What Steam Direct can mean for indie developers

Recently, Steam announced the upcoming replacement of the Greenlight process with a program called Steam Direct. So far, few details are known about this new system of publishing and selling games. In the new blog post "Management of online gaming projects," we present a translation of an article on this topic from Benjamin Lohman. He works as a CEO in a studio that has released more than 150 apps for iOS and Android, and also started making games under Steam. He talks about how in his opinion will change the approach to development, marketing and ratings on Steam.

Benjamin Lohman: "What Steam Direct can mean for indie developers"

Link to the original.

1) Will they stop finding my game because of the publication of a mass of new games?
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Everyone has already read steamspy 's tweet that 38% of all ten or more thousand games on Steam were released in 2016. I don’t think that this number will become much higher when Greenlight is replaced with a system more comparable to Apple or the Google Play Store:

• On Steam, there will still be some kind of quality check procedure to avoid the spread of malicious applications and Trojans. It is still impossible to place a frank hack there. Apple recently announced that it is going to clean up applications that have not been updated for a long time. I am sure that Valve is aware of such problems, which may be more likely to arise in the future, the easier it will be to add new content to Steam.
• In addition, as in the two other large app stores, the company is going to take a down payment, and to participate in the program will need to fill out a bunch of papers. The fact that less than 60% of all past Greenlight games have been released (which proved that at least a few people are interested in their concept) also proves that there is a huge difference between having an idea and creating a game.

Even if we assume that the number actually becomes much higher, I personally do not care. No one wakes up in the morning with the thought "I want to play, go through all ten thousand games on Steam and buy the ones you like." Usually people get information about new games from various other sources, and then go to Steam and look for a specific name.

Yes, the Steam Store itself gives decent traffic and audience reach, especially if you participate in the sale, but the amount of traffic you receive is controlled by Steam algorithms. Steam wants to make money selling games. Since the buyer's attention is limited to ratings, newsletters and other announcements telling about the games sold on Steam, they always seek to show the games that the buyer will buy with the highest probability.

Consider mentioning a game on the page of any Steam rating as advertising for which Steam aims to get the highest possible CPM (in this context, revenue per 1000 ad views).

Usually the games shown will not be those that have not received enough attention to go through the Greenlight. Therefore, if you do not yet have sales, then in the future you will not get a lot of sales from showing the game on the Steam platform, and vice versa. If I worked on Steam, I would accurately track and take into account the amount of convertible traffic coming from other resources, because for Valve it makes sense to encourage game developers to advertise not only their game on Steam, but also the gaming platform itself as a whole with traffic to pages Steam.

In short:

Of course, it would be nice if Steam released every month just 30 new games, but this has been irrelevant for the last couple of years. I think that the transition from Greenlight to Steam Direct will not change anything in this regard, even if the number of games on the platform increases slightly.

Continue to talk about your product on third-party resources and expect additional attention from the most Steam.

2) Ratings will become more important - try to get good grades

I still think that the average quality of games on Steam may decline slightly (although the Steam Greenlight itself does not guarantee the high quality of games). If this is not the case, then buyers may still think: “So, the verification process is no longer here. Perhaps the quality of games will be lower. "

This may lead to the fact that the ratings will become even more important. I think that in Steam they think the same way, because they announced on September 12 last year about adding more filtering options taking into account the ratings of the game and stated that the overall rating will be calculated only by the users who actually bought the game on Steam.



The system announced by Steam with Steam Direct is more similar to the systems used in the Apple Store and Google Play. As the CEO of a studio that a few months ago switched from developing more than 150 applications for iOS and Android to developing games for Steam and consoles, I have some thoughts about further developments.

You may have noticed that your favorite applications offer to rate them in the appropriate store. 9gag asks me to do this every day. Applications make sure that you use them often, and suggest that you can put a good mark on the store. This meets the requirements of the stores, because the application does not ask the user for a positive review or rating. It simply selects those users who supposedly like the app, and are neutral to ask for it.



Another strategy is to show the “Rate my application” window to the user inside the application with the ability to directly enter a rating (for example, 1-5 stars).

If the user puts a high mark, the application asks if he wants to add a rating to the store page. If he chooses a low rating, the application asks him what could be improved without sending him to the store page.

I did not check if there are relevant provisions in the Steam Terms of Use, but I would not be surprised if in the future one of your favorite games asks you to do something like this. Maybe not in the game itself, because the redirection from the game to the browser is terribly inconvenient. Perhaps she will offer this through a newsletter, Twitter, etc.

The most obvious clue, of course, is to listen to all the customer ratings and try to satisfy their requests as far as possible.

