Independent developers werenone too pleasedto learn that Valve is now charging a $100 fee to list games on Steam Greenlight, a new service which allows users to vote on which games will be offered for sale on Steam.
The fee came into being because lots of fake games and porn titles began clogging the service, and making it difficult to find genuine titles. Valve felt that the $100 fee would discourage trolls, and vowed to offer all the extra revenue to Child's Play to show they're not trying to make a quick buck.
However, some have fired back saying that it amounts to putting an economic stranglehold on the service, ensuring that struggling game designers or poorer people wouldn't be able to list their games.
Valve has now issued a statement that somewhat addresses the outcry.
"We always try to build quick iteration into our process for development of new features, and Greenlight will be no different. We have a huge list of suggestions from customers and the lessons we've learned from shipping, so Greenlight will definitely continue to evolve over the next weeks and months as we tune the system and add valuable features."
While it's certainly not an admission of wrongdoing, this comment reads like they're saying "whoa whoa, don't everybody get angry just yet. This might not be permanent, we're still evaluating things." We'll be following this story and will update this space if Valve offers any further comment.
