This is a horrible turn of events and will have extremely dire long-term ramifications for Steam. I just hope Valve will be observant enough to change this before the massive ****-storm of asset-flips and 3-day template projects becomes too overwhelming.
If you can’t muster up $500 to release a game then you have no business making games in the first place. If you can’t pay $500, how did you invest the time (which costs money) to make a quality product?