Greenlight Process

            There’s this community project on Steam known as Greenlight. The Steam Community looks through lists of games and votes on which games should be put on Steam. Seems like a great way to get indie titles noticed and ported to PC, right? It would if it weren’t for all the shovelware that shows up all the time.

            Shovelware is a term used to describe games that are so bad and abundant that you shove them out of the way in hopes of finding something good. Greenlight is filled with this kind of stuff. Yet, lots of these titles show up on Steam every day. How? Because the developers who are trying to get their games on Steam show a few screenshots and a video of gameplay or possibly a cinematic trailer showing no gameplay. Players don’t get to playtest anything. They vote based solely on concept. 

            Take Day One: Garry’s Incident. I recall seeing this on Greenlight back in 2013. I liked the idea of a jungle survival game where you crash land in an unfamiliar place and have to figure everything out. I saw how it looked and thought it was ready to be put on Steam. I voted “Yes” and waited. Eventually the game was approved and Steam Greenlit the game. Later in the same year, the game launched and it is horrendous! 

            Ever since then, I have avoided the Greenlight Community at all costs. I saw only a concept, but had no information on the developers. No idea how good they were, what past games they made, how much money went into this, nothing! You want to know how bad it was? Here’s a link to a first impression of it by Totalbiscuit.

 

            How did this get Greenlit? By voters like me. I was just one of the thousands of players who thought this was a good idea. Concept wise, it was brilliant. The execution was terrible and until Greenlight fixes the way it approves games, don’t bother voting.