Steam Greenlight gets submission fee, smaller rating queue

Valve's indie game voting system Greenlight has received hundreds of submissions from developers since its launch on August 30, but users eager to vote for games they'd like to see added to Steam's catalog were also confronted, perhaps not too surprisingly, with fake and/or offensive entries from pranksters. As a result, Valve has updated its terms and now requires a $100 fee in order to submit a game to Greenlight (the fee is not retroactive, so anyone who submitted a game for consideration before the fee was implemented won't have to pay it). In another bid to reduce the "noise and clutter" from Greenlight, the queue window of unrated games has shrunk to just a dozen.

Valve also stated that it will donate the collected fees to Child's Play , a charity that brings toys, consoles, and games to children in hospitals around the world. "We have no interest in making money from this, but we do need to cut down noise in the system," UI Designer Alden Kroll said in a separate post.

Steam's community, though supportive of the update, carries just enough healthy divisiveness for discussion. "I guess I'd rather submit a game to Desura or sell it through the Humble Store before taking the risk of paying $100 so a group of trolls can downvote my game and it doesn't even make it on Steam," one comment states.

"This is a really good change," another poster says. "$100 seems a little high to me, but any developer completely serious about getting their games onto Steam should be able to pay it. Greenlight isn't the place for mods or freeware games anyway."

TOPICS
Omri Petitte

Omri Petitte is a former PC Gamer associate editor and long-time freelance writer covering news and reviews. If you spot his name, it probably means you're reading about some kind of first-person shooter. Why yes, he would like to talk to you about Battlefield. Do you have a few days?

Latest in Platforms
Screenshot of Children of Clay showing a mysterious clay model
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 10, 2025)
discord
Brace yourself for Discord to get worse: Reports swirl that the company is in talks with bankers about opening itself up to shareholders
The Spy from Team Fortress 2 holds up a folder with an accusatory expression.
Steam users react ecstatically to update that lets them access their heaving game notes via the web, also it fixes Monster Hunter Wilds video recording
HasanAbi
Twitch streamer Hasan Piker suspended after saying Republicans would 'kill Rick Scott' if they really cared about Medicare fraud
Screenshot from Faceminer showing a PC desktop with several windows open
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 3, 2025)
PORTSMOUTH, UNITED KINGDOM - OCTOBER 20: A man smokes a cigarette while he looks at a smart phone screen on October 20, 2024 in Portsmouth, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
Meta says sorry for turning Instagram into a horror show of violence, gore, dead bodies, and other graphic content that 'should not have been recommended'
Latest in News
Microsoft Windows 11
The latest Windows 11 dev build gives you the ability to snap together commonly paired apps for access in a single click, and I'm already sold
Monster Hunter Wilds - a player yells in despair with their arms out, kneeling on the ground.
Some Monster Hunter Wilds players are skipping the endgame weapon grind because they just freaking hate how they look
Inside
Limbo and Inside studio demands compensation from co-founder Dino Patti for alleged 'unauthorized use of Playdead's trademarks and copyrighted works'
Key art of Kent Paul in Grand Theft Auto Vice City.
'My own voice was driving me f***ing insane': GTA Vice City actor admits even he couldn't get past his own, notoriously difficult mission
Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti graphics card
Specs for Nvidia's new RTX 5050, 5060, and 5060 Ti GPUs leak out and that 5060 might actually be half decent. If it's priced right
Pipboy holds up an open padlock.
A BIOS update could be all that's stopping you or someone else from jailbreaking your old AMD CPU