I talked to some Steam developers last night about Greenlight.

I was in London last night for an indie meetup with Steam. They did a quick presentation about Steam itself, then introduced Greenlight, then we asked them a ton of questions. This is what I understand about it...

Greenlight will replace the old Steam submission process from the 30th of August. Instead of sending an e-mail to the 'gatekeepers' and waiting a few weeks for a yes / no response, you will create a page on Greenlight showing off your game and the community can vote on it. The page will contain screenshots, game info, possibly a trailer video but won't support game demos for the time being.

The voting system appears much like Facebook 'likes' - each user can either vote for your game or choose not to. Games with the most votes will be greenlit for publication on Steam (when the developers are ready). They said they'd be tuning the system a lot after launch, but seemed pretty keen to accept the games that get a lot of votes regardless of their own opinions.

There will be a fairly sophisticated system for users to browse games, or you can drive your existing community there to vote (as long as they have Steam accounts). I suspect the latter will be important.

Finally, if you've already applied through the existing system (or apply soon!) you are welcome to try Greenlight afterwards if you don't succeed. And if you have had games published on steam before, you may be able to utilize your existing relationship to bypass the process.

More info here:

http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/

Please discuss and ask questions!