"Drop a comment and get a free steam key"

You should report them if they make links to steam download that lead to other software because it can be misleading and dangerous.

That's actually a really good idea... pre-order it and when it reach a certain amount it will get on Steam.

Valve never really seemed to care about the quality of items available through Steam. It just didn't show as badly before Greenlight.

Greenlight exists because Valve didn't want to review submitted games. Valve already waved through games by "trusted publishers" (where "trusted" simply meant the publisher already had a game on Steam.) But the growth in commercial indies meant that Valve was getting more games by publishers not already on Steam. More than that, Valve was increasingly taking heat for rejecting "fan favorite" games (while waving some train wrecks through) and it was becoming publicized just how awful Valve's review process was.

Valve's solution wasn't to improve their approval process, but rather to crowdsource it and just review the top items. That still ran at a glacial pace, even though there were suspicions that Valve was just rubber stamping top titles without even applying their review process. Their most recent fix has been to just rubber stamp much larger numbers more frequently.

Gabe Newell's idea of turning Steam into an open storefront itself came from not wanting Valve to deal with the whole approval process.

Valve won't do shit about this.

Actually, Valve has said that part of the purpose of Greenlight is to ensure that any game that gets added to Steam already has a built-in follower base from the people who followed it and voted for it there. So part of its purpose is to serve as a marketing tool -- you think Valve is totally disinterested in the fact that Greenlight helps a lot of new people see the game as they vote on their queue, gives them an easy way to bookmark it, and provides a chance to sell it to them when it's greenlit?

3cool5read

First of all, congrats on getting your product greenlit. As you may have noticed from the majority of the replies here, reading isn't always involved when it comes to getting things for free.
Anyway, I'd like to differentiate your piece of software and the Greenlight process, because I'm not personally interested in the software. But I agree with you on the method of garnering more interest for your GL campaign, it's totally within the rules of the system, so I can't see why people dislike it so much.
Since Valve isn't yet up to the task of creating a process where the product's quality is mainly defining whether it reserves a spot on their store. Most of it is up to the marketing of the campaign creators themselves right now. You see alot of "buying" votes for promising something in return (keys,giveaways etc). I view it as very similar to a political campaign where they do the same thing to get people to go vote on their party, instead of convincing them through their standpoints and policies.
Some might considers it unclassy, but right now it is the most common way to get your product through GL if you haven't got a large fanbase (AVGN) or are driving a hype train (Surgeon Sim). Not by choice but by design.
EDIT: on the subject of your GL improvement proposals, I can see where you are coming from. But I can imagine the idea of a subscription fee being related to any part of Steam would be a scary thought for the users. Even though it is has nothing to do with the rest of Steam, it could potentially raise alot of protest in fear of being locked out of even more services.

1: You think the greenlight system is bad.
2: You prove your statement so easily, so smoothly it hurts. :D It was the stupidest bribe ever, but it doesn't really matters, 'cause your campaign was FREE and still 100% efficient. You didn't even had to give away 5k $ worth of games (shots fired).

At this point no matter what people think, say or do, you already won. And I really hope, others will follow your path. Even if Gabe removes your program (wild guess - maybe after 1-2k reports they start to worry; thanks to this thread you might get 100> ,including mine, these gonna have no effect at all) you already got what you wanted.

TLDR: Good job man.

On top of that, Mosaico's promotion only required users to leave a comment to provide some feedback, but nobody was required to vote "yes" in order to get a free key. I can't understand all this hate, I'm sorry you do not agree with our promotion but I don't feel like we did anything wrong or immoral.

I'm really curious if you're that dumb or think we in general are that dumb. Would people get their free Steam key for posting a comment if your product wasn't on Steam? So what do you think they fucking did beside leaving a comment that you totally didn't see coming and didn't encourage them to do by your promotion, especially that they were already on the webpage?

You knew your shit isn't getting anywhere even remotely close to Steam for what it is so you just cheated your way in and yet you have the nerve to insult at least some of us after, writing such bullshit. Bravo.

I am indeed very proud of being able to publish my software on Steam, and I have to thank everybody who made it possible and helped me.

Such an achievement - your hard work and dedication resulted in a great piece of software that caught people's attent... oh wait, nevermind. You just cheated the system and you're so proud of yourself. Again, bravo.

I'm happy your product was greenlit and that you found a method that works. Most of the games I vote for are because I already own the game on Desura (and they tend to give you a Steam key if you own it there). I disagree with your idea that Steam should be a subscription based service. Steam is a vendor above all, like Desura, GOG, and Gamer's Gate. First of all I for one would not be willing to pay a monthly fee to have temporary access to games. Second of all, giving Steam a subscription model to access games would completely destroy the gift and inventory system. The fact that you even suggested this shows you have no clue how Steam or Steamgifts even works.

You said in the post and the blog that people needed to buy the product in order to get the free key. If that's the case then I don't have any problem with the promotion. Sure it's likely that a lot of people didn't realise they won't be getting it for free unless they buy, but it's still very different from just giving things for free, because it's one of the rare cases when people's "I intend to buy it" votes really mean that.

By the way, don't take Steam Gifts opinions too much to heart. It's one of the most opinionated forums I'm on, with people regularly commenting without really having any idea about what they're commenting about. (Well, I know there are even worse forums, but I keep out of them. :) .)