Valve bulk approves "many" of the lingering 3400 Steam Greenlight games
As Steam Direct launches.
Yesterday Valve bulk-approved "many" of the 3400 games awaiting their fate on Steam Greenlight.
Only those with "insufficient voter data or concerns about the game reported by voters" were not greenlit.
The bulk-approval comes as Steam Direct replaces Steam Greenlight. It means, from now on, anyone can release a game on Steam providing they provide necessary paperwork, a $100 fee and pass Valve's internal game review process.
"Building a release pipeline to support thousands of developers and millions of customers is a delicate balance," said Valve in a post about Steam Direct. "We specifically don't want an onerous and detailed certification process that makes it difficult for developers to release games, but we also want some level of confidence that games are configured correctly and aren't going to do unexpected things to customers' computers.
"So we have a couple of brief review periods where our team plays each game to check that it is configured correctly, matches the description provided on the store page, and doesn't contain malicious content. These processes shouldn't take more than a day or two unless we find something configured incorrectly or problematic."
The bulk-approval of lingering Steam Greenlight games doesn't necessarily mean a tidal wave of new titles will wash in, as many still need to be finished. But over the coming weeks and months the tide could noticeably rise.
"With this transition to Steam Direct, we'll be keeping an eye on new submissions and making adjustments as necessary. We aren't quite sure whether there will be a lot more new submissions, just a bit more, or even fewer," said Valve. "It's most likely that there will be an initial surge of new submissions and then a new rate somewhat higher than what was coming through Greenlight.
"Our analysis suggests that quite a bit of the previous volume of submissions to Greenlight was motivated by trading card abuse. We expect there is a category of game-shaped objects that are unlikely to be worth someone paying even $100 to bring to Steam, so that will likely lower the rate of incoming new titles somewhat.
"We also appreciate the scrutiny and feedback from developers and players (such as Lars Doucet and Sergey Galyonkin) that keep holding us accountable, making smart suggestions, and digging into our changes because this whole wonderful platform exists to serve you."