One thing I quickly realized on Steam(their website is not working now…I mean seriously…):
In 5 hours my game got over 100,000 impressions and 3900 page views - in 24 hours 200 had it in their wishlist but as the NDA prevents me from discussing actual sales, let me tell you just: they suck. In fact it seems that one million + positive reviews won’t be enough to quit your job.
Your best best is 10 million impressions + cult following game + friends buying + investors. Basically all the things that will make your sales success everywhere. But the conclusion from my experience that far is tha Steam isn’t good place for organic traffic. Can’t really compete with Google, Amazon and the likes.
You may have put alot effort into it, noone except you knows and I wouldn’t doubt that at any time, but alot of personal work may not be enough to compete with all the other games that are usually developed by teams over months and years.
From the trailer that I’ve seen in one of your other threads, I wouldn’t consider it to be ready for the market. It may look graphically promising (depends on one’s personal expectations) but at least the trailer doesn’t really tell much about the whole thing. Running around, looking at some graphical highlights which are often out of the box and shipped with the engine and doing a little bit of shooting is simply not enough. As hard as this might sound. Some have succeeded with that, but those exceptions often had at least one rare or innovative element which got them through.
A real professional could create such a project in a few days and might even top yours. The market is already flooded with lots of products which should have never been released in regards to all the bugs and not-yet-ready-to-release contents. It’s not a simple business (unless your idea is so weird and strange that the crowd goes wild for some reason and hypes your game).
Didnt you already make a rant thread about this? There is no need to stir up more attention to how poorly your game (i use that work loosely) has done.
justbrosingthanks, while i, like the rest of them, think that your game is an abomination, i’d like to honestly thank you for sharing your experiences.
I have a question and a tip.
My question is, do you play computer games, to have a frame of reference, or rather not?
The advice is, get a whackier name for your game. Have a look at “Shower with your Dad Simulator”. It sold tons of copies and while it is a better game than yours, the gameplay itself still cant carry it or explain its success.
For example, “Shooting blanks with your dingdong” - now THATS a title that can sell a few thousand copies.
Yes just having a game on Steam won’t make you rich.
You better build a fanbase around your game (as yourself noted).
Another big success factor these days seems Youtube. If you have a interesting enough game that attracts a lot of youtubers (preferably the famous ones) your game will do well. Look at Slime Rancher for example.
Having a game in a niche, that won’t be touched by triple A studios certainly helps too.
I really appreciate you sharing your data with us. 100k “Impressions”, does that mean 100k times the logo of the game appeared in some list or search query? And that converted into 3900 clicks leading toward your store page? I have to say I find the smallest logo, that is shown in the autocompletion of the top right search bar, a lot more appealing than the artwork in the top right corner of the actual store page.
I find it interesting that your game has 100% positive reviews. Even if the people say “it’s so bad that it’s good” I interpret their thumbs up review as not being actually angry. To me it seems like you didn’t oversell your product and people knew what they were getting into. It might have hurt sales at the moment, but it led to 100% positive reviews so far. If the product you are providing was more in line with what the market demands, you might have had a solid base for long term success there.
But of course I’m talking out of my arse here, since I never released a product.
Roughly what percentage of people has refunded the game?
Yes, it means roughly 3.9% of people click on the game once they see the impression on Steam.
Again, can’t discuss sales but…well could be better. I genuinely can’t find data on refunds, I am not saying this as a way to “cheat” the NDA - but I can’t. Basically as I can’t it will seem probably no one 0_0.
One more thing:
Search accounts for over 80% of the traffic. Some people actually use the search lol!
The other 19% are the impression clicks and just 1% from elsewhere. Literally no clicks from youtube or anywhere…
Again, that’s just the very first day, I am waiting for data since yesterday and today to see hopefully more clicks from other pages…
Does the data tell you what the people searched for? If they searched “the rebel”, it is most likely they actually did come from youtube. I never click links on there, I always search for the name of the game on steam. If they searched for “FPS” or “action”, then I’d see them as “real” search querys.
Afaik it’s part of the standard steam contracts. But I’ve never heard of them actually enforcing that, and plenty of devs have shared numbers.
justbrosingthanks:
Is this the game you are talking about?
Is this an accurate video of the game’s current state?
Based on that video, I would not expect very many users to buy the game regardless of how many impressions it received. The frame rate in the video is extremely low. It looks unplayable. I would suggest shooting a video with a much higher/smoother frame rate.
A very public act of self-immolation in which a person refuses to disclose the motives for said act of public self-immolation does not constitute an achievement worthy of significant monetary compensation; nor should it be surprising that in spite of said act attracting the attention of a large quantity of people, none of those people were positively impressed nor do they wish to see any more.
Yeah you would have turn those page views into sales (and honestly your looking at 1…3% of those people turning into customers) and get listed on the popular new releases category, I think in order to have any hope of gaining any traction on steam youd have to great product that you can sell at a high price point because steam is based on revenue.
Sadly my experience that far tells different. On the tens of products i have on google and amazon - it’s constant about 30-70 of the people who use the product write a review - something negative, sometimes positive. Here…well it’s different. Everyone and their brother is devoting huge amount of time to my game - I guy had just wasted 30 minutes to write like 5,000 words in the forum there to criticize the game. I don’t get it…are those people getting paid to do this? Are they just 12 years old with all the time in the universe? I’d never waste so much time to whine about anything even if i can’t stand it with my guts. There’s definitely something weird here or just…the gaming community is childish hehe :P.
