Steam Direct launches, replacing Greenlight submission programme

Steam Direct is live, according to a blog post made by Valve yesterday.

The replacement for the Greenlight game submission system, which has already closed, went live and, thanks to E3, it all seems to have happened quite quietly.

The blog post details the new submission process for Steam Direct. In short, game and VR developers will need to submit relevant paperwork including tax and verification documents before paying the $100 fee for submitting a project. This fee is per project so once a game has been submitted, any new projects will follow the same process and applicable fee. The $100 fee is returned once a project exceeds $1000 in earnings.

Finally the game will enter a review process. This is the part of the process that is the most under scruitny given Greenlight’s termination. The full deatils of the process, as stated in the blog post are quoted below.

"Building a release pipeline to support thousands of developers and millions of customers is a delicate balance. We specifically don’t want an onerous and detailed certification process that makes it difficult for developers to release games, but we also want some level of confidence that games are configured correctly and aren’t going to do unexpected things to customers’ computers. So we have a couple of brief review periods where our team plays each game to check that it is configured correctly, matches the description provided on the store page, and doesn’t contain malicious content. These processes shouldn’t take more than a day or two unless we find something configured incorrectly or problematic."

Following the termination of Greenlight, Steam has ‘greenlit’ "many of the 3,400 titles that were remaining." Other titles that did not succed can re-apply to Steam Direct as long as they meet the basic legal and approriateness criteria.

On the subject of what happens next for Steam Direct, the blog notes that things could be more hectic in the short term, saying: "We aren’t quite sure whether there will be a lot more new submissions, just a bit more, or even fewer. It’s most likely that there will be an initial surge of new submissions and then a new rate somewhat higher than what was coming through Greenlight."

During this time, Steam will be monitoring the submission process and any issues that may arise and will also be accepting feedback from developers and users on how the program is going.