Valve has officially closed Steam Greenlight. Steam Greenlight will be closed this spring Steam greenlight will be closed

Just yesterday, on the official Steam blog, an entry appeared under the uncomplicated name "Steam Evolution ( evolving steam, orig. )", which introduces a new approach to publishing new games to the Steam store.

All this is still in theory! I understand this very well and have always understood it. Moreover, it was with such ideas that he generally began developing his game. And he began to look for an audience for his game and collect the so-called community after the first month of development! And I continue to this day. Some audience has gained, but very small. But how to collect a large one, so far it has remained a mystery to me. In any case, I did my best, based on my strength and, of course, the amount of time that I had for this. And as a result, I came to only one conclusion that it is simply unrealistic to do everything yourself and manage to do everything, and at least project promotion, PR and audience recruitment should be entrusted to professionals who know a lot about this and who have a lot of experience in this business ! It is simply unrealistic to do all this with high quality, while also continuing to develop the game with high quality! Physically, there is not enough time for everything. So now I'm thinking of finding some PR agents to whom I'll pay a lot of money and who will help me finally promote the project and find a really big enough audience. It seems that there is no other way. And after that, it is advisable to switch to Steam, because a large audience will help to give a quick and high-quality start to game sales, and also a large and targeted audience will be pulled up in Steam itself;)
Well, something like this.
prog :
Dreaman, nowhere is there such a magic button to blow up and make the game popular, gather a community in one day and earn millions. :)

For some reason I assumed that you would write something similar in response to my question;)
This is all clear.
And in my opinion, it is with the help of the Steam platform that it is easier, more convenient and more efficient to achieve such results that you wrote about than anywhere else. But the initial starting audience, which will give a certain starting and quite powerful impetus to the project, is certainly needed. I understood this very well, even before I started developing my game;) And initially I didn’t even think about any Steam either. He was also somewhere in my plans for the distant future. I thought that I would release my game on my own, put it somewhere, and so on. But over time, I realized that Steam is the most effective in distributing the game and one way or another it is very desirable to release your project there;) This is my personal opinion! Of course, you can disagree with me, but I will move in this direction;)

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prog , what you described in such detail has also been clear to me for a long time and in many respects I agree with you;) Moreover, I have been trying to implement much of this in practice for a long time, and not just theoretically talk about it. And as practice has shown, and as I wrote above, one person does not have enough time or energy for all this, unfortunately. That is why, again, as I wrote above, we need people who will professionally and efficiently promote the project and work with the community! In my opinion, this is quite logical.
But about Steam, so far I do not see a good enough alternative to it. Maybe I just haven't studied the issue yet. What kind of sites do you think are good enough to host the game that can be a real replacement for Steam?

For those who have not read the original of the new publications from Valve, but by some miracle will look here in the comments, a brief summary of the current state of affairs with Steam Direct:
The rules of the game at the start are as follows:
fill out the documentation
pay 100$
waiting 30 days
you get your first appid
additional appid you buy for $100 each
customize the page, upload builds
you wait for Valve's QA to go through the game, it's stated 1-5 days
two weeks before the release you post the "coming soon" page
if the game has collected more than $1000, then the entry fee is returned with the next transaction in your direction from the valve (applies to each appid separately)

In this post, we're going to talk about closing down Steam Greenlight and the transition to Steam Direct.

If you haven't already, it's worth reading the last few posts we've made recently about , some , and some . These posts introduce and describe the subtle, but important, shift in the way the Steam Store is designed, and who it is designed for.

A look back at Greenlight

Steam Greenlight launched on August 30, 2012, at a time when we realized that we weren"t able to predict which titles players were really interested in. Up until that point, a small team here at Valve had been hand-picking games to invite on to the Steam platform, and almost every day we would hear from players wondering why awesome new game X wasn't available on Steam. The more this happened, the less confident we became that our own tastes were accurately representing the tastes of everyone using Steam. Greenlight was introduced as a way to help our team figure out which games players most wanted, by having those Steam users vote. Almost right away, we saw an incredible variety of games being submitted and voted on, which made it clear to us that there are far more distinct tastes and interests among Steam players than we had realized.

Right from the early days and throughout the life of Greenlight, we have been continually surprised by the hits coming through. In just the first year we saw titles such as War For The Overworld , Evoland , Rogue Legacy , and Verdun move through Greenlight and go on to become hugely successful. We found it was easy to explain afterwards why some titles turned out to be big hits, but when we forced ourselves to predict beforehand, we weren "t nearly as accurate as we thought we were going to be. Those early years also saw huge growth in some categories of games that we had previously considered extremely niche, like visual novels. , we still see surprising smash hits come through Greenlight, such as the recent releases of Dead Cells and Blackwake .

Now, five years since Greenlight started, we"ve seen over 90 Million votes cast on submissions in Greenlight. Nearly 10 Million players have participated in voting in Steam Greenlight, but over 63 million gamers have played a game that came to Steam via Greenlight. Some of those titles, like The Forest , 7 Days to Die , and Stardew Valley , are in the list of top 100 games ever released on Steam.

