Company Of Heroes: Tales Of Valor
Steam Games On Oculus Quest 2
Steam Games On Ipad

The Steam Summer Sale 2021 is upon us, and is providing PC gamers with a whole host of tempting deals on some of the best PC games on the market. We're seeing tons of games go on sale from triple. Steam is an entertainment platform that gives you access to hundreds of video games. It offers access to thousands of games and links you to an engaged community of fellow gamers. The platform is available for PCs, Macs and computers running Linux. Aug 06, 2021 The ambitious goal with the Steam Deck is to be able to play the entire Steam library—that's more than 50,000 games—at launch via Proton, Valve's tool for running Windows games on Linux.

I truly wish I could just create a bunch of quick jam games, polish them up, hire an amazing artist, and release them. Think about it: 30 day development times, quick and out-of-the-box ideas, and just hope people fall in love when I drop the game on steam out of nowhere with no dragged out marketing campaign. I release 12 games a year, each one earning 5K! Awesome – comfortable middle American lifestyle.

It sounds like a great plan, and I actually considered doing it with my series 1 Screen Platformer. I did this test because I think that most game developers spend WAAYYY too long on their game.

But it won’t work.

In this blog when I say “small game” I am referring to games that are short in development time, have a pre-release marketing of less than 5 months, have limited content (1-3 hours total), and do not receive may updates post launch. Let’s call this the “rapid release” marketing strategy.

The Steam algorithm (1) actively works against these types of small games with short pre-launch marketing periods. The algorithm is purposely trained to suppress games that are made and launched in rapid succession.

In today’s blog I am going to outline specifically how the Steam algorithm works against these types of games.

Many of these algorithms are only hinted at or winked at by the staff at Valve but I am going to state them loud and clear so you know how they work and why they keep small games down.

Company Of Heroes: Tales Of Valor

But first… why does Steam hate small games?

Remember the indiepocalypse where all indies freaked out when Valve essentially removed any curation and allowed anyone with $100 to release a game on Steam?

In the post-greenlight era, scammers of all stripes released a bunch of games made up of assets downloaded from the Unity Asset Store. Jim Sterling did this really mean video about those supposedly horrible horrible people who did asset flips.

Also there were these scammers who would create quick games and price them for absurd amounts like $200. Everyone suspected they were money laundering schemes.

Then there were “Achievement Spam” games where you could pay $1 and play for 1 minute and get 100s of achievements. Read about achievement spam games here.

These games would even give players trading cards that they could trade for real money. It was a crazy abuse of this loophole in the marketplace.

People complained that Steam was flooded with Shovelware. “It is the Indiepocalypse” developers shouted!

Guess what? Valve was listening. And they acted. You got your wish. Shovelware isn’t a problem anymore. Really it isn’t.

Sure people might laugh and share links on twitter to obvious horrible Shovelware titles like Summer Sale (which uses SEO to be the top result when you search “Steam Summer Sale”) but those games rarely make money because of the algorithm.

Seriously, the folks at Valve have very carefully tuned the algorithm to make sure these types of games are so unprofitable that they get instantly buried and developers stop making them. In this blog post from April 2020 the team at Valve essentially proclaimed victory over these Shovelware titles.

In that blog there was this one VERY telling chart that compared how much games released in 2018 earned vs games released in 2019 earned because of their Steam algorithm improvements. See that big orange section? That is the new algorithm gutting the sales potential of Shovelware, fast-release, “crap-games.”

In short: congratulations, we are now in the era where Shovelware doesn’t make money and doesn’t “get in the way” of “real” games. The bad news is Steam is now perfectly calibrated to promote, epic, long-form, games with years of development and marketing behind them.

In public statements and Q&As Valve is always eager to promote themselves as an open platform where anyone with a dream and $100 can have a chance at hitting it big. They rarely mention all the little barriers you have to overcome in order to really make a sustainable living on Steam.

In today’s column I am going to show you all the small ways parts of Steam withhold visibility until your game overcomes certain (somewhat unmentioned) thresholds.

In short, if you want to get any form of visibility on Steam, you gotta produce a big game and market the hell out of it. Rapid release games rarely can accomplish this.

Barrier #1: Popular Upcoming

There is this little widget on the front page of Steam called “Popular Upcoming.” If you manage to get at least about 5000-10,000 wishlsits you will appear on this widget about 1 week before your game’s set release date.

Steam shoppers really pay attention to this list and you can expect to earn about 200-1000 wishlists PER DAY while your game appears on this list.

This is great, free visibility. Thanks Valve!

Unfortunately, it takes a while to get up to 5000 wishlists – even if your game is great looking and in the right genre. If you are trying to rapidly develop and release a game, there just isn’t enough time to get the minimum wishlist requirement to get on this list. This widget’s algorithm is a carrot (not a stick) that essentially acts to fast-track games that have proven to meet broad appeal on Steam.

If you have a rapid-release title, you don’t get to be on the fast-track and you will see games promoted more than yours. You will also get fewer wishlists which will mean fewer convert to sales.

Side Note: There was a time where some naughty developers would game this widget by perpetually setting their release date 1 week in the future to spend MONTHS on this list. Valve cracked down on this requiring you to open a support ticket to change your release date if you are within about 2 weeks of your original launch date. You can’t game this system.

Barrier #2: Ten Reviews

Steam averages your review scores to give shoppers an easy-to-read summary score such as “Positive” “Mixed” or “Overwhelmingly Positive.” However it only gives that score after your game receives 10 reviews.

Fewer than 10 and Steam just limply lists your reviews like this:

Similarly, Steam give you a little thumbs up icon on this long list when you get 10 reviews. Until you get that magic 10, you get no icons, and you get lost among all the other Shovelware.

I have seen many games sales stagnate until they hit the magic 10 number. Here is one example. In this image the “L” is the launch which starts to tail off until they get the “10” which seems to rebound the daily wishlsits.

I am not sure if Valve explicitly hides your game until you get 10 reviews or if Steam shoppers have subconsciously learned to be wary of games until they have enough, but this is one of the first barriers you have to overcome when releasing your game.

If you are rapidly releasing your game it is hard to get a critical mass of players to follow your game and be there to play and review your game soon after release. Remember, the typical ratio is 30 purchases for every 1 review. So that means you probably need at least 300 sales before you can hope to get over that first hurdle.

Another hurdle, if someone reviews your game but they got it via a free Steam key, it does not count towards the total.

It is hard to get 10 reviews if you are a rapid-release game.

Barrier #3: Trading cards and showcase achievements

Guess what? The Steam audience REALLY LIKES achievements. They like earning them, they like showcasing cool looking achievement icons on their Steam profile pages. They like trading cards. Many players buy games based on the cards and the achievements they can earn.

Look at this amazing player’s profile page. They have a custom avatar, with an animated border, unique backgrounds, and that “WELCOME” text is actually achievements that they earned in a game that used letters as the achievement icons. Hardcore Steam players LOVE achievements and the benefits that come from games that support them.

However Valve tweaked the alg

Steam On Games