Developers using Steam Greenlight's replacement Steam Direct will be charged a $100 recoupable publishing fee
Valve has provided an update on Steam Greenlight's replacement, Steam Direct, and how it will affect the Store’s algorithm and cutdown on the ability for "fake game" developers to game the Trading Card system.
Back in February, Valve announced it was replacing Steam Greenlight with a more "streamlined service" called Steam Direct.
At the time, the company said the publishing fee for Steam Direct could run from $100 or as high as $5,000. The fee has now been set at $100 for each game, as it was with Steam Greenlight submissions.
A post on the Steam Blog notes the $100 per game publishing fee for Steam Direct provides the "lowest barrier possible" to developers. The $100 will be recouped and submissions for Steam Greenlight and voting will be suspended starting next Tuesday.
The Steam Direct Service will go live on Tuesday, June 13.
"Like all the work in the Steam Store, Steam Direct will take some iteration to get the kinks out," reads the post. "We're optimistic. Aiming for the low publishing fee gives every game developer a chance to get their game in front of players."
Valve said the new Store algorithm, which was announced in May, will do its best to "make sure" players see games, including those on Steam Direct, are "worth your time to look at."
"Combining everyone's increased visibility into the algorithm's thinking with the human eyes of Curators will hopefully ensure that whenever that algorithm isn't working properly, we'll know about it, and have the chance to fix it.
"We're going to look at specific places where human eyes can be injected into the Store algorithm, to ensure that it is working as intended, and to ensure it doesn't miss something interesting.
"We're also going to closely monitor the kinds of game submissions we're receiving, so that we're ready to implement more features like the the Trading Card changes we covered in the last blog post, which aim to reduce the financial incentives for bad actors to game the store algorithm."
Vale revealed its changes to Trading Cards last month, as it found those who develop "fake game" were exploiting the Steam Trading Cards system. These fake games were sold for cheap with the majority of fund coming from those who traded Steam Cards with other users.
Those gaming the system would hand out "many thousands of keys" to bots which would farm Trading Cards.
The culprits would use Steam Greenlight to gain votes enabling the product to be put on the storefront, and them game the Steam Store’s algorithm.
In short: changes made with Steam Direct will make it easier to sift through the garbage, and along with the new Store algorithm, Steam users won't be subjected to seeing said garbage in their discovery queue or on the Store. And it will keep bad apples from gaming the system with Trading Cards.
Valve said i's next post will cover the sunsetting of Greenlight.
If you head over to the the Steam News page, you will also be provided with more information on updates coming to Steam Curators.