You might have missed the latest gaming charity news when it comes to Valve’s new community venture “Steam Greenlight”, but after a recent announcement we’ve learnt it will be donating funds to Child’s Play.
Steam Greenlight is a new way for the community to help decide what upcoming games will be released on the Steam platform. The idea is developers can share screenshots, videos and general information about their projects to gain support from Steam users. More details about this can be found on their about page.
The latest announcement has declared that developers will be charged a $100 fee to post to Steam Greenlight. The proceeds are being donated to Child’s Play and Valve have clearly stated they have no intention of trying to make money for themselves through this fee. The reasons they have introduced the fee is due to the overwhelming number of bogus projects being posted, some with offensive material and other fake entries. Valve hopes that the one time fee will cut down on the fake and less serious projects being posted and prevent people abusing the system with unacceptable material.
The reaction has been mixed, some people are thrilled that Valve are doing something about the initial problem, supporting a charity instead of doing it for their own gain and giving indie game developers a platform to promote themselves. Others think it’s a step backwards and only promotes developers who have money to burn and in fact leaving indie teams with less opportunity. Either way it’s just another example of gaming and charity working hand in hand. It isn’t the first time Vale have been involved with charitable work and it probably won’t be the last!
