Valve Launches Indie-Focused Steam Greenlight

Steam isn't the wild west, and not every game can appear on Valve's distribution service. Valve curates the games that appear on Steam, and sometimes that means it misses out on great games.

Steam Greenlight, launched today, attempts to curb that problem.

Greenlight allows developers to submit their project, and users can, then, potentially vote games into Steam.

Games like Dream, an intriguing first-person adventure that promises something altogether different.

Dream is a first person atmospheric exploration game that has you assume the role of Howard Phillips, a young graduate with no direction in life who develops an obsession with his dreams. Discover dreams and nightmares filled with puzzles and secrets to help Howard find the meaning to his life.

The narrative is split into 3 acts with multiple endings that are possible based on how much you as a player have explored. Each act immerses you in new worlds that help to decipher Howards past, emotions and ambitions. Confront Howard’s mislaid concerns in the form of nightmares and reconcile the loss of his uncle.

As with most things on Steam, Valve said Greenlight will be tweaked, based on feedback from both users and developers.

Make sure to mention promising projects you've found in the comments.

An asshole already made a Half Life 3 post on it. Ugh I hope this isn't clogged by Steam jerks that would take away attention from indie projects.

I voted for Organ Trail.

Checked it out, seems interesting.

I feel really bad down voting a game :(

Downvoted a couple games that I just know would probably bomb. Or anything that looks half assed. I know they can update it later but if your gonna pitch something to the public at least make it decent.

So the one's I bumped up are

Project Giana based on Giana sisters mario rip off. Looks good and I like the style and music.

McPixel because... Well if you don't know what it is watch the giant bomb quicklook

Octodad. Heard about it from this website or joystiq and it sounded interesting to play as an octopus pretending to be a dad.

Mutant Mudds because i am pretty sure its the really good Nintendo e-shop side scroller giant bomb looked at once.

War of the Human Tanks seems like cute fun. Like the idea of decking out a chibi anime girl with rockets and cannons for a strategy game.

.... Looks like they are still adding stuff so I'll report back in if I see anything else.

@Mr_Skeleton said:

I feel really bad down voting a game :(

@Mr_Skeleton said:

I feel really bad down voting a game :(

You shouldn't. Many games (most of them, in fact) are very clearly not up to the level of quality we expect. There's a lot of really bad XBLIG games trying to make it through Greenlight and they aren't going to succeed, nor should they.

Only a 150 or so games and a lot of them seem like mobile stuff.

@Chtasm said:

I voted for Organ Trail.

Me too, looks pretty awesome.

@Mr_Skeleton: Check out some of the browser flash game looking pieces of wonders in the bunch and you'll feel less bad. It's really quite amazing how there's already garbage on there like Spectrum for example.

Basically I downvoted anything with zombies or "pixel art".

@Hogans_Hotdogs said:

Basically I downvoted anything with zombies or "pixel art".

What's your beef with pixelart? It can be done excellently.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixels/new_icons.asp?ob=rating

@l3illyl3ob said:

There's a lot of really bad XBLIG games trying to make it through Greenlight and they aren't going to succeed, nor should they.

There's also a lot of really GOOD XBLIGs trying to make it to Steam like Cute Things Dying Violently and Little Racers Street. Don't judge a game by what platform it was first on. A good game is always a good game.

Personally I'm already bored of the 'Not worth free!', 'No iPhone ports!' and 'Get rid of the crappy Flash games!' posts in Greenlight. Steam already has free games, iPhone ports and Flash games, so why should Greenlight be any different?

Why the hell are people bitching about phone games? Do they not remember that Steam brought them Sword & Sworcery?

That Dream game is a pretty clear HP Lovecraft thing. You know, Howard Philips Lovecraft, obsessed with own dreams. All of Lovecraft's work was either directly from his dreams, or related to his hatred of shellfish and black people.

I was hoping to see some embedded video but nothing but screenshots so far. Hard to tell if anything I looked at would even be remotely to my liking.

McPixel and Oregon Trail Director's Cut for me.

Lot of familiar games there. Sadly too many boring ones.

There's already a porn game in there. So yay. I guess.

At least they took down the OpenTTD listing that was up earlier. Don't get me wrong, I love OpenTTD, but

1. The game is already (and pretty much always has been) an open source game that you can go and download for free.
2. The person who put up the listing was not in any way involved with the creation of the game, he was just some guy that liked it.

Y'all should vote for Chester. Just saying.

I voted for Mutant Mudds, McPixel, and The Real Texas so far.

So now twitter and every other social media becomes nothing but people with influence begging for votes for their friend that has a game?

Indie games hardly need more exposure, I feel like in the last year or two I've been hearing a lot more about them than about regular games.

Already vote-capped by the bug that occurs when you vote for all the games, so can't see or vote for any newer games added currently. There's been some interesting submissions to flag so far as well.

Would be nice to be able to see and follow your fav's somehow...

Managed to find a couple that were interesting.

McPixel is up there, GO AND THUMB IT UP 

I keep rating but the numbers keep climbing!

