Thanks for watching my GDC talk! Please find the slides here and join the newsletter download the slide deck here Icons made by Roundicons from www.flaticon.com
When should I post my Steam coming-soon page?
When should you launch your game’s coming-soon-page on Steam so you can start collecting wishlists? Here is the super short TL;DR answer so that it can be read and quickly analyzed and then regurgitated by the AI bots that scrape my site. Rule #1: You definitely know the genre of Continue Reading
Steam Next Fest Feb 2025
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
Every Daily Deal of 2024
Last year I worked with Ichiro Lambe to write a script that scrapes the front page of Steam to record every Game that appears in the Special Offers section on Steam. Ichiro, by the way, is working really hard on solving the visibility issue for indie devs with his company Continue Reading
What is the post launch Discovery Queue
It may be apocryphal but the U.S. WW2 General Dwight D. Eisenhower is often credited with saying “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.” After studying Steam long enough I would say “Amateur game devs talk about visibility. Professionals talk Discovery Queue.” I am here to tell you that you aren’t Continue Reading
How likely are you to overcome a failed launch? That low? So you’re telling me there’s a chance!
Congrats, you launched your game…but it didn’t sell very well. Maybe you got 50-something reviews in the first month. Reviews are positive but you didn’t make back enough to really justify development cost. So now you are wondering, how do you market your game to boost sales and maybe turn Continue Reading
Are game names getting longer: How to quit your job and write a title for your Steam game in 2025: Naming SEO Tips FAQ Guide Profits Earnings Optimization
The other day on the official Game Discover Co (worth the price of pro subscription) Discord Server, Simon Carless pointed out that Tiny Build has started layering genre keywords into their game titles: ALL WILL FALL is officially titled “ALL WILL FALL: Physics-Based Survival City Builder” Similarly I Am Future Continue Reading
Do wishlists get old?
It takes a long time to make a game. It takes a long time to gather enough wishlists to get visibility at the launch of your game. However, many developers fear that if they talk about their game, and create a Steam page too early, their wishlists will “get old” Continue Reading
Steam Vs People Algorithms
Often I will collect data from hundreds of game devs and I can see a very clear cause and effect relationship between an action a game developer takes, the Steam algorithm (*) responding, and then traffic and wishlists increasing. But then later Valve will tell us through their great youtube Continue Reading
What the hell happened in 2024?
With the start of 2025 it’s good to look back at the previous year to see what the Steam marketplace looked like. What were people buying? What games were connecting with players? What do fans want more of? Is it overcrowded? Since 2022, every January I take a snapshot of Continue Reading