Last year Valve agreed to publish all of the games nominated for an IGF Award on Steam. It led to the likes of Kentucky Route Zero and MirrorMoon EP skipping the whole Greenlight process and going straight into the store when the developers were ready.
Valve and the organisers of the IGF have inked the same deal once again.
“The organizers of the Independent Games Festival, the leading showcase for independent video games worldwide, have announced a renewed agreement with Valve for IGF 2014,” write the IGF in the announcement post.
“Once again, all IGF Main Competition finalists for this year’s event will receive the opportunity to accept a distribution agreement for Steam, a leading platform for distribution in today’s burgeoning independent gaming market.
“This means every single Main Competition finalist in each of the jury-voted categories – the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence In Design, Excellence In Art, Excellence In Narrative, Excellence in Audio, and even the Nuovo Award – can work directly with Steam to bring their titles to PC, Mac and Linux.”
This is a hugely good thing. With Greenlight proving to be an unreliable means of getting a game onto Steam, providing quality games with a means to bypass the process is straight up good.