Today we are going to talk to you about how to add a game to Steam. It's very easy, especially if you know where to click and in what sequence. So let's try to sort out this topic as soon as possible.

Direct purchase

Well, let's start with the simplest and most commonplace scenario. If you are wondering how to add the game you just purchased to Steam, then you don't have to worry - after downloading it will appear in the system automatically.

This is a fairly common way for toys to appear in the client. Typically, when a user purchases an application, it starts downloading to the computer automatically. After that, the system will suggest installation. If the answer is yes, you will not need to think about how to add the game to Steam. Otherwise, you can implement the idea after you put the toy on the computer.

Not the only scenario. Let's try to figure out how else you can answer our today's question.

With your own hands

Now it's worth thinking about how to add games to Steam, downloaded, for example, from torrents. Especially if they are hacked. Nobody wants to get banned for using unlicensed content, right?

First of all, we need to find the folder in which all the toys are stored. It's called like this: Steamsteamappscommon. Found her? Then install the game to this location. Then start the client of the program. Now you know how to add games to Steam. True, this technique does not always work. Often, it just creates a lot of problems that can be quite difficult to solve. Thus, you will have to come up with new workarounds. And, what is most interesting, they are available. Let's quickly try to find an answer to the following question: "How do I add a game to Steam?"

Breaking the system

Now you and I have gotten as close to our question as possible. Now let's quickly figure out how to add a third-party game to Steam, and then play it normally.

The first thing to consider is that not all applications can be launched through this client. The content that is not supported by the program, you will not be able to "shove" into "Steam", no matter how hard you try. So make sure the toy is supported by the customer. Otherwise, as already mentioned, you can leave the idea.

If you know for sure that you have made the right choice, then you can try to deal with our question. First, install the toy on your computer. It doesn't matter where exactly. This is where all your installed programs are usually stored. After that, you can open the application client and log in to it.

Wondering how to add a game? With "Steam" it will be quite easy and simple. Go to the "Games" section, which is located in the upper panel of the program. Now it is worth paying attention to the very last line - "Add a third-party program". Click on the inscription and then see what happens.

A window will open in which all applications available on the computer will be displayed. Check the boxes for the games you want to see in the client, and then click on "Add to favorites". That's all. Now you know how to add a game to Steam. Everything is easy and simple. You can delete a toy in the same way, using the library. Remember that when you clean up the client, the application itself is saved on the system.

Conclusion

So we learned how to upload new applications with you to the Steam client. As you can see, there is nothing complicated here. True, if you do not want to think about this topic for a long time, then you can always buy an application in the program, go through the activation and enjoy the process.

In addition, you can always get this or that toy as a gift. After its adoption, you still do not have to rack your brains over the issue of adding content to the system. It is activated in the same way as in the case of a self-purchase. Wait for the download to finish and then simply launch the program. That's all. The game will automatically appear in the games library.

After that, you will have the opportunity to play normally, as well as receive special collectible cards and achievements. In addition, users who play on Steam from time to time participate in various contests and sweepstakes. This way you can win some interesting official add-on for your apps.

With the transition to Steam Direct, there are many questions to be answered, which is why rumors and speculation arise among consumers and developers. As a developer who has been very familiar with the Greenlight process since 2015 and has successfully completed it twice with Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion and HD Renovation (with a total of over a million users), I'd like to talk about Direct and first impressions of it. There is a lot to talk about, including the changes to protect against abuse of Steam Trading Cards, pricing, and what the new system will mean for developers and consumers.

The old way: Steam Greenlight

Let's start a conversation with Steam Greenlight. This will be just background information, I will try to summarize it briefly. Steam Greenlight is a Steam feature implemented by Valve to help indie developers sell their games on Steam. How this process worked: The developer paid Valve $ 100 to participate in Greenlight. The developer had to pay this fee only once, and then could upload any number of games to Steam Greenlight. Money was not returned back.

After payment, the developer was given access to the Steam Greenlight portal, in which he could create a Greenlight page with information about the game (name and description), upload videos, trailers and screenshots to it, useful links (for example, to a demo of the game) and links to pages in social networks ... In addition, it was necessary to add to the page everyone involved in the creation (if there was someone else besides you), after which everything is ready to publish the page in Greenlight.

