This evening, Valve announced Greenlight on their SteamCommunity.com website.
It’s a system for simplifying the route from indie developers to Steam Store. Developers will post screenshots, videos and descriptions of games they’re getting ready to release and rather than a roomful of Valve employees picking which ones to publish and which ones they have to decline, the community will get to vote. Once a game reaches a critical mass, it qualifies for publishing on the PC digital distribution service.
[drop2]Think of it kind of like Kickstarter for the marketing of games, except it’s free.Not only will an independent developer get the chance to strike a resonant chord with the community and have their game released on a potentially lucrative platform, they’ll be increasing the game’s profile as they do it.
The people checking out Greenlight submissions will be potential customers so developers will have a very definite metric system of determining just how successful they might be, once a game is released.
If you know of a game you’d like to see available on Steam, you can contact the developer directly and suggest they submit it to the system (it’s not actually working yet, but it will be ready to go at the end of August).
The aim is obviously to make sure that the game with the best chance of success are made available to paying customers but this method should also ensure that games can be announced, supported and released in a relatively short time frame. It’s an idea so simple, I can’t understand why it’s not already normal.
Source: SteamCommunity
KeRaSh
Sweet! I’ll send EA an E-Mail and tell them about this great platform they could release Mass Effect 3 on.
Tuffcub
What a load of fuss.
Tuffcub
To clarify: Vote this, Kickstarter that, Suggest the other.
ENOUGH.
Give me decent games not fecking suggestion forms.
Pixl1983
See now what you don’t realise is that this is a very cunning way to get the youth involved in politics.
Valve have launched a video games democracy. What with it being Valve and all, it’ll work fantastically and when the kids realise that their votes count, they’ll maybe try voting for someone in government. Then they’ll see how badly that works causing an uprising, signalling the perfect time for Valve world domination.
Gabe for world president and everlasting peace (No world war III)!
The Lone Steven
I can see this being abused by trolls and fanboys thus causing a lot of indie games to get declined.
Can we get every EA game on Steam so that Origin dies as apparently it’s a pile of poo?