Steam Greenlight: Valve Announces First Round Of Top Indie Games, Steps Further Into User-Generated Publishing Model

Always a fan of user-generated content and community-oriented software development, Valve Corp. released the list for its first round of independent games from its new "Steam Greenlight" program on Tuesday. Titles include "Black Mesa," "Cry of Fear," "Dream," "Heroes & Generals," and "Kenshi," all of which ranked at the top of the community's most popular titles on the new Greenlight platform.

Debuting in August, Steam's new program is part of an effort to help independent developers gain visibility and community support for their work. The process works like a combination between Kickstarter and a social discovery platform like Foursquare or Heyzap: Participants find different projects that they can then vote on themselves and share with their friends and fellow Steam users. Those with enough support then gain access to Valve's acclaimed software distribution platform Steam itself, giving them a chance to attract a much wider audience of potential users and eager gamers.

When it was first launched just last month, the platform received so many submissions from users and aspiring developers that Valve eventually chose to introduce a $100 application fee, a charge that Valve assured critics would be donated to charity.

"We have no interest in making money from this," the Seattle-based company said at the time. "But we do need to cut down the noise in the system."

Now that Valve has approved of these community-selected titles, they will move onto the new 'Greenlit' section within Steam Greenlight, where they will exist until they are ready debut on the Steam Store. Some of these titles will become full-fledged, purchasable games, while others will be available as free downloads.

"The Steam community rallied around these titles and made them the clear choice for the first set of titles to launch out of Greenlight," said Anna Sweet of Valve in a statement emailed to the press. "Since launch, hundreds of titles have been submitted, with more coming in every day. We expect to be announcing more titles coming to Steam via Greenlight soon.

Valve noted statement that many of these titles are still in development, and will therefore not become available on Steam for another several months.