Now about how the approval process worked - after the page was published, your game ended up in Steam Greenlight, where users voted Yes, No, or Maybe to show their interest. In addition, they could subscribe and share links to it, leave comments, read blog posts and announcements from the page creator. All games in Greenlight were ranked by "Yes" votes, and if your game made it to the top 100 on Steam Greenlight, then you could count on potential success. If a game made it to the very top of the popularity contest (one of the top five spots), your game was approved by the community and given the green light. Congratulations! What happened after is not very important for this article, so let's stop there.

New way: Steam Direct

Now let's talk about Steam Direct and what we know about this process. Remember the $ 100 Steam Greenlight donation? By paying it, you could publish any number of games. Well, now you have to pay $ 100 per game... The contribution is no longer one-time. The bright side, so to speak, is that if your game itself earns more than $ 1,000 on Steam, then that $ 100 will be returned to you.

After payment, you need to fill in information about yourself: name, social security number, etc., so that you can make sure that you are really who you say you are. Valve also requires tax forms and banking information to be completed. During the filling process, you will be required to sign several non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). After all this bureaucratic work has been completed and the company has verified that you are a real person, you will be allowed to enter commercial information - game name, description, cost, etc. In the Greenlight process, you didn't have to do this until your page was given a green light.

Once you've figured it out, you will be invited to the Steam Developer Portal. This is where you can upload your game: files, achievements, Steam trading cards, and the like. It is necessary to submit a nearly finished version of Valve's game for testing so that the company makes sure that you are not trying to publish malicious software or something similar to the platform. This usually takes several days. The same applies to Steam Trading Cards and other add-on files for the game. Valve recommends doing all of this no later than 30 days before the game's scheduled release so that all files are approved in a reasonable amount of time and no one has to panic. The term "game" has no strict definitions, but Valve will take a few days to check if your game matches the description on the page. Once approved by Valve, you can release your game to Steam. Congratulations!

The price of fame

Yes, there are problems with that. The most important thing is that before your game was supposed to win some interest in Steam Greenlight. In Steam Direct, you just need to pay, and that's it - you are already in business. The problem is that Steam is practically turning into a PC version of the Google Play Store.

This is a very dubious move for me as a developer and a consumer, because there will be more games on the platform. It doesn't seem so bad, does it? But in fact, this is so, because on Steam it is already difficult to find worthwhile games in the general heap - 40% of games on Steam were released in 2016... Steam Direct makes it even more difficult to find new games that will grab your interest. As a developer, you have to compete with a bunch of substandard games taking up the homepage that you should have taken.

Steam Direct adds a new continuous stream of games, but finding games is also tricky due to user-added tags. Anyone, troll or not, can go to a game's Steam page and add tags to it. Oftentimes, very low quality games are labeled as "horror" or "scary" even if they are not horror games. It could be a 2D side-scroller about a unicorn collecting cakes, but if the game is of poor quality, the trolls will add a horror tag to it. If you look for new games labeled "horror", you will surely find horror games or scary games, but there will also be games that are definitely not related to this genre. This problem already exists, but the more low-quality games appear on Steam due to the constant addition of new ones, the more users will abuse the tagging system.

Another opinion of mine may be unpopular. I spoke with several developers and they, like me, believe that the price game publishing on Steam Direct should be slightly higher than $ 100... In my opinion, it should be at least $ 500, especially considering that you will get money back by selling more than $ 1000. Thanks to Patreon, the developer's streaming channels on Twitch, and the donations simply collected on the site, a good developer and a good game will easily collect the necessary amount of money.

Speaking of payment, what about those developers who sell games for 99 cents or even is free? They will not get their money back, and if they do, then for 99 cents they need to provide a solid amount of sales. The situation with free games is even worse because in-game transactions are not counted when refunds are made. Someone might say: “Why return the money? You get ADVERTISING! " Or: “Why do you want your money back? Are you making games just for the sake of making money ?! " To both of these claims, my answer is that game development isn't always cheap. Well, when you get a return on your work, it helps create new games.

An interesting (to say the least) situation with developers releasing free games. I sympathize with those who want to put the game on Steam, make it free and will not get anything with this new system - this is not very fair to them. Developers making small profits may not make any money at all. My first game on Steam was free. I understood that I could not return the money, because: 1.) It is impossible and 2.) None of the developers will return their money. If the Steam Direct system had been introduced then, I would have envied those who returned their money, because I would not have been able to do so. Hopefully there will be some kind of system to help such free game developers. It might be worth giving the money back if they have X downloads like it's a $ 1,000 paid game.

