Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Edge Magazine's 30 page(!) Valve mega-feature:















 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/2117195691992645419
According to journalists, indie devs are struggling more and more on Steam and they're being left behind. According to Valve, nothing could be further from the truth.

Data Deep Dive: How are new releases on Steam performing?
ef996326556b3a4c9e157a1a1780234d36662743.jpg


We are constantly examining how the growth of Steam affects new titles and what it means for developers. Usually, our own internal questions mirror those of many in the development community.

In an effort to share some of our findings, we've put together the following post on how new releases have been performing. We're hoping this information is useful to developers, and we're interested in hearing whether more data-driven reports like these would be helpful to your product planning and development. And, if yes, what other topics would be of value. Read on, and please let us know what you think here in the Steamworks discussions.

The TL;DR

Here's a summary of what we found:
  • Over the years, there's been a continuous increase in the number of games achieving success on Steam. We'll dig into this in the first section below.
  • Earnings prospects for most - but not all - games improved in 2019. We'll dig into this in the second section below.
Some Background

A bit of history and context is helpful for understanding the analysis that follows. Prior to 2012, games that released on Steam were hand-picked by employees here at Valve. We realized that we were probably getting in the way of success for a lot of innovative games, and players were demanding more diversity in the kinds of games available via Steam. So, in 2012, we officially launched Steam Greenlight to allow players to vote on the games that would be released. Initially, we were only able to accept a small number of top-voted games per month. Then, in August 2013, our launch capacity improved with the introduction of some new internal tools, and for every month thereafter we accepted batches of at least 100 games. In June 2017, we launched Steam Direct with the intention of making the process of bringing a game to Steam more streamlined, transparent, and accessible.

Opening the platform resulted in a large number of new titles releasing on Steam, reflecting a diversity of niches and players we couldn't have dreamed of. Creating robust discoverability tools and systems was, and still is, crucial to ensuring that games will be surfaced to the customers who will want to play them, and we are continually experimenting with improvements to these systems.

So, has all of this been working? For whom? Read on for details.

More new releases than ever are finding success

One of our goals is to be a platform where great games can realize success. So a natural place to start this analysis was to ask: Are more games finding success? Of course, "success" is different for each developer, so we looked at several different benchmarks of success in this analysis.

Regardless of how we defined success, though, we found that an increasing number of games were achieving it.

As a first pass, we tallied the number of games earning over USD$10,000 in the first two weeks after release each year. For reference, most recent games earning around $10,000 in the first two weeks earned between $20,000 and $60,000 over the course of 12 months following release. We looked at the first two weeks of earnings to give even weight to games released across the year, and because initial earnings are a key metric that we hear many developers using in conversation. We also decided to study "paid games" (games with an up-front price tag) and save free-to-play games for another study, since initial earnings probably aren't the right metric for the success of free-to-play games. (For more on the reasoning behind our analysis choices, plus additional charts that use alternate success metrics, see our research appendix.)

a4970b9ef9ca42018ca05fe4d8be7cfbc3966d76.jpg

As the graph shows, the number of games meeting this success measure has increased pretty consistently over time, with an 18% increase in 2019 compared to 2018. That increase wasn't just due to a larger number of games on the platform - the proportion of games meeting success increased by 11% in 2019.

You may also notice a jump on the graph between 2013 and 2014. That reflects the increase in the number of games we accepted to Steam beginning in August 2013. Many of these games weren't immediately ready for release, so the effect of that increase only really shows up in 2014. By 2019, more than three times as many new releases met the $10k benchmark than in 2013.

232641a3f44b955827f42f77f52f0a2af5815578.jpg


Many recent successes would never have previously been on the platform

As mentioned above, we opened the platform because we believed that "hand curating" the titles released on Steam had led to some great titles being missed. To test this, let's suppose we had never opened the platform. The dashed line in the graph below estimates what the trend would have looked like if we hadn't increased the quantity of games accepted to the platform in mid-2013. Assuming the trend was stable, it suggests that opening the platform more than doubled the number of releases meeting the $10K benchmark each year. While we can't say for sure, we think the green portions of the bars above the dashed line are, largely, games that would never have previously found success on Steam... because they never would have been released on the platform at all.

