Feel Confident marketing your game
I don’t think I am going to do a big survey of all the games that were in Steam Next Fest this year. I didn’t see anything too different. People showing their numbers in the HTMAG discord conform to what we saw last year. But I always like to look Continue Reading
We are in a new era of Steam Next Fest (SNF). In the Fall of 2024 and again in February 2025, Valve changed the SNF algorithm slightly to potentially give more visibility to smaller titles by distributing equal visibility on all games. Did it work? Let’s find out. The data Continue Reading
The first Steam Next Fest of 2025 is now over. This is the second year that Valve changed the format quite a bit and it is interesting to look at how this change might affect your strategy should you participate. In this post I will be looking at some top Continue Reading
The Steam algorithm is tied to promotion: the more external traffic you bring to Steam, the more confident the algorithm is that you have an interesting game and will promote it. Last week I recapped my survey of the developers who participated in the October 2024 Steam Next Fest. In Continue Reading
An entirely new Steam Next Fest This year Valve fundamentally changed how developers manage their demos and how they are given visibility within the algorithm (I wrote about these changes here): Also you should totally check out similar analysis from another data cruncher Adam Sharman here. I think these changes Continue Reading
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 Continue Reading
At the conclusion of the June 2024 Steam Next Fest, Valve created a special page commemorating the 50 most-played demos during the fest. In this mid-week mini-blog I am taking a look at some of the trends I noticed while browsing those charts. (The first thing I noticed was there Continue Reading
One of the longest running mysteries around festivals like Steam Next Fest was whether people deliberately play games and carefully evaluate each or do they just spam the “wishlist” button as they browse? For instance Valve has made it exceedingly easy to wishlist games: they added that blue button with Continue Reading
Steam Next Fest is over and I had a chance to talk to Xalavier Nelson Jr. about his company’s latest game I Am Your Beast and the strategy they used to propel it to the 16th most-played-demos during the June Steam Next Fest 2024. In less than a week I Continue Reading
I just left a Zoom call for Valve’s 3-times-a-year pre-Next-Fest Q&A. It is a great service Valve does to support developers before before the big show (Next Fest starts in October 9th) and I would recommend you attend them if you can. I have been to just about every one Continue Reading