The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[rusty_shackleford]

maybe if your game averages less than 1 concurrent player you should consider just giving it out for free tbh

 

[Latelistener]

Getting the most out of your Steam Release
13 May @ 9:20pm - Alden

Today we're releasing a couple of new informational resources for developers and publishers to help them get the most out of each Steam release. We've launched a new Steamworks homepage that details all the major features available to game developers via Steam and some new documentation specifically pointing out the features that can be used to help build an audience and communicate with players via Steam.

New Steamworks Homepage
We've heard from quite a few game developers that aren't aware of many of the tools and features available for free via Steamworks as part of releasing a game on Steam. So we thought it would be useful to put together a better overview page that provides a summary of all the ways that developers can make use of the Steam platform. Among these tools are ways to help build an audience, manage business, communicate with players, and solve common development challenges.

You can check out the full new information site on the homepage of Steamworks here: https://partner.steamgames.com/

Marketing Tools & Features Documentation
We've also gotten a lot of questions from game developers about how to reach the right audience for their game and build up to a successful launch. So, we've put together a set of documentation to draw attention to the tools and features that Steam provides for game developers to reach customers and stay connects throughout the lifespan of a game. Many of these are tools that Steam has had for a long time, but who's value we haven't been good at communicating over time.

You can find this new resource here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/tools

As always, please let us know what you think, or if you have any feedback.

Sincerely,
-The Steam Team

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks#announcements/detail/1604882062445035703

 

[Infinitron]

New Valve trademark - DOTA Underlords: https://trademarks.justia.com/884/17/dota-88417315.html

 

[Solid Snail]

New Valve trademark - DOTA Underlords: https://trademarks.justia.com/884/17/dota-88417315.html

Probably an Articact expansion/rebrand trying to save the game.

 

[Silentstorm]

Seriously, another DOTA game?

Wasn't Artefact a DOTA spin-off of some kind?

Because all that game did was show that the DOTA name isn't enough to make a game sucessful, i mean i think a few months later there was less than 100 people playing the game and it's gotten to a point where you can buy every single card for less than 40 bucks i believe while DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike have items that sell for a lot more.

 

[Sentinel]

So yeah, GTA 5 has sold 110m units. Absolutely mental. Wonder how many of those are on Steam.

 

[Latelistener]

At the beginning of 2018 there was a report that they sold around 10 millions on Steam. I assume it doesn't include Cockstar Social Club keys. The current number is probably close to 15 millions.

If they hadn't delayed the release on PC the number would have been twice bigger.

 

[Jenkem]

 

[LESS T_T]

Still Mordhau. But also Divine.

Rage and Total War are coming up as release dates are approaching.

#10 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
#9 - Human: Fall Flat
#8 - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
#7 - Risk of Rain 2
#6 - Valve Index VR Kit
#5 - RAGE 2
#4 - Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition
#3 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#2 - Grand Theft Auto V
#1 - MORDHAU

Also, did you notice PUBG is at third place 6 weeks straight.

STILL MORDHAU. (MUST BE ALL CAPS!) But Total War is coming up...

#10 - Risk of Rain 2
#9 - No Man's Sky
#8 - RAGE 2
#7 - RAGE 2 - Deluxe Edition
#6 - A Plague Tale: Innocence
#5 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#4 - Grand Theft Auto V
#3 - RAGE 2 (pre-order sales)
#2 - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
#1 - MORDHAU

 

[vortex]

And still, multiplayer games win over single player ones, mostly.

 

[LESS T_T]

Valve's thought about the "positive review bomb" on AC: Unity: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1621770561051427036

TL;DR: they're not quite sure but they decided to leave it be. Also FAQ at the end has juicy info about how reviews affecting game's visibility.

Positive "Review Bombs"

In our recent post on User Reviews Revisited we covered our process for identifying off-topic review bombs on games, and how you can decide for yourself whether or not you'd like to see them included in Review Scores throughout the store. Back in 2017, we defined a review bomb as an event where players post a large number of reviews in a very compressed time frame, aimed at lowering the Review Score of a game. At the time, we wondered if there'd be "positive review bombs", but there were no examples of one. We decided to wait and see.

