Official Group for Steamworks Development Support

Biggest Topics From Our Conversations with Devs at GDC 2023

We frequently organize roundtable chats with game developers (both in-person and virtually), and always enjoy getting to interact with folks in these sessions. Though we detail all of the tools Steamworks provides in our documentation pages, we view these talks as opportunities to get into more nuanced discussions with developers about best practices for finding success in the business of making games, while also gathering feedback about what we can be doing better.

If you're interested in joining a future Q&A chat session with folks that work on Steam, please take our survey linked at the end of this post.

Most recently, we hosted 12 roundtable events at GDC, and thought it might be helpful to take the biggest topics that came up in these discussions and drop them into one place (below!), along with both our answers and quick links to where you can find the corresponding documentation.

Visibility in the Steam store is a continuous balancing act between making sure customers are seeing games they’re interested in while also surfacing new games to help them find their audience. From Early Access to Full Release, we’ve outlined some key points in our Visibility Documentation.

In addition to our four major seasonal sales, we've been running more regular themed sales and developers were curious about our approach. We look at these events as a way to celebrate different tags and genres in a way that makes the broader Steam platform feel like a smaller gaming community. That means it can be an opportunity for developers to market their game to a more concentrated audience, while giving Steam users a way to more easily discover games they love. That’s why you’ll notice a wider range than ever before of themed events throughout the year in addition to our major seasonal sales.

We’ve posted the full list of events for 2023, including the major seasonal sales, themed/tag sales, and Steam Next Fest.

We heard from a lot of developers looking for guidance on best-practices for building and communicating with an audience for their game. Though there is no one “right” way to use the platform to build your audience, (each developer and game is different), we intentionally make a wide range of tools available for you to leverage based on your goals. You’ll find some guidance in our general marketing documentation.

While there, you can read through different bullet points that offer guidance through more specific marketing goals: From how to use the Events and Announcements tools, to communicating through wishlists, and more. We also have a page dedicated to outlining overall best practices.

Google is planning on sunsetting Universal Analytics in July, so quite a few developers had questions about what kind of traffic reporting system Steam will adopt in its place. We weren't ready to announce our plans during GDC, but we have just done so earlier this week. You can read details here in our post: The future of traffic reporting on Steam.

A number of developers had questions about best ways to make use of the various playtesting features that Steam offers. We created Steam Playtest to make it easier for devs to get direct feedback for their game, and it could be a great option for you to help you test your game. Steam Playtest is a free, low-risk way to get playtesting data from your game without having to stress out about Steam keys, user reviews, or wishlists. For more details, check out the Steam Playtest Documentation.

We held a couple of sessions specifically to cover questions about Steam Deck, including best practices in preparing a game to run well on Steam Deck. Most of what was covered is pretty well documented in our Steam Deck Documentation.

We heard from developers on a huge variety of topics – too great to capture here. But here is a quick rundown of some of the other common topics and where you can learn more about each:

• Demos: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos
  
• Live Streaming: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/broadcast
  
• Steam Next Fest: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/upcoming_events/nextfest
  
• Free to Play Games: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/freetoplay
  
• Steam Bundles: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/bundles
  
• Steam VR: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/steamvr/info
  
• Wishlists: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/wishlist

We're considering attending a few upcoming events in person and would like to know if you plan to attend any of the same events. Or, if you're interested in joining for a virtual Q&A session at some point.

Please take our quick survey to let us know if you're interested in chatting with us.


Thanks again to everyone who came out to our event at GDC. As always, feedback from developers is what helps us continue our work to make Steam even better, and we hope our discussions there (and here!) are helpful to you as well.