Valve Now Charging Developers $100 to Submit to Greenlight

By Catherine Cai
published

Those who submitted false entries on Greenlight have ruined it for everyone else.

A few days ago, Valve announced that Steam Greenlight, a community-driven effort to streamline the approval process for indie games to make it onto Steam, was finally live. The developer was probably too optimistic about Greenlight to see the hazards of hosting open submissions with relatively few stipulations. Within a matter of hours, Greenlight was flooded with fake content, including the ever-elusive sequel to Half-Life 2.

In order to beat back the tide of false submissions, Valve's tweaking Steam Greenlight's policies a bit. Now, developers will have to pay a $100 fee, which Valve will donate to the charity Child's Play, in order to submit an entry onto Greenlight. Considering the costs to develop a game, $100 isn't wildly expensive for an indie developer to pay, especially when it comes with advertising to the Steam community. The fee will also deter those submitting Half-Life 3 as a joke.

It's sad to see that those who decided to abuse a useful free service have ruined it for legitimate indie developers looking to get their content onto Greenlight. $100 isn't a heavy price to pay, but it's quite a bit heftier than free.

Contact Us for News Tips, Corrections and Feedback

Catherine Cai
39 Comments Comment from the forums
  • vittau
    Wonderful, no more free games will be submitted now... ¬¬

    That's why we can't have good things I guess, stupid people everywhere.
    Reply
  • booyaah
    We are also accepting donations to the booyaah beer fund :)
    Reply
  • ikefu
    I'm willing to bet anyone with a good game will be able to come up with $100. Especially considering it wouldn't take hardly anything to make the money back from purchases if it was really worth submitting.
    Reply
  • schnitter
    I'll give 200 if you get your butts working on Half Life 3.
    Reply
  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer
    I understand their argument, and I'm all for Child's Play, but they could have charged $10 and still managed to accomplish what they claim they wanted to accomplish. $100 is a lot to pay when there's a possibility that your game won't get picked.
    Reply
  • vistaofdoom
    Old_Fogie_Late_BloomerI understand their argument, and I'm all for Child's Play, but they could have charged $10 and still managed to accomplish what they claim they wanted to accomplish. $100 is a lot to pay when there's a possibility that your game won't get picked.100 dollars for advertising... yeah that's humongus.

    ps: 10 bucks is way too low
    Reply
  • Darkerson
    Hopefully this will curb all the idiotic submissions, like that stupid porn game, and all the other crap, like people submitting games they dont own. Its also nice they are donating the money to charity. Go Valve!
    Reply
  • Johmama
    Old_Fogie_Late_BloomerI understand their argument, and I'm all for Child's Play, but they could have charged $10 and still managed to accomplish what they claim they wanted to accomplish. $100 is a lot to pay when there's a possibility that your game won't get picked.It costs a LOT of money to develop a game. $100 is nothing when you've gone through the trouble of development. Especially for the possibility of getting it on Steam.

    On the other hand, $100 is a lot of money to make a joking submission of HL3, or a "wishful" submission of Metal Gear Solid, of which you have no rights to.
    Reply
  • obsama1
    Great that they're donating the cash to charity, but the fee will deter those looking to make free games. Maybe something like $10-$25 would have been OK.
    Reply
  • hotroderx
    why not just put a stipulation in that anyone found to be submitting false games will be fined and taken to court.
    Reply