Steam’s Greenlight service may not be a perfect method of bringing popular indie titles to life, but when games like Papers, Please can actually exist due to Greenlight’s fan-driven nature, it’s difficult to complain. This “Dystopian Document Thriller” was one of four new products to be approved for Steam’s library in the most recent update.
It was Reverb’s Edge of Space, Dukope’s Papers, Please, Allegorithmic’s Substance Designer 3, and dtp entertainment AG’s Venetica that got the thumbs up. If you haven’t noticed, that’s a much smaller group than what’s been seen in the past. Because it takes so long to look over 10 different games for the approval process, Valve has decided to lower the number to allow for a smoother, more streamlined process.
“We have decided to Greenlight a smaller batch this time, so we can move more quickly,” the update reads. “There are lots of titles getting attention, so we are likely to continue Greenlighting titles in this quicker, but smaller batch fashion.”
As always, these particular games were decided through a voting process. It’s up to Steam’s users to choose which projects make it.
“These titles were selected on the same criteria we have been using in the past: Votes in Greenlight give us a hugely valuable point of data in gauging community interest along with external factors such as press reviews, crowd-funding successes, performance on other platforms, and awards and contests to help form a more complete picture of community interest in each title.”
Be sure to back your vote up with dollars and cents when these games go live in the near future.