Valve has officially closed the Steam Greenlight program. The program was used by game developers and gamers to get popular products onto the Steam Store faster.
The closing of Steam's Greenlight program marks the end of an era. The program first launched in August of 2012 as a way to give independent video game developers a chance to more easily get their titles published on the distribution platform.
The Greenlight program was shut down because the barrier for Steam Store entry was too high and too uncertain.
With Steam Direct 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 $100 recoupable application fee for each new title they wish to distribute.
According to Valve, the new $100 fee exists to "decrease the noise in the submission pipeline." Once a title has generated over a thousand dollars in revenue Valve will refund developers the initial entry fee.
The new program should allow developers to directly submit their titles for listing on the Steam Store, provided the title is approved by Valve, without requiring thousands of gamers to support the product in its Greenlight introduction phase.
The 3400 games that are still waiting to be greenlit under the old program will be reviewed by Valve based on the same Steam Direct policies.
Steam Direct launches on June 13th 2017.
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