For the past 3 months one of the most common questions I got from developers was “I am participating in the June Steam Next Fest (SNF) where I will get the most exposure to my game, should I launch it right after it to capitalize on my HYPE?”
At the time I didn’t know. I didn’t have any data. So I decided to use the June 2024 Steam Next Fest (SNF) as a benchmark to see if it was a good idea to launch a game immediately after Steam Next Fest ends. For this analysis I used Simon Carless’s excellent Hype data which is available for GDCo Plus members (which I am one.) In this post all use of the word “Hype” is the GDCo definition which is a score that they assign to every game that 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). I also asked talked to Simon to review the charts I made to make sure I was interpreting the Hype data correctly.
So is it a good idea to launch post SNF? In this post I will analyze that.
But here is the TL;DR
- So many separate devs were asking me if the same strategy was a good idea that I started to think it was a bad because everyone would be doing it and therefore crowd eachother out.
- I did notice a slight “crowding out” where lots of little games were all launching the same week.
- To get featured in the launch algorithms (Popular Upcoming and New & Trending) it is more important to launch next to fewer games than it is to avoid monster AAA launches.
What is the gap?
In June there is a short period of time between two BIG STOREWIDE events: the end of Steam Next Fest and the beginning of Steam Summer Sale.
Most people don’t want to launch during the BIG STOREWIDE events because there are more interesting things going on than your launch (sorry, but it is kinda true), and the launch algorithm widgets are typically hidden or don’t look like they normally do so they probably aren’t as effective.**
For example, during Steam Summer Sale, popular upcoming looks like this
Instead of the typical list like this:
** Side Note: I don’t know if games in these “altered” widgets perform better or worse. The altered state actually looks more attractive here and it features 16 games in stead of the typical 10 that default Popular upcoming has. I will do a followup on that. If you have a game in this widget, please let me know so we can look at how it performs.
Therefore “The Gap” is the eye of the storm between these two crazy Store Page takeovers.
In June 2024, these were the timeframes of these distinct periods:
- June 10-17: Steam Next Fest
- June 18-26: The Gap
- June 27-July 11: Steam Summer Sale
With this study, I want to look at the games that fell into the gap.
How many people had this idea?
In total 479 games released during the gap between Steam Next Fest and Steam Summer Sale.
Here is a chart of the daily number of games released. I color coded the games:
June 10-17 : Steam Next Fest (Gray): 309 Games (~38 games / day)
June 18-26: The Gap (Red): 483 Games (~53 games / day)
June 27-July 11: Steam Summer Sale: 488 Games (~44 games / day)
*note I only sampled June 27-July 7 since Steam Summer Sale is still ongoing as of this writing
Analysis: So as you can see, a lot of people had the post-SNF release idea. June 19th and June 20th (the first two days following Steam Next Fest) and they had the most releases that month!
“Ya but I bet they were all hobbyists!” As the reddit kids like to say.
Well, we can filter for that using Game Discover Co’s hype metric. I talked to Simon Carless and said that a game with a hype score > 50 is a contender for having a chance to move up the algorithm (and by extension MAYBE get featuring in Popular Upcoming and new & Trending, but 150 hype is more likely to guarantee placement). According to Simon 150 Hype is almost equivalent to 7000 wishlists. 50 hype is equivalent to 2000 wishlists.
Filtering out low performers makes the picture even more dramatic. A lot of games with lots of hype were released during the gap.
Analysis: So most of the people who pay attention to the Steam calendar and strategize, picked the gap as a day to release. So a lot of smart people had this idea.
This means it is a busy release period. If you launched in the gap you competed against a lot of other games for that coveted “Popular Upcoming” and “New And Trending” slot.
Remember there are only 10 slots on the popular upcoming chart. In those first 3 days of the gap there were more than 10 “hyped” games released which means that there were games that could have appeared on them were crowded out. Not good.
Just to double down on this I just did a simple SUM of all the hype for all games releasing (even sub 50) every day in June. It really shows how many hyped games are released during the gap week.
Analysis: A lot of people had the idea to release their game in the gap.
How does this compare to a “typical” month?
May is a relatively uneventful period without as many Steam events. So how does it compare to June? Here is the daily release count of games with 50+ hype
If I start out at the 18th of each month and just count how many 50+ hype games release for the next week and average them out and compare May 2024 to June 2024 I get this
Week 3, Average 50+ hype releases:
May 2024 = 9.43 games
June 2024 = 12.14 games
As you can see, in June there are an extra 3 games per day that take up a Popular Upcoming and New & Trending slot.
Remember there are 10 slots in those widgets. May doesn’t average out to over 10, but June is way over 10.
A lot of people had the idea to release in the gap.
Ya but what about MOMENTUM!
The main reason people say they want to release immediately after Steam Next Fest is because people just played their game during the festival, they probably saw it on the front page, the game might have been featured in a promo video or covered by a content creator. Their game has MOMENTUM! It has MOJO! VELOCITY! People care! Let’s turn that MOMENTUM into DOLLARS!
So true, maybe a lot of games released during the gap, but maybe it is because it is a powerful moment. The argument is “Sure there is a lot of competition, but despite that, the MOMENTUM makes it worth releasing during a busy time.”
Again Game Discover Co has a metric we can look at. They track “Hype Score To First Week Conversion.” It is a metric to see how much of the hype translated into sales.
Here is the Median “Hype Score To First Week Conversion” for 50+ Hyped games for every day in June.
Analysis: That hype conversion looks kinda low for The Gap. I don’t know if launching into The Gap is that great.
I asked Simon about this and he said
“So the ‘median’ [of all games across Steam] is very roughly 0.15 for significant games (tiny games have way higher or fluctuating conversion rates)”
Simon Carless
The Average Hype Score conversion for “The Gap” week was 0.184
So, yes it is slightly above the median but not significantly so. Look at June 2nd and 3rd! Now that is some hype conversion.
So should you launch during The Gap?
Let’s step back.
First, I think indie developers spend WAAAY too long trying to pick the perfect day to launch their game. I don’t think it has as much of an impact as indies think. My theory is because Steam has a box where you must input a specific launch date, it primes you for over-analysis. In my mind that analysis leads to Bikeshedding aka The Law of Triviality
“Bikeshedding, also known as Parkinson’s law of triviality, describes our tendency to devote a disproportionate amount of our time to menial and trivial matters while leaving important matters unattended.”
The Decision Lab
So what important matters are developers leaving unattended?
Genre.
In general I think developers follow their heart too much when picking a genre / graphic style and not doing enough market analysis while at the same time spending way too much brain power picking a release date. So please, spend much more time thinking before deciding to make that pixelart platformer puzzle game.
Back to launching in The Gap… there isn’t an advantage to launching right after Steam Next Fest and it could actually hurt your launch. But NOT by that much.
In general, the success of your launch is determined by the amount of wishlists you build up in the months and months and months leading up to your launch. NOT the one week before. So I think that is reassuring? Maybe? Your sales cake is already baked by the time you get to the 1 month before your launch. So don’t freak out is what I am trying to say.
Pleasing the Steam algorithm is the most important thing. Just because your individual game has some recent momentum does not influence the algorithm. At launch the most important factors are that you have enough wishlists to appear in Popular Upcoming and then sell enough to appear in New & Trending. Launching in SNF means you are competing with more people who also have similar hype.
Speaking of The Gap and freaking out. Back in 1998 this 30-second GAP commercial was so influential that it became people’s identity for at least 2 years. Seriously, guys in my high school unironically started wearing black and white Leather Creepers and vintage bowling shirts because of this one commercial. Kids, the world was a wild place before social media. That is a freakout.