Steam Greenlight receives an update, now requires $100 fee to submit

Valve announced earlier tonight that some changes have been made to Steam Greenlight, specifically to the application and rating process. A $100 fee is now required to submit to the service, which is obviously $100 more than before (free).

Steam Greenlight launched last Thursday and there have already been over 700 submissions, but not everything is completely legit. Sure, plenty of indie developers have put up games on Greenlight, but for every legitimate game there are plenty of illegitimate ones. Valve is not certain if those are done as jokes or just by people not sure how Greenlight works, so the company is now implementing the $100 fee.

Before you think Valve is charging just because it wants a profit, think again. All $100 of the fee goes directly to the Child's Play charity, which is a great idea on Valve's part. The hope is to make sure only actual games are on Greenlight and remove so much "noise," as the studio put it. Everyone who already submitted to Steam Greenlight will not have to pay the fee, but new submissions must in order to appear on the service.

The other change is to how Greenlight looks. When you load it up next, you will be presented with a much smaller list of games to rate. This list can be randomly generated or customized to genres you are interested in, which certainly makes it easier to find games. The rating system has also been changed, with a question asking, "Would you buy this game if it were available on Steam?"

Your choices are a simple "Yes" or "No/Not Interested," but hopefully there will be a "Maybe" added later. No more confusing thumbs up/thumbs down system, and when you have finished rating you can move to the next game in the queue.

Valve still has work to do on Steam Greenlight to make it a perfect (or more efficient) system, but at least they're staying on top of it.