Valve and Independent Games Festival Renew Partnership to Bring 2014 IGF Finalists to Steam
Today, the Independent Games Festival announced that it had renewed a deal with Valve to fast track Steam releases for all IGF 2014 finalists.
Every year, hundreds (thousands?) of indie developers submit their prototypes, demos, half-cocked alpha builds, and games to the Independent Games Festival to compete in a juried selection. Categories include Excellence in Visual Arts, Audio, Design, and Narrative, as well as Technical Excellence, Audience Award, Best Student Game, and the Nuovo Award.
Eventually, a group of finalists in each category is decided, and the winners are announced each year during the Game Developer's Conference.
Here's where Valve comes in. Thanks to this new agreement, all IGF finalists, in every category, get a direct line to negotiate a Steam release -- as opposed to having to find a publisher or navigate the soupy morass of the Greenlight system.
Finalists from the 2013 competition that have ended up on Steam include, gosh, "Gone Home," "Cart Life," "Kentucky Route Zero," "Incridepede," "Little Inferno," "FTL," "Guacamelee," "MirrorMoon EP," "Starseed Pilgrim," "7 Grand Steps," "Bientôt l'été," and "Thirty Flights of Loving."
That is, in short, a calvacade of some of the best indie games from the past year, and it's no secret that a prominent Steam presence can have a huge impact on a small game's sales. (Coincidentally, the Fullbright Company just announced that "Gone Home" has sold 50,000 copies since its release about a month ago.)
Finalists for the 2014 competition will be announced in January. After that, you can expect some -- if not most -- of them to end up on Steam.
[IGF]
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Joseph Leray is a freelance writer from Nashville. Follow him on Twitter
