Surprised I didn’t see anything here on this. If someone already posted then I apologize for the dupe and just axe it please.
I happened across this article today…
The interesting thing is Valve says the bug has been fixed (at least they didn’t deny it) yet the overall reduction in attention & sales seems to have remained at least for some Indie games.
Another good example why relying on Steam, Google Play store etc for marketing is very risky.
That bug was obvious for months on Steam. I am glad to hear they finally found time to acknowledged that. For months, my Steam client had been recommending popular games that I already owned. For example, I love playing PUBG, but I already own PUBG. Advertising PUBG to me repeatedly was a missed opportunity to sell me something else.
Call me overreacting, but by observing recent months, what happens on google, plus steam, for me seams somehow like conspiracy theory, even targeting different markets. Who knows who else may be involved?
I always perceived steam front page advertising system as very bias.
Nothing new that Steam only care abotu the already successful games. Its like with free weekends. Only already successful games get granted for that. Whats up with that
I don’t think it’s any kind of conspiracy going on. It’s just these companies (Steam, Google, etc) are all businesses. Their goal is to maximize the profit of their business. If it aligns that increasing awareness of your game will also increase their profit then I’d suspect you will be getting a lot of free marketing from them. If however another game brings them more money that game will get the attention. And I imagine this is always ongoing flavor of the month.
These are all distribution platforms. Not marketing services. It’s just that sometimes if things align a game will get free marketing from them because it is in their best interest. But it cannot and should not be relied on.
Or you can tailor you game specifically to bring benefit to Steam as well. Then your chances of being directly marketed by them go way up.
Yes I understand is a business. Is just coincidentally happens about same time recently on different platforms. But to be honest, I haven’t tracked history from many years back, for each platform. Hence this may be happening all the time, over years. But never mind.
But as we discussed, the fact is, we can not rely on such platforms as small fish.
Definitely this, regardless of platform.
But I think, it may be hard for new starters.
You could grant free weekends without marketing the game. But they dont do that.
I do wonder for short games, while this gives opportunity to market the game, would that potentially hurt overall sales? Since many customers who played the game and finished over weekend, won’t be needed to buy it.
I guess short games are so cheap anyway so they dont benefit much from free weekends at all.
Interesting they had a bug in their system, but these platforms are always working on their discovery algorithms. Their changes are made with the goal of maximizing profits for the platform, not for maximizing exposure across their library.