>“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.”
>WTF MY $20 THREE YEAR OLD WALKING SIM WITH A $2 DISCOUNT DIDN'T SELL AS MUCH THIS YEAR FUCKING GABE I'M GOING TO EPIC!!!!
Austin Diaz
...
Levi Foster
>game sold less this year than last year >it’s the store’s fault, and not an unavoidable reality of all video game sales everywhere on every platform forever throughout the history of the medium Bait harder Sweeney, this shit is boring
Asher Wood
Steam doesn't have nearly as good of sales as it used to (games used to go on sale for well above 75%, usually 85-95%, games that have since never gone above 75%. It's dumb as fuck), they got rid of flash sales which incentivize impulse buys, but that also means the spotlight never gets shined on these tinier games. I don't know what garbage the guy in the OP makes, but I worked for puppygames around the time ultratron was released and I can say with full certainty that before 2011, holiday sales were about 800% better in terms of sales for us. Our games were still priced about the same, but no flash sale never meant the deep deep cuts, and also meant our games never got showcased like they did. I left around the time refunds started cause I knew the company would be circling the drain, surprise surprise, it is.
But yeah, steam sales have been a mess for years, users have seen it, devs have seen it, everyone's seen it. They're so formulaic.
Christian Miller
The last sale was honest to god horrible. One of their worst by far. At least the stupid race let me get insane e-peen levels. >trading card fags btfo
This thread again? Anyway, the wishlist deal was 100% the retarded userbase's fault that didn't know how to organize it to put their favorite games at the top, so they nuked them only to get Cyberpunk in the #1 spot. Valve had to come out on Twitter and remind all the room temperature IQ children out there how to do the basic fucking task of reorganizing their wishlist like a functioning human being.
The discovery queue wasn't used to earn cards this sale, which definitely affected small developers. But front page recommendations, "more like this" and such all worked as intended, so don't bitch about them.
Luke Bell
Interesting, yet Steam drones are still in denial even though they admit they miss flash sales.
Xavier Rogers
/thread
Luke Cox
report kotaku advertisement repost thread
Ryder Bennett
>The discovery queue wasn't used to earn cards this sale, which definitely affected small developers.
Hah, you even admit Steam fucked it up for indies - argument over
>But front page recommendations, "more like this" and such all worked as intended, so don't bitch about them.
If you remember the grand prix sale (which clearly you don't with your goldfish steam drone brain), the first thing you saw was big marquees for franchises like Resident Evil, Call of Duty, Assy Creed, etc but nothing for just random individual games.
There's plenty of reasons to hate steam. From the drm to the shitty business practices to the snooping around your pc. But not advertising your shitty indie game for you is not one of those reasons.
>the wishlist deal was 100% the retarded userbase's fault that didn't know how to organize it to put their favorite games at the top But the ranking for the whitelist didn't work for 3-4 days straight. If people didn't try re-ranking their wishlist after the fact then that's on them but Steam still fucked up there. imagine being this much of a Kotaku shill
Parker Hernandez
Oh look, the SAME FUCKING THREAD.
Fuck you and fuck off.
Robert Cox
>summer 2019
HYLICS 2 WHERE?!
Michael Morgan
>>“Last sale, I made over $2,000,” the developer wrote. “This one I’ve barely made $200. Thank you.” oh no, you only made $200 dollars as opposed to making nothing. Fucking steam :( Fuck indie devs. Try making a better game instead of screeching and complaining. Or get a real fucking job
Elijah Price
>But not advertising your shitty indie game for you is not one of those reasons.
Or maybe you can just admit that Steam is wrong for once? For the longest time, getting your game on Steam was the game changer, the big time.
Now anyone can put their shitty game on Steam and it doesn't matter anymore, and ironically, that just buries the really few obscure gems on Steam are decent - 300 copies being sold should not be this common
If it wasn't for indie devs like me, you would all be stuck playing call of duty and final fantasy for the rest of your lives.
Isaiah Mitchell
MODS THIS IS SPAM MODSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Easton Williams
Sounds preferable to playing your shit games tbqh
Aaron Martin
Flash Sales being gone is another result of indies whining about something. Customers got sick of buying shit games on Steam after indies bitched and moaned about Valve keeping their store tightly sealed for years. Now they flooded the market and customers needed something to fight back with. Enter refunds and the death of Flash Sales.
Thank You Indies for fucking everything up.
Jason Rivera
This but unironically, Doom was an indie as hell project, and after the huge success of Wolf 3D and Doom, they became a major publisher.
Xavier Fisher
This game wasn't decent though.
Jose Morris
1989 Tiananmen Square
Lincoln White
Refunds were due to rulings regarding the sales of digital products in Europe Flash sales also were unappealing to Valve since they made people wait until the last day to buy. They were replaced by the discovery queue
James Garcia
Why does every indie developer think that THEY have the gem buried in an ocean of shit?
Tip: you’re just another drop in the ocean of shit. If Valve never opened the floodgates, you wouldn’t be on Steam to begin with. Take your shit to itch.io
Brayden Morales
If their algorithm determined it's more profitable to funnel people towards garbage triple A games instead of garbage indie ones, why would they do anything else? Steam is under no obligation to help your game do well, especially if it's at their own expense
Hunter Reed
I got on steam before greenlight and before steam direct. Now my shit gets buried within an hour of coming out because of all the steam direct games where devs upload dozens or hundreds of flash games for $100 each.
Alexander Myers
>shitaku literally give zero fucks
Noah Murphy
Your game is shit, deal with it.
If your entire business model is “people will buy it just because there’s nothing else to buy instead” your product is garbage.
Jeremiah Sanchez
>Indies complain >Steam listens
It's Valves fault, just so you know - the indies have no power.
Show me your Steam hours on it.
Nolan Adams
If people don't know your game exists, it could be the best game in the world, and it'll wither on the vine.