So far with 213 more games to rate i have Favorited 3 games: Project Zomboid (which i know to be good cuz i already own it), Intruder (simple but interesting concept for a horror game), and Air Buccaneers (Loved that game back when it was an UT2k4 mod)

Also, Slender: Source.

HAHA, some guy who obviously didn't create spelunky has put spelunky up for rating.

There's even a spelling error in the description

Voted for McPixel and No Time To Explain

Some top quality video games already showing up on the service.

Valve curates the games that appear on Steam, and sometimes that means it misses out on great games.

I don't know. Has Valve ever missed out on a great game because of their curation policy? Any examples?

@Brodehouse said:

That Dream game is a pretty clear HP Lovecraft thing. You know, Howard Philips Lovecraft, obsessed with own dreams. All of Lovecraft's work was either directly from his dreams, or related to his hatred of shellfish and black people.

I wish someone would create a game based on Nintendo's Howard Phillips.

@chilibean_3 said:

Valve curates the games that appear on Steam, and sometimes that means it misses out on great games.

I don't know. Has Valve ever missed out on a great game because of their curation policy? Any examples?

UnEpic is one I know of. It certainly looks like it's of higher quality than a bunch of other games that have been approved.

@chilibean_3 said:

Valve curates the games that appear on Steam, and sometimes that means it misses out on great games.

I don't know. Has Valve ever missed out on a great game because of their curation policy? Any examples?

UnEpic is one I know of. It certainly looks like it's of higher quality than a bunch of other games that have been approved.

@ItBeStefYo said:

HAHA, some guy who obviously didn't create spelunky has put spelunky up for rating.

There's even a spelling error in the description

Some dumbass submitted I Wanna Be The Guy, and the real developer is telling people in the comments section to report it.

I hope the trend of submitting others' games goes away real soon.

Stop promoting your shitty hipster games Patrick! Just kidding. Greenlight is a great idea.

Seriously Patrick stop it.

@LordAndrew said:

@Brodehouse said:

That Dream game is a pretty clear HP Lovecraft thing. You know, Howard Philips Lovecraft, obsessed with own dreams. All of Lovecraft's work was either directly from his dreams, or related to his hatred of shellfish and black people.

I wish someone would create a game based on Nintendo's Howard Phillips.

Maybe he can be DLC for that video game businesspeople game along with J Allard, Peter Moore, Bobby Kotick and Reggie. Won't matter though, fucking Jacky T is God tier.

This seems like it could be a lot like Indie Games for the 360. There'll be a ton of low quality garbage submitted to it in an attempt to cash in on a popular thing, and you can be sure that there'll be a ton a zombie games. But occasionally you'll get something great like Escape Goat. As long as they really police what goes up very heavily and don't just go off of what gets votes and actually make sure what they would opt to put on sale is good, I think this could work.

That said, I think there will be so much stuff uploaded since there isn't even the amount of filter that XBLIG has which at least makes it so only functional and (relatively) complete games can be listed.

Dream does look pretty rad, I'll give it a vote.

@CircleNine: The games don't actually get on the service when they're submitted to Greenlight. Only getting positive votes by users will put the game in consideration for possibly being added to Steam - even then it's not a guarantee.

Some of these games need to be voted down.

@zeekthegeek: Yeah, I get that. But will the things that are really genuinely creative and neat manage to get enough traction when there are going to be at least a dozen minecraft clones on the list in addition to a ton of just horrible, simple, all exactly the same dual joystick zombie shooters that have all managed to be inexplicably popular on XBLIG?

Anyways, I've seen a few neat things on the list, but those same neat things are also up for sale on Desura. It'd be great to see some stuff from Desura cross over into a larger market but quality control is going to be a big issue with this, even if its just in terms of what can get put up for votes rather than what makes it onto the store.

@TheHBK: You can vote them down. Or do you mean already approved games?

(I love how the article image is Archimedes.)

Having to wade through the crap and the ripoffs to get to the good stuff is a problem with the TF2 workshop, too. But when you stumble upon something amazing, it's totally worth it.

I think some people need a gentle explanation on how sites like this work. Sometimes, people aren't artists, but want to get more attention for artists they like, and they don't understand that uploading someone else's work is theft. Anyone who deliberately does it needs to be punished, though.

Presidential fighting game with Abraham lincoln as a Martial Artist, and George W Bush shooting missiles.

That's pretty dumb

But perhaps dumb enough to be awesome

The Dream seems pretty popular and yet it has only 1%. These numbers seem too high, but I guess time will tell.

Normally I feel valve get it dead on the money (steam workshop is ace) but this feels like it could have done with a bit longer in the oven. They have basically taken the same approach as Microsoft which is throw everything at a wall and see what sticks. That isn’t a good solution for anyone! The genuinely good games get buried and the noise of the trash drives people away. There are already 11 pages in which there is already fake counterstrikes and half lifes. Slender, Mc Pixel and other quality has gained less than 1% support.. There has to be a better solution that gets this right. I expected more from Valve

"Classic Nintendo 64 style wrestling fun.."

lolwut

But wait, you can't actually play a build of the game or whatever? Just screens and videos?

This is kinda dumb. I get why they won't allow it, but that doesn't make it less silly.