Steam Greenlight launches with hundreds of games to vote for

After hearing about it for the past few weeks, Steam Greenlight has finally launched. As many of you already know, Steam Greenlight is a new system that allows developers to submit their game to the community for approval. Should the Steam community welcome the game with open arms (or, in this case, up-votes), then it stands a good chance at being added to the Steam catalog.

This works on multiple levels: first, it rewards developers who truly have something good to offer gamers. Second, it lets Steam members feel like they actually have a say in what becomes available in the Steam store, and third, it lets Valve outsource the work of wading through the piles of submissions it undoubtedly receives each and every week. At the time of this writing, 326 games are awaiting votes on the Steam Greenlight page, and that number is sure to rise in the coming days.

There are a lot of unknown games listed on Steam Greenlight, but some immediately recognizable games include the likes of Mutant Mudds, Project Zomboid, Rekoil, and Kenshi. Valve said in a statement today that the Steam Greenlight we're seeing now is the product of months of testing with indie partners and beta members, and that the company is planning to grow and improve Greenlight as time goes on, just as it has with Steam's other features.

Since developers can submit assets from their games at any point in the development process (and there isn't any approval process before a game shows up on Steam Greenlight), we're expecting the number of game listings to grow pretty fast from here on out. Therein lies one of the problems with Greenlight, however: if developers are constantly submitting new games for the community's approval, it seems like there would be a pretty good chance that games worthy of attention end up getting lost in the crowd. We shall see if that's the case shortly. Have you found any games worthy of your vote in Steam Greenlight yet?