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How many people have games on steam?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by roger0, Aug 15, 2014.

  1. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Just to clarify, I meant that I see it as the opposite to a golden goose compared to the prior Steam situation, mainly as a result of the dilution you mention. Whether that translates to less sales for the people who are doing everything well anyway, I have no way to know.
     
    Games-Foundry likes this.
  2. Games-Foundry

    Games-Foundry

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    The main risk will be to discoverability. If a crappy game can use the same tags as a high quality game, then everyone has a problem. Steam need some way of sorting by rating but we've all seen that is prone to abuse as per the iOS store. We shall see.
     
  3. Patheagames

    Patheagames

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    Well, our game, Planet Explorers, is on Steam, and I hang around here waiting for Unity5 all the time. :)

    As others have already mentioned, the most important part about finding success on Steam is to have a pretty well defined product already when you get on. Don't try to go for the easy money by just throwing a barely working demo on there, that won't work anymore. We pretty much had 20 hours of storyline gameplay ready before we got on Early Access, and some players still thought that was too short. The first reviews need to be positive, as they're the ones that will forever stay on the Steam store page.

    Games Foundry, did you guys eventually get 64bit working? Unity4.5 blew up in our face so we're sitting that one out.
     
  4. Games-Foundry

    Games-Foundry

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    Good to have you join in zede05. I've had one eye on Planet Explorers since you launched on Early Access, and will no doubt be picking it up in the future.

    I concur with your review comments. Reviews are definitely sticky.

    We got 64-bit Folk Tale working once Unity fixed a show-stopping bug in 4.3. Since then we moved the default Steam build to use 64-bit (since thats the vast majority of players). 32-bit is still supported, but requires opt-in to a special build. 32-bit OS limitations can be vicious once you start rising above a 1.25GB footprint or have a lot of memory fragmentation. We ran into that at launch and quickly had to patch with some memory optimizations.

    Right now we've got a problem with SSAO on AMD cards. Any experiences you guys have run into?
     
  5. Patheagames

    Patheagames

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    Oh? So 64bit in Unity works now? No more of that collision based crash bug? :eek:

    Not to derail the topic, but this is the first time I've heard of the SSAO on AMD bug, what's that about?
     
  6. Games-Foundry

    Games-Foundry

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    Yeah that's the fix that enabled us to go 64-bit.

    Re: SSAO on AMD, we've had plenty of users sharing screenshots with black bands everywhere. To derail some more, interesting stuff coming out of unite14 - I'm watching the tweet feed.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2014
  7. Rico21745

    Rico21745

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    I've given up looking at my twitter feed. It's blowing up with interwebz indie drama atm.
     
  8. BFGames

    BFGames

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    Well we have not released our game yet, but we are on Steam :)
     
  9. roger0

    roger0

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  10. DocLogic

    DocLogic

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  11. roger0

    roger0

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    about 7 months. I'm shifting my attention to beta testing and marketing. The graphics is a strong point, but it lacks a lot of gameplay. I'm afraid people may look at it and think it has a ton of levels, but then play it and find out its very short and give it negative reviews.
     
  12. Rico21745

    Rico21745

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    You really should make sure you have a proper fleshed out game before going on Steam imho. Steam isn't the platform to do alpha testing, you should tap into your community, or provide builds of your game for free, if you want to make sure your game plays nicely and is fun. Yes this includes Early Access imho.

    I personally put myself in other people's shoes before I decide to charge for anything. Which is why I've made no money yet :p I'm a big believer that if I wouldn't pay for my own game, neither should you.

    So I guess maybe its worth considering using that as your barometer for when its ready to release? Would you buy your own game? Look at other similar games out there and compare it to them.
     
  13. roger0

    roger0

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    When I originally started, I was building a game that I would want to personally play. Although I had to make severe gameplay cuts in order to fit the time frame I was willing to work on it for.

    But for what its worth, I think its still a good game. I don't know if I would buy it if I was just looking for a new game. It's hard to put yourself in those shoes. I had fun making it though. This game was really a testing ground for me to go through the entire development cycle before making a huge game.
     
  14. Rico21745

    Rico21745

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    In that case it may be worth putting it on something like Gamejolt to start building yourself a community rather than Steam. Or maybe Desura, tops, but I definitely wouldn't do Steam until you're fairly solid you yourself would pay for it. Desura, I've heard, is far more forgiving than Steam.
     
  15. roger0

    roger0

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    Well I've already spent seven months on building the game, so I don't think I should spend anymore time on it. And its not just the game that will make it successful, but it's the marketing.

    Internet sources says Desura and the other stores are no where close to steam sales. At this point ill just take the hit, if its not good enough for steam as it is now, it wont go on, if it is, then it will.
     
  16. BFGames

    BFGames

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    We spend 2 years (not full time though), seven people and we are not even en beta with our steam game yet ;)
     
  17. ChrisSch

    ChrisSch

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    Good luck! Also gave it a yes. And I hope you're correct at assuming the sales are way better on Steam than Desura. My assumption is that they're at least 10 times better.

    I'm still collecting cents in a little jar for the Steam registration fee tho. Otherwise I'd hit Greenlight long ago.