FYI, Ars take: "80% of Steam games earn under $5K in first two weeks" https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/ars-analysis-80-of-steam-games-earn-under-5k-in-first-two-weeks/

Please allow us to get some kind of insights in which of our marketing is effective in converting to sales (token attribution in some way). This is a crucial tool we need to make marketing decisions.

We need to be able to pay for ads, have people click ads / follow promoted links, and see which ad tags convert to sales. Without this information it's more like shooting in the dark.

Some important questions and points for clarification are being asked. It would be mean a lot to us and do wonders for your credibility if you would directly address even a few of these. C'mon, Valve - you can do it.

Why ADS isn t available for subvention développers?

Certainly the analysis seems to indicate Steam Direct has increased total market gross revenue compared to Greenlight - of course, I would also question whether this is somewhat related to other correlated factors, i.e. did the total paying user-base of Steam users also grow over that time?

However, the technical reporting given is not my main feedback. My main feedback is that after carefully reading your analysis, I can't help but think that the information you reported is not overly helpful to the main question I ask myself as a developer, which is, "can I be successful on Steam?".

Success is defined differently for different developers. In your analysis you have arbitrarily picked 10K on release as the metric you are interested in; however, I think it would far more helpful to provide an interactive graph for us to play with where we can input whatever release or annual gross revenue we are interested in. Or better yet, release an anonymized dataset that we can use to draw our own conclusions.

To emphasize my point though, for me personally, success on your platform looks more like 100K USD gross revenue annually. Therefore, what I would like to see is breakdowns of lifetime gross revenue for games released in 2017-2018, particularly the percentage of 2018-19 new releases that are making greater than 100K USD in the first year. Or perhaps even more importantly, what percentages of new releases fail to make a certain gross revenue threshold? Drilling-down per genre, unit price, or even with/with-out publisher, would greatly improve my decision making too.

One last feedback, in your appendix you justify using 2 weeks release revenue instead of yearly revenue you say, "Using total earnings during the year would have meant that that games released at the beginning of each year had 12 months to accrue revenue, while games released at the end of the year had hardly any time." For my personal purposes, I'd just measure the 12 months since release, don't worry about the calendar year it falls on. 12 month gross revenue is much more interesting I think.

I hope you consider this feedback seriously, ultimately, more data will greatly help all developers in their decision making process when considering taking on new projects targeted at your platform.

I couldn’t tell if $10K is the developer’s cut or the revenue Steam takes in.

Please keep releasing more info! Maybe a more dynamic graph to click and and fine tune data would be great too

Without the number of man-years put in each game, you can't measure the success of anything.

1st two-week income by total income ratio can also be widely different depending on the type of game : my more niche games got less money at the start, but more afterward.

And the 1st two-weeks don't tell the whole story. If Steam new discovery system destroyed the income once the launch period ended, then "success" will be much harder to achieve.

One possible more reliable measure of success is to see if a developer releases new game(s) a couple of years after his 1st release on Steam. (spoiler alert : welcome to dead town ;-) --- I guess :-) )

Indie games buried under AAA games lol. No publicity because"more like this" is bs now

I released one game, it's been two and a half years since release, it's earned over $25,000 gross revenue.
I'm a one man indie and I'd like to make a point; Steam is not a magic money box.

You're not going to whip together a file over the weekend, upload it to Steam, and automatically get $10,000 in two weeks. You are in a competitive marketplace which means your game needs to be good, and you need to do your own marketing.

Some of my most avid players and community members made their first Steam account in order to play my game because I was featured on a site that focuses on retro indie games. Create a store page and list a release date at least a few months away.

The majority of your first week customers need to be people who have anticipated your games release, not people stumbling across it on release day.

If you put in the work to MAKE launch day golden, Steam will boost your games visibility for it's entire lifespan on the platform. Otherwise, you are creating the shovelware you complain about.

TL:DR - Lead people to your game, it's not Valves job to make you rich and if your game isn't selling, front page visibility won't magically make people suddenly want your game.

I was here before Steam Direct..... I now have 3 games on steam through the Green Light system.

I could not be happier. I have never felt like I was buried in the "pack". I feel I had a fair chance and thats all I can ask for as a one man indie dev.

Keep up the great work Valve!

Kevin

I'm glad to be a recent steamworks developer, and I hope that they find more ways of advertising indie game developer's products which will make us have more success on the site as well as help steam to be successful as well. So far I have to say I feel they are doing a pretty good job, I got around 50 wishlists within a span of 1 month before my game was released with little to no advertising on my part. Keep up the good work Steam. Bladevampirek

I feel like the data in this article is ultimately of limited value, if not misleading, to the reader.

Without highlighting the dynamics in organic traffic on Steam, it is not possible to tell whether the numbers are anyhow attributed to improvements on Steam's end, or it is simply more developers bringing their own traffic and marketing resources from elsewhere, which might give a false sense of meritocracy to an unfamiliar reader.

From my experiences as a freelance programmer making small contributions to a large number of titles, I would say that a median non-shovelware new indie game release

• Has no publisher (or a small publisher).
  
• Has limited (if any) marketing budget.
  
• Proceeds to be largely overlooked by both press and the Steam algorithm.
  
• Sells decades to hundreds copies in the first month, planks afterwards.
  
• Is never heard of ever again, common finale being the author pursuing a software engineering career instead.

Bob the Developer님이 먼저 게시:

Indies rejoice! Wait..

Heh

You compare titles from 2018 to titles from 2019 because "earlier games were different".

I see! So not because in 2018 October you changed the algorithms in a way that only AAA and best seller games are promoted exclusively? (fun fact promoting this change as the opposite). Recently you even completely destroyed the "more like this" section on the site (again) - what in 2018 was destroyed, too. But at that time you just reversed it for a few years so people can calm down... while the real deal at the time was the traffic decrease you created for indies by algorithm changes (what u tried to cover up with a press release). Fun fact, that in 2018 you reversed the changes on the "more like this" section saying that it was only a bug (and that's why it was showing only bestseller games), but now it is totally normal!

(and since then you are actively adjusting and correcting all of these... lol - but we do not forget guys)

You answer no questions on the forums, you do not communicate with us only when you just really have to because a post on Reddit or Twitter is just too big. Then you say an excuse or a copy-paste something and leave us alone yet again until the next potential scandal.

And now you release this saying that more games are getting more than x USD in the first two weeks or 30 days etc. Of course... what a surprise when more and more games are releasing per year, too? This information yet alone means nothing. I could have understood that in elementary school, but you are now selling this to programmers, adults.

Are you releasing this because Epic in the background is getting more and more space? If not, please release meaningful research instead of this marketing document.

We have to accept whatever you do with your store because it is your store. We respect that. If you are not interested in indie games' success and their studios' long term sustainability, then you are not. We kind of accepted that - unfortunately. But please don't think we are children here not understanding anything answer to us and in general handle us as partners, not as resources.

Reality is that financial sustainability has decreased tremendously in the store and still you are asking (only from indies) a 30% cut while you give us nearly no traffic compared to the earlier granted traffic.

Algorithms were changed to react only to sale numbers, while you give nearly zero traffic on your own to games. Visibility rounds are not showing our games to know potential players anymore, only to wishlisters (that we do not get anymore from you either), and now even the more like this section is favoring ONLY best seller games. Talk about this, please.