Tis the season of giving. You might be wondering how to give back to their fellow developers. Should you upvote their Reddit posts? Eh, kinda. Maybe retweeting their announce tweet? Eh, a bit… Should you buy a copy of their game and leave a review? Better. But, the best thing you could do to support your fellow developer is to bundle your game with them. Bundling can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra revenue manifested out of thin air. Let me explain.
What is bundling?
Bundling is a totally free, totally developer-configured feature on Steam where you and any number of other developers agree to put their games into a “bundle” and Steam presents that bundle on all of your store pages just under your primary “Buy” button. It doesn’t cost anyone any extra money, it doesn’t hurt your sales. It is just the magic of smart promotion and merchandising.
You can see an example of some bundles for the game Peglin.
Here is the official documentation on setting up bundles.
How well does this work?
Dylan Gedig, the developer behind Peglin has been very active making bundles with other games that are rogue and physics based. He told me that his bundling work has earned his team $150,000 since launch at the start of 2022. Note this is just the money that Peglin got. This isn’t $150,000 split among all the developers in the bundles. I do not know how much the other games got from these bundles (that information is private to them.)
It’s amazing to think that just going into Steamworks and clicking through some menus can earn someone an extra $150K they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Here are the 3 different bundles Peglin is part of.
Even more examples of success
Nomad Survival was an early Vampire-Survivor, Hoard Survivor-like which launched in 2022. Similar to Dylan at Peglin, the developer has been friendly with other developers releasing Hoard-Survivor-likes and bundled with a couple of them.
Spellbook Demonslayers had a very big launch which directly translated into a sales increase for the bundle with Nomad Survival. Here is what the developer of Nomad Survival had to say about the sales increases because of bundles:
So far, I have seen my daily sales increase over 15x. Not 1.5x. Fifteen times. People also bought the bundle on my end, people who have never heard of Bounty of One, people who didn’t know of Spellbook Demonslayers, as such all games in the bundle saw a net benefit.
The Fox Knocks Developer of Nomad Survival
Now the 15X sales increase lasted only for the days around the launch of Spellbook Demonslayers. But, in the 30 days after the launch of the bundle, Nomad Survival’s sales have settled into 2X the daily baseline before the bundle.
Bonus visibility
Some Steam festivals even feature bundles. Here is a screenshot of Steam Scream Fest 2022. If this trend continues in other Steam festivals, you could get extra eyes on your game if you bundle with big titles.
How to earn thousands doing this
Let’s say you launched a game in June 2022. Let’s call this game A. It has been out for a while and it made some decent money.
Let’s say you have a friend who is launching their game in January 2023. Let’s call this game B. Their game is super popular right now. They are earning 100s of wishlists a day and think they are going to have a big launch.
Because you are their friend they agree to bundle your game with theirs. So you go into Steamworks and follow these instructions. Then when Game B launches in January 2023, hundreds of thousands of shoppers will look at it and see a little box that says “Buy the <We are Friends> BUNDLE” noticing it costs just a few dollars more. And a lot of people will buy it because it is just a few bucks more and they get 2 games instead of just one.
In the parlance of retail this is called an “order bump.” It is just like at McDonalds when they ask “Would you like Fries with that?” The worst they can do is say no. But by just asking you can make hundreds of extra sales that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
The Peloton
This bundling strategy works kind of like cycling. The following diagram shows off what is called a peloton. The lead cyclist of the group expends a lot more energy because they are cutting through the headwinds. All the downstream riders expend a lot less energy because they have a nice wind-free ride.
In our story, the newly-released Game B is the lead of the peloton. Steam always gives newly released games tons of free visibility. Game B takes that visibility and spreads it to the other games in the bundle that have already been released (like Game A.)
This strategy really only works if you have your game bundled with someone who is launching. If you bundle with Game B and it was released months ago, you might see some increased sales but it is a mere fraction of what would have been possible when you launched.
Temporary altruism
In cycling, that lead peloton rider doesn’t get much benefit. They have to push extra hard to break through the headwinds so all the other riders can benefit. But, cycling is actually a team sport. After some time, the lead rider will drop back into the peloton to rest their legs while someone else will take their lead spot for a while.
You should have the same mindset when you bundle with other developers.
Remember, the benefits of bundling are at their maximum when a new game launches. The developer behind Game B was very nice to include you in their bundle when they launched. But, when you are launching your next game (Game C), it makes sense for you to include their Game B in a new bundle.
If we look at the Peglin bundles again, Dylan created the Pegglelike Roguelike bundle when he first launched Peglin. The other game (Roundguard) had launched months earlier. So in this scenario, Dylan was the peloton lead and was sharing his visibility with Roundguard.
The Roguelike FUN bundle was formed when Backpack Hero launched so that game was giving its visibility to help Peglin. See how everyone gets a turn supporting each other?
I think bundles could work without a game having an anticipated launch within it, but it’d obviously be way less impactful for the games that didn’t just launch.
The Fox Knocks – Developer of Nomad Survival
Keep the peloton small
Buying a bundle is an impulse purchase on the part of the Steam shopper. The shopper already knows they want to buy game B, and the bundle is just saying “Hey for $5 more you can get 2 games!”
If there are too many games in the bundle the total bundle price exceeds the “impulse buy” range. My experience tells me that the total cost of the bundle should not exceed the cost of a AAA game.
So try to keep your bundle down to just 1 other game or 2 other games if you offer a really deep discount.
Summary
So if you are launching a new game and you have thousands of wishlists and it looks like you might make a lot of money, do the right thing and bundle with some other indie developers who might need the extra visibility and money. If you are launching and you are not bundling? Why not? Let’s share this visibility.
Look for other games that are in your genre and art style. Then reach out to the developers and see if they would like to worth with you on a bundle. Send them this article if they don’t quite understand peloton aerodynamics.
If you are the newly launching game, bundling probably won’t make you much more money directly, but it will do a whole lot for someone who needs it. That is the true spirit of the holiday.