Greenhouse
“The Greenhouse is a new distribution platform operated by Greenhouse Interactive, dedicated to supporting independent game development worldwide. We help indie developers get their games into the hands of gamers, and that gives gamers easy access to new and innovative games that they might otherwise have missed.”
Penny Arcade and Hothead Games have started this portal in order to sell their game, and in the future “…to use it as a way of promoting great independent games that might otherwise slide under the radar”. Of course, there are similar services all over the web but since Penny Arcade is quite big the situation automatically gets very different. Not to say that it’ll automatically be great for everyone, chances are only a very select few games that the PA guys deem worthy will end up on greenhouse. Maybe the altruistic thing is just a front and they’ll hog the revenues as much as any other publisher, or maybe I’m being overly optimistic about the impact it might have. One more distribution channel is better than no more distribution channel, though, and as they put it my default policy is “cautious optimism”.