Valve wants developers to stop treating Steam Greenlight like Tammany Hall

Stop buying votes with free game keys. That’s the notice Valve has given to developers in their Steam Greenlight program. The initial idea for Greenlight was that developers would submit their projects on the service and people would vote on them. If they got enough votes, Valve would approve the game for regular sale on Steam. Simple, right? Life being what it is, things aren’t that easy in practice. First, a lot of submissions were rip-offs and copies of other games. Second, almost every game is just an early access pitch, which brings additional issues. Finally, developers have found ways to game (pun intended) the system with freebies. It turns out that voters like free stuff.

“We understand that running contests and giving away copies of your game can be seen as a form of marketing. But for the purposes of Greenlight, we don’t think that giving away copies of your game in exchange for votes accurately reflects genuine customer interest.”

Let’s have some clean voting! Get on Steam the old-fashioned way – with false advertising, over-promising features, and flat-out lies.