Thumb Pulled? 100 More Titles Greenlit

The Greenlight program has hardly been without its detractors. When first announced it seemed as if the indie messiah had arrived, parting the seas of bad games to allow those noble and true forward. Then the waters muddied as its systems and comments sections were overtaken by Steam's worst trolls. Now it lies as a problematic but necessary tool of indie game development. But perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel: Valve have announced that a new batch of one hundred titles were being greenlit as of yesterday. This brings the total to a rather respectable 260. Details on some of this number, and what it may mean, within.

The reason given for this huge bump in titles is a need to stress-test the systems used to publish games on Steam and get feedback from a large number of developers on these tools. There's no mention made to the issues Greenlight has faced or the growing unpopularity of using it, but I wonder if this sort of huge change might help with that too. Part of the problem is the amount of time it can take to actually reach the Steam store. Meanwhile your game lounges in obscurity, your only connection to its "fanbase" the daily deleting of homophobia and death threats from your inbox and comments. That's going to get anybody down, so speedier acceptance once you've passed a certain threshold helps. In fact, this seems to be what Valve's Tom Bui was hinting at back in July. As Nathan says, how far this will get us is up for debate, but at least it's something.

Anyway, here's a complete list of the coverage we've given games that were given the go ahead this time:

8BitMMO - Two trailers.
A Walk in the Dark - Two trailers.
Against the Wall - Trailer, words.
Armikrog - Kickstarter.
Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator - Trailer, interview.
Automation - Demo, Flare Path.
Black Annex - Words, trailer.
Bridge Constructor - Free version.
Call Of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land - Wot Adam Thinks.
Chrome Squad - Kickstarter.
City Car Driving - Flare Path.
Cook, Serve, Delicious - Demo.
Damned - Trailer.
Dead Cyborg - Two trailers.
Depth Hunter - Demo impressions.
Dino Run SE - Trailer.
Doorways - Trailer.
Eleusis - Demo thoughts.
Escape Goat - Wot John Thinks.
Forced - Demo impressions.
Gray Matter - Demo and intro video.
Hoodwink - Trailer.
InFlux - Trailer.
Knytt Underground - Trailer and demo.
Legend of Iya - Kickstarter.
Legend of the Knightwasher - Trailer.
Legends of Aethereus - Trailer.
Megabyte Punch - Impressions, trailer and demo.
Mortal Online: The Awakening - Three part diary.
Mutant Mudds - Trailer.
NEO Scavengers - Demo thoughts.
Oniken - Trailer.
Paranautical Activity - Trailers, impressions.
Poker Smash - Trailer.
Rawbots - Kickstarter, trailer.
Ray's The Dead - Trailer.
Reprisal - Demo and browser version.
Road Redemption - Trailer.
Running With Rifles - Two trailers.
Salvation Prophecy - Trailer.
Signal Ops - Two trailers.
Son of Nor - Kickstarter, trailer.
Soul Saga - Kickstarter.
Super Amazing Wagon Adventure - Trailer.
Talisman Digital Edition - Cardboard Children.
Teslagrad - Demo, trailers.
The Plan - Free version, trailer.
Underrail - Demo and trailer.
WARMACHINE: Tactics - Kickstarter, interview.
Zafehouse Diaries - Wot Rob Thinks.

Things learned writing this post: a lot of games start with Legend or Legends. RPS covers a lot of games. We tag our posts pretty well.