Valve set to overhaul Steam distribution with Steam Direct this Spring

A new post on the Steam Blog highlights changes coming to Steam as a distribution platform.

Alden’s post talks about how Steam has changed over the last 13 years. It is now a more direct distribution service and they are going to make it easier to publish a game on Steam in the future. Greenlight highlighted some problems they had. One was finding more ways to connect customers to the games they want while the other is improving the pipeline to bring new content to Steam.

Steam Direct is the future of Steam distribution and they are targeting it for Spring this year. Valve is asking new developers to complete certain paperwork that is similar to applying for a bank account. Developers will then pay a fee for each new title which is meant to reduce the noise added to the platform.

While we have invested heavily in our content pipeline and personalized store, we’re still debating the publishing fee for Steam Direct. We talked to several developers and studios about an appropriate fee, and they gave us a range of responses from as low as $100 to as high as $5,000. There are pros and cons at either end of the spectrum, so we’d like to gather more feedback before settling on a number.

Steam Direct is another step in Valve’s process of making Steam better. Hopefully this works out better than Steam Greenlight did in terms of quality content on the platform.

More information is available on the Steam Blog.