Enlarge (credit: Valve Software)

Valve announced today that anyone will be able to publish games on Steam through its previously announced Steam Direct program for “a $100 recoupable publishing fee per game.”

In announcing the direct publishing fee, Valve says it “wanted it to be as small as possible to ensure it wasn’t a barrier to beginning game developers, while also not being so small as to invite easy abuse by people looking to exploit our systems.” The company’s “initial thinking” hovered around a $500 fee, the post notes, but eventually that number came down as “the community conversation really challenged us to justify why the fee wasn’t as low as possible, and to think about what we could do to make a low fee work.”

Valve’s announcement doesn’t go into details on how exactly developers will “recoup” the $100 fee Valve is asking for, outside of the usual 70 percent cut of Steam sales they already receive. The fee may end up being used as a sort of advance payment on Valve’s usual 30 percent cut of revenues, but it’s unclear how that would work for completely free titles listed on Steam.