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[Verrius]

I was actually in the "higher" camp, $100 seems a bit too low to really act as a true barrier against the asset flips and shovel ware that was pouring through Greenlight. With that being said, I think $100 is a good compromise when they're also taking actions regarding the use of trading cards as a profit source for these companies. The fact it's reimbursable is icing on the cake, I don't even think that part is necessary.

$5000 was definitely too excessive, but I don't think they were really considering that. I'd say $500-$1000 reimbursable I wouldn't have been offended by. Getting yourself fully protected legally would still cost well more than that, and isn't reimbursable.

Not to mention that there was no guarantee of actually getting "through" Greenlight, I honestly believe that Greenlight was more hostile than anything else. It already costed $100, but the voting system encouraged some horrible practices.

[Hussar]

The fee should be higher. 100$ is laughable and will not stop the most determined asset-flippers. Especially when they're selling their "access" for 50 or more. So just 2 dumb people will buy and they got it back, maybe even with a small profit. Anymore purchases beyond the first two gonna be a pure profit for them. And those games will always sell to more than 2 people. Always.

Also I don't take it as a cash grab. If someone wants to be on steam, then they want to make money (just like all the scammers, same reason why they've abused the steam so far). And just like in work or anywhere else, relations should be beneficial and not one-sided. This means there have to be some quality required. You could argue that this "fee" doesn't have anything to do with it, but I disagree. As others said before me, if someone is serious about their game - they'll have already something to show and it shouldn't be a problem at all for them to get that measly 100 bucks. Which is honesty a laughably small fee, should be at least 250 if not 500. Cuz I'm sorry, what was going on thru steam, the asset-flips, crapgames traded for cards & gems. It was. Just sickening.

It's time to stop. This. If this will work, Steam has just become a more respectable and serious platform for both consumers and developers. So yeah, I have totally 180* view on this @zaimoni.

Edit: And I see they've quite modified the 'deal' since last time I was looking at the topic. If it's going to work, cash is not relevant as they require quite a lot of other things now. Big thumbs up for them.

[behrooz]

Clearly volume isn't deemed to be working for Steam now, thus the paywall cash grab

Steam doesn't need a 'cash grab'.  By a conservative estimate, Steam pulls in $3B+per year in revenue for Valve... from estimates based on just their revenue streams that are publicly available.  That's comparable to Nintendo, Vivendi, EA, massive corporations with tens of thousands of employees.  Of all the arguments you could make, that's one of the least plausible.

[CrashToDesktop]

Not really concerned about this type of stuff.  I'm fine with it, in fact - from personal experience in game development, $100 is hardly anything at all when it comes to making a game, at least in any sort of even semi-serious fashion.  I agree with Alex that it's there more to stop the shovelware and scams.

If you ask me, $100 sounds fine as a baseline.  Whether or not it needs to be raised in the future is something else, however - we'll have to wait and see how it works out.

[xenoargh]

Not a real concern.  Even if you're a developer in a cheap country due to currency stuff and have pirated every single one of your software applications used to develop your game, $100 is a laughably small sum compared to what it costs to develop your game.

[NicoleGlowacki]

If you can't afford $100 to put your game on Steam, put it elsewhere until you get that money. You might even be able to patch it for the most common bugs before being on Steam. And if you can't get enough sales, maybe you shouldn't put your game on Steam then.

Also, wasn't the fee higher than that before Greenlight became a thing?

If you want to receive some fee when you put your game elsewhere you will need to advertise it in some way to make people see your product, so it's not as cool as the greenlight was.

[nomadic_leader]

I'm more anti-steam than you! Since I hate having an intermediary app with 500mb of crap in my ~ dir that tracks all my playtime (creepy), and I gotta register and blah blah. I can download and update things myself, and run shasums to make sure they're legit (speaking of which why no starsector shasum??)

Anyone playing a game of ASCII graphics (roguelikes) can deal with downloading their own stuff too so I don't worry about those guys; they'll find their audience.

Tonnes of stupid crap scam games is undermining the walled-garden approach of steam and even the apple app store, where when you search for something there's like 5 ripoffs of it. Avoiding that kind of crap is the whole rationale for the walled garden, so they either gotta fix it or the walled garden must perish.

[TJJ]

walled-garden approach of steam

Steam isn't, nor has it ever been, a walled garden.
Comparing it to Apple's ecosystem is pure hyperbole.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

I dont really follow - how is this any different from the old steam greenlight fee? (which iirc was also 100 dollars for the dev studio). This seems to be the same thing, just a marginally better way to avoid game spam that we were seeing.

I'm glad someone mentioned this before I did. The new Steam Direct fee is identical to the old Steam Greenlight fee. This is not a change. From the information Valve has released about Steam Direct, games don't even have to go through a voting process to see if people might buy them. You just fill out the paperwork, upload the game so Valve can check that it's not malware or vapourware, and wait 30 days IF this is the first time you've put a game on Steam. This is, if anything, less hostile than Greenlight was, as long as your game is actually a game.

[Drokkath]

Only pitching in to say that I'm done trying to play games that use Steam and by doing so I have to resort to finding cracks to launch a game. All of that because of one reason: I loathe when I press on a game exe I've set in the Steam "Update when I launch the game." which is obvious how damn frustrating it really is, all of my alterations I've done the other day for a game; gone because of the gorram Steam force-shoving the updates down my throat.

And yes I know, I can try the Steam's "Offline" mode but who knows when that too gets shadily compromised Like what Microsoft did to Windows 7 (which I use) and Windows 8 users with updates shadily starting to install the damn Windows 10. NO! MEANS NO!!!  

Steam can rot for all eternity in the deepest and darkest cages of Nurgle's land in Immaterium, or as a giant mangled and mutilated skull under the Khorne's throne for all I care.

Spoiler

I WILL NOW BRAKE THE STEAM'S ENTIRE BODY IN MY MIND ACROSS THE GROUND!

MAIM! KILL! BURN! MAIM!! KILL!! BURN!! MAIM!!! KILL!!! BURN!!![/u][/b]

[close]

[Thaago]

@Drokkath

Wait, its not totally clear to me; you like Steam, right?
 

[Drokkath]

Wrong.

Spoiler

[close]

[StarSchulz]

Have you spent time looking through the steam greenlight que? there were a TON of garbage "shovelware" games that were made only to snag some quick money.

[Wapno]

What about freeware games? I don't think anyone would even consider paying a 100$ just to release a game they're not going to have any income whatsoever from.

[Deshara]

there was a growing cabin-industry of people pirating asset packs and spamming them onto the steam store front in hopes to make up to 5$ per title, and people pirating asset packs and spamming them onto the store front to generate steam cards to launder stolen credit cards with.
The fee is there to stop that, it's not a matter of Valve trying to make cash off of it (they make more money carving a portion of the sales from the steam scams than they do charging a hundo to stop a lot of scam sales from happening)