3) Disappear a great tool for finding ideas for new games.

Before investing a lot of time and money in the development of the game, we always try to find out whether our idea of ​​a new game will be interesting to someone other than us.



Steam Greenlight was a great opportunity to find out whether to invest long hours in game development. So far, three of our games have gone through Greenlight, and one has failed. It saved us a lot of money. In those that passed Greenlight, the ratio of those who voted "Yes, I would buy this game" and "No" clearly showed us how interesting they will be to people compared to each other. For example, our next project Escape the Loop got the best ratio of all three games, so we plan to invest a lot of time in it.

Before starting a new project, we are still trying to get feedback from the community, but in the future, instead of Greenlight, we will have to use another tool.

4) A good marketing tool will be lost.

Steam Greenlight is a great way to draw attention to your project early in the development process. A much smaller number of people view the Greenlight pages than months and years ago, but you can still reach players who would not otherwise know about your game without Greenlight. The target audience of people viewing Greenlight, in my opinion, is different from ordinary gamers. Greenlight players want to learn more about the game and the development studio. They want to follow the development of the project from the very beginning and therefore can become fans of your studio and / or game.

Of course, the lost marketing effect of Steam Greenlight can be replaced by transferring information about the early stages of the project on other platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.

TL; DR;

[approx. trans .: too long; didn't read ]



I think that the consequences of changes for us, indie developers, will be quite tolerable.

The fact that there will be more and more games is generally a problem for indies with their low marketing budgets, but I think Steam innovations will not make things worse. I still believe that improving product quality and marketing from the very beginning of development can make a project profitable.

In discussions of the article on gamasutra.com, a small discussion has unfolded, we present the most interesting comments:

Tristan Pilepich: It seems to me a bit early to discuss the entry fee, its value has not yet been announced.

A contribution of $ 5,000 will be completely different in effect from the contribution of $ 500. A large amount means that the developer will reach the limit of his balance (and will not be able to set aside funds for the future). This makes the release on Steam a very serious investment in the game. A smaller amount can afford the most serious amateur developers seeking to try their luck with their concept and achieve popularity.

It seems that everyone believes that Valve will stop at a sum in the range of 500-1000 dollars, and based on this, I agree with the conclusions of the article. But if I am not mistaken, while the company has not announced anything except the ceiling of $ 5,000.

Benjamin Lochmann: Tristan, thanks for the comment! You're absolutely right; a $ 5,000 installment will definitely be unprofitable for indie developers. I think that a smaller contribution, for example, something around $ 500, will not be a huge obstacle for the majority of indie, because for the release of the game in any case requires some kind of budget. Anyway, I don’t think they will set the bar at $ 5,000.

This does not mean that I would be opposed to no contributions at all. I like the indie developer community and it's great that theoretically you can make money making games, even if you are a small company with a small budget. As a consumer, I believe that the more indie can participate in this, the better. In addition, I believe that we can miss the awesome games, if not everyone can participate in the sale of games on Steam. If everyone can participate, the percentage of good games will be lower, but, as it seems to me, the quality of the best games will increase.

Jaakko Maaniemi: It will be interesting to see what this will evolve into. It seems on the Greenlight Alden developer forums [the Steam employee] hinted that the refund threshold may be different from the contribution amount. That is, they can create a system in which the developer pays, for example, $ 1,000 for publication, but can pick up a refund if he earns $ 500. Or 2000 dollars, or other amount.

Andy Lundell: It will definitely be less painful for lonely developers. A single may even decide to put $ 5,000 on a credit card if the refund threshold is within 100 or less.

But if you think ... even $ 5,000 on a credit card will not save us from a lot of sad stories. Greenlight has a lot of games that shouldn’t really get to the store, but their creators convinced themselves that they would be the new Notch [creator of Minecraft].

Jaakko Maaniemi: I don’t think that the contribution will even come close to 5000, it will probably be less than 1000 dollars. I think this is quite normal. This is how faith in your game is tested. Many people will learn a bitter lesson, and this is also normal. Steam is actually a platform for selling not only PC games, and the developer can conduct an “acid test” of the game in many other stores before putting money for a release on Steam. Probably even worth doing so, because to make money on Steam is not as easy as it was a couple of years ago.

In the meantime, everyone is waiting for how it will be implemented and how it will affect the gaming industry of Steam Direct, we will prepare new articles and translations for you. We hope that they are useful and interesting. For those who are in Moscow, we also hold free open lectures on the gaming industry right at the Graduate School of Business Informatics at Riga. To visit, just register here:

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