14 DAY TRIAL // Gabe Newell, the leader of Valve, says that much of the success of the company is due to its ability to connect with its customers and give them the space to make important decisions that then affect all its products.
He is quoted by Gamasutra as saying that, “We've essentially crowd-sourced supervision of a lot of decisions to our customers and it works way better than almost any other system we could design. They're rabid, they're passionate, and there are a lot of them.”
At the moment, gamers can decide which indie titles will be launched on Steam via the Greenlight system and they also have a hand in choosing which titles go on sale.
At the same time, smaller beta groups constantly work with Valve in order to improve features of the digital distribution service that will then be rolled out to the larger public.