I just built my first game, and trying to get it greenlit. I’m wondering how many other people have games on steam and if its very realistic to get on there. Has it made you rich?
thanks!
I expect those ppl dont post on the forums anymore.
too busy rolling around in all that money
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LOL, that’s true. I’m pretty sure most of them don’t even have a forum account.
But some of us get so sick of rolling in our money that we get bored and look to the forums.
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Because HarvesteR totally didn’t just post in the forum like a couple hours ago. His baby being kerbal space program.
There are some that pop in, but it’s not too common. I have to imagine it’s mostly some combination of too busy and not paving new trails and coming to the forums for ideas/support.
I would never abandon my forum account, even if I got a crap load of money…
nah im just screwin with u ofc I will never come back lol
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I drop in from time to time but we’re usually pretty busy developing, contributing to Unity beta testing, and engaging our community.
To answer the OP, Steam is no longer the golden goose that some folks think it is. To have any chance of success you need to spend a good amount of time marketing your game and building a community of followers early on in development so that you can first get through Greenlight, and then come launch day you can drive a lot of traffic and sales to Steam, giving you the greatest chance of hitting the Feature Section on the store home page and more importantly staying there for as long as possible. If you don’t, sure you may get your 3 days on the store page (its even less now), but you’ll drop off soon after with very little to show. Even the biggest historical golden goose of the feature section isn’t delivering for some developers. If you do amass a small army of supporters you can email for support at key times, chances are you’ve got a great game and you’ll do well.
As for ‘getting rich’, some devs publish their figures on www.gamasutra.com, although they often break distribution contracts in doing so. You’ll discover unexpected failures and immense success stories for #madewithunity games involving several million dollars in revenue. Success depends on bringing the right game to market at the right time with the right team backed by a good sales and marketing strategy. That can still be a one man team if they are a superstar, but delivering success also requires a lot of non-technical skills in business and marketing.
The absolute best thing you can do to maximise your chance of success is to start making a kickass game that people want to play. The rest becomes a lot easier if you start there.
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Bro, I had your game on my wishlist for a while now ahha. I didnt even know that the devs used unity AND are partly active in the forums. Good for you guys! Cant wait to put my game on greenlight though haha
thanks for the reply. My game looks good enough to be taken seriously, but it lacks gameplay. It can be finished in about 3 - 7 hours because there’s only 6 levels. So I have trouble visualizing a fan base getting behind it like minecraft.
Also, can you say how much percentage steam takes from sales?
Well steam is not like it use to be.
Before it was ultra-hard to be on steam, but you will be sure to get a lot of money (above 100k $ at least).
Now steam has open the gate, and during the first months of 2014 they release as much game than during the entire 2013. So you have at least 4 times more game to compete with. So there is a good chance that the revenue is divid by 4 (and from the numbers gathered from number I’ver accessed, it looks like it).
Also steam as made some modification: the release tab are not the first tab selected on the page store => release exposure and sales are reduce drastically.
Early acces game are not on the release list anymore.
For each type of game you have a unique way to build a community. So it’s not as easy like people say: time = community. You need a game that talk to people. I mean good is not enough. A game that people enjoy is not enough.
You need to make a game that look good on youtube. A game that make people talk to each other. A game that people can pitch each other.
Your time spend on marketing only multiply the marketing quality of your game.
For example super meatboy: you talk to your friend about the difficulty.
Be aware that statically 20% of game only pay what they cost. And don’t be fool too much by the number you get on gamasutra. Only successfull game published their numbers…
What ever people say there is a hard work factor, and a luck factor. The people you met (some good, some bad for your business), the opportunity you get, the youtuber that cover you. There is a snow ball rolling effect. Success call for success. And if you get a top youtuber to test your game, there is a good chance that others will follow.
Hard work / talent / time only reduce this part of luck.
Don’t do game if you want to be rich!
Most other industry have a better ratio.
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Luck is indeed one of the ingredients, and as Wild Factor has said it’s influence can be reduced through talent and hard work. You wouldn’t become a full-time indie if you were in it for the money, as the probability is you’d earn more plying your skills elsewhere. Just as in the music industry however, there is an opportunity to break through into the big leagues.
For Steam’s cut, it’s public knowledge and can be found via Google.
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To the bold: yes. I’m a full-time programmer, and I earn my pay in a more standard 8A-5P job. However…for about an hour every night after I get off work, I do stuff on my little projects (currently my 3D Tile Pack). I love it. Even if I never earn more than $100, it means I’m part of a great community, and a more informed consumer. What’s more, my Unity works are responsible for my current job, so you could say I’ve already won; a ballpark hit game would be “gravy”, albeit Delicious Gravy of +33 Awesome Sauce.
EDIT: That said, I want my Delicious Gravy of +33 Awesome Sauce. And, I am capable of spelling sauce correctly. See?
