As of yesterday, Steam Direct has been officially launched. For a recoupable cost of $100 per game, anyone and everyone can now release their game directly on the Steam Store. The process involves filling in some forms to detail things like company name, who will be receiving payments for sales, that kind of thing. The typical paperwork one would expect when dealing with taxes and what not. Which, I’m sure, will become a tad confusing when it comes to games submitted outside of the US, but hardly insurmountable.

As I previously theorised, the $100 fee is actually more of a deposit, and will be refunded once a submitted product reaches $1,000 in sales. This means you need only 100 units sold, working on the idea of it being $10 a pop, which is not at all unreasonable if you ask me. Considering that Steam has a potential user base of more than sixty million users, and still growing.

One thing that will doubtless come as a great relief to many of Greenlight, and now Direct’s doubters, is that Valve have confirmed their staff will take some time to play each and every game launched via the new system. I don’t think this means they’ll be spending millions of hours effectively play-testing stuff for you, but they will be directly checking quality, to make sure there’s nothing like a keylogger hidden in the code. Each review period is expected to last no more than a couple of days, so long as everything works. And assuming you don’t submit a product at the close of business on a Friday.

For those who have already submitted a game that has not passed the Greenlight process, fear not. Just log in to the correct part of Steam where your payment will be fully refundable. From there you can, of course, resubmit your game under the new system, just like everyone else. There will certainly still be some snags as the new system is fleshed out, some teething pains so to speak. But all in all, as an aspiring game developer myself. This is pretty much the best thing that has ever happened in the gaming world. I’m keen to see all the new products that would never have seen the light of day.

But what does everyone else think? Sound off in the comments below.