Introducing Steam Direct…

Valve‘s announcement says that Steam is evolving. That statement makes sense: there are more players than before, and there are also more (sometimes questionable quality) titles as well. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Steam Greenlight is being replaced.

„After the launch of Steam Greenlight, we realized that it was a useful stepping stone for moving to a more direct distribution system, but it still left us short of that goal. Along the way, it helped us lower the barrier to publishing for many developers while delivering many great new games to Steam,” the post says. It also adds that Valve has to improve on bringing new content to Steam faster, as well as connect the customers and the games they’d like to find together, too.

Steam Direct, which is set to launch in the Spring, will try to address these issues. „We want to make sure Steam is a welcoming environment for all developers who are serious about treating customers fairly and making quality gaming experiences.”

The non-Greenlighted games can change to the new method after the refund, but the pricing will be between 100 and 5000 dollars for publishing. Perhaps this is Gabe Newell’s way to get rid of low-quality games, but in return, the community doesn’t have to greenlight the games to make it available on Steam properly.

Steam Greenlight has launched over a hundred games that gained at least a million dollars since its August 2012 launch. This result will be hard to be topped.