A few weeks ago, in response to the Notre Dame tragedy, Ubisoft did something great for their fans by making Assassin's Creed: Unity available for free on Uplay, and committing funds towards rebuilding the monument. This led to a significant spike in players of AC: Unity on Steam, and a large number of positive reviews for the game. This led us, and members of the community, to wonder if this was finally a positive review bomb, and whether it should be considered off-topic.


Data-wise, it doesn't quite fit the pattern of negative review bombs: in the case of AC:Unity there was a significant increase in actual players alongside the increase in reviews. That isn't necessarily the case with a typical off-topic review bomb (but, to be clear, we have seen some negative review bombs with that characteristic).

Without reading the actual reviews, the data here all looks very much like a game that's gone on sale, or received an update. It's seen a spike in players, and as many people have come to realize, there's a fairly good correlation between player count and user reviews - if you get more players, you're going to get more reviews.

But we also went and read a large chunk of the reviews. Some reference Notre Dame or the giveaway. But most just look like standard reviews of a new player, or a player that's returning to a product they bought a while ago. Ubisoft has released significant updates to AC:Unity since launch, and it appears that some players who bounced off it at launch have returned, and found themselves enjoying the game more.

So it's not clear it's a review bomb. It certainly doesn't fit our original definition in the "aimed at lowering the Review Score" section, but back in 2017 the community's terminology around "review bombs" was also focused only on concerted negative efforts. It'd be nice to change that terminology to something that doesn't imply positive or negative, but that's really up to the community.


But moving on. We thought we should still spend some time discussing whether it's off-topic. As a refresher - if we mark it off-topic, the only result will be that the Review Score won't include the reviews over this time period. In this case, the game clearly didn't change (although it does appear to have changed since some of the reviewers last played it). But the context around it has. It's not uncommon for us to see context changes around a game that then result in changes to the game's popularity. But are those games actually better, or worse, after those context changes? Should that be reflected in the Review Score?

When thinking about whether it's off-topic, we often ask ourselves if the "general" Steam customer browsing the store would be better served if the Review Scores included the reviews. We don't want players buying games they don't have fun with, because that's not good for any of us in the industry, so we want that Review Score to be as useful as possible. But with that question in mind, it still doesn't seem like there's a single answer to whether context changes should be reflected in the Score.

Some context changes are largely divorced from the game itself, such as news about the political convictions of the developer. Important to some customers, for sure, but unlikely to be something we would feel confident should be included by default for all users. But other context changes can be significant predictors of whether or not you'll be happy with your purchase. For instance, news that the live team of a multiplayer online game has been laid off is a context change that seems useful to have reflected in the Review Score for prospective buyers.

In this case, the Notre Dame tragedy has made it so that AC:Unity happens to now include the world's best virtual recreation of the undamaged monument. That's a context change that could be increasing the value players are getting from the game, so perhaps the game really is better than it was before? Or maybe that's unrelated, and it's actually players feeling good about Ubisoft's significant donation to rebuilding the monument? Irrespective of the reason, perhaps this is a short-term temporal effect? Should temporal effects even be included in Review Scores? If a game was heavily focused on a time of the year, like Christmas, we suspect we'd see it have Review Score fluctuations around Christmas-time, as more people bought it and thought it was better on average than people who bought it at other times of the year.

If visiting the virtual Notre Dame is a reason players have reviewing the game more positively, we'd expect the Review Score to continue to reflect it in the future, albeit at a lower volume. But that's still the case even if it's not the reason - the future Review Score would revert to where it was prior to this event.


So, we're not really sure what to do here. It doesn't actually seem to be a review bomb in the way we've previously defined them, but maybe that's just our definition being wrong. But even if we define it as one, we're not sure whether it should be off-topic or not. The overall Review Score would decrease by 1.3% if we marked it, which wouldn't have any significant effect on its visibility in the store (see the FAQ below for more on that). So either way, the game itself wouldn't be affected by our decision.