9293c68b225dcc33b23ff3ec4851ca0e5ace4c4a.jpg


The $10k threshold was a fairly arbitrary starting point, and to make sure this analysis wasn't a fluke, we also tested higher and lower cutoffs and different time ranges. We found similar patterns in all cases. For example, we see more than 4 times the number of games earning over $5,000 in the first two weeks in 2019 vs 2013, and more than 3 times the number of releases earning over $250,000. You can find graphs for these and other benchmarks in our research appendix.


Most games did better in 2019 vs 2018

We were encouraged by the results above - there are more hits than ever these days, and it looks like our decision to open the platform helped that happen. But we also wanted to study how releases across the distribution – such as the median release, the 25th percentile release, and the 75th percentile release – were doing. (The 'median release' is the game that half the releases did better than and half the releases did worse than. You could also call it the '50th percentile release.')

How we studied median and percentile growth

When running these numbers, we were initially tempted to compare the median and percentile results from 2019 to all previous years. However, we noticed that the median game in 2019 was a very different kind of game than the median game in, say, 2013. And the same was true for the 25th percentile game. We realized the composition of games on Steam had changed so much between different release policies that a full historical comparison was meaningless. (See our research appendix for more on how we reached that conclusion.)

Instead, we compared 2019 to 2018, isolating the comparison to the first full year of Steam Direct. This comparison allowed us to more accurately see how the market on Steam is settling into the new policy. Additionally, we made several changes to our discoverability systems in 2019 in the hopes of better matching games to customers who would want them, and this comparison gives us some insight into whether those changes are working.

First, we looked at changes in median earnings. We found that the median game released in 2019 earned 24% more during its first two weeks of sales than the median release in 2018.

3b4e0f030513f65f071263cd0a267c139180bf60.jpg


Next, we looked at percentiles other than the median. Here, the news was more mixed. On the upside, the 75th percentile release (meaning the release earning more than 75% of new releases in each year, but less than 25% of new releases) earned 56% more in its first two weeks in 2019 vs. 2018. However, the 25th percentile release earned 17% less.

More generally, we found that releases above the 35th percentile earned more money in 2019 vs. 2018, and releases below the 35th percentile earned less.

3a02423da8069a8f7b77317d6bf2d1882683d2de.jpg


We want to make sure we aren't standing in the way of games' successes, so we plan to take a closer look at everything that contributed to these results.

What's next

We hope this study was helpful and gives more insight on the impacts of Steam's growth on new releases, both recently and over the years. We know there's more work to be done to help developers find success on Steam, and there's a lot more to be studied.

We’d like to get your input on what other analyses might help you better understand the landscape. Let us know your thoughts and suggestions here in the Steamworks discussions.

Note: If you're interested in a look at our methodology and some more detailed graphs, please see our research appendix.


-The Steam Team
 
Last edited by a moderator:

ultimanecat

Arcane
Joined
Mar 19, 2015
Messages
575
I'd imagine Valve probably has some high-tier data analysts, so while releasing stuff like this is obviously self-serving I'm inclined to believe they know what they're talking about. Meanwhile, when even New York Times' editors can't into basic numeracy and games bloggers are lit and gender studies majors or community college washouts, I'm not too worried when they drum up concern for their roomates' and Twitter friends' queer furry dating simulator. They're actually upset because they have no real influence on Valve at this point and can't direct the focus of what succeeds and what fails like they could for a few years early last decade.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/2117195691992645419
According to journalists, indie devs are struggling more and more on Steam and they're being left behind. According to Valve, nothing could be further from the truth.

As the graph shows, the number of games meeting this success measure has increased pretty consistently over time, with an 18% increase in 2019 compared to 2018. That increase wasn't just due to a larger number of games on the platform - the proportion of games meeting success increased by 11% in 2019.

You may also notice a jump on the graph between 2013 and 2014. That reflects the increase in the number of games we accepted to Steam beginning in August 2013. Many of these games weren't immediately ready for release, so the effect of that increase only really shows up in 2014. By 2019, more than three times as many new releases met the $10k benchmark than in 2013.

232641a3f44b955827f42f77f52f0a2af5815578.jpg
This is not really as contradictory as it might seem. There's a linear growth for apparently the Top 1000(?) games with a lot of shit stuck at the bottom:
number-games-released-steam.jpg
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,105
I can't believe random indie developers still somehow feel entitled to success simply because they're publishing on Steam. There are undoubtedly cases of algorithm unfortunately burying good games, but in most cases shit is exactly where it belongs.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/2117195691992645419
According to journalists, indie devs are struggling more and more on Steam and they're being left behind. According to Valve, nothing could be further from the truth.

