Valve already started getting on board the crowdsourcing movement when they outsourced Portal 2 level development to players, and now they're doing the same thing for their digital publishing business on Steam.
"Steam Greenlight," launching in August, will allow players to vote on which games ultimately get released on Steam.
"For many stores, there is a team that reviews entries and decides what gets past the gates," Valve writes. "We're approaching this from a different angle: The community should be deciding what gets released. After all, it's the community that will ultimately be the ones deciding which release they spend their money on."
Developers will post their games in concept or playable form, and Steam users will vote on the ones they're interested in. The games that get published will be chosen based on "relative interest" compared to other Greenlight games.
Interested developers need a Steam account with at least one game, and can submit an application with at least one video, four screenshots, and a written decription of their game.
Do you think the hive mind will serve as adequate gatekeepers for Steam? Tell us in the comments or on Twitter.
[via Joystiq]
