Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress)
and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced
the addition of an Early Access section to Steam's library of over 2,000
titles.

 

            Steam Early Access titles allow the community to get involved early and play
select titles during their development. The goal of Early Access is to
provide gamers with the chance to "go behind the scenes" and experience
the development cycle firsthand and, more importantly, have a chance to
interact with the developers by providing them feedback while the title
is still being created.

 

            To support the interaction between Early Access players and developers, Steam offers
easy and automatic updating of games, letting developers iterate
quickly to respond directly to bug reports and feedback from customers.
And, like all Steam games, Early Access players will be able to interact
with other players, making it easy to create and share screenshots,
tips, and in-depth guides.

           "A lot of games are already operating as ongoing services that grow and
evolve with the involvement of customers and the community," said Sean
Pollman of Badland Studio.  "Greenlight helped us raise
awareness for Kinetic Void, and now Steam Early Access will let us
continue the development of our game while gathering crucial feedback,
input and support from the steam Community."

            The first titles coming to Steam Early Access are:

·         1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby)

·         Arma 3

·         Drunken Robot Pornography

·         Gear Up

·         Gnomoria

·         Kenshi

·         Kerbal Space Program

·         Kinetic Void

·         Patterns

·         Prison Architect

·         StarForge

·         Under the Ocean

             For more information, and to see all Early Access titles, please visit www.steampowered.com/earlyaccess

Pretty awesome. If no one else picks up their game, steam is going to have complete control of the digital distribution market.

I hope this means we see greenlight games coming out faster. Also, the War Z should forever be bannished to this section.