HOW TO USE STEAM’S MARKETING? (2024)

Hello there,

A few words before getting into the topic.

It’s been A WHILE since I’ve written here.

• I went on amazing vacations in Japan and I changed jobs.
• My previous employer asked me to remove some of the content from my blog, which has been hard on my motivation to write and resulted in less interesting content for you. Sorry about that.
• Starting a new job also took a lot of focus and energy but it’s for the best as I’m now working for an amazing studio.

I READ STEAM’S MARKETING SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

Earlier this month, Steam released an article addressing some of the big questions you might have about marketing your game.
As you want to sell your game on Steam, having a good understanding of how it works is key.

Sources

• Steam visibility: How Games Get Surfaced to Players
• Best Practices: Developing an audience while developing your game – GDC 2024 – To be fair, you can skip this one as it won’t give you any actionable advice and it’s quite long 🙂

KEY LEARNINGS

The best placements are curated while the others are algorithms-based.

Curated placements are shown to everyone and algorithmic visibility is personalized to individual players.

Let’s start with the latest.

STEAM ALGORITHMS

Steam puts a lot of effort and trust into their algorithms. Their goal is to match games with the players who will love them.

This allows them to follow players’ interests instead of trying to predict them.
As with many algorithms, the more you interact with Steam, the better the algorithm gets at recommending games you will like.

In a nutshell:

• Players’ interests drive visibility, and you need to market your game to gain this interest first.
• Visibility can happen after you launched if your game is being picked up later on (like Fallout recently with their TV show or Among Us during the pandemic).
• Visibility is not impacted by refund rate or reviews (as long as you are above mixed).
• Visibility is impacted first and foremost by revenues and play time. It is also influenced by localization and wishlists counts.

FEATURED AND RECOMMENDED – BIGGEST ALGORITHMIC PLACEMENT

Recommendation change depending on when you’re logged in and when you’re not.

You can also see the importance of TAGS when while being logged in.
I get recommendation for Manor Lords.

The more players interact with Steam the better it gets at recommending games for them on the Featured and Recommended.

• Games you’ve played or wishlisted
• Games your friends played, wishlisted or recommended
• Regionalized Top Sellers
• New releases and updates
• Curators you follow

THE DISCOVERY QUEUE – THE BEST MARKETING TOOL

Your marketing objective should be to trigger the Discovery Queue as much as you can.

• You need to reach a huge number of external visits converting to wishlists in a short period of time.
  Steam says that the traffic pages don’t count but wishlist gains certainly do as it shows players’ interests.
• It’s the only marketing tool that can be used effectively before launch.
• A great trailer, content creator or festival coverage can lead to triggering the Discovery Queue.
• Discovery queue triggers when your game reaches enough interest once launched (remember, playtime and spending are key factors).
• Personnalized on game played, genres and relevant tags

CURATOR RECOMMENDATION

• Based on curators, if you don’t follow any you won’t see it.
• In my opinion the curator system on Steam is broken. I distrust curators, especially since you will receive hundreds of fake and scam requests for keys at your game launch. I would advise refraining from engaging with them.

FROM DEVELOPERS AND PUBLISHERS THAT YOU KNOW

You either follow the publisher or developers or have played games from them.

Hence the importance of having players follow your developer/publisher page.

THE “BIG BLOCK“

This is algorithmic and personnalised based on your region.

New & Trending

• Excludes Early Access games until they go in 1.0
• Needs a certain threshold of “popularity” (remember revenues and time played!)

Top Sellers

• A list of the most wishlisted upcoming games sorted by release date. Steam looks at wishlist activity for the last two weeks – hence the importance of having great wishlist velocity (lots of wishlists gain in a short period) when you are closer to your launch.
• This is the one place where wishlists matter in terms of Steam marketing visibility.
• You need to reach a certain threshold to be listed (the talk of the town is 7,000 wishlists but Steam hasn’t disclosed any numbers and says it’s not the case.)
• One way you can impact this position is to release earlier in the day than your competitors so you appear first for your day of release.

Specials:

• Most popular games by revenue that are currently discounted.
  

CURATED VISIBILITY

Curated visibility reaches everyone on Steam and is granted once your game has reached a certain threshold of “popularity”.

Steam doesn’t specify exactly how they measure it, but I would bet on a mix of players numbers, review score and revenues.

• If you want to have midweek or week-end deals you need to be on the top “few hundreds best selling games on all of Steam”.
• To be featured on curated offers you need to show Steam that your game is appealing to a wide audience and will maximize sales. Remember that slots are limited and Steam will favor the games most likely to drive revenue.

You can improve your reach to a wider audience with those elements

• Localization
• Regional pricing
• Marketing assets and support
• Controller support

FRONT PAGE TAKEOVER

• Not used everyday.
• The biggest amount of marketing provided for any game.
• Can be applied to publishers sales or event (Festival, Regional celebrations, press)
• Can feature the game key art or fancier assets in .gif format

SPECIALS OFFERS

• They are scheduled way in advance – about 8 weeks ahead of time.
• Earned based on customer interest (spending and time played again) and a discount.Based on promotion and discount.
• Midweek and daily deals are shown to everyone on Steam.
• Also shown in your launcher capsule – the smaller tabs Steam runs when ou launch it.
• You can ask Steam for a special offer featuring.
• I just discovered that you can have a .gif asset for your special offer to stand out more!

CONTENT HUB – CATEGORY BASED

• They work just like the front page but for categories of game meaning they have both curated and Algorithmic push

• You see tags, similar to other games (according to tags), wishlisted or owned by your friends

STEAM’S ADVICES ON MARKETING

Step 1: Have a good game (duh)

• “Your game is your best marketing tool.” – Thanks a lot Steam for this impactful insight I guess.
  

Step 2: Show it in the best way possible.

Steam is telling you how to market your game the RIGHT way and you can find some answers on blog ready for you.

Have good screenshots and key art

Think about your game as a product

Make a great store page with relevant tags

Make great trailers that show the gameplay quickly

Step 3: Market your game before launch

• Build up wishlists so you let players know when you’re out.
• Wishlisters receive an email when your game is launched in Early Access or 1.0 and for any discount above 20%.

Step 4: Feedback and testing

• Playtesting on Steam is quite handy and easy to do! I highly recommend you use it!
• Get a demo in the hands of players
• Get in a Steam Next Fest before launch – the closer to launch the better.

Step 5: Post-launch

• A great marketing strategy is to combine a game update with a discount.
• Use your Steam Capsule to show you’ve got new content. You can get a temporary capsule for 30 days.
• Game Update and letting players know about them via Blogpost