>“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.”
Why do indiedevs not understand they have to market their game and that no one else is going to?
Lincoln Sanchez
fpbp. It's not even about being indie. Games like Papers, Please or Katana Zero have proven indies can succeed so long as they're good.
If you make the umpteenth fucking "pastel colours and sad piano music about character struggling against depression" game, of course it's gonna be overlooked.
Chase Brown
Steam is pretty much impossible to browse for games they aren't paid to bring to the top of the list. They need a catalog that shows you lots of results. Instead you get a list that shows just a few results in a vertical fashion that is pretty impossible to sift through for older released games that you might like.
Alexander Anderson
Fuck Steam
Xavier Martinez
You can do those things now though. And the search box works. Do you really walk up and down every aisle to see what every brick and mortar is selling?
Anthony Foster
sales drop off over time, everyone knows this That $2000 was almost everyone who wanted to buy it buying it, you can sell the same product to the same people.
Sebastian Bailey
Fucking this. I don't even know who this developer is and Steam keeps recommending me odds and ends shit. Of course big budget shit is gonna be on the front page but even still with all my purchases most of my recommendations are still pretty obtuse to the casual gamer. You shouldn't even be relying on steam to push your game. If its good the community will talk about it and recommend it here and on r*ddit.
Nicholas Phillips
OP here. Pls click the link and turn off adblock bafore you start reading. Ty.
Julian Morgan
STOP FUCKING POSTING THIS THREAD ITS BEEN LIKE 50 TIMES KILL YOURSELF
Anthony Clark
This thread again? It didn't need a continuation.
Do your part and report this dumbfuck.
Ayden Lopez
Where are the new Steam customers?
Benjamin Gray
>actually continued the thread Absolute mad lad.
Colton Wood
If I'm just browsing, yes. That's the thing with Steam though. If you know what your looking for its fine but you can't just quickly browse deep into the catalog very easily.
Why not. Can't be much worse than your indie game.
Parker Peterson
Nice try Kotaku
David Brooks
>expecting the meaningless mods to enforce any rules that isn't GR15
Asher Long
fpbp
Caleb Myers
You made this thread once already
Adrian Johnson
steam is a bunch of jews but its still infinitely better than epic
David Baker
To this day no one has EVER managed to present an example of a game that was actually good but didn't sell. All these games always have at least one of these obvious, telltale signs as to why they didn't appeal to the public:
>Shit graphics (outright bad or lazy retro pixelly shit). >Identical to another game, often from the same devs but sometimes to a cheaper, mobile version. >Hilariously high price/low discounts. >Been stuck in early access for years with no end in sight. >Missing the obvious, most important feature of its genre (online mp, mods, etc...)
>curators >discovery queues >friend recommendations >the frontpage >new and trending list >top selling list >popular upcoming list >recently updated list >from developers and publishers you know list >the new releases/events ads that pop up when you launch steam >every game being organized by categories
And so on, so forth. You have to be a mongoloid to struggle finding shit on steam.
>b-but I don't like curators/discovery queues/friends/whatever!
Then whose fucking fault is it that you can't find shit? "Durrrrrrrrrrr I don't use the tools to do what I want to do hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"
>Nearly all AAA companies are churning out constant, ceaseless garbage >"Hahahaha infies suck a diiiick" Why is this board the fucking worst one on this site?
Grayson Watson
The fact that people actually believe that the issue of bad game sales is on Steam and Valve's end is laughable.
The real issue is that there's too many goddamn games coming out and not enough consumers to purchase them all. With how many games come out a month these days you're always going to be buying only the best of the best and can easily ignore anything that isn't of that quality. Essentially the only thing that will fix this is a major downsizing of the industry where a hell of a lot of indie devs and regular devs go out of business or just give up, and then the quantity of games slows down a lot. Then from that the survivors will be in a golden age of sales (just like the early 2010 were for a lot of indie devs), and then the cycle will begin again. Probably a lot quicker now though given the easy access to gamedev tools
>* PD sold well, but not as well as some expected (there's no doubt it will break even somewhere along the way, but in Poland your game is always compared to Witcher 3 and Frostpunk ;))
So... are you retarded? It did sell. It just didn't sell a lot because it's a bad game from a known bad game developer.
We were talking about good games that didn't sell so you failed in literally every way.
Elijah Ramirez
you really needed a random indie dev to tell you the sale sucked ass? i could have told you that sales have been getting worse and worse since they removed flash sales. saliens was the WORST why is valve so clueless?
