The problem with the current Greenlight system is not exactly the amount of people voting but people voting for stuff they wouldn't buy (xD lel rock simulator, upvote!) or mostly developers abusing the system. They'd either give away keys (or other stuff) for voting, put the very same game but with a different name on Greenlight and afterwards on the store multiple times (each one getting its own visibility) or just flood the store with crap.
Some devs - and those are who cry the loudest right now (I don't include poor but passionate or legit indie devs in the "crying" group) - release(d) up to 9 games a year, all of them literal garbage where the only positive reviews came from friends of the dev or alternate accounts, and they demanded the same kind of launch visibility and store presence while burying other indie's titles.
I have zero respect for devs like that who abuse the system and I hope Steam Direct is the nail in the coffin of their "business".

This may and probably will be bad for hobby devs who don't do game dev as their primary source of income but I think it's a necessary step. The fee can't be too low either or it will become worse than before.
Taking different countries and average incomes into consideration I think Valve will choose different fees for different areas of the world, like they do with store prices for all their products. Probably one of the reasons why you will have to undergo a background check as a developer first.