Valve have announced an overhaul of their approval process for indie games which will see players choose what titles show up on the companies digital download service, Steam.
Coming sometime in August, Steam Greenlight won’t have some arbitrary amount of votes a game would need to be published, instead the system will incorporate a number of barometers for success. Valve says “the specific number of votes doesn’t matter as much as relative interest in a game compared with other games in Steam Greenlight.”
It’ll be down to the developer to publicize their own game and, to that end, Valve intends to allow creators to upload early builds or concepts of their game.
“Steam Greenlight is a new system that enlists the community’s help in picking some of the next games to be released on Steam,” reads the FAQ on the Steam Community.
“Developers post information, screenshots, and videos for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution. Steam Greenlight also helps developers get feedback from potential customers and start creating an active community around their game as early in the development process as they like.”
That’s all there is to it right now. Steam Greenlight is planned for release in late August.
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