Valve released an update for indie groundswell voting system Steam Greenlight early this morning. As a consequence, developers will see more detailed stats, ‘collections’ should prove more useful, and your vote queue will become more manageable.
Despite the controversial instatement of a $100 submission fee four months ago to weed out the not-so-serious Greenlight entries, Valve have seen an average of three new games posted to the service every day. If you were to start browsing Greenlight today for the first time, you’d be met by some 1,025 games to sift through. A big job.
That’s why Valve have added a skip option alongside ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ for each entry, which will remove the game in question from your queue temporarily – currently for a month, though that’s subject to change. The ‘Ask me again later’ button should help clean up your queue, and will log skipped items in a convenient Items to Revisit Later menu.
What’s more, a new ‘follow’ option will now complement the ability to ‘favorite’ particular entries. You’ll be notified whenever a developer posts a new announcement about a game you’ve followed. And if you’ve previously favourited any entries, you’ll find that you’re now automatically updated on their developers’ doings.
Valve have also provided a better reason to subscribe to or create your own curated lists of Greenlight entries, called ‘collections’. Collection owners can now post announcements to all of their followers. Expect to see a bundle of PCGamesN recommendations popping up shortly.
Meanwhile, a set of detailed statistics are newly available for developers, revealing voter numbers over time. With any luck, that’ll enable devs to better respond to their communities’ wants and provide more of what works.
Don’t know where to begin? Perhaps you’d better start with our Paul’s Spotlight on Greenlight – a weekly overview of the very best fish in Valve’s indie barrel, as well as the most patently absurd.