Valve charging $100 for Greenlight

Valve has decided to add a $100 charge to its Steam Greenlight community voting program.

The program gives the steam community voting power to ‘greenlight’ Indie and amateur games for release on the digital distribution service.

Greenlight was greenlit just days ago and already 700 projects have been added, but some say it’s hard to sort the wheat from the chaff without some sort of filter that prevents scammers from uploading a few pictures and a phoney description.

When Valve found itself in the awkward position of removing a "sex game" deemed too steamy for Steam, it was only a matter of time before policing measures were enacted.

"There is unfortunately a significant amount of noise and clutter being submitted, either as a joke or by fans not fully understanding the purpose of Greenlight," said Valve.

"So, with those things in mind, today we’ve made two updates to how Greenlight works."

"The first update is a $100 fee for someone to post to Steam Greenlight. The proceeds will be donated to Child’s Play. We have no interest in making money from this, but we do need to cut down the noise in the system."

The move has proved immediately controversial, with some arguing that a fee defeats the purpose of Greenlight, which promised to open Steam to any and all interested developers.

Others back the move, saying that if you can’t raise the $100 to get on Greenlight, it’s unlikely you have the ability to support your game after launch on Steam.

It remains to be seen what sort of effect this will have on actual submissions, and only time can tell if $100 is more prohibitive for scammers or for indies.