And Another Topic: Abuse of Steam Trading Cards

A major issue with Steam Greenlight was the abuse of Steam Trading Cards. Developers generated thousands of keys and passed them on to bots that launched Steam games to farm cards. Then they put a high price on the cards and received their percentage on their sales.

This problem exists on several levels, including two of our favorite words - Steam's algorithm. If you didn't know: the more time they play the game, the more Steam considers it to be more popular, so they advertise it more on the main page, recommends it to users, etc. It is clear that this is a serious problem. Steam shows us unpopular and low-quality games, because bots farming cards break the whole system.

With the introduction of Steam Direct, Valve changed its approach: now a game with cards needs to achieve a certain number of hours of gameplay for all players, plus it must meet some other indicators that Valve is hiding from us. As soon as the game reaches these indicators, the cards begin to fall out. After that, all players who have played time in this game will receive cards. Sounds cool, right? Well, not quite. Especially when you consider that we do not know the indicators that the game should achieve. Not to mention, Steam Trading Cards are a serious reason for abandoning a purchase - if users can't get the cards right away, this can be a problem. Even in the current system, consumers complain that cards don't fall out. It hurts the store, achievement hunters and collectors, all to fight the small number of people farming cards to make money. But I'm sure that even with these changes, the card farmers will still find ways to continue their shenanigans.

Hey! This is my game!

The last problem that popped into my head is probably the most important of all. This is the problem of stolen jobs and DMCA bans. During the Steam Greenlight process, attackers sometimes completely copied an existing page in Greenlight and published it in Greenlight. Why I call them "intruders": The link to the demo of the game actually led to malware. Greenlight had fake pages that tricked unsuspecting users into downloading malware.

It happened least once with the original Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion in Greenlight. What should a developer do when he sees this? In Steam Greenlight, a page with a copy of his game could be complained about by the developer and the community, in addition, you could have asked for a DMCA block, and if the game received enough complaints, it was blocked. Ditto for fan games and games with replaced resources. What about Steam Direct? How carefully will the search be conducted so that no one steals your work or replaces resources in it? When using Steam Direct, you will no longer be able to ask for a DMCA ban until the game is released and starts making money, which scares me quite a lot.

In the worst case scenario, a malicious developer can take someone's game, make money from it, and disappear. They might even take games from free sources (like itch.io or gamejolt) and pass them off as their own. Hopefully Valve will be very careful so that the solution to the problem is not too difficult for the developer, otherwise we will be inundated with such content.

Where to go next?

This is all the information we have so far, plus my thoughts. We just have to wait for the details to do a more accurate analysis to decide if this is a good idea or not. I understand where Valve is going to make these changes. It seeks to reduce obstacles to developers, but I'm not sure that such a system is well protected from people trying to exploit it to "cut" easy money.

Fans of computer battles will find it useful to learn how to add a game to Steam, if it is on a computer or on a media.

This will make your applications easier to access and organize in one console.

Steam at a glance

The entertainment and gaming platform Steam, an Internet resource where registered users download computer games according to their interests and preferences. Variety of genres, affordable prices, support, awards and achievement cards encourage players to make new purchases, to buy a sequel to a video game they like.

In the Steam database, there are more than 10,000 games for Windows that are available to users for free, or at a price of 3 euros and more. The platform supports Linux operating systems, for which more than 1.5 thousand games are available, as well as Mac OS - at least 2500.

January 2018 was a record year for Steam - 18 million people simultaneously played online multiplayer games.

Steam was developed and published by Valve. The main task of the portal is to protect the copyright of the creators of computer games, who exhibit new products and old developments on this resource. Also, the platform has become a vehicle for electronic distribution of games.

Promotions, demos, weekend discounts help test the latest in the gaming industry. Based on the analysis of the number of downloads and reviews, a report is drawn up that promotes new "toys" before they are sold in stores.

Registered Steam users receive the following benefits and features:

• automatically save game data;
• get updates for free;
• activate versions of games on disks;
• broadcast and chat;
• take screenshots and videos;
• receive news;
• create communities and groups;
• receive cards for achievements;
• get discounts when buying or get a free game;
• listen to music that is recorded on the device;
• open access to the library of games (family access);
• create a backup copy of your account;
• count on the help of technical support.

For third-party gaming programs, only a few functions may be available on the platform:

• chatting with friends who see installed game applications;
• screenshot works;
• there is a broadcast of game moments.

