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Valve announces Steam Greenlight, lets users choose which indies get on Steam

What will get the green light?

Words: on July 9, 2012
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Valve has announced a new initiative within Steam that will allow the users themselves to select which independent games are released on Steam. Being showcased on Steam can mean a huge boost for some indie games, and competition can be fierce. Steam Greenlight gives this power to the players, allowing them to select which games they're most excited about.

"For many stores, there is a team that reviews entries and decides what gets past the gates," Valve wrote in a post announcing the initiative. "We're approaching this from a different angle: The community should be deciding what gets released. After all, it's the community that will ultimately be the ones deciding which release they spend their money on."

"We are most interested in finding the games that people want, not requiring them to always hit a specific number of votes," the post continues. 

In an industry where megahits like Minecraft can go unnoticed by the industry at-large (while the game spreads through word of mouth through forums), the new initiative should be a much more democratic way to get attention focused on the right games.

Increasingly, it seems like Valve is focusing their support on independent developers. Just today a (completely unsubstatiated, yet exciting) rumorbroke that they'll be launching a big indie bundle sale soon. It's growing pretty clear that Valve wants Steam to be the location of choice for the next wave of big indie games.

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Platforms:

PC

Topics:

Steam , Valve

7 comments

  • robotdickens - July 12, 2012 12:12 a.m.

    RELEASE ALL THE INDIE TITLES!!!!

  • Travia220 - July 9, 2012 9:29 p.m.

    First off, the Indie Bundles that will be up for the Summer Sale are hardly a leak. Simply because the Steam CDR can be accessed by the public, thus it's not really a leak. I'm not sure why you believe it will be an Indie Mega Sale, Valve hosts Indie Bundles at every single one of their major sales. So it's likely each bundle will have it's own daily deal that corresponds with a new daily deal specifically in the indie section. Now with that said, I love this idea of "Greenlight." I just hope we get to see more information regarding it. Hopefully this means indie games get on Steam Faster and we see more games.. however it also means we will see more terrible games coming on Steam because Greenlight is not a QA Process. Although if Valve allowed Demos to be uploaded on the developers "Greenlight" Section it could massively turn into a QA Site and give community members a chance to offer input and see if the game is good/playable.

  • ParagonT - July 9, 2012 8:20 p.m.

    Indie support ftw.

  • Shinn - July 9, 2012 7:30 p.m.

    Just read the "what if my game has been posted" section. That's more than a little disconcerting, I don't want to watch Steam like a hawk to make sure someone doesn't steal something I code, and I don't want to be put through a long drawn out process to prove I created it.

  • ncurry2 - July 9, 2012 3:28 p.m.

    Idk. I'm pretty sure I'm alone on this but the majority of indie games I've played, I personally felt rather meh about. I think it's great though for those people that really get into indie games that this will be available but it's not something I'll be participating in. But again, I think I'm probably in the minority.

  • HorriBliss - July 11, 2012 2:59 a.m.

    I felt the same way, having only played a few of the more higher-tiered games: Limbo and Braid two notable examples among them. But my whole perspective changed when I played Bastion, it really is story-orientated and that's where it outshone the competition. It honestly restored my faith in what indie developers can accomplish

  • IceBlueKirby - July 9, 2012 3:13 p.m.

    This is pretty cool. There are several indie games I have on Steam that I'd never have even known about if they weren't on there, so giving users the ability to choose what gets released will theoretically get more games more exposure. I'm all for supporting indie devs, and this should help give them the support they need to get their games to a larger audience.

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