As a result, we've decided we're just going to leave it alone. But hopefully, this post has helped you understand that thinking behind why we've ended up there. If you have any thoughts on how we should approach this case, or similar cases in the future, we'd love to hear from you in the comments below.


FAQ

Q: Why wouldn't AC:Unity's visibility in the Steam Store be affected by the Review Score change if you marked it off-topic?

A: There are a number of places in the Store where we factor in Review Scores when sorting games into lists. Games receive a "boost" based upon which user review bucket they're in (Mixed, Mostly Positive, etc). The actual boost amount is quite small relative to other factors in the Store, and it's essentially the same for all the Mixed or above review buckets. But there's a big boost drop-off as soon as a game drops below Mixed into the negative buckets, which occurs at the point where less than 40% of the user reviews are positive. A Mixed game receives over 500% more boost than a game in Mostly Negative. That might seem scary, but we're still talking about a boost that's small relative to many other store factors, and it's the minority case - 71.7% of titles on the Store are Mixed or above.

In the case of AC:Unity, the positive review spike looks significant in the Recent Reviews view, but in the overall Review Score it only shifted from 59.7% up to 61%, both of which are squarely in the Mixed reviews bucket.

Q: Why were people buying AC:Unity if it was free on Uplay?

A: Any time there's an increase in visibility of a game, we generally see an increase in players and sales. Many of Steam's systems are designed to multiply player interest and activity around a game. Obviously, some players who saw the news might decide to go and buy AC:Unity to explore virtual Paris. But even players who already own AC:Unity may drive further sales, because they may decide to fire up AC:Unity to look at the Notre Dame. Steam will broadcast that activity in the form of toasts, achievements earned, trading cards, and so on, and that increases the visibility of AC:Unity to other players. For example, in the time period since the events in Paris, there's been more than a 500% increase in the number of toasts shown to players telling them that a friend has launched AC:Unity.

You might expect that increase in visibility to have resulted in more players going over and picking it up for free on Uplay. It's possible that these are players who simply didn't know they could get it for free, in spite of the most prominent user review on the store page doing its best to let them know that.

 

[Sentinel]

Most important part is this

The overall Review Score would decrease by 1.3% if we marked it, which wouldn't have any significant effect on its visibility in the store (see the FAQ below for more on that). So either way, the game itself wouldn't be affected by our decision.

 

[LESS T_T]

Honestly it is quite refreshing that Valve opens up and shares their thought process and some inner workings this much.

 

[Rahdulan]

Almost like the only winning move was not to actually meddle at all or something. In the grand scheme of things "review bombing" is irrelevant beyond hurting devs' fee fees. On customers' end it just brings attention to a game at which point game will stand or fall on its own merits.

 

[LESS T_T]

Well looks like Valve failed to catch the next big thing, that was born from their own game: https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/14/dota-auto-chess-heads-to-mobile-without-the-dota/

Dota Auto Chess heads to mobile without Dota

Valve is making its own. Sounds like they still have rather amicable relationship with the original "modder" team: http://blog.dota2.com/2019/05/dota-auto-chess/

Dota Auto Chess

If you’re like us, you’ve spent much of the last six months playing Dota Auto Chess. And if you’ve followed Valve closely over time, you know what usually comes next: we’ll play something we love or meet some people we’re inspired by and then figure out a way to work together. In fact, Dota 2 exists because a group of us here at Valve couldn’t stop playing the original mod. After we played the game, roughly 1 billion times, it was pretty clear that we should reach out to the creators, Drodo Studio, and start a conversation about working together.

So in February we flew the Drodo team over from China to chat about the future of Dota Auto Chess, and to see if they’d want to collaborate directly with us (this was also during one of the worst weeks of snow we’ve had in years, sorry about that, Drodo). We had great conversations, but we both came to the conclusion that Valve and Drodo could not work directly with each other for a variety of reasons. We ended up agreeing that we’ll each build our own stand-alone version of the game, and support each other to the fullest.