How to add games to your Steam library

Most of the players use games from different companies, saving applications and programs on the computer. Steam makes it possible to run them from the console. In this case, it does not matter where the program was downloaded from.

If the installation files are recorded on the hard disk of your computer, you can easily and simply add them to the Steam library. This helps to efficiently use the memory and capabilities of the computer.

Step by step algorithm:

Installing a game purchased on Steam from a computer

The low speed of the Internet does not allow you to download the files you need through your account. If the program with the game was purchased through Steam, then you need to manually write it to the account library. Users, in this case, take the saved files elsewhere, from the player who has already downloaded them.

1. Copy the game folder to the USB flash drive from the Steam \ steamapps \ common folder.
2. Attach it to a new folder on another computer, for example, D: \ Steam \ steamapps \ common.
3. In the tab "Games" "Libraries" Steam find the desired file.
4. Click on the "Install" button, and in the pop-up window select the path to the folder that you created on the D: \ Steam drive.
5. Checking and updating starts, if necessary.
6. Then installation. In this case, a warning appears about the possible loss of saves. This is due to the fact that the game was downloaded on the computer of another person with an account.

Adding previously installed games to the Steam library

When changing or reinstalling the operating system, there is a problem with installing already downloaded game applications from Steam. If the files were saved on the C drive by default, then the games must be loaded again, since when reinstalling these files will be erased by the new system.

And if they were saved before changing the operating system on another disk, then restore them as follows:

1. To do this, open a Steam account. Confirm with a verification code. Previously purchased products will be displayed in the library.
2. Save the steamapps folder on the D: \ Games drive, where the installed games are stored. In the Games folder, create a new folder, for example Games1.
3. In the Steam library, click on the name of the video game "Install". Select the installation location D: \ Games \ Games1. Installation begins.
4. At this time, exit the platform through the Exit button. Close the icon on the taskbar (on the desktop at the bottom right).
5. Go to the D: \ Games \ Games1 folder and delete the files that were created there.
6. Cut the steamapps folder with the right mouse button and paste into the Games1 folder.
7. Open Steam, start the Library. The games will be loaded onto the computer.

Little tricks help users to play online with friends. For a stable game and the operation of programs that depend on the Internet, it is worth checking out providers who offer new rates and Internet connection speeds.

And then there will be no need to run around with flash drives and register difficult addresses, study materials on the Internet. And it's easier to create a Steam backup - there is a button for this in the settings.

There are three ways to add a game to your Steam library:

• through the built-in store;
• via the "Add a third-party game" button;
• by entering a digital key.

When buying through the store, games are added automatically, the other two methods require simple manipulations through the program interface. Let's talk about them in more detail.

Note: the screenshots for this instruction are taken on Windows 10. On other OS versions, as well as on Mac OS and Linux, the procedure is the same.

Adding a third-party game (downloaded earlier)

This feature is useful when the game has already been downloaded and installed on a computer without using Steam, and there is a need to add it to the program library for your own convenience. To do this, you need to follow a few simple steps.

Open Steam, in the lower left corner we find the inscription "Add", click on it with the left mouse button. In the menu that opens, select "Add a third-party game", click on it.

All applications installed on the computer will be displayed in a new window.

Find the game you need in this list, and click in the checkbox (arrow number 1) next to its name so that a checkmark appears there.

If it is necessary to add several games, then we also select them with checkmarks sequentially. After finishing press the button "Add selected" (arrow number 2).

If the game you want is not in the list, but you are sure that it is installed on your computer, you can specify the path to it manually. Click the "Browse" button, an Explorer window will open, in which you need to find its executable file. This file is easily recognizable by its icon and EXE extension. We find it, select it with the mouse, press the "Open" button.

After clicking the "Add Selected" button, the specified file is added to the Steam library and appears in the general list on the left. Now it can be launched directly from the application using the "Play" button.

Adding a game using a key

You can add a game to Steam using a digital key purchased earlier in another store or received as a gift from friends.

Run the program and open the "Library" tab. Here, in the lower left corner, find the "Add" button, click on it and select "Activate on Steam".

A short description of the activation process will appear in a new window. Here we click "Continue".

A standard subscriber agreement will appear, you need to read it (well, or at least view it), and then click "Agree".

In the next window, a field will appear for adding a key (arrow number 1), after entering which we press "Next" (arrow number 2).

