How much does it cost to put a game on Steam?

In June 2017 Valve replaced Steam Greenlight, where players voted games onto the store, with Steam Direct: a flat fee per game, paid back once the game proves it sells. One hundred dollars is low enough not to stop anyone serious, and enough to slow the flood of throwaway submissions. About 20,000 games came out on Steam in 2025, by the counts How To Market A Game compiled from four trackers, nearly all of them through Steam Direct.

The obvious reading is that $100 is the cost of being on Steam. It is closer to a deposit. A game that earns $1,000 gets it back, and the real costs of a Steam release are elsewhere: Valve's share of every sale, and whatever you spend making the game findable.

From Valve's Steam Direct page and fee documentation:

• $100 per new app, in US dollars or the local equivalent, paid with any Steam payment method in your country except the Steam Wallet.
• Not refundable, but recoupable: Valve pays it back in the payment after the product reaches $1,000 in adjusted gross revenue from Steam store and in-app purchases. The recoup shows as its own line on the monthly report.
• An app credit: paying creates a credit on the Steam account of the person who paid, and only that person can activate it. Only users with Admin permission in the Steamworks partner can pay.
• Per product: each game needs its own fee. DLC and demos are added from the base game's landing page, under All associated packages, DLC, demos and tools, rather than with a new app credit.
• Taxes on the fee: Valve charges VAT, GST or similar where a country requires it, and invoices the individual who paid; Valve does not issue duplicate invoices for an employer.
• Withholding: the recoup can be withheld if the fee payment is charged back, refunded or flagged as fraudulent.

• 30 days after paying, for your first few titles, before the game can release.
• 15 to 30 days for Valve to verify your identity, tax and bank paperwork.
• 3 to 5 business days for each of the store page and build reviews; Valve asks for seven ahead.
• Two weeks with the page public as Coming Soon before release.

Most of these overlap, so a first title can go from paying to releasing in about six weeks. Pay the fee as soon as the paperwork is in: paying early costs nothing, and the 30 days cannot be shortened later. Our guide to publishing a game on Steam lays the steps out in order.

The fee is the only payment to Valve before launch. After launch, the costs are a share and your own choices:

• A game that earns $800 in its life: Valve's 30% share is $240; the $100 fee is never recouped. Net to the developer before tax: $460. The fee is a real cost for games that do not sell.
• A game that earns $5,000: Valve keeps $1,500; the developer receives $3,500 and, once the game passed $1,000, the $100 fee back. The fee cost nothing.
• A game that earns $15 million: Valve keeps 30% of the first $10 million ($3 million) and 25% of the next $5 million ($1.25 million). The $100 is a rounding error.

The amounts are adjusted gross revenue, after refunds, chargebacks and sales taxes; see Steam's revenue share for how that is worked out.

• Is it per developer or per game? Per game. Each new app needs its own credit.
• Does it expire? Valve's documentation sets no expiry on an unused credit, but the 30-day wait for a first title runs from payment, so there is no reason to buy one early.
• Can I get it back if I never release? No. It is not refundable; it is only recouped through sales.
• Can a publisher pay it? The person who pays owns the credit and must activate it, and the invoice goes to that person, so pay from the account that will manage the app.
• Does a free game recoup it? Only through in-app purchases or other paid revenue; a game with no revenue never reaches $1,000.

itch.io charges no fee to upload and lets the developer choose its revenue share, 10% by default, and many games launch a demo or a jam version there first. The fee is not the difference that matters. Steam brings wishlists that email players at launch, festivals such as Next Fest, discovery queues and the store most PC players already have open; a game that sells there recoups the $100 within its first few dozen copies. For a game you intend to sell, the fee is the cheapest line in the budget. For a free prototype you only want feedback on, a free store or a Steam Playtest of an existing app may be the better first step.

Flockbay is a free AI game builder on the official Godot engine. It builds the game for free, makes the native Windows build, and drafts the Steam store page, copy, tags, content survey and capsules from a real frame, as a .zip you upload yourself, so the optional costs above can be close to zero. You pay the Steam Direct fee and do the paperwork in Steamworks; Flockbay never sends anything to Steam and takes no share of your sales. Preparing the page by hand and its .zip are free; drafting is free in beta until 1 December 2026.