Steam Game Festival lets you play indies that would've been at GDC

With industry events like the Game Developers Conference cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Valve is stepping in to help small, independent game developers get the word out about their upcoming projects. Starting today, the company will highlight more than 40 new and unreleased indies as part of the Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition.

You'll be able to check out demos of the games. We don't know all the studios taking part just yet, but we'll update this article with some of the featured games when the event starts later today at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. That said, we do know the event will run until March 23rd.

This is the second festival of this type that Valve has helped put together. In December, the company worked with Geoff Keighley, the founder of The Game Awards, to host the debut Steam Games Festival, which highlighted 14 games over 48 hours. Keighley tweeted on Tuesday that he and Valve plan to host additional events throughout the year. They also want to bring the festival to other platforms.

The importance of something like this can't be overstated. Very few indie studios have personalities like Jonathan Blow to draw people to their games. They also don't have the type of marketing budgets that help launch AAA titles up the sales charts. Instead, they depend on word of mouth to spur sales, something that's hard to nurture when community get-togethers aren't happening.