Thomas Garcia
Sauce of the gif please.
Connor Ross
pretty much this. its a bit clunky but when i want to find a game of a certain type i usually can find them. steam labs looks cool too wonder what else theyre gonna do with it
Gabriel Price
dustforce 2
Luis Brown
To be completely fair, it's still Steam's fault that they don't incenitivize/advertise those some of those features enough.
Parker Nelson
>dustforce 2
When the fuck is Spire coming out? Is Hitbox Team even still alive?
Oliver Brooks
No, it's not. You are just the kind of retard that only uses the channel and volume buttons on a remote control.
Xavier Ross
>unsavvy shopper The real sales happen every other week during special events or specific sales the publishers/devs themselves set.
Pay attention to those instead.
Luis Cook
They often do. A lot of their sales usually revolve around some of these features, like "Get a card by using this new feature"
Alexander Perry
>Why won't Steam incentivize to use these useful, existing features that can help me do what I want to do?
That's how retarded you sound.
Easton Walker
man its so many devs that are just mia for the past couple years ken lavines company, freedom planet 2 devs, retro studios, i could go on not sure if theyre waiting for a good time to announce their shit
Colton Bailey
River City Girls
Anthony Reed
100% agree. Valve offers as many tools as possible and they keep adding even more on top. If some visual novel pretending to be a real game doesn't sell it's simply because the dev is retarded and expects Steam, a storefront, to do advertisement for them.
Nathaniel Howard
Look up the games of the developers featured in the article
Yeah, and how many AAA games are worth even looking at jackass?
Oliver Clark
I don't think so. He mostly focused on the mechanic that he wanted to explore which he called Narrative Legos. From what I gathered, although it was a bit vague and abstract, it seems like he wants to do a sort of roguelike but where the story itself is also roguelike. I'd have to see the GDC talk again.
Jaxson Allen
The funniest part about all this was the Sir, You Are Being Hunted dev panickly asking the Regency Solitaire dev if his wishlist hits were dropping too. The Regency dev said it was no big deal and to leave him alone because he was working in game stuff.
That's the difference between indie devs and why some succeed when others are left whining about muuuh saleeees.
Thomas Jones
>this is bad, so this other thing isn't bad ???? Both facets of the industry can be largely shit user
Asher Ross
What, ever? >Witcher >Civilisation >DMCV >MHW Those are all recent
William Anderson
Found Yitz. How's it going? But to answer, while AAA are just designed like an assembly line nowadays, there is at least a certain level of polish and quality to draw people in. That thing isn't going to draw any big audiences, not without you sucking someone's dick at Kotaku or Polygon.
We don't know the sales numbers for these indie games, I mean we could point to AAA games like Okami or Beyond Good and Evil for how this can happen.
Zachary Evans
>go to Steam >scroll down about a page >click on "Specials" >here's your games on sale
>go to Steam >click on Wishlist >sort by "is this shit on sale" >bam
>steam has a sale >banners on the front page >steam has a big holiday sale >giant banners you can click through that have everything pre-sorted and also sorted into "under $10" and "under $5"
I'm not sure what more you retards want from Steam other than a man to come to your house and look things up for you because you're empty-headed.
>I have to crawl into the sewer! I see bad game beside good game, my eyes burn! WHY STEAM, WHY
Uh huh. A screenshot from a curating system that hasn't existed in years sure proves your point, doesn't at all make you look retarded.
No, back in reality you only get those kind of games when you go looking for them in the unfiltered list of ALL new releases. They are not something the general public ever sees unless they want to.
>B-but what if this cool game ends up there and I miss it????
Literally impossible. The point of the trending list is to filter good stuff from the bad stuff. You are literally only looking at shitty games because you want to and I think it's time you stop pretending to be retarded.
Alexander Stewart
user, do you get upset if you're shopping at a store and the generic brand of chips is next to the brand you were looking for, which is next to a dozen other brands you didn't know about? If you went to a GameStop would you get mad that bad game is next to good game on the shelf?
Is your mouse wheel getting worn down? What's the issue here. Did your mom see one of those awful RPG maker sex games and make fun of you? Scroll past it. Move on. It literally doesn't matter.
