'Not on Steam' Sale makes a case for Steam Greenlight as profile-booster

Not on Steam is a site for games that - you guessed it - aren't on Steam, but the group's recent sale saw titles that were on Steam Greenlight at the time gain a significant vote boost on Valve's service, as well as decent sales.

It follows my opinion blog on why Steam Greenlight should perhaps "go away," as Valve's Gabe Newell suggested.

Joystiq reports that the Not on Steam Sale discounted over 35 titles by up to 50%. While the titles weren't on Steam, some of them were waiting to be accepted through Steam Greenlight.

The offering included such titles as The Sea Will Claim Everything, Girls Like Robots, Race the Sun, Leviathan: The Last Day of the Decade, Blood of the Werewolf, and Tower of Guns. It was hosted by Race the Sun creator Aaron San Filippo, who recently penned a blog post explaining that before the sale his game wasn't even in the top 100 on Greenlight, but after being in the sale it is now at tenth.

He wasn't alone, and an interesting post-mortem on the sale suggests that being on Greenlight helped the Not on Steam sale games gain sales and achieve votes on Greenlight.

Conductor of the post-mortem, indie consultant Mike Kanarek, told Joystiq, "Not on Steam did not make anyone fabulously wealthy. Our top sellers (or top Greenlight vote-getters) sold fewer than 2,000 games apiece (with an average of about 200) and may have added as many as 3,000 votes on Greenlight (with an average of about 700) through Not on Steam. In general most games fell well below these averages with a few big sellers and vote-getters pulling the average way up. Most games got a modest but respectable sales and vote increase, and a handful did enormously well."

He added, "This suggests that a presence on Greenlight in some way encourages sales, even off of Steam. It's impossible to say whether it's because Greenlight acts to increase discovery and awareness of these games, or if there are people who simply take a game more seriously if it's on Greenlight."

Does being on Steam Greenlight make an indie game feel more 'credible' to you? Would you buy a game if it was on Greenlight over one that wasn't? Let us know below.