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i think this is bad news. "We will ask new developers to complete a set of digital paperwork, personal or company verification, and tax documents similar to the process of applying for a bank account."

It's all about control and stopping real indie development. "low as $100 to as high as $5,000." That's _per title_ ! and it will whatever they can get away with. $5000 to publish a game is not indie anymore.

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Valve aren't looking to make money here (well, obviously they are, but not directly from this like you are implying). $5k a game means literally nothing to them - the amount they make from sales makes that a joke.

This is a matter of competing pressures. We want indies to be able to publish as easily as possible, but customers don't want to see lots of bad games.

The easier you make it for indies, the easier you make it for people pushing out crap. This is clearly a response to people's complaints about the lowering quality of the average content in the Steam store, after their attempts at providing better game discovery methods and curation systems haven't solved the issue.

point taken. but it need not be solved by increasing the barrier to entry. instead it's a ranking problem; make the poor titles sink to the bottom.

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