Gabriel Gonzalez
>Steam started out with tight quality control, to the point where even Notch didn't know if Minecraft could get in >Valve listens to the complaints and opens Greenlight >People still complain >Valve opens it fully >WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHERE'S THE QUALITY CONTROL You have to either go out of your way to find these games or you're simply neglecting the tools Steam offers to filter these games. Both cases, it's on you.
Landon Jones
>Use quotes from a handful of literally who developers >Not even bothering to name some of said developers >Fueling PC storefront war bullshit >Kotaku
All of this shit is utterly useless because all categories are too broad. RPGmaker shit piled together with actual RPGs, boomercore and military shit under FPS tag etc. Steam needs to implement fucking Booru-like tag system already because that's the only content discovery tool that has proven to be sufficient so far. Digital stores, music websites, art platforms, social media, they all suck a huge smelly dirty cock even with all their fancy tagging systems and algorithms. Only boorus allow me to find exactly what I want, even if that's a picture I fapped to 10 years ago.
Stop being retarded, user. There's no comparison between physical games that had to struggle with shelf space//limited printed runs and digital goods.
Luke Harris
They just need to update their search to allow you to exclude games by tag instead of having to make it a sitewide thing and also an option to only show games with so many reviews.
I don't know. Based on my preferences Steam recently recommend me an early access indie game and I had a hell of a great time with it. Maybe independent developers need to make better games?
Lincoln Robinson
You guys are missing the point: this scenario is made up, and kotaku is on Epic's dollar to make these anti-steam stories up
Jack Sanders
>If your game is good it will be talked about automatically. Going way too far in the other direction there.
Ryan Carter
Rpgmaker is a tag, mongoloid. You can simply type it so that it's not included in your search. See? This is exactly what I mean: people too inept to even search for stuff. I'm not even going to waste my time reading the rest of the post because I'm sure it's full of similar, retarded flailing masquerading as cynical "everything is bad" shit.
No. How undertale got so popular? Because it was talked about it. Same with Lisa and all the other good indie games. None of them had any to very little advertisment.
Henry Cook
>Make some trash games >HURR WHY STEAM DOESN'T ADVERTISE MY SHIT GAME I CANT MAKE MONIES
Samuel Nguyen
>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 I mean this is just the future of gaming
Jose Reyes
>Nobody puts any of there games on sale >They dont sell >WHY THE FUCK DID I MAKE NO MONEY :((((((((((
Nicholas Carter
>Things that never happened
Yeah I'm sure Steam actively wants you to not buy stuff.
Brody Phillips
Different user here. What's usually difficult is getting over that first bump of getting people to talk about it. Both Undertale and Lisa had a kickstarter which obviously helps get the name out there before it's even released. I think a better example would be Baba Is You. I think it was made by some student, suddenly won an award and out of the blue, got Yea Forums to love it.
Deluded indie devs that think indie gaming is still full of mediocre-ass shit and so any old junk will sell.
Isaiah Green
i agree with him desu
this sale was dogshit and their recommendation engine has gotten retarded, not to mention the shitty redesign. valve needs to get their shit together but they're stuck cucking each other in that dumb flat structure so nothing will ever get done unless it can make them a billion dollars in bonuses.
Liam Price
make better games loser.
Kayden Powell
these indie ''devs'' believe that their worthless Asset flips and RPGmaker remplates deserve sales and to get those sales they want to be the only top dog on the market remember when the PS4 just released? how every indie dev was claiming it was the saviour of indies because only a few titles where available at the time, they did the same with the Switch and are now doing the same with EGS these indiedevs will turn their back on you the moment you let other people play on their playground
Isaiah Edwards
>Okami or Beyond Good and Evil >AAA Are you retarded?
Robert Perez
The sale itself had a bunch of issues and was needlessly complicated and launched in a clearly broken way. Devs reported how a bunch of people were deleting their games from their wishlist due to the phrasing Valve used in the first day. But I personally haven't had an issue with the recommendation system. It's been a long time since I've had Steam recommend a game that I truly had 0 interest in.
The community event was a mess, not the sales. The sales went off without issue. Those devs bitching are using Wishlist as some sort of guaranteed sale indicator when that is simply not the case. If users removed them from the list because of the event then they were never interested in the game enough to buy it in the first place.
