Steam Direct goes live next week

Steam has officially pulled the plug on Greenlight, and will roll out its successor, Steam Direct, next week. Valve today announced that it has closed the Greenlight submission and voting processes in anticipation of a June 13 debut for Direct.

As for what happens to the more than 3,400 games that had already been submitted to Greenlight but not yet completed the process, Valve said it has a team going through them to determine a final batch of titles to come out of the program.

"Our goal is to Greenlight as many of the remaining games as we have confidence in," Valve's Alden Kroll said. "There are some titles that will not be Greenlit, due to insufficient voter data or concerns about the game reported by voters."

Any titles that don't make it into that final Greenlight batch can still launch through Steam Direct, "provided they meet our basic criteria of legality and appropriateness."

Originally launched in 2012, Greenlight let customers vote on games to be added to the Steam catalog. While the system led to a proliferation of new titles arriving on Steam, Valve expressed a desire to move on to a different arrangement as early as 2014, and earlier this year said it would halt the program entirely.

In some ways, Steam Direct will lower the hurdle for developers looking to get on Steam. After submitting bank and tax information to Valve, developers will pay a $100 fee for each game they release, with the developer receiving that money back if the game's revenues on the storefront top $1,000. Previously, Valve charged a one-time Greenlight submission fee of $100, with all proceeds going to charity.

"The goal with Steam Direct is to provide an understandable and predictable path for developers from anywhere in the world to bring their games to Steam," Kroll said.