It seems to take a lot to get Valve to drop a parent-talk hammer on the development community, but the act of giving away free keys for games on Greenlight caused them to do just that. Word has been spreading around after SteamDB posted a screenshot of a post by Valve in a closed community thread that explains the company’s position on free game keys for Greenlight games.

GamesIndustry.biz transcribed the text from the screenshot, which read…

“When you give away copies of your game in exchange for votes, you put us in a really uncomfortable position,” … “We do not think these votes accurately reflect customer interest and it makes our job harder in deciding which games customers would actually buy and play on Steam.” “We understand that running contests or giving away copies of your game can be viewed as a form of marketing,” … “But for the purposes of Greenlight, we don’t think that giving away copies of your game in exchange for votes accurately reflects genuine customer interest.”

I’m betting most indie devs prepping games for Greenlight read that and were like…

I actually understand exactly what they’re saying. I mean, how can you truly judge if the game is gaining votes because it merits the attention based on consumers/gamers legitimately being interested in the game or if it’s just because they have a free game key for when the game finally launches?

I’ve been “guilty” of supporting some Greenlight projects that promise free keys. However, there’s a flip-side to this argument that leaves the room dark and empty: what happens when the developer can’t gain promotional traction for a game that some people do have a legitimate interest in?

I mean, I try to regularly cover Greenlight games whenever I get a chance, and oftentimes I pick games that seem interesting but aren’t always getting a lot of attention. If the media isn’t covering a lot of these games and the developer doesn’t manipulate the social media space like certain literally whos, how are they supposed to get out of that rut?

Maybe if giving away free keys as a last ditch effort isn’t a bad thing – if the developer exhausted every effort to get the name of the game out there I think that it may not be too bad.

Ultimately, this issue comes down to a broken games media. They only promote games from their friends and if you don’t fit within the cultist-clique culture then you’re fresh out of luck.

I guess we’ll see how indie devs get creative to filter in hits and upvotes for their games without diminishing the value of Greenlight via free game keys. It’s a hard place to be in for an independent developer, but if we had better games press this issue wouldn’t be as pervasive as it is.