Valve seems to be moving away from the traditional approval process for what games get to be sold on Steam and what games do not.

Using the Steam community to let potential buyers say what games they might be interested on spending their cash on.

http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight

I suppose this makes the process of selecting game a lot more reliable. If a game makes its way there its a guarantee that people are actually interested in it and should also help developers with another (huge) venue to get feedback on what is needed to make their game more interesting to people and get them to buy it.

Also it's coming soon...

To The Moon hopefully will get picked up by this. That game is fantastic and needs picking up by more people.

But kudos on Valve doing this, hopefully some interesting games will come from this. However I wander what part of Valve time this will release in.

What defines a malicious game? Is that their escape clause to keep embarrassing titles like Bonetown off of the service? Edit: same question wih 'offensive materials'. Some people may find violent content offensive that another could find benign.

@UltorOscariot said:

What defines a malicious game? Is that their escape clause to keep embarrassing titles like Bonetown off of the service? Edit: same question wih 'offensive materials'. Some people may find violent content offensive that another could find benign.

Appropriate questions, but keep in mind that the community of Steam is incredibly big. With that in mind, I think the outcome would present itself similar to Gaussian Distribution. For each game of course. I see nothing wrong with that, now if there was something like 10-20 voters, then yeah that would not be the most effective method, but we're talking about potential millions here.

Does this mean we can lobby to get KOTOR 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance on there, or is it only for upcoming indie games?

I find this very intriguing. By letting you make a presence on Steam earlier, they are also creating a more formal way of getting these small projects organized. Very interesting.

And so the letter writing campaign for System Shock 2 begins anew...

No, seriously I'm going to write letters to all the publishers currently on Steam with a list of games that need to get on that service. Maybe Paramount will finally let Activision release those licensed Star Trek games.

I wonder how long it will for someone to maliciously post BF3.

Seems like it's just a thing of guessing though. =P It's not like they're going to give us a free copy so we see which games are good and suggest them.

@amena said:

Seems like it's just a thing of guessing though. =P It's not like they're going to give us a free copy so we see which games are good and suggest them.

From the Steam page:

Can I post my game concept or early builds?

Absolutely! We encourage you to post information about your game as early in the development process as you are comfortable with. Greenlight will let you define whether you are posting your game as a concept/early build or as a playable game that is nearing completion.

We ask that you only define your game as 'playable game' if you have a playable build that demonstrates the gameplay mechanics and at least one level of your game. Otherwise, please classify your submission as 'concept' until its far enough along that the community can reasonably evaluate the mechanics, scope, and style of your game. Either way, you will probably get great feedback and a good start in building a community of fans around your game.

@BaneFireLord said:

Does this mean we can lobby to get KOTOR 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance on there, or is it only for upcoming indie games?

Only games that have been submitted to Steam Greenlight can be voted on, and games can only be submitted by the devoloper or publisher. If the developer/publisher doesn't want to put the game on Steam, Greenlight is unlikely to change that.

Neither KOTOR 2 nor Marvel Ultimate Alliance are likely to be rejected, so they don't need Greenlight.

@Pr1mus: CONCEPT is the key word there. Beta games should never be priced.

I mean they're not going to give us the full game to try out are they? That's my question.