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KSP is on Steam, and I’m still lurking about here, and posting whenever I get a chance or the game is taking too long to load, so that myth is busted I guess. 
Like GamesFoundry said, being on Steam isn’t a magic cash-making thing. KSP wasn’t on Steam for a very long time (this was before Early Access and Greenlight were a thing also), because we didn’t want it to be on Steam too early. KSP was still evolving, and going on Steam too soon could have backfired on us.
Steam can be a double-edged sword. Yes, you expose your game to a much larger crowd of potential players… But on the other hand*, you expose your game to a much larger crowd of potential players*.
So make sure your game is ready for that spotlight.
Cheers
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‘Make sure your game is ready’ - I absolutely second that based on our own experience of Early Access.
Early Access has involved a lot of pioneering for the early adopters, and I’m sure HarvesteR would agree that the amount of learning is huge. The experience completely changes your understanding of what to do and what to avoid, and I’m not sure it’s something you can ever truly prepare yourself for.
So since experienced and successful developers are posting here, this seems like a great place to ask.
What is a good way to get a project to a ‘Steam-ready’ state, especially for a small team/one-man band (in other words, with limited resources)? Is it a good idea to post webplayer beta builds until the quality is there? Are there more efficient ways of refining a game to be Steam-ready?
For full launch or Early Access?
Full launch. But that leads to an equally good question: what considerations go with Early Access? It seems like most games on Steam that go with Early Access are usually highly unfinished, sometimes even barely playable. That can’t be the right way to do it.
That’s very true. Not every game is compatible with Early Access. For instance, I couldn’t fathom trying to release an adventure game in early access… How would you plug the gaps in a game that heavily relies on a complete storyline? And even if you do, if a game has very low replay value, why would an early access player come back to it even if it is more polished?
Early access is something you have to design for, from as early as the initial concept. You have to have a game that can be playable in a minimally complete state, and not only has room (and direction) to grow, it must also have mid-way stopping points to do releases at.
Not all games fit those requirements, but that’s not a fault in itself. The publishing scheme has to be chosen to fit the game you have, or you have to design a game to fit the publishing options available to you.
I wouldn’t call myself an expert in such things, but to try and answer the initial question, what I would do to gauge ‘readiness’ is to publish the game on its own community first, where you can gather a small (and very helpful) group of early players, which will give you invaluable feedback. From there to being ‘ready for steam’, there is no roadmap (accidental pun is welcome), but once you have people playing your game, you’ll be able to get a general sense of it.
Cheers
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I don’t think so, it says on steamworks they don’t discuss royalties publicly, and I cant find any obvious google searches that pop anything up except speculation. Steamworks.
Well, game making is my passion, but I need to make money also. I’m living with my parents and not working at any job so I can dedicate myself to game making 24/7.
But if I’m not getting any success i’ll have to move out, find a job, and join the rest!
It’s pretty late on Friday night, and I’m waiting on the next build to regression test before tomorrow’s patch, but I’ll try my best.
The premise is really about starting with yourself at the center of a circle, then keep expanding the radius to take in more and more feedback from increasingly further afield.
The first circle is yourself. Is your game playable, fun, and robust? Self-criticising a work of passion objectively is a tough thing to do, but you should have a good idea if you think it’s ready or not, and how it stands up to competition already on Steam.
The second circle extends to friends and family, but only if you tell them to rip into it and be ruthless with the truth.
The third circle includes game dev peers - go to local dev meetups or weekend gamejam and share your game.
The fourth circle is to reach out to potential players around the world, and to do that you’ve got to make them aware of your game. Put together a teaser video containing almost exclusively gameplay footage and put it up on YouTube. Have a website with images and a newsletter sign up form. Then you can start building a database of interested players. We did this from early on, and by EA launch day we had around 19,000 people to email. When you’re ready you can contact those people with a demo that they can download, play, and provide feedback on. Encourage them to record let’s play videos and post you unlisted video links, or have an online survey for them to complete ( which you could incentivise with a suitable prize like a free copy of the final game ).
It’s the final circle that will tell you whether you are ready for Steam. If you can’t build a pre-release community, that’s your answer right there. Your game isn’t ready. Even if your game is ready, it’s also a good test of whether you as a person are ready. The process of building that pre-release community will equip you with some of the business and marketing skills you’ll need once you’re on Steam.
Early Access is best suited to sandbox games. Other games can work, but only when they are very close to completion, in which case EA can be used more of a promotional vehicle for obtaining final feedback. Early Access is maturing very quickly from what was arguably the wild west of the early days. Players are demanding more on all fronts: more gameplay, more quality, more updates, more communication, more involvement. I’ve seen games release recently that have flopped in Early Access that a year ago might have done well.
The best way to prepare yourself for Steam is to make a high quality game that offers something new. Something that people want to talk about. KSP excelled in that area. Do that, and the battle is half won.
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