We tell fans to “wishlist and follow.” We send them to this button. But really what do these buttons do after someone pushes them?
The various ways that fans can interact with your game, your company, or your publisher is so complicated, I made this chart to try and explain it:
Click Here for full sized image
As you can see, most of the actions you take don’t alert the average user. In today’s blog post I will review some of the most important areas and show you where your news updates appear.
But first, lets define where your posts show up
What is the News Hub?
This is your News Hub. Basically it is an automated list that is automatically generated by Steam based on what games you have wishlisted and followed.
I don’t know how much steam shoppers use this feature, but it seems to be the go to place where the algorithm stuffs these announcements.
To access it, you click “News” on the Steam title bar
And then you get this giant block:
What is the Activity Feed
Activity Feed is a list of everything that is going on with the games you own and follow. To view it, from the main Steam page go Community > Home.
It looks like this:
As you can see it is a mix of reviews, screenshots, and news updates. You can also filter this. If you follow a game and they post an update, it might appear here (depending on how popular).
What is the Library Homepage What’s New
If you go to the installed Steam client (not the website), then go to your library, there is a section at the top called “What’s New”
All the games that have events posted appear here. I imagine this page is viewed a lot because people are always going to Steam to play their favorite games.
Players will see your news posts here if they follow or own the game. This is why getting followers, and then posting regular updates are important: you show up more to your fans.
For more information from Steamworks documentation see this guide
What is Recently Updated?
If you update your game, post an update, and then use an “update visibility round” your game will appear on this widget on the front page of Steam: You have a limited quantity of update visibility rounds, so use them wisely.
What is the difference between a wishlist and a follow?
The easiest way to think about the difference between the two is a wishlist means they want to buy it and a follow means they want to hear more information.
When I ran my qualitative analysis of Steam and watched people browse (read more here) I asked them how why they followed some games. They typically said they followed “living” games that were frequently updated. They meant “Games As A Service” style products that always have something new added.
There is a slight wrinkle in this when you talk about following a studio or a publisher because you get a new notification when they release a new game. Basically shoppers are following a brand and they want to see what comes out next.
Launching your game sends emails regardless of discount
Wishlisters get an email about your game if you discount it by 20% or more.
HOWEVER, during the launch of your game, every wishlister gets an email regardless of discount. That is why many smart indie developers provide 0%, 10%, 15% off discount for their launch. They get the email without giving away too much money. After the launch though, you only get the visibility if you discount more than 20%.
What is more important, a wishlist, or a follower?
In brief: A wishlist is more important.
A follow just gives them little light news. As it is now, when someone follows your game, they don’t get a notification when you launch.
That is a huge distinction! You want them to buy your game.
This was the biggest surprise when I dug into the research, when someone follows your game they do not get notified of your launch. Most likely they wishlisted it, but still! Following is only for getting news.
However, if they follow your studio they will get 1 notification when you launch your game. They don’t get notified with every discount, just your launch (there are actually 2 if you do early access, followed by 1.0 launch).
So my take on importance is:
- Wishlisting your game
- Following your studio
- Following your game
Set up your Developer and Publisher homepages
People can only follow your studio if you have your developer homepage set up.
Have you? To find out, go to your steam page and click your Studio name.
If it just is a page with a list of your games with little tiny icons, you did not setup your creator page. But if you have a page with a big “Follow” button, you did it right.
This is what a default non Creator page list looks like:
This is what a creator page looks like. Note the “Following” section.
Action item: Go set up your creator page. Most people don’t do this! Learn more how to set this up using the steam documentation.
Wishlisters nor followers are notified when you launch a demo
They just don’t. So create an Steam news event to notify the followers and tell your Social, Discord, and Newsletter followers that it is live.
Playtesters don’t get notified by your launch
Playtesting is a Steam feature to make running a beta test of your game easier. You upload a build you want to beta test, enable a few options, and a button is added to your Steam page that says “Request Access.”
When someone clicks it, they are added to a list of potential playtesters. However, by default they don’t get immediate access to the game.(See note below). As a developer, you don’t get to see their individual user names and pick who you want, you just see “X number of people opted into the playtest.”
When you are ready to start the playtest, you pick how many people you want to “add” to the playtest and Steam will randomly select from the pool of potential playtesters.
The selected people DO get an email that they were selected for the playtest.
However, after the playtest is over, those people do not get any further notifications about your game unless they wishlist or follow.
Action item: If you run a Steam playtest, make sure you have lots of reminders within the playtest build of your game to “Wishlist and Follow.” Clicking the button takes the player to a Steam page. Unless you get those people to wishlist, and or follow, they will never get notified about your eventual launch.
Note: There is a setting that grants immediate playtest access. Read about it here.
Nobody gets notified when you launch DLC
They just don’t! So you need to make sure that they also message them in the main game when they boot it up, and through your various owned media channels like discord, your newsletter, and social media.
You can also use an Update Visibility Round to announce new DLC is available, and that puts you on the front page of Steam.
Action Item: Use Update Visibility Rounds to announce your DLC
Why your launch is so important
The Steam algorithm is quite simple: if your game makes a lot of money in a short period of time (aka a spike of profits), they will promote you. If you don’t, they will bury you. In Q&As Valve representatives always point out that the algorithm doesn’t care when that spike of profits happens: it could be in your first month, or it could be in your 13th month on the store. The algorithm doesn’t look at when. In theory, if you have a disastrous launch, you could, possibly, take a few months to fix your game, do something to generate another spike of profits and then trigger the Steam algorithm and get on Steam’s good side.
Unfortunately that doesn’t usually happen because most of your visibility comes at your launch. Look at all the reasons your launch generates the most money:
- Your wishlist emails goes out
- The discounted prices is most likely the highest it will ever be (most people do 10%-20% for their launch)
- The follower email triggers for your Studio, and (if applicable) your publisher.
If you try to relaunch your game with a big patch, you cannot re-trigger the Follower emails.
If you try to “relaunch” your game, fewer people will be notified and the price of your game will most likely be lower. It is very very very hard to relaunch a game to get that spike of money if your launch spike was low.
Following a publisher / studio sets a floor
One of the most underrated reasons why having a major publisher release your game is their follower count.
Look at Devolver they have 293,367 followers
Team17 has 138,883
Raw Fury has 34,311 followers.
As you can see from the notification chart, when someone follows a publisher, they get an email when that publisher releases a new game. In a way, every game that Devolver publishes starts out with a baseline of 293,000 notifications at launch. That is HUGE!
Now as you know, once the game launches, the publisher followers don’t get any further emails, but still, a launch email of that magnitude is a major advantage.
So, before you sign with a publisher, go see how many followers they have.
Email overload
Valve is conscious that if they send too many emails, fans will stop checking and clicking them. If you discount your game multiple times in a short period of time they might only send one email. For instance you are in a special genre sale and get a ton of sales and wishlists, and then 1 week later you are in a Steam seasonal sale, the number of discount emails that go out to wishlisters will be reduced for that seasonal sale. This line appears in the Steamworks documentation “there is a 1-2 week cooldown between wishlist emails. This can be extended during periods of high traffic (like seasonal sales).” Read more here
Additional reading
Check out this great blog post by Simon Carless. He also goes into Wishlist to Follower Ratios.