Valve cans Steam Greenlight, replacing service with Steam Direct later in 2017

Valve have decided to close the Steam Greenlight platform and replace it instead with a process called Steam Direct, launching later this year.

The news was announced in a blog post on Steam’s site and the big takeaways are that Valve has canned Greenlight, the process by which developers and enthusiasts could present their games to the Steam audience in the hope that you’ll win the populist vote and be "greenlit", allowing you to launch your game on Steam’s marketplace.

This process has long been accused of being obscure, but it meant that the monolithic marketplace that Steam has become did become a breeding ground for diversity, as triple-AAA action hits appeared in the same deals as visual novels, twine games and nigh-endless survival games.

However, the masses of new games has led to calls for Steam to deal with its discoverability problems, so that developers can get their games noticed amidst the ever-widening crowd.

For now at least, Valve are looking to replace Greenlight with Steam Direct, the exact process for submission is still being figured out and will be revealed closer to the switchover but for now it appears that studios and developers will need to submit documents and be given the all clear by Valve at which point they can release their games directly for a cash fee.

The fee hasn’t been disclosed but Valve say in the post: "We talked to several developers and studios about an appropriate fee, and they gave us a range of responses from as low as $100 to as high as $5,000. There are pros and cons at either end of the spectrum, so we’d like to gather more feedback before settling on a number."

The higher end of the spectrum has proven to be troubling for several indie developers, but the actual cost has not yet been revealed by Valve.