Have you ever wondered why the games that end up on Steam end up on Steam? And has that wonder turned to anger that the game you want to see isn’t up there? Well soon you might have the chance to help out with Steam Greenlight, a system for community voting on games to be released on Steam.
Summarized, the service is this:
Steam Greenlight is a new system that enlists the community’s help in picking some of the next games to be released on Steam. 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.
Basically, the power starts coming to the people to decide what ends up on Steam, and that ability certainly will be a good thing for smaller developers to help get the word out on games they are making. Right now the “point” that games need to hit to be accepted is not set (i.e. how many votes/recommendations a game needs), but that will be ironed out as soon as people start using the system and a baseline can be measured. It seems as though being first on the charts isn’t necessarily the only thing your game needs to get selected, though, so that’s nice:
We’re going to be reaching out to developers as we see their games getting traction regardless of whether they have achieved a specific number of votes or are sitting 1st or 2nd place at any given time. We are most interested in finding the games that people want, not requiring them to always hit a specific number of votes.
Developers also are able to upload stable builds of their titles for players to try which can only help garner votes and feedback. Very cool.
You should see Steam Greenlight go up for use in late August. I hope the community likes my cat-zombie-vampire-wizard-farming simulator!