If the key is entered correctly, it is valid and not activated, the following window will appear:

Click the "Finish" button. After that, the game is activated and appears in the general list of games in the Steam library.

To open it, you need to click on the name with the mouse and press the "Install" button.

The game will be downloaded, installed on your computer, and after that it will be available for launch.

With the transition to Steam Direct, there are many questions to be answered, which is why rumors and speculation arise among consumers and developers. As a developer who has been very familiar with the Greenlight process since 2015 and has successfully completed it twice with Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion and HD Renovation (with a total of over a million users), I'd like to talk about Direct and first impressions of it. There is a lot to talk about, including the changes to protect against abuse of Steam Trading Cards, pricing, and what the new system will mean for developers and consumers.

The old way: Steam Greenlight

Let's start a conversation with Steam Greenlight. This will be just background information, I will try to summarize it briefly. Steam Greenlight is a Steam feature implemented by Valve to help indie developers sell their games on Steam. How this process worked: The developer paid Valve $ 100 to participate in Greenlight. The developer had to pay this fee only once, and then could upload any number of games to Steam Greenlight. Money was not returned back.

After payment, the developer was given access to the Steam Greenlight portal, in which he could create a Greenlight page with information about the game (name and description), upload videos, trailers and screenshots to it, useful links (for example, to a demo of the game) and links to pages in social networks ... In addition, it was necessary to add to the page everyone involved in the creation (if there was someone else besides you), after which everything is ready to publish the page in Greenlight.

Now about how the approval process worked - after the page was published, your game ended up in Steam Greenlight, where users voted Yes, No, or Maybe to show their interest. In addition, they could subscribe and share links to it, leave comments, read blog posts and announcements from the page creator. All games in Greenlight were ranked by "Yes" votes, and if your game made it to the top 100 on Steam Greenlight, then you could count on potential success. If a game made it to the very top of the popularity contest (one of the top five spots), your game was approved by the community and given the green light. Congratulations! What happened after is not very important for this article, so let's stop there.

New way: Steam Direct

Now let's talk about Steam Direct and what we know about this process. Remember the $ 100 Steam Greenlight donation? By paying it, you could publish any number of games. Well, now you have to pay $ 100 per game... The contribution is no longer one-time. The bright side, so to speak, is that if your game itself earns more than $ 1,000 on Steam, then that $ 100 will be returned to you.

After payment, you need to fill in information about yourself: name, social security number, etc., so that you can make sure that you are really who you say you are. Valve also requires tax forms and banking information to be completed. During the filling process, you will be required to sign several non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). After all this bureaucratic work has been completed and the company has verified that you are a real person, you will be allowed to enter commercial information - game name, description, cost, etc. In the Greenlight process, you didn't have to do this until your page was given a green light.

Once you've figured it out, you will be invited to the Steam Developer Portal. This is where you can upload your game: files, achievements, Steam trading cards, and the like. It is necessary to submit a nearly finished version of Valve's game for testing so that the company makes sure that you are not trying to publish malicious software or something similar to the platform. This usually takes several days. The same applies to Steam Trading Cards and other add-on files for the game. Valve recommends doing all of this no later than 30 days before the game's scheduled release so that all files are approved in a reasonable amount of time and no one has to panic. The term "game" has no strict definitions, but Valve will take a few days to check if your game matches the description on the page. Once approved by Valve, you can release your game to Steam. Congratulations!

The price of fame

Yes, there are problems with that. The most important thing is that before your game was supposed to win some interest in Steam Greenlight. In Steam Direct, you just need to pay, and that's it - you are already in business. The problem is that Steam is practically turning into a PC version of the Google Play Store.

This is a very dubious move for me as a developer and a consumer, because there will be more games on the platform. It doesn't seem so bad, does it? But in fact, this is so, because on Steam it is already difficult to find worthwhile games in the general heap - 40% of games on Steam were released in 2016... Steam Direct makes it even more difficult to find new games that will grab your interest. As a developer, you have to compete with a bunch of substandard games taking up the homepage that you should have taken.

Steam Direct adds a new continuous stream of games, but finding games is also tricky due to user-added tags. Anyone, troll or not, can go to a game's Steam page and add tags to it. Oftentimes, very low quality games are labeled as "horror" or "scary" even if they are not horror games. It could be a 2D side-scroller about a unicorn collecting cakes, but if the game is of poor quality, the trolls will add a horror tag to it. If you look for new games labeled "horror", you will surely find horror games or scary games, but there will also be games that are definitely not related to this genre. This problem already exists, but the more low-quality games appear on Steam due to the constant addition of new ones, the more users will abuse the tagging system.

