$100 (which goes to charity!) to advertise as many of your products on the major distribution retailer for that specific product niche (ie games). That is a massive - massive win for the indy developer. Seriously $100 is nothing compared to regular advertising costs, and not only are they getting exposure they are getting it on one of the biggest sites for games.

Honestly any developer complaining about this price is not thinking it through well enough - as part of a marketing campaign its a tiny cost.

I honestly wouldn't begrudge steam to charge even if the money were just going direct into their own pockets - that its going into a charity is icing on the cake.

Some Steam fan posted in the other thread that they'd frozen submissions and force everyone (indies only, duh) through Greenlight, apparently in order to have a number of Greenlight gems to illustrate the project's success.

edit:
Yes, absolutely. $100 is peanuts compared to the cost of marketing necessary to gain the upvotes in Greenlight - and once you are advertising and presumably selling your fully finished totally-not-vaporware independently, you'll earn the $100 back several times over.

On a positive note, at least the fee is only one-time per-developer and not per-game.

Indeed - that is more than generous of Steam. Add that to the charity donation aspect and it really looks like they didn't want the Greenlight to be a paid for service on their site. The cost being introduced to deal with the flood of trolls and of - well - lower grade games that simply were not serious pitches.

Steam should be what Steam wants to be. If they wanted to close the thing down they could. That's part of living in a country that IS a democracy.

Yes they do. Plenty of indies that were not let in before are now one their way.

You know that steam isn't the only platform right? If you really want the kind of game you're talking about support them through desura, gamers gate, or the devs website. It makes me wonder how many of these games you actually own and how much is just whining. I know I own plenty of Interactive fiction I can't get on steam and you don't hear me bitching it's not on there.

You're crazy if you honestly think that this new charge wont cause a lot of shitty releases to not even try it. There were so many of these games that were just flash based on websites that were the type of stuff I payed for on newgrounds back in 2002. That kind of stuff is a waste of space and takes away from the rest of the games.

Yeah, and I'm saying they're wrong to do it. That's also part of living in a country that IS a democracy. Trying to shoot down criticism based on the simple fact that something is perfectly legal is a pretty useless way to behave in a discussion. You're sure about this? Or are you just saying it because it fits your argument? Because the Steam FAQ (http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/FAQ.php) states the following:

[At the moment Steam is currently not accepting new game submissions as we transition to our new Steam Greenlight process. You can find out more about Steam Greenlight here: http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight

In the meantime, the following sections will answer some basic questions on distributing your game through Steam.

2. What do you look for when accepting games for Steam?

Going forward, we’re putting the choice into the hands of customers through Steam Greenlight. You can find about more about Steam Greenlight here.

That's Valve talking, not me. And it's been stated by many developers that the submission process is no longer open to them, and that they're being told to go to Greenlight. Even devs who had games in the submission queue already.

Obviously the release schedule is set up in such a way that you're still going to see indie games released on Steam without Greenlight for a while, because their deals were arranged before Greenlight.

Also, developers with a long working relationship with Valve, as well as most publishers, will not have to go through Greenlight. Maybe you should, instead of attacking me based on things you don't know. I like Steam, and the way it's become a social network makes me inclined to buy my games there if I can, because I like the achievements, the stats, all that stuff. I don't get why it's so wrong to want Steam to release more good games in genres that I like, even though they might not be top sellers. "If you don't like it here you can go somewhere else" is yet another lousy way of arguing something. The quality of indie games released on Steam has traditionally been pretty high. Some of the worst games, like Flatout 3, are from established publishers. Established publishers do not go through Greenlight.