Valve has announced that it will be replacing its Steam Greenlight program with a new program dubbed Steam Direct. The new program will make it easier for developers to publish their titles on the Steam Store.

In the announcement that Valve released last Friday it states that the current Greenlight program does not fully suit the wishes and requirements of indie developers because the barrier for Steam Store entry is too high and too uncertain.

With the new system developers will be required to complete a set of digital paperwork, personal or company verification and tax documents. Once set up, developers will have to pay a new recoupable application fee for each new title they wish to distribute.

The current Greenlight program is considerably cheaper for developers because they are only required to pay a one-time only developer fee of $100. According to the announcement the new developer fees will rise to an unknown price between $100 and $5,000 to "decrease the noise in the submission pipeline."

Althrough not made entirely clear, the new system should allow developers to directly submit their titles for listing on the Steam Store without requiring thousands of gamers to support the product in its Greenlight introduction phase.