The order of operations
Electronically sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement and the Steam Distribution Agreement.
$100 USD (or local equivalent) per product, with any payment method Steam supports in your region.
Tell Valve where to send money, complete the tax interview, and verify who you are.
Now you can build the store page, upload builds and configure features.
The $100 app fee
You pay it once per game (and per other product, like a soundtrack sold as its own app). Once that product earns $1,000 in adjusted gross revenue, the fee is paid back to you. It isn't a subscription and there are no listing fees.
Company identity
| Field | Rule |
|---|---|
| Your name | Your legal first and last name. No aliases or nicknames. |
| Company legal name | The legal entity that owns or has the right to publish the game, and that signs the Steam Distribution Agreement. It must match your bank and tax documents exactly. No "doing business as" or friendly names. |
| Company form | For example "A Sole Proprietorship" or "A Washington State corporation". |
Bank details
You'll need your account number, routing or bank code, and bank address. The one rule that trips people up: the account holder name must match the legal name you onboarded with. If you're onboarding a company, open a business account in the company's name first. If you onboard as an individual, use a personal account in your own name.
The tax interview
Valve is a US company, so every partner completes a US tax questionnaire, wherever they live. It works out your tax status and how much, if anything, is withheld from your payments.
| You are | You'll provide info like |
|---|---|
| A US citizen or company | Form W-9 |
| An individual in a country with a US tax treaty | Form W-8BEN |
| A company in a treaty country | Form W-8BEN-E |
Treaty countries (which includes most of the EU) can often reduce US withholding, sometimes to zero. Have your local tax identification number ready.
What you can't publish
Onboarding is also when you agree to Steam's content rules. The ones that surprise people most:
| Not allowed | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Ad-supported business models | No games funded by showing players ads. |
| Blockchain apps that issue or trade crypto or NFTs | Banned outright. |
| Content you don't have the rights to | Assets, music, fonts: make sure your licenses cover commercial use. |
| Unlabeled or ungated adult content | Adult content must be disclosed in the content survey. |
| Content that breaks payment processor rules | This mainly affects some adult-only content. |
Also banned: hate speech, malware, anything that harvests credentials or payment data, content that exploits children, and anything illegal where the game is sold.
Getting paid
Valve pays monthly by bank transfer, roughly 30 days after the end of each month. Steam handles consumer VAT and sales tax on your sales. What you receive is your revenue share, which you then declare as income in your own country.
A realistic timeline from zero
| Day | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 0 | Sign agreements, pay the fee. The 21-day clock starts. |
| 0–2 | Submit bank, identity and tax details. |
| 2–10 | Tax verification completes (answer any document requests fast). |
| Then | Build the store page and aim for Coming Soon as early as you can. |
| 21+ | The earliest you could release, if both reviews and the two-week Coming Soon period are also done. |