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Is the AI flood here yet? How many games have released in 2024
Every year, I look at how many games have launched and how many have reached “Real Steam” (which I arbitrarily pick as having 1000+ reviews.) This year I want to track it throughout the year. Are we...
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How creating a spinoff for a hot genre lead to success for Deep Rock Galactic...
Success metrics Last month, the developers behind the Deep Rock Galactic Survivor (DRG:S) announced that they sold over 1,000,000 copies of their game since its February Launch. We are thrilled to...
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Spirit City: Lofi Sessions. How shrinking down lead to huge success
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions launched 1 week ago today and has already sold over 55,000 units. In fact, within the first 4 days it already sold 40,000 copies. The game is developed by Mooncube Games, a...
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What Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor can teach us about early access
I will be honest, I don’t get Early Access. Why would teams want to subject themselves to that exposure to the community with an unfinished game? How do you navigate having the game feel good and have...
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How to get special Daily Deal featuring on the Steam Front page
Everyone wants “exposure” for their game. Mostly, they just want their game pinned on the front page of Steam. In today’s blog I am diving deep into the way you get that front-page featuring in the...
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How Weekend Deals Work
In today’s post I will explain how to get one of the biggest prizes on Steam: The Weekend Deal. Last week I wrote about the Steam Daily Deal which typically earns games $10,000- $70,000 during a...
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Success via a game inspired by YouTube Content
On October 18th, 2022, a game developer named Blake (discord handle Tisbury) released Backrooms: Escape Together (BET) on Steam after having his Steam page live for only 2 weeks. During that 2 weeks...
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Do Steam Players Like Hard Games or Approachable Games?
I always say that the Steam player base is “hard core.” They love deep games with lots of content. They like UIs that are complex and cluttered. If you asked me for a screenshot that perfectly...
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How Screenbound is Building in Public
Today I am excited to have a guest post written by my friend Ryan K. Rigney who heads up marketing at Odyssey Interactive. You should definitely subscribe to his weekly newsletter for game developers,...
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What is Wishlist Velocity and is it a better indicator of success?
I know I know I write about wishlists a lot. But, if you are a heart surgeon you have to talk about blood a lot too. Pre-release, wishlists are an integral factor in Steam visibility. After release,...
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The double jump trick to Steam Next Fest
Steam Next Fest is over and I had a chance to talk to Xalavier Nelson Jr. about his company’s latest game I Am Your Beast and the strategy they used to propel it to the 16th most-played-demos during...
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Do demos help earn wishlists? Steam Next Fest June 2024
One of the longest running mysteries around festivals like Steam Next Fest was whether people deliberately play games and carefully evaluate each or do they just spam the “wishlist” button as they...
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Steam Next Fest June 2024: Top demos and genre
At the conclusion of the June 2024 Steam Next Fest, Valve created a special page commemorating the 50 most-played demos during the fest. In this mid-week mini-blog I am taking a look at some of the...
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Should you launch your game immediately after you appear in Steam Next Fest?
For the past 3 months one of the most common questions I got from developers was “I am participating in the June Steam Next Fest (SNF) where I will get the most exposure to my game, should I launch it...
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What games are selling on Steam: The Q2 Report
At the end of every year I go back and look at all the games that reached at least 1000 reviews (old blog posts see my 2022 recap and 2023 recap). Here is a preview of my 2023 recap: This year,...
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When “Mostly Positive” games don’t sell
I see this a lot. I have worked on games like this: A well-crafted game releases that have sales that are ok, but not great. And these games did everything right! They followed the basic marketing...
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What Steam’s big demo update means for your marketing strategy
Valve just radically changed the behavior of demos. You can read all about it here. The TL;DR of the changes are as follows: Your demo can have it’s own Steam page which you can launch much like a...
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Big in Japan
Twitter still works in Japan Strangely, Japan still loves Twitter. They also love reading blogs about games! I love Japan. If you look at stats you will see Japan is the #2 user of the site. If you do...
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Valve just took away a valuable visibility tool
Last week Valve outlawed excessive cross promotion and other visual noise from Steam store pages. Here is their official blog post announcing this change. I am not sure this is a great idea. In...
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How to cross promote under the new Steam Rules
As I wrote in my last blog post, Valve will remove all URLs that are embedded in your game’s Steam page. Valve’s aim is to declutter Steam pages that are no longer about the game itself. For the most...
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