As the graph shows, the number of games meeting this success measure has increased pretty consistently over time, with an 18% increase in 2019 compared to 2018. That increase wasn't just due to a larger number of games on the platform - the proportion of games meeting success increased by 11% in 2019.

You may also notice a jump on the graph between 2013 and 2014. That reflects the increase in the number of games we accepted to Steam beginning in August 2013. Many of these games weren't immediately ready for release, so the effect of that increase only really shows up in 2014. By 2019, more than three times as many new releases met the $10k benchmark than in 2013.

232641a3f44b955827f42f77f52f0a2af5815578.jpg
This is not really as contradictory as it might seem. There's a linear growth for apparently the Top 1000(?) games with a lot of shit stuck at the bottom:
number-games-released-steam.jpg
I was going to post something like this but decided against it for one reason: a solid 70-80% of those games are garbage. I don't mean they're bad(they are,) I mean they're things such as asset flips or rpgmaker shit.
I'd like to see a chart with number of games released per year that have a positive rating with at least 20 reviews.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,928
I can't believe random indie developers still somehow feel entitled to success simply because they're publishing on Steam. There are undoubtedly cases of algorithm unfortunately burying good games, but in most cases shit is exactly where it belongs.
You can't believe that people who identify as cryptoanarchocommunists think they deserve money for existing?
 

Country_Gravy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 24, 2004
Messages
3,406
Location
Up Yours
Wasteland 2
Do you think the Valve VR thing is the stepping stone to making this work, or is it another Steam Link/Steambox?

I kinda want to play Elite: Dangerous in VR, but all the wireless ones are way too expensive. The Valve Index or whatever is priced super crazy, but do you think that their technology combined with their massive store will help VR reach viability?
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Do you think the Valve VR thing is the stepping stone to making this work, or is it another Steam Link/Steambox?
I'd expect Steam Machines to be re-released at some point tbh. They've put an impressive amount of work into Proton, most of my windows games work with just 1 click on linux now thanks to it.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,430
Location
Grand Chien
Do you think the Valve VR thing is the stepping stone to making this work, or is it another Steam Link/Steambox?

I kinda want to play Elite: Dangerous in VR, but all the wireless ones are way too expensive. The Valve Index or whatever is priced super crazy, but do you think that their technology combined with their massive store will help VR reach viability?
Elite VR is the biggest waste of time ever. Save your money if that's all you're looking for.

Good reasons to buy VR right now:

  • Porn
  • Half-Life: Alyx
  • Racing simulator with wheel, bucket seat, etc
That's it

Seriously the porn is something else if you get the good, high-res shit and invest in... complimentary equipment

Of course it can't compete with real pussy, but it comes fucking close
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1792935884902997963

Steam Labs Search Experiment 4.1: Query Expansion

Steam Labs Introduces Smarter Tag-Based Searches
Now We're Thinking with Queries


In this experiment, Query Expansion, we improve Steam Search by treating tags more like a human would: using logic! Take the three tags RTS, Real-Time, and Strategy, for instance. If a game is tagged RTS but not Real-Time and Strategy, a search for Real-Time + Strategy won’t find that game using Steam's existing Search tech. Query Expansion fixes that.

You can experience our new Search Results - including those surfaced thanks to Query Expansion - when you visit Steam Labs Experiment 004.1: Search Query Expansion. Here, many searches which leverage tags will now cast a wider net and display more titles. As always, we’d love your feedback; You can let us know what you think of your new Search Results in the discussions.

Read on to learn about how Query Expansion gives better search results.

Improving Search Results with Query Expansion


The core of Query Expansion is that we don't just consider the tags on a game, but also the tags that these logically imply.

Let’s say you're hankering to play a 3D Platformer, so you select the 3D and Platformer tags in Steam Search. As a result, you see something like this:

0f99b78e681c7573279f1d8fdd5776235b761473.png


However we also have a 3D Platformer tag. If you searched for that instead, you'd get more results, but this is also missing some items from your first search:

7e23cdfaa08f9a6b802f802b537e9d155775c845.png


Now, when you opt into Steam Labs’ improved Search with Query Expansion you get all of these results, plus more, regardless which set of tags you use to perform the search. Here we can see that this set of results is broader than even the sum of the previous two methods':

f7e8780cbe5db2454d780559896f8b7e0513ae54.png


In either of our initial cases, results were missed because the existing version of Search treats all tags as unrelated pieces of information. A human can of course discern that 3D Platformer is composed of the elements 3D and Platformer. Search ought to be smart enough to recognize this sort of relationship, too.