With these kinds of successes, the thousands of niche titles, and everything in between, we realized that a direct and predictable submission process will best serve the diverse interests of players moving forward. So thanks to all of you who voted and played games in Greenlight, as we begin the transition to Steam Direct.

Retiring Greenlight

The information below on Greenlight and Steam Direct is going to be most relevant for game developers, as it discusses the nuts-and-bolts details of the transition.

As of now, we are no longer accepting new game or software submissions via Steam Greenlight and voting has been disabled. One week from today, on June 13th, we'll be turning on Steam Direct.

Over the next week, a team here at Valve will be reviewing the list of titles that have not yet been Greenlit and will be selecting the final batch of titles to pass through the Greenlight process. Our goal is to Greenlight as many of the remaining games as we have confidence in. There are some titles that will not be Greenlit, due to insufficient voter data or concerns about the game reported by voters. Titles that are not ultimately Greenlit may still be brought to Steam via Steam Direct, provided they meet our basic criteria of legality and appropriateness.

If you are a game developer with a game in Greenlight that hasn"t been Greenlit yet, please be patient as we review the 3,400+ pending submissions. If you bought the Greenlight Submission fee, but haven"t had a chance to post a submission , or if your submission has not been Greenlit by the end of this process, you can use the Steam support site to request a refund of your submission fee.

Steam Direct details

The goal with Steam Direct is to provide an anable and predictable path for developers from anywhere in the world to bring their games to Steam. With that in mind, we're making the process as easy and streamlined as possible. A new developer will simply need to fill out some digital paperwork, including entering bank and tax information and going through a quick identity verification process. After completing the paperwork , the developer will be asked to pay a $100 recoupable fee for each game they wish to release on Steam.

As we have been doing for the past year, there is a short process prior to release where our review team installs each game to check that it is configured correctly, matches the description provided on the store page, and doesn't contain malicious content.

Additionally, brand-new developers that we haven't worked with before will need to wait 30 days from the time they pay the app fee until they can release their first game on Steam. This gives us time to review the developer's information and confirm that we know who we're doing business with. Developers will also need to put up a "coming soon" page for a couple of weeks prior to release, which helps get more eyes on upcoming releases and gives players a chance to point out discrepancies that our team may not be able to catch.

Steam Direct will launch in one week, on June 13th.

system Steam Greenlight, launched in 2012 to support indie games. As expected to replace Steam Greenlight a more rational system will come this spring Steam Direct.

Recall that the platform Steam Greenlight was created to evaluate user interest in small projects - potential players can vote for and against games, and those that are most popular, valve releases on Steam. Since then, at least a hundred games that have passed the Greenlight crucible have earned more than a million dollars, and over the past year 16 million new users have appeared on Steam, which prompted the owners of Steam to think that players love completely different games. To whom give 4X strategies, and who loves visual novels ... And valve unable to accurately assess the requests of all users and filter out interesting projects from uninteresting ones.

Reforming the system green light,valve is trying to remove the barriers young developers face when releasing new games. After all Steam Greenlight in its current state, doesn't give a clear idea of when the game will get a green light, or if it will get one at all. And a one-time fee of $ 100, which gives the developer the opportunity to place any number of their projects on Steam Greenlight, gives all kinds of "craftsmen" to litter the site with products of disgusting quality ().

In the case of Steam Direct everything will be much easier - for new developers (there are, obviously, "old" ones working with valve on other conditions) you will need to provide a package of documents similar to that submitted when opening a bank account and pay a registration fee. This fee will be charged for each new game added to Steam, and its amount is still under discussion: the studios to which valve asked for advice, called the amount in the range from hundreds of dollars to 5 thousand and more. Here, obviously, the golden mean has yet to be found, which will weed out completely random scoundrels, but will not become a barrier for poor, but noteworthy developers.

In any case, by providing the required documents and paying the "fee", the developers will be able to release their game on Steam without delay. Although for valve, of course, the right will remain to refuse to release games on its site that contain completely unacceptable content.

That's how Steam Direct will protect players from profitable "browsers" and other financially successful, but dubious content in terms of quality, and whether it will protect from it at all - remains to be seen. How to figure out the many other pros and cons of the new system, because it’s not for nothing that the upcoming changes valve informed in advance and invited everyone to the discussion.

Valve has announced the demise of the Steam Greenlight site. This service was intended to test the possible popularity of new games from independent developers.

Steam Greenlight has officially stopped working

What will happen to Greenlight before the launch of Direct?

The Steam Greenlight service is no longer accepting new apps and games. Those projects that are still under consideration will be reviewed over the next week. Far from everyone will receive approval, as some did not manage to get enough votes. They can be added to Steam Direct later.

Why do you need Steam Direct?

The launch of the new service is one of the big changes that Valve is making. This is necessary to counter intruders. The creators of Steam suggest that the new system will allow worthy projects to attract the attention of the players, as well as give Valve the opportunity to more carefully verify the identity of the developer.

In order to offer their game through Steam Direct, developers will need to pay $100.

Steam Greenlight Results

During the operation of the service, more than a hundred projects have earned a million or more dollars. Valve believes that thanks to this system, the entry threshold for Steam for developers has been significantly reduced. Despite this, the company is confident that the results achieved are not enough.