Joshua Ross
>these indiedevs will turn their back on you the moment you let other people play on their playground Pretty much this. It's basically "don't let anyone but me in the store". "Why isn't my game being lauded and selling like its the next Undertale?" "Why are people giving my game a mostly negative review when I worked so hard on it?" Some people forget that even if there was a lot of work put into a creative work, that in no way correlates to good sales or good reception. Plus, so many indie devs forget to actually advertise the fucking thing. It's not Steam's job to market the game for you, it's just a platform for people to pay for it. I've seen decent games be completely ignored simply because there was zero effort put into marketing it. No attempt to foster a community if it's a multiplayer game, no attempt to get people talking about it, no attempt to quickly patch any serious issues it might have on release.
Eli Robinson
/thread
Julian Hernandez
Have you been to Wal-Mart? I rather crawl through the sewer.
Wyatt Myers
there's really just no fucking good games on steam. everything is boring shit. of everything in my library and everything in my wish list, nothing looks interesting or fun to play. only platform with fun games is the switch, which sadly i do not own.
>$2000 in a 2 weeks >6 months later make $200 Sounds like a tail sales to me. Be happy you made anything .
Christopher Cruz
You probably ignored every one of those features whenever they were rolled out with all the NEW! stickers and notifications. Hell, events commonly have you go through those features to get bonus points.
Mason Long
fpbp /thread
Jace Ross
Holy shit its just like steam!
It even has the be happy fish cat food chink shit
Parker Miller
>Buying bread at Walmart Sewer might be an upgrade.
Ryder Turner
Yeah, I should've specified. The sales don't have that chaotic nature that daily deals had but it was decent. It was the event that was fucked. >they were never interested in the game enough to buy it in the first place. I wouldn't say so. I had a bunch of games on my wishlist that I basically kept as a sort of reminder to take a closer look. Sometimes I'd see a game recommended on Yea Forums, wishlist it on Steam just so that later on I could see whether it was something I'd like or not. Or see a game and decide that I refuse to pay for it unless it reaches a certain price. I'm sure people even deleted games they actually wanted and only left the one game they really really really wanted to win. For most people it was Cyberpunk.
Justin Richardson
>games on my wish list don't look interesting or fun to play
What the fuck? How did they get on your wish list if you aren't interested in them? Are you retarded?
Actual indie dev here. I moved to EGS a while ago since I actually get a decent cut unlike Gabe Jew-ell who steals most of the profits to keep his bloated store front active. Tim S personally takes me out to dinner every friday night. It's quite nice.
Camden Long
t. tim "tencent" sweeney
Oliver Diaz
I guarantee you and 99% of people making the same complaint have a bunch of games they bought in previous sales that have never been played. Play thr fucking games you already bought. You don't have to constantly buy new games every sale.
Caleb Reyes
>“Last sale, I made over $2,000,” the developer wrote. “This one I’ve barely made $200. Thank you.” no one cares, mister entitled indie developer. make your own money instead of licking corporate boots and expecting them to fuck you more gently
That seems like a you problem, not Steam. Or blame Nintendo for not having their games outside of their console. Or just buy a Switch.
Ryder Kelly
fuck off China
Brayden Cook
all the games in my wishlist are just popular steam games people ahve told me were good. i could very easily wait until the end of time before actually playing any of them though however.
Steam isn't Wal-Mart. Steam isn't a storefront limited by space. Steam is a vidya-focused Amazon
Jeremiah Myers
You might just be going through something if no game seems to excite you. Even if you had a Switch you might end up still feeling that way.
Angel Campbell
The sales weren't low enough
Kevin Howard
>everything sucks!
That's just your mental illness. Go treat your depression before you kill yourself or others.
Blake Moore
it works exactly like how you want it to, incel.
Jacob Rodriguez
"The only guarantee of success is a quality product well-made" t. funny hat man
Logan Martinez
Just adding to the fire that is exactly how it works and you are stupid.
Juan Garcia
>i should make exactly the same amount year after year, after all that's how capitalism works
Zachary Morgan
holy fuck based, what game? I'm gonna play this shit on the emulator now.
Charles Green
I have no idea how it sells, but I'm gonna shill Renowned Explorers anyway!
Lincoln Harris
Why the fuck would you do all that work to make a game, but not be willing to invest enough money to get decent art?
Cameron Smith
>can't exclude tags in a search without editing URL >can't even edit URL in client >can exclude tags from discovery queue but this doesn't affect search results >ignored games still show up in results but just marked with "ignored"
>Linking to kotaku >It isn't even an archived link >Expecting me to a shit about some fuck who sits on his ass and makes games all day having a hard time
