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hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs
Anonymous User asked:

Curious if you can elaborate on "playing steam's algorithm game"? Are you just talking about adding screenshots a description etc or is there something else that you're doing?

the algorithm game is a few things:

  • putting together a proper description, trailer, screenshots, etc
  • giving your game the proper tags for discovery
  • sending the game to steam curators. honestly i have no idea how effective this is but it's the done thing
  • passing the ten-positive-reviews-by-paying-customers mark on day one so steam recognizes your game as "real" and lets the algorithm promote it. this is the big thing; if you don't hit this margin, you'll be fighting an uphill battle for a long time
  • similarly, passing the fifty reviews mark is very important, as that's when your game can go from being marked as "positive" to being marked as "very positive." similarly, at 500 reviews you can hit "overwhelmingly positive" if you're above 95% positive, but it's a hell of a hike getting there
  • participating in seasonal sales, participating in themed sales, putting together your own sales. sales sales sales sales sales

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in reply to @hthrflwrs's post:

Can confirm this from another angle too - When I released on steam I'd gotten myself incredibly burned out and so after I set up my store page and tags, I just collapsed and did nothing on or after launch. To this day it feels like a struggle to get steam to show 77 Oleander anywhere and even with curator recommendations, not hitting at least that 10 positive reviews mark has really made it feel like a slog to get any traction on steam whatsoever.

Cannot begin to overstate how important it is to plan for doing those things as part of your release plans.