Another opinion of mine may be unpopular. I spoke with several developers and they, like me, believe that the price game publishing on Steam Direct should be slightly higher than $ 100... In my opinion, it should be at least $ 500, especially considering that you will get money back by selling more than $ 1000. Thanks to Patreon, the developer's streaming channels on Twitch, and the donations simply collected on the site, a good developer and a good game will easily collect the necessary amount of money.

Speaking of payment, what about those developers who sell games for 99 cents or even is free? They will not get their money back, and if they do, then for 99 cents they need to provide a solid amount of sales. The situation with free games is even worse because in-game transactions are not counted when refunds are made. Someone might say: “Why return the money? You get ADVERTISING! " Or: “Why do you want your money back? Are you making games just for the sake of making money ?! " To both of these claims, my answer is that game development isn't always cheap. Well, when you get a return on your work, it helps create new games.

An interesting (to say the least) situation with developers releasing free games. I sympathize with those who want to put the game on Steam, make it free and will not get anything with this new system - this is not very fair to them. Developers making small profits may not make any money at all. My first game on Steam was free. I understood that I could not return the money, because: 1.) It is impossible and 2.) None of the developers will return their money. If the Steam Direct system had been introduced then, I would have envied those who returned their money, because I would not have been able to do so. Hopefully there will be some kind of system to help such free game developers. It might be worth giving the money back if they have X downloads like it's a $ 1,000 paid game.

And Another Topic: Abuse of Steam Trading Cards

A major issue with Steam Greenlight was the abuse of Steam Trading Cards. Developers generated thousands of keys and passed them on to bots that launched Steam games to farm cards. Then they put a high price on the cards and received their percentage on their sales.

This problem exists on several levels, including two of our favorite words - Steam's algorithm. If you didn't know: the more time they play the game, the more Steam considers it to be more popular, so they advertise it more on the main page, recommends it to users, etc. It is clear that this is a serious problem. Steam shows us unpopular and low-quality games, because bots farming cards break the whole system.

With the introduction of Steam Direct, Valve changed its approach: now a game with cards needs to achieve a certain number of hours of gameplay for all players, plus it must meet some other indicators that Valve is hiding from us. As soon as the game reaches these indicators, the cards begin to fall out. After that, all players who have played time in this game will receive cards. Sounds cool, right? Well, not quite. Especially when you consider that we do not know the indicators that the game should achieve. Not to mention, Steam Trading Cards are a serious reason for abandoning a purchase - if users can't get the cards right away, this can be a problem. Even in the current system, consumers complain that cards don't fall out. It hurts the store, achievement hunters and collectors, all to fight the small number of people farming cards to make money. But I'm sure that even with these changes, the card farmers will still find ways to continue their shenanigans.

Hey! This is my game!

The last problem that popped into my head is probably the most important of all. This is the problem of stolen jobs and DMCA bans. During the Steam Greenlight process, attackers sometimes completely copied an existing page in Greenlight and published it in Greenlight. Why I call them "intruders": The link to the demo of the game actually led to malware. Greenlight had fake pages that tricked unsuspecting users into downloading malware.

It happened least once with the original Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion in Greenlight. What should a developer do when he sees this? In Steam Greenlight, a page with a copy of his game could be complained about by the developer and the community, in addition, you could have asked for a DMCA block, and if the game received enough complaints, it was blocked. Ditto for fan games and games with replaced resources. What about Steam Direct? How carefully will the search be conducted so that no one steals your work or replaces resources in it? When using Steam Direct, you will no longer be able to ask for a DMCA ban until the game is released and starts making money, which scares me quite a lot.

In the worst case scenario, a malicious developer can take someone's game, make money from it, and disappear. They might even take games from free sources (like itch.io or gamejolt) and pass them off as their own. Hopefully Valve will be very careful so that the solution to the problem is not too difficult for the developer, otherwise we will be inundated with such content.

Where to go next?

This is all the information we have so far, plus my thoughts. We just have to wait for the details to do a more accurate analysis to decide if this is a good idea or not. I understand where Valve is going to make these changes. It seeks to reduce obstacles to developers, but I'm not sure that such a system is well protected from people trying to exploit it to "cut" easy money.