It hasn't been that long since we informed you about Valve's declaration about the upcoming Steam update with a new system called Steam Direct, which is undoubtedly one of the most vital changes they’ve made so far. However, it comes at a great cost which makes developers think twice before putting their game on Steam.
Before we dig deeper into the problem, it is necessary to say that there has always been a fee for having a game published on Steam. Indie developers were obliged to pay Steam Greenlight fee which allowed them to put their games on Steam as a part of the Greenlight program in an unlimited quantity for a cost of 90€ or 100$. These games had a chance to be later published if they received support from the community. On the other hand, Steam Direct comes with different rules that might not seem developers friendly but make total sense in the end. Developers will not be allowed to upload a huge number of games unless they have a budget to pay the fee for each game. That seems to be the main reason why many Indie developers are upset and prefer the old system of Steam Greenlight.
The reason why this change has to be done is quite obvious. If the fee is set too low, the number of bad games is going to increase, and the overall quality of the Steam store will rapidly decrease. In that case, the Steam Store is going to get flooded with low-quality games once again, and it's going to be much harder for Steam and their algorithm to handle the quality checks and recommendations based on users' preferences
That being said, setting a fee for something like Steam Direct is a very complicated issue that requires a lot of factors to be taken into consideration. We hope that Valve will not set the fee entirely out of price range of Indie developers simply because Indie games are an inherent part of gaming and a lot of nowadays popular titles started exactly as little Indie projects powered by the passion of amateur developers.
source: steamcommunity.com
What is Steam Direct?
Steam Review System
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SteamDirectly.com