Release on Steam vs Website or Both?

[SpiderPig]

Curious as to what peoples thoughts are on this.  Should releasing your game on Steam be the best and only choice you should make as an indie?  Or should you aim to get your game out on as many platforms as possible including selling it on your own website?  Steam takes a large cut out of your revenue - 30% if I remember correctly.   But can Steam do more for your game than a good marketing campaign can do?  And is their marketing of your game actually worth 30% of the sales - if that's even what they do - what do they do?  My Wife has just started her own marketing company so naturally I'm thinking it'd work out better for me to ditch Steam and just do a website that handles all the sales/updates and forum discussions.  I can see this being better value for money due to the website running costs and marketing costs being near a set amount per year regardless of sales - but the best and right choice?  Not sure yet.  What do you think?

[Marcousik]

I see in general the release phase very problematic.

The market is today flooded with games and I have no idea how people should know about my little game I spent 10 years on and that is not 1/100 so good as Ubisoft (or whatever big studio) is able to do...

The market is so flooded that maybe someday gamers on twitch will get paid by a games studio to get their game played ? Who knows.

Like to be added to a game pass... Is this a privilege? A chance ? Who pay who to get the game in a game pass? Would you pay to get your game published in the XBOX Game Pass? Even if "normaly" XBOX should pay you for the (copy)rights of your game?

Except you do a big add campaign on youtube, but which indie is going to do this, I ask?

So to answer your question, the very first question should be before the release plattform choice, how do you want to release something without that it goes forgotten?

(sorry for being so pessimistic!)

Edit

The only real winners in the games industry are those publishing plattforms (steam, Game Pass, Epic...) and ironically those who just do nothing, except relating gamers to developpers. But gamers use those plattform because it's nice presented and there are attractive deals. IMO it ruins the games market somehow evenif I'm too a steam user.

[Genebris]

I don't even know a single successful indie game selling outside of Steam or at least Epic. It's well worth 30%.

If you convince Steam that your game is worth marketing by doing your own marketing first, it will help you a lot.

 

By the way, a good guide I recently found: https://gamesensor.info/guide/1

[SpiderPig]

There are lots of indie games out there and I think it all depends on how much effort you put in before release and how much you continue to put in after release.  A good idea is only part of the equation, if you really believe in your game and give it the time and money it needs it'll probably do well.

Thanks for the guide, it answers a few of my questions.

Quote

If you convince Steam that your game is worth marketing by doing your own marketing first, it will help you a lot.

I wonder how one does that...

[aiaf]

I think yes Steam can help.

Having a website + forum/discord and manage to create a community would be great.

 

Imo you will need to think at the target audience, very much depends on the game type.

Make something people will recognize and easy to play,some nice features,  (good ui) otherwise your into trouble.

 

My experience is i made 2 games that are really original and they got buried by steam.

Very little sales.

My puzzle game is so awesome and one of a kind that it hurts nobody plays it.

But yeah i have no idea what makes a game successful , maybe is good just marketing + game type people are familiar with,

[SpiderPig]

I also think Steam is great.   But if our games get buried because they don't make Valve enough money to start with it means we have to do our own marketing anyway.  Which means the sales you do get, Steam didn't earn they're 30%.  Yeah you could be paying to have an easy platform to upload your game too and it's something that players are familiar with - but I don't feel it's worth 30% just for that.  Maybe my new knowledge of the marketing process from helping my wife with Uni has given me an unjustified confidence with ditching steam.  

Either way I'm curious to put the success of my game in my own hands and leave Steam out of the equation, at least to start with.  I think with a good demo, a Kickstarter campaign, you own website and YouTube videos following the development from early on, should put it in a fairly good place.  I feel the player base for your game should be built right from the start, way before a playable demo.  I think that's where YouTube videos come in.

I did make and release a small game on Steam that got buried - partly because my heart wasn't in that one.  It was something small just to learn the whole process really.

 

@aiaf for your games I would learn about marketing now.  Figure out what your target audience is and where they are hiding and cater adds for them.  Most people end up on Facebook at some point in the day making it one of the best places to advertise - but you have to know your target audience.  Marketing managers can figure that out with special software I think.

[Thirsty Panther]

Here is an blog post that may help.

What makes an indie developer successful?

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs/what-can-we-learn-from-the-1-600-highest-earning-indie-developers-on-steam-

 

[Josh]

I have a few ideas:

1. Follow the trend of the types games that are currently popular now. An example of this is Dangerous Rays, which got very popular right when survival FPS/RPG type games were getting popular. (Unfortunately it was never finished.)
2. Piggyback on some kind of copyright-free IP that is already popular. An example is SCP: Containment Breach, or Slenderman. Neither of these games would have been popular if they didn't build off of something that already had a built-in audience. I think HP Lovecraft's works are now public domain, so there's another idea.
3. VR! Why does everyone ignore this? All it takes is a halfway decent game to be very popular in this smaller but sizable market. Better to be a big fish in a small pond, and so on.

[Yue]

 

The funny thing is that we have to create something that people like and not just that we like. Look at trends, marketing research. On the other hand, sales, advertising, should be considered part of the investment in the development, it is what the big studios do, so everything is summarized in capital for the project that even if the game is very bad, a good marketing will make it visible at least for a critique and that people know about it. 

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

[reepblue]

3 hours ago, Josh said:

VR! Why does everyone ignore this? All it takes is a halfway decent game to be very popular in this smaller but sizable market. Better to be a big fish in a small pond, and so on.

I'm waiting on a certain engine with tools I'll love, with the features I want, and performance I can't live without. 🙃

[SpiderPig]

46 minutes ago, reepblue said:

I'm waiting on a certain engine with tools I'll love, with the features I want, and performance I can't live without. 🙃

Me too.  😁  I'm very much looking forward to playing around with VR in Ultra.