Valve has announced that anyone who wants to submit a game to its Steam Greenlight service will now have to pay a $100 fee to do so.
Originally announced in July, Steam Greenlight allows developers to pitch their projects to the Steam community, who then vote on which of the submitted games should be made available for sale on Steam.
Since launching last week, Greenlight has received over 700 project submissions. Unfortunately, many of those have been bogus “troll” entries, which Valve referred to as “noise and clutter.” Thus, the fee was implemented in order to ensure that only the “legitimate” entries are considered. All proceeds from the fee will be donated to Child’s Play, a charity headed by popular gaming site Penny Arcade.
“We have no interest in making money from this, but we do need to cut down the noise in the system,” a post on the Steam community website read.
Those who have already submitted a project to Greenlight will not need to pay the fee retroactively, but will need to for any future submissions.