Steam charges $100 fee for Greenlight submission

By: Musa Afridi

  |   September 5th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Fee intended to discourage non-serious games being submitted and all fees will be donated to the charity, Child’s Play as Valve buckles down on its latest feature.

Steam is an online digital distribution platform and much more. The service recently expanded to allow users to submit their own video game creations to be shared and sold to other subscribers of Valve’s service. The service itself goes by the brand name, ‘Greenlight’.

The initiative is one of many that Valve plans to launch over the course of the next few years as it encourages average gamers to develop games and provides them a platform where they can sell or offer them to the general gaming public.

However, after initially making the service available for free for developers, Valve has since had a change of heart and now charges a fee of $100 per submission on to Greenlight.

There has been a certain level of outcry from fans, yet Valve is holding fast on its decision and released the following statement explaining the motives behind the move itself.

The statement explained how the fee would discourage developers from uploading ‘clutter’ and joke titles onto the platform, thus making the experience smoother and more focused for both developers and those looking to find and play particular games.

It read: “There are a ton of legitimate submissions that people want to see…there is unfortunately a significant amount of noise and clutter being submitted, either as a joke or by fans not fully understanding the purpose of Greenlight.”

Before going on to explain how it would help those browsing through the service find quality games by providing a “smaller, manageable list of games that you haven’t rated.”

As for the fee itself, well it turns out that Valve has no intention of keeping the money and all the ‘proceeds’ will be donated to a charity. In fact, the company mentioned the name of the charity that will be benefitting from Greenlight and identified the foundation as Child’s Play – and no it has nothing to do with the evil murdering doll, Chucky.

It seems a shrewd move from Valve on all fronts, although one has to wonder if $100 may be a bit too steep for the more casual developers out there. However, at the same time it can be argued that it will encourage only the top developers who are serious about their titles to make submissions and that only seems to benefit everyone concerned.

But what about the readers; do they think that Greenlight will work or is the concept doomed to fail from the start? And would you consider purchasing any of the titles available on the service? Let us know in the comments section below.