Valve has decided to go with a relatively low self-publishing fee for Steam Direct, its new publishing model. Direct, a replacement for Greenlight, comes with a $100 publishing fee that’ll be paid by developers who want their content to be on the store.
While Greenlight allowed people to pay $100 and then publish as many titles as they liked, Direct’s fee applies to every individual game.
You’ll be able to get that money back if your game passes $100 in revenue. Valve only keeps the money if a game earns very little.
Valve announced Steam Direct in February and revealed it was considering fees ranging from $100 to $5,000. Clearly it decided a lower price was the best plan of action.
The company initially settled “around the $500 mark,” said Valve’s Alden Kroll. But the public debate “really challenged us to justify why the fee wasn’t as low as possible, and to think about what we could do to make a low fee work.”
Valve has yet to reveal when Direct will launch to replace Greenlight.
