>“Last sale, I made over $2,000,” the developer wrote. “This one I’ve barely made $200. Thank you.”
>Developers are chalking this up not just to wishlist issues, but also changes in the way Steam recommends games, as well as changes to the structure of the sale itself. Nepenthe and To The Dark Tower developer Yitz pointed to Steam’s data on his games, which showed that the “vast majority” of his store page traffic came from outside Steam, as opposed to from built-in recommendation systems like the front page, the discovery queue, tags, and games’ “more like this” sections. Data from the first half of 2018, meanwhile, shows less than 20 percent of his traffic coming from external sites, while over half came from within Steam. This, Yitz says, has been an issue since October 2018, when a Steam algorithm bug caused big games to make big gains in traffic while small games lost out. While Valve said in December that the issue had been fixed and the flow of traffic re-normalized, some developers say their games never recovered. Yitz is in this camp.
>“Before October 2018 (and for a few months after that while I gave Steam the benefit of the doubt), I told anyone who asked me that Steam was 100% worth it for indie developers,” he said in a Twitter DM. “Now, that trust is gone, and it’s not because I’ve changed or become more cynical... This Steam sale was a disaster, but I’m far more concerned about the overall trend we’ve seen in the Steam algorithm since October last year: pushing unpopular (including ‘mostly negative’ reviewed) triple-A games over titles that Steam has more than enough data to know would be a better match for the consumer.”
Nigga was paid by pig sweeny to write that probably. Also if your game isn't good enough to sell on word of mouth alone then it doesn't deserve to sell.
Adam Collins
It's almost like that's what happens when you do zero marketing and expect Steam to do everything for you.
This but also the same game will sell fewer and fewer copies every year as it ages and also steam sales drew less people overall because publishers gave shit discounts this year.
Bentley Nguyen
>I made $2,000 when the game was new and $200 when the game was a year old??
Zachary Morris
Nepenthe is actually a neat little game, the crayon visuals add charm to it. I didn't like the blatant Undertale combat rip off, though. Got it for free on itch.io so I gave it a try.
Gavin Reed
Yeah but it's also because the sales are getting worse and worse. I bought one game and I saved like... $15. None of the other games I wanted was on sale
Hunter Turner
Maybe make a good game next time LMAO
Kevin Morales
i wouldnt give 1 dollar for this shit ive seen games of higher quality on Newgrounds and those where free
Nathaniel Robinson
why do devs think I give a shit that they don't like steam?
Grayson Cook
Steam had one of the worst and most hostile Steam sales in existence; how do you advertise on a platform that tries to delist your game to show more games like Assassin's Creed and Resident Evil?
That's what I said. The publishers set the discounts on the sales. This year most of the discounts were shit.
Ethan Ramirez
>REEEE VALVE MAKE PEOPLE SEE MY GAMES BETTER >REEEE PUT MY GAMES ON THE STOREFRONT WHY DO YOU NEED CURATION >REEEEE GREENLIGHT IS TERRIBLE >REEEEE WHY CAN PEOPLE REFUND MY GAME imagine still listening to indie ''dev'' complaints
Jesus. How fucking entitled can one developer get. How about the fucking retard makes an actual good game next time? Maybe if the game is good, it'll get shown to people. Fucking crazy how that works, huh. I do agree that the sale was fucking garbage though.
Carson White
That Steam drone paranoia is delicious
Nolan Phillips
Did he expect to make the same amount of money he did last sale? That's just stupid.
Nolan Ward
>kotaku Fuck off.
Hudson Nguyen
>makes low effort RPGmaker shit >people would rather buy games with more effort put into it >WTF VALVE HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN IM GOING TO EPIC
>literal who developer >indieshit hipsterb8 >surprised it sells poorly Cope
Brody Ross
I swear every single time a dev complains about MUH EBIL STEAM I go check their games and it's all the kind of trash that wouldn't even make it on Steam were it not an open market. It's amazing how despite all the bitching about gamers being entitled, the only ones acting like whiny babies are devs who DEMAND sales. I for one, have bought a ton more games than usual ever since Steam opened up the doors, despite the fact that sales are absolute garbage now.
>I didn't become rich off my first videogame >Steam needs to change that
Jose Thomas
the steam platform is slow and laggy, which makes browsing games a chore.
Evan Thomas
>Steam is broken because a shitty non-game sold less this year than when it was released Am I still supposed to believe that journalists don't take sweeneybux to shit on valve?