Search shouldn’t be too smart, however, because it’s not a recommender—it should return what the user asked for; no more, no less. But before we go too deeply into our solution, let’s get a better look at the problem.

Gaps in Tagging

Some games are tagged more thoroughly than others. We have some longer-term plans to help address that, and Query Expansion is a simple first step.

For example, games tagged RTS might not always have the tags Real-Time + Strategy, and vice versa. Likewise, a game tagged Action-Adventure + JRPG might lack the tags Action, Adventure, and RPG. Unfortunately this will return Search results that vary considerably based on which particular tags the user happens to choose. (See below for details.)

Developers who don’t know about this issue might, for example, tag their game RTS and not realize that it could fail to return in a search for the simpler tag Strategy. And who could fault them?

On the flip side, developers who do know about this issue might load their game up with every possible permutation of their chief tags—indicating RTS in addition to Real-Time + Strategy, RTS, and so on. The downside to this approach is that it fills the game’s tag profile with lots of redundant tags, when we instead need more meaningful tags which help describe or surface the game to users in the Steam store.

Query Expansion fills these gaps without requiring taggers to add synonymous tags to every game on Steam, or requiring players to form complex search queries.

51c6354f3f6375e3f9fb8e06245b97904720582d.png


How It Works

Let's look more directly at what Query Expansion does, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t do, so that we can become confident in the quality of the Search Results surfaced by these changes with respect to tags.

First and foremost, we intend for our Query Expansion to err toward being cautionary. For instance, we've told it that:

Action-Adventure strictly implies Action + Adventure and
Strategy RPG strictly implies Strategy + RPG

However we've not taken a leap to suggest synonymous relationships between merely similar or corollary tags. For example:

Dark does not imply Lovecraftian
Fantasy
does not imply Magic
Shooter
does not imply Action and
Strategy does not imply Turn-Based

Sure, Dark and Lovecraftian often appear together in association with the same games, but this correlation is not equivalence, and therefore these two tags aren't appropriate to associate with one another when implementing Query Expansion.

With that established, we went through our entire list of tags and mapped out relationships that everyone could agree made sense. This includes tags that break down into other tags (FPSFirst Person + Shooter) as well as tags that are constructed from other tags (Strategy + RPGStrategy RPG). Most of these relationships work in both directions, but not all of them.

For instance, a game tagged Looter Shooter clearly deserves the tags Loot and Shooter. However, Looter Shooter is a specific sub-genre with its own conventions. And although it’s not Steam’s place to define those conventions, it does seem prudent to recognize that not every game tagged with Loot and Shooter is necessarily a Looter Shooter. For now, relationships between tags like this require human consideration.

Expanding Tag Queries, Step by Step

Here’s a somewhat simplified example of what goes on under the hood.

Search queries start with the user’s list of tags:
Action +
Adventure +
2D Platformer +
Puzzle

We identify complex tags and break them down into simple tags:
2D Platformer2D + Platformer

We see if any simple tags combine to form complex tags:
Action + AdventureAction Adventure
Puzzle
+ PlatformerPuzzle Platformer

We add these as synonyms for each of our original tags using OR:
(Action OR Action Adventure) +
(Adventure OR Action Adventure) +
(2D OR 2D Platformer) +
(Platformer OR 2D Platformer) +
(Puzzle OR Puzzle Platformer)

Next, for each tag, we look for complex tags that fully incorporate it:
Action → (Action Adventure OR Action RPG OR Action Roguelike)
Adventure → (Action Adventure)
2D → (2D Platformer OR 2D Fighter)
Platformer → (2D Platformer OR 3D Platformer OR Precision Platformer OR Puzzle Platformer)
Puzzle → (Puzzle Platformer)

We add these as synonyms for each of our original tags, using OR (provided we haven’t added them already in an earlier step:)
(Action OR Action Adventure OR Action RPG OR Action Roguelike) +
(Adventure OR Action Adventure) +
(2D OR 2D Platformer OR 2D Fighter) +
(Platformer OR 2D Platformer OR 3D Platformer OR Precision Platformer OR Puzzle Platformer) +
(Puzzle OR Puzzle Platformer)

Now some of you might be thinking, “Action RPG? 2D Fighter? I thought we were looking for Action+Adventure+2D+Platformer+Puzzle, what’s this other stuff doing in here? Surely this will pollute our Search Results!”

