Steam Greenlight attracts 2 million voters, looking to release Steamworks API to devs

Valve attracted "roughly" 2 million voters to its Steam Greenlight service since its launch last August, and is "actively looking into" releasing its Steamworks API to developers, according to an online discussion earlier this week between Valve staff and a handful of indie developers.

Crunching Koalas reports that during the discussion, Valve's Tom Bui said there is currently no set timeline for when it will make the Steamworks API public. Having the API earlier would allow developers to prepare their games for Steam prior to being Greenlit. In the future, Valve may consider separating Greenlight games into two categories: those "ready to go" using the API and those still in development.

The last batch of Greenlight games approved on May 1 was a smaller one than past groups, and Valve said it will likely continue to approved smaller groups of titles. Valve would like to Greenlight more games, but it is currently not possible "as a result of hard technical limits" with its tools. The company is "actively working on" ways to allow more games to pass through Greenlight.

"There are lots of titles getting attention, so we are likely to continue Greenlighting titles in this quicker, but smaller batch fashion," wrote Valve's Chet Faliszek.

Bui also noted that when deciding whether or not to Greenlight a game, Valve's staff takes into consideration success on other platforms, awards, reviews and the size of the game's community. Bui said Valve encourages developers to write this information in their Greenlight page's description. The company is also considering adding a demo button for games looking for approval through the service.

A transcription of select parts of the discussion can be found here.