Steam Greenlight is getting dropped
Steam Greenlight was launched way back in 2012 as a way to test how consumers would react on small-scale projects.
Steam Greenlight is a system that enlists the community's help in picking some of the new games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and video for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution.
Launching Greenlight was a good move for Valve, right? I mean, because of that, developers started popping up here and there, pitching their creations to the masses and hoping that they get "greenlit" for distribution. Consumers, on the other hand, get to try Greenlight games without spending a dime. Well, originally, Greenlight was positioned as a way for the company to lighten up the load from evaluating and curating every last project that was submitted to the company.
Last year, 4,207 games were released on Steam via Greenlight. That's a lot. The video below by PixelTwitch from four years ago explains what Steam Greenlight is.
What's going to happen now, you ask? Well, Valve's going to replace Steam Greenlight with Steam Direct. Unlike Greenlight which was similar to a popularity contest, Direct will just require developers to fill out a form, submit their game to a basic compatibility test, pay a fee and launch the game.
Another difference between Greenlight and Direct is the pricing. With Greenlight, developers pay a one-time fee of $100 then they can release as many apps as they want. With Direct, the fee will be per project. The price is still uncertain as of this point but Valve is considering prices up to $5,000. Now, the reason they're doing this move is because
Valve wants to find a balance between allowing struggling but talented creators to launch great new games, while discouraging multiple launches of questionable quality and seriousness.
According to Valve, Greenlight is becoming a problem for developers, who are frustrated by the uncertainty of the process, and its opacity. The company is talking to independent developers to gauge its next move, most particularly the level of the fee. The annual diminishing consumer interest on Greenlight games is also a problem.
This change, however, will not affect Steam Early Access games, under which developers can sell incomplete builds f their games.
Were you an active voter in Steam Greenlight? What can you say about this change?