Good question! But don’t worry, those extra terms don’t ruin the results—quite the opposite. The OR logic makes sure the fancier tags are only there to contribute the bit that overlaps with the user’s request—the Action in Action RPG in this example. And keep in mind there are tons of genre hybrids on Steam; so the fancier terms ensure that when you ask for peanut-butter flavored snacks, we don’t forget to include peanut-butter-and-chocolate cookies (but rest assured, we won’t return any chocolate snacks that don’t also have peanut-butter).

This approach allows us to locate more titles than were served by even the sum of results when searching for 3D, Platformer, and 3D Platformer, as in our first example. Now, additional results such as Biped, are served front and center. This title has the tags 3D and Puzzle Platformer associated with it. So you see, now searches for complex tags like 3D Platformer catch titles with alternate though still relevant combinations of tags.

Applications

Query Expansion isn’t the final word in improving our tags system, but it’s a good place to start. For now we’re just leveraging Query Expansion as applied to tags in this Search experiment. We’ll be closely monitoring the results before we decide whether and how to use Query Expansion in other applications such as across more forms of metadata in Search, or in additional Browse views, Recommendations algorithms, Dynamic Collections in the Library, and other areas of Steam.

Try Searching with Expanded Queries Today

You’ll need to opt in to the Steam Labs Search experiment to see the new Search results leveraging Expanded Queries as applied to tags. You can do this by visiting Steam Labs Experiment 4.1: Search with Expanded Tags.

Steam Labs

Today's changes to Search were made as part of Steam Labs, an experimental environment where we try out potential changes and additions to Steam, and gather feedback on their usefulness.

By developing new features in Labs we're able to experiment without impacting everyone who uses and sells games on Steam. At the same time, we can try things out publicly and receive feedback early in the development process. If you would like to help us further design and refine Search or other Steam features, head over to Steam Labs and try out the experiments that catch your interest. We look forward to your feedback!
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
I'm not about to necro a 12 year old TF2 thread, but the voice actor for Soldier recently died. Valve added a tribute to him in today's update.

Team Fortress 2 Update Released
May 1, 2020 - TF2 Team

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

  • Added a tribute to Rick May, voice of the Soldier
  • Fixed a client crash related to malformed custom spray files
  • Fixed an exploit where sentry guns could fire through thin walls
  • Fixed confirm dialog showing the error model for some items when using paint cans
  • Updated the Aim Assistant and Telefragger Toque to fix jigglebones issues
  • Updated the ConTracker font to fix missing characters in some languages
  • Updated/Added some tournament medals
  • Updated the localization files

This now plays in the main menu: https://youtu.be/uchk0yGIO_g



And they added Soldier statues to every vanilla map.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014

Now in your library: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/2188131190848882026?

Steam Client Beta - May 6th, 2020
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:

Library
  • Added a new library shelf "Play Next", which recommends unplayed games from your library (similar to the Steam Labs experiment of the same name).
 

Tacgnol

Shitlord
Patron
Joined
Oct 12, 2010
Messages
1,871,734
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Think I have too many humble bundle left-over games for that to work.

Reminds me, I wish Steam had a mass key activation service. I've got like 100 humble keys to activate, and doing them one by one is pretty tedious.
 

Hirato

Purse-Owner
Patron
Joined
Oct 16, 2010
Messages
3,935
Location
Australia
Codex 2012 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong

Tacgnol

Shitlord
Patron
Joined
Oct 12, 2010
Messages
1,871,734
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Reminds me, I wish Steam had a mass key activation service. I've got like 100 humble keys to activate, and doing them one by one is pretty tedious.
https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey


Doesn't appear for me.
ZFSZ1Up.png

It requires a browser extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/enhanced-steam-an-itad-fork

My assumption is the browser extension would still hit Valve's hard cap on key activation. You can only activate a certain amount of keys in a fixed interval.

It would also be really nice if there was just a single "activate all" button on Humble.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom