam Greenlight and good day to Steam Direct.

In other words, Steam Greenlight is dead and gone for life. However, there should be no need for any panic. Why? Because Valve aims to launch Steam Greenlight’s successor (Steam Direct) on the 13th of June. That’s just the half of it though, because I also spotted the following upcoming changes to Steam:

Steam Direct Fee & Upcoming Store Updates

Changes to Trading Cards

The Steam Store: Our Philosophy and Next Steps

So I take it that there will be quite a few changes to Steam in the near future. Well, let’s hope that it’s for the greater good, and that it will be a positive wind of change for both developers, publishers and Gamers.

And with that said, what’s your take on this matter? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below!

Source:
Steam

Robin “V-Act” Ek
Editor in chief
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround