Valve Corporation, responsible for the popular Steam client, is behind a recent Greenlight Developer's Group post that urges game developers to stop trading game keys for votes. The original message was posted by Valve employee Alden Kroll on February 9.

Stepping directly into the message, Kroll writes, "When you give away copies of your game in exchange for votes, you put us in a really uncomfortable position. We do not think these votes accurately reflect customer interest and it makes our job harder in deciding which games customers would actually buy and play on Steam."

Evidently, many Steam users have neglected or not considered Kroll's notion as they've exchanged their votes for free copies of new games. In comparison, receiving a free game for a single vote may not seem like much, but in the long run, hundreds of false votes can peg a new game with an inaccurate rating.

Beyond that, Kroll provides another reason why Greenlight Developers should not give out free copies of their game for votes. Kroll goes on to say that trading keys for votes only promotes the idea and forces other developers to follow suit.

He writes, "Additionally. when you give away copies of your game for votes, then every other developer on Greenlight thinks that is now the thing they need to do in order to get noticed. We don't think that is healthy for the system or really what customers want."

However, the post does go on to mention ways that game developers can give out free copies of their game for promotional purposes.

"We understand that running contests or giving away copies of your game can be viewed as a form of marketing. But for the purposes of Greenlight. we don't think that giving away copies of your game in exchange for votes accurately reflects genuine customer interest," Kroll writes.

With regards to how Steam users feel about this whole thing, a discussion post on Reddit provided some insight. One of the top posts, receiving over 400 "upvotes" reads, "It does somewhat defeat the whole point of Greenlight if devs are bribing for votes. It's always been a hard argument to push with the self-interested, though - devs looking to circumvent Greenlight and users interested in something for nothing. Glad to see Valve are acknowledging it."

In the end, while many Steam users might agree with Valve's stance on trading game keys for votes, there have been no official restrictions put in place or changes to Steam Greenlight made.