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
7 things I learned about Steam in 2024
Really, what is my job? I am not a clairvoyant who can predicts what Steam will do or have some special intuition that gives you wishlists. All I do is I go to the hundreds of devs who are willing to share their data with me (like you) and I Continue Reading
What are Crafty Buildy Strategy Simulation Games?
The Steam Winter sale is going on right now and you might have some Christmas money to spend so I built a huge list for you of the types of games that do well on Steam. I want to inspire you or maybe even just introduce you to the types Continue Reading
Minami Lane: 6 months of development, $750K revenue
This is a story of two developers who spent about 6 months making a Wholesome management game and it went on to earn $750,000 (pre cut gross) It is an amazing story with something that developers of all types (an genres) can take away from it. The numbers Here are Continue Reading
How We Harvest Shadows earned 220,000 wishlists in 3 months
Here is the wishlist graph for We Harvest Shadows where solo developer David Wehle managed to earn over 220,000 wishlists using a trailer, a demo, and some clever marketing: How did he do it? OVER ANALYSIS WARNING: I am including the conversion rate here because I want to remind people Continue Reading
How do you promote a game before Steam Next Fest?
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
How was the October 2024 Steam Next Fest
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
Did too many games release in Q3 of 2024
At the start of 2024 I decided that every Quarter I would check in to see what games are doing well, how many games are releasing, and what it says about finding success on Steam. I also take a moment to single out games that have earned more than 1000 Continue Reading
What Jonas Tyroller’s Games reveal about the Steam Algorithm
Which matters more: The game or the marketing? Popular gamedev YouTube personality Jonas Tyroller recently released a video where he argued that the most important factor in your game’s success is whether the game is “good” and that “marketing” is not as important. His argument is that if you have Continue Reading