Good Bye Steam Green Light

Hello ladies and Gentlemen
Today I want to talk about Steam and their decision about removing Steam Green light system permanently. As a Game developer this concerns me a lot but this is not only important for the Developers. It is also interesting for non Developers and Gamers using the steam marketplace.

Steam and Steam Green light
Steam is the biggest video game marketplace on Windows, Mac and Linux. It currently has 125 Million active users all around the world. Since October 2012 Steam also became a market for steam exclusive software. These software can also just like the games only be used from a valid Steam client on your operating system. However the Community forum and hub are still usable through a web browser.
Steam Green Light was lunched in august 2012 and was a system which Indie developers could use to publish their games on the steam marketplace. It works so that before a game can get published, the developers need to start a green light page and impress the community with screenshots and trailers of their game. The steam community can then decide with their votes if this game is “worthy” or not. If the game passes a certain vote number it is going to be officially on the steam marketplace.
This idea sound great on paper, however the steam green light system was a big problem. The system was tricked easily so the steam marketplace became full of low quality game that were able to pass the green light.

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Goodbye Green light, Hello Steam Direct
By removing the Green Light system, valve introduces “Steam Direct”. It should gives the Developers the opportunity to publish their game directly on Steam with being dependent on the community vote. Steam Direct is also not going to check every game for the quality however there is going to be a publishing fee around 100 – 5000 Dollars. Valve thinks that this is going to keep publisher who are serious about their game and avoid low quality games. The exact price is still being discussed. However the entry fee is going to be payed back after the game makes 1000 dollars of sales. Every new Developer need to wait 30 days after paying the fee before being able to publish game. This gives Steam time to validate the Developer Account.

Conclusion
In opinion this is a good step to the right direction. Steam Green light was full of low quality games and it was hard to find the good games between them and support them. This system is going to scare “bad” games and leave more room for serious productions. I think this is very good for the Steam community and the Gamers. However this could make Steam unattractive for little Developers and make them to publish their games on other marketplaces like ichi.io.

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Now it is your turn. What do you think about this? Did Valve do the right thing or are you going to miss Green Light. Tell me your opinion in the comments. I am very excited to hear other opinion on this topic.