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Steam Direct, the self-publishing option to get games on Steam has launched. Valve have also said they gave the greenlight to many of the 3,400 games that were still left in Greenlight when it closed.

Developers will pay a recoupable $100 fee to get their game onto Steam, that's $100 per-game, not $100 to register with Valve. Once they earn $1,000 with the title, they can claim it back.

While initially I had some concerns about the store suddenly getting spammed with new games, it's doubtful that will actually happen. We have to take into account the fact that developers have to go through the identification, banking and tax checks with Valve first. Valve did also say in their previous post that games would have a vetting period of 30 days, although this new announcement states the testing period may only last one or two days.

Valve also adjusted the way Trading Cards work, which a fair amount of games were apparently being put up to abuse. Games now have to hit some kind of metric set by Valve to show it's genuine users purchasing and playing it before cards will drop.

You can read the announcement in full here.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens that's for sure. Valve have said they will share an analysis of "changes in volume of submissions or behavior of developers".

I think it's great Valve have lowered the barrier for developers, but it does mean my job here becomes even more important to showcase the good (and the bad) games.

What do you think? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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7 comments

Leopard Jun 14, 2017
I hope that can prevent shovelware on Steam.

Steam was becoming the ultimate garbage in terms of games.
razing32 Jun 14, 2017
Really curios if it helps.

Curios as well how many of those 3400 games are good and not shovelware.
Luke_Nukem Jun 14, 2017
If you've spent much time browsing Greenlight at all, yeah a very large percentage of those games looked atrociously crap.
TheRiddick Jun 14, 2017
Gone are the days of botnets green-lighting terrible games from terrible developers, hopefully...

Guess the bots will focus now on posting fake reviews, however I think there are some conditions to that also?
Purple Library Guy Jun 14, 2017
Quoting: LeopardI hope that can prevent shovelware on Steam.

Steam was becoming the ultimate garbage in terms of games.

I think it underlines the importance already of sites like GoL that I never actually became aware of this. I basically never buy anything I haven't seen reviewed here, and I don't bother browsing around on Steam for more because really, my hands are full just from the GoL-reviewed stuff that looks good.
Ardje Jun 15, 2017
Quoting: TheRiddickGone are the days of botnets green-lighting terrible games from terrible developers, hopefully...

Guess the bots will focus now on posting fake reviews, however I think there are some conditions to that also?
I think you can grade reviews. Oh wait... review grade bot...
/me sighs.
Edit: what if grading and review importance get biased by the steam level a user has?
Certainly a bot wouldn't have a steam level of 10.


Last edited by Ardje on 15 June 2017 at 10:53 am UTC
razing32 Jun 15, 2017
Quoting: Ardje
Quoting: TheRiddickGone are the days of botnets green-lighting terrible games from terrible developers, hopefully...

Guess the bots will focus now on posting fake reviews, however I think there are some conditions to that also?
I think you can grade reviews. Oh wait... review grade bot...
/me sighs.
Edit: what if grading and review importance get biased by the steam level a user has?
Certainly a bot wouldn't have a steam level of 10.

Can't you inflate your steam user level with card collections or such ?
Mine is fairly low compared to friends since I just buy and play games and don't care that much about levels/cards and such.
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