How would you like over 3,000,000 impressions on your game every day for 2 weeks? The developers of Eden Crafters managed to get this for the launch of their prologue using “One Weird Trick (TM)”: they launched during the Steam Summer Sale.
Typically everyone advises against doing any big promotional moves during the store-wide Steam Sales because the theory is that shoppers are so deal-hungry and they have a bunch of new games that they purchased that they don’t have time for a new full price game or a free demo or prologue. (I even warned against it in this post)
Similarly the typical front page of Steam changes to heavily promote the discounts of older games. As a result, the “New & Trending” and “Popular Upcoming” widgets are shoved to the bottom of the page almost as an afterthought.
In fact they change the way the widgets look. Here is a comparison shot of the typical Popular Upcoming Widget on a typical day.
Here is what the widget looks like during the last Summer Sale:
But Eden Crafter’s gambit of launching during a Steam Sale worked! Here is the wishlist chart for the main game. That big spike occurred at the exact peak of the Steam Summer Sale. And the effect is long lasting. Months after this maneuver, the game is still earning over 500 wishlists per day.
In today’s post I am going to cover the strategy and effects of launching a game (specifically a free prologue) during storewide sales.
The Game
Eden Crafters is a still-in-development open world automation base builder (one of the strongest genres on Steam). To promote the game, the developers released a demo and then a free prologue.
The main game has five planets that players can explore and build upon. The Demo and the Prologue both constrain players to just the ocean planet. The prologue had a bit more content than the demo.
The developer said that the demo and prologue have about 45 minutes of content.
The launch sequence
The sequencing of this marketing strategy is a bit tricky here so let’s look at a timeline
- June 9th Steam Next Fest (SNF) Starts – Eden Crafters participated with a demo. But while in SNF they also cross-promoted their upcoming Prologue called Ocean World: Eden Crafters.
- June 17th SNF Ends – The prologue manages to get 10,000 wishlists thanks to the cross-promotion.
- June 18-22nd The surge of releases of “Post Next Fest Hype” games – A lot of developers release their game after SNF hoping to capitalize on hype. I document this phenomenon in this blog post.
- June 24th – Demo is pulled and the prologue Ocean World: Eden Crafters launches (the prologue got into popular upcoming)
- June 26 – Ocean World: Eden Crafters (The prologue) hits New & Trending
- June 27th Steam Summer Sale Starts – The New & Trending widget changes but the game is still featured on it.
- July 11th – Steam Summer Sale Ends – Return to normal widget, but the Eden prologue is still featured.
The following chart is the traffic numbers for the prologue Ocean World: Eden Crafters.
In the top half of the graphic, notice how the light blue line for “Home page”; this is traffic from the typical “New & Trending” widget.
Then notice that on June 27 a new green line labeled “Seasonal Sale” emerges. When Steam enters “Summer Sale” mode, the front page is a “Sales Page” so that widget is now the primary source of traffic and the typical home page is hidden.
But then once the sale is over on July 11th, the Sales page drops and the Home Page “New & Trending” widget returns.
The results
It worked!
The following chart is the number of wishlists earned on the main game Eden Crafters during the Steam Summer Sale.
Why this works
The easiest way to get front page featuring on Steam is to get your game into Popular Upcoming (read how to get into it here) and then New & Trending (earning probably ~$8000 within 24 hours for paid games).
Once a game appears on these widgets they stay on until new games release and meet the minimum thresholds and bump the oldest games off. Many people mistakenly think that New & Trending is based on a game continuing to sell well. That is incorrect. The duration a game spends on New & Trending is based entirely on how many other games are release and meet the minimum thresholds to appear there.
Therefore your success with these widgets is largely contingent on how MANY other games are released at the same time as yours. This is why I don’t think indies have to worry about launching on the same day as a big AAA game. It isn’t how BIG the other game is, it is how MANY other games are launching next to yours. (AAA launches typically scare away the competition so you and that AAA game can be sitting on the list together with little other games vying for attention.)
The other side benefit of launching during Steam Summer Sale was that the widget was changed to support 16 games instead of the typical 10! Fewer games, and more slots! Amazing.
For case studies of games that succeeded by launching the same day as a AAA release, see these two blog posts:
The quiet launch period during Steam Summer Sales
So how quiet are releases during Steam Next Fest?
I love to check the “Hype Calendar” feature which subscribers to Simon Carless’s Game Discover Co. Plus can access. “Hype” is the GDCo score that they assign to every game. It is a soup of weighted metrics such as follower count, wishlist rank, track record and a number of other factors (get the full definition of Hype here).
In the 3 months before Steam Summer Sale, a typical week had a cumulative hype score in the range of 56,000 to 64,000. That number represents the sum of the hype of every game released that week.
How high was the cumulative hype score for the two weeks of the Steam Summer Sale?
- June Week #4 = 8,000
- July Week #1 = 2,500
Basically 1/20th the hype of a typical week.
There was no competition!
Nobody with any serious game was launching during the two weeks of the Steam Summer Sale. Sure there were games that released but they were typically from very small developers who couldn’t get enough sales to appear on New & Trending. All the bigger game developers were scared of Steam Summer Sale drowning them out so delayed their launch to another week.
The field was totally cleared.
And when the field is cleared, there are no new incoming games that can bump your game off the New & Trending list. Therefore your game stays on the list until more “hit games” are released after The Summer Sale.
Caveats
So, yes, a free prologue managed to find the perfect loophole in the algorithm and stay on New & Trending for 2 weeks. I am not sure if this would work for a paid game.
There is a chance that if the game is a premium title it has a harder time getting sales because everyone is spending their money on the Summer Sale discounts.
Even if you try to replicate this with a free prologue, note that Valve is probably going to start discouraging releasing them with the latest changes to the Demo rules.
Also note that Valve has been changing a lot of other pages lately. We haven’t had a major store sale since the latest round of changes. Who knows if the next big storewide sale will still have a prominent “New & Trending” widget. Also there is a new tab just for “free games.” That could affect the potency of the Prologue trick.
Advice
If you are willing to take a chance, it might be worth it to release your game during the next big sale.
You can track sale dates using the SteamDB sales tracker.
The Autumn sale occurs November 27th – December 4th. Then the Winter sale occurs just a couple weeks later.
I checked the hype score for the Autumn sale week and it is actually looking pretty hyped (This could be because AAA studios typically release their games in time for Christmas). But, the last 3 weeks of December are looking very very low. Like the lowest of the entire year. This could be because the date is too far in advance and most games haven’t picked the week they will launch. Or it is low because most studios are shut down for the holiday and don’t want to support their game at launch. So the last weeks of December might not be a bad option if you are solo dev who would rather support their game than hang out with family.
Good luck and please let me know if you try it.