A little useful notes about Steam

Good day. We recently launched our Steam Squad project on Steam, which we have already written about here. And now I would like to share a couple of technical points:

1. Passage greenlight. Impressions and methods.
2. Communication with the US tax and brief manual, how to get the US tax number in an hour.
3. Thoughts about promotion.

Greenlight

As it is known at the moment, for neophytes to get on Steam you need to go through the Greenlight vote. In the most general terms I will describe how it works (although everyone already knows, probably). Developers put their games there and in every way praise them. The most effective way of extolling is an intelligent video trailer. And not indifferent members of the Steam community walk around and put pluses and minus ones on these “presentations”. The most important thing in this story is that on the minusiki, the administration wanted to chut, they were only interested in two parameters - the plus signs and the speed of the plus set.

As long as your game hangs on the first page, the pluses are very, very cheerful. It hangs there for a week on average, well, it's as lucky. The farther away the more there is laid out and, accordingly, crowded faster. Further intensity naturally drops. In general, the set of plus signs, if without additional interventions, will be similar to the positive part of the logarithm.

In addition, Greenlight is extremely responsive to any advertising, especially Google advertising. In general, to go Greenlight is not too difficult. In addition, today Valve’s policy is such that it only becomes easier to pass it. We scored two times less pluses than those who passed half a year earlier. Those who pass today are gaining half the size of us. Apparently, it is no secret for anyone that soon the access to Steam will become publicly available, with minimal moderation for cutting off crooks, hooligans and schoolchildren. Especially roguish school hooligans.
')

Communication with the States Tax

When you pass Greenlight (I hope by this time you will have a Russian legal entity) you will need to fill in the W-8BEN form. This is a form of avoiding double taxation, and it is objectively useful to fill it in, even necessary. A very clear and sensible sample filled with W-8BEN lies right on the Steam Guide. But there is one significant caveat - you need to enter a tax number into it, which you must assign to the state tax. For what it is necessary to fill in the ss-4 form and send it to the tax authorities of the "damned west".

And about W-8BEN and about ss-4 on Habré everything is already written . So, why do I write this? Fill and send ss-4 by fax or mail are not recommended for health. We filled and sent, and waited 2 weeks, then three weeks, and at the end of the fourth week we began to press deadlines. And then we found out that this is being done via Skype, that there are Russian translators and sane consultants, and all this takes exactly an hour.

Download ss-4, read diagonally, encircling the constituent documents of our company and call the number +1 (267) 941-1099. There we declare straight away that we want a trasleyter to Russian (if we want it, of course). Next hour, a maximum of three hours of conversation and our number, right away. Call from Skype of course. Americas, I have not opened here, all this to the fact that there may be a call. So immediately speak with fax and mail will be a hundred times worse, and then - still call. And do not forget to overlap constituent documents, otherwise I had to call twice.

Thoughts on promotion

The most useful and, I think, the most honest way to promote it is to go on blogs and forums and distribute keys to admins. Do not spam in smoking rooms or anywhere else. And right away, and honestly go to the local boss. Moreover, if no one really knows you, like us, then the target sites are 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers. It is very difficult and very exhausting. But there is a bunch of interesting friends and real feedback from very experienced gamers. And in conversations with them a lot in my head gets into place. In general, unlike smm and seo shamanism, this is quite a clear and understandable work, but perseverance is needed.

But smm shamanism is getting worse, since the number of public records has long exceeded reasonable chapels and no one reads them. In general, honest hard work, in the long run, as always, turned out to be more useful and more efficient than playing on local trends.