Ordinarily, a developer needs to find a deep-pocketed publisher to finance their projects. However, Valve Software managing director Gabe Newell thinks gamers should be able to invest in titles they find interesting.

Newell explained the concept of community game financing in an interview with GoodGame:

So right now, what typically happens is you have this budget - it needs to be huge, it has to be $10m - $30m, and it has to be all available at the beginning of the project. There's a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative.

What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, ‘Hey, I really like this idea you have. I'll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I'll also get a copy of that game.'

So move financing from something that occurs between a publisher and a developer… Instead have it be something where funding is coming out of community for games and game concepts they really like.

Seems like it could work with reasonably-sized projects from trusted developers. It seems appropriate that Newell brings up this idea because his company does have a pretty loyal following. This system would require a company to be transparent about a game's development, though. They'd have to release a steady stream of information about a project to keep its "investors" in the loop. This "hey, everything's going great, here's a new screenshot" shit that some companies pull just wouldn't fly.