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Valve slapped a price tag on self-publishing games through Steam Direct, its Greenlight replacement, today but how is the game development community taking to the news?
3 Min Read
Valve slapped a price tag on self-publishing games through Steam Direct, its Greenlight replacement, today and Twitter has been abuzz ever since.
While the company was originally toying with the idea of charging developers as much as $5,000 with Steam Direct, Valve today announced that the fee would instead be $100 per game, recoupable after a game reaches $1000 in sales.
That fee also isn't much different from the fee developers already paid to submit a game to Greenlight.
In that wake of that announcement, many developers took to Twitter to discuss the fee, if Steam Direct will be better for indie developers than its predecessor, and if any of this will actually help fix Steam’s discoverability problem at all.
Still not a fan of the Steam Direct Fee, but I appreciate the costs are now similar to publishing on iOS for "1 game a year"-devs.
— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 2, 2017
If you can't manage a $100 crowdfunding campaign to get your game on Steam you're not going to be a success on Steam and that's okay.
— Mike T (aka 🌈🐱) (@viTekiM) June 2, 2017
(re: steam direct fee. Skeptical fees will weed out anything. Apple store has roughly equiv. fee. App store is.. full of shovelware)
— MOOMANiBE (@MOOMANiBE) June 2, 2017
If anything, this makes Steam look less lucrative to me. Sure, it's got lots of users, but when no one can find games, what's the point?
— Noah Ratcliff (@20c109) June 2, 2017
Hmm, that self publishing fee seems like a bit of a "the baby shall be split in two" compromise. Not sure how it'll help anyone.
— Dan Pearce Online (@GameDesignDan) June 2, 2017
off top of head:
— Mike Bithell (@mikeBithell) June 2, 2017
devkit (if not provided because they don't know you, or dev not open)
localisation (for store, this ain't optional)
[cont]
if $100 sounds massive (and it is for a lot of folks) then my recommendation is to go earn that on itch.io, maybe android
— Mike Bithell (@mikeBithell) June 2, 2017
So yeah if you're a poor developer who releases lots of tiny games, you're not very welcome on Steam. @itchio is a great alternative though!
— JP LeBreton (@vectorpoem) June 2, 2017
The Big Risk of Steam Direct is of course a release list that is unmanageable with a recommendation engine that only helps already big devs
— Daniel Steger (@StegerGames) June 2, 2017
(4) Given the already tough vis situation on Steam, I don't see this fee having a meaningful impact on anyone's ability to make a living.
— Aaron SanFilippo (@AeornFlippout) June 2, 2017
I think the most important bit is fee ($100) stays the same, but is recoupable and indies don't have to do a weird song and dance to pass GL
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) June 2, 2017
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