Steam Greenlight gets submission fee, smaller rating queue

Valve's indie game voting system Greenlight has received hundreds of submissions from developers since its launch on August 30, but users eager to vote for games they'd like to see added to Steam's catalog were also confronted, perhaps not too surprisingly, with fake and/or offensive entries from pranksters. As a result, Valve has updated its terms and now requires a $100 fee in order to submit a game to Greenlight (the fee is not retroactive, so anyone who submitted a game for consideration before the fee was implemented won't have to pay it). In another bid to reduce the "noise and clutter" from Greenlight, the queue window of unrated games has shrunk to just a dozen.

Steam's community, though supportive of the update, carries just enough healthy divisiveness for discussion. "I guess I'd rather submit a game to Desura or sell it through the Humble Store before taking the risk of paying $100 so a group of trolls can downvote my game and it doesn't even make it on Steam," one comment states.

"This is a really good change," another poster says. "$100 seems a little high to me, but any developer completely serious about getting their games onto Steam should be able to pay it. Greenlight isn't the place for mods or freeware games anyway."

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Omri Petitte is a former PC Gamer associate editor and long-time freelance writer covering news and reviews. If you spot his name, it probably means you're reading about some kind of first-person shooter. Why yes, he would like to talk to you about Battlefield. Do you have a few days?