as pope developed the game, he regularly posted updates to tigsource, a forum for independent developers, and got helpful feedback on some of the game's direction. he also created a publicly available demonstration of the game, which further had positive feedback to him. pope opted to try to have the game submitted to the steam storefront through the user-voted greenlight process in april 2013; he was hesitant that the niche nature of the game would put off potential voters and had expected that he would gain more interest from upcoming gaming expositions. however, due to attention drawn by several youtube streamers that played through the demo, "papers, please" was voted through greenlight within days.