Steam Greenlight cleans up by giving early concepts their own home

One of the major flaws of Valve's Steam Greenlight service is that its list of nominees includes several titles that just don't exist yet: they're really early in development, they're just concepts or, at worst, they're not even genuine games at all.

This has caused headaches for game developers hoping to see their actual, playable games distributed on Steam, but thanks to a new program introduced on Wednesday, relief is on the way.

Greenlight now has a Conceptssection, which the company says is intended for games "looking to gather feedback from the potential customers [sic] and begin building a community."

Whereas normal Greenlight submissions can be voted on for potential distribution through Steam's platform, Concept votes have no effect on the game other than for a developer's own research: you can't get a concept approved for distribution, but you can gauge player demand. Concepts are also free to submit, versus the newly-instated $100 fee for normal Greenlight games.

The company has also extended its Greenlight voting system to include non-gaming software, which was made available on Steam earlier this month.