Drodo has been working on their own, non-Dota mobile game and the beta is out now. We’ve worked with them to help the existing DAC mod players migrate their account progress over to their new game. It looks pretty cool so far, we encourage you to go check it out.

As for us, with Drodo’s blessing, a group of people here at Valve are currently working on a standalone Dota version. We’ll share more information about this soon.

From the Drodo team:
”We appreciate the great encouragements, support and help that Valve offered on Dota Auto Chess and Drodo’s standalone game. Valve has been a great company, who gave birth to the Steam Platform and open community like Workshop, enabling millions of players to display their talents. Being a fan of Dota2, we have great confidence in Valve’s new game, and expect the next world-class game. In the meantime, with Valve’s support, Drodo will continue updating the DAC mod, and attempt to design new modes and adaptations in our stand-alone game. We endeavor to offer more to you, all the fans that like Auto Chess. Thank you, it’s you that are making this possible. We look forward to growing together!”

 

[Infinitron]

There is now standalone Steam chat app for mobile platforms.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.valvesoftware.android.steam.friendsui
https://itunes.apple.com/app/steam-chat/id1434890245

 

[PrettyDeadman]

There is now standalone Steam chat app for mobile platforms.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.valvesoftware.android.steam.friendsui
https://itunes.apple.com/app/steam-chat/id1434890245

Is it a safe alternative to telegram if you are afraid russian government might by listening to your conversations while you are in russia?

 

[LESS T_T]

Interesting, now they're doing this: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/2565275416677184326

But it's less interesting that they didn't sort these by revenues, eh.

Top Steam Releases of April 2019

We are continually fascinated by the number of amazing games coming out on Steam each month and how much variety there is in what becomes popular. In any given month, the most popular new releases represent a wide variety of styles, genres, and themes. They may be worldwide hits or they may have a stronger audience only in particular regions.

So, we're trying something new with this post by taking a look at the 20 top-selling games released in the month of April.

To generate this list, we started by enumerating all the games released between April 1 and April 30. We then looked at revenue earned by each of those games in the first two weeks following that game's release. From that list, we took the top 20 games by revenue to make our final list. Finally, we sorted the 20 games by release date.

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, a wacky physics-based tactics game released in Early Access on April 1st, 2019. Appropriate release date for a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, right?

SUPER DRAGON BALL HEROES WORLD MISSION, a Tactical-Card game set in the Dragon Ball Heroes universe. Released April 4th, 2019.

ISLANDERS, a super chill minimalist strategy game released April 4th, 2019 and already adding new content to the game.

MarZ: Tactical Base Defense, a top-down strategy and tactical defense game released April 4th, 2019.

Supraland, a first-person adventure puzzle game released April 5th, 2019.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy / 逆転裁判123 成歩堂セレクション, a collection of the first three games in the popular courtroom adventure series, released April 9th, 2019.

Vacation Simulator, a quirky VR simulation game from the makers of Job Simulator, released April 9th, 2019.

Zanki Zero: Last Beginning, a post-apocalyptic simulation game with a deep narrative and elements of RPG and dungeon crawling, released April 10th, 2019.

Pathway, a strategy RPG set in the 1930s great desert. Released April 11th, 2019.

Weedcraft Inc, a game about the business of producing, breeding and selling weed in America. Released April 11th, 2019.

Staxel, a sandbox farming game for singleplayer or with friends. Exited Early Access on April 11th, 2019.

One Finger Death Punch 2, a lighting-fast stickman brawler with cinematic kung-fu moves. Released April 15th, 2019.

Forager, a 2D open world crafting and resource management game. Released April 18th, 2019.

Pagan Online, a fast-paced hack-and-slash action RPG released in Early Access on April 18th, 2019.

Katana ZERO, a stylish neo-noir, action-platformer featuring breakneck action and instant-death combat released April 18th, 2019.

Driftland: The Magic Revival, a real-time strategy city builder. Released April 18th, 2019.

Paper Dolls Original , a first-person horror adventure game steeped in Eastern culture, released April 19th, 2019.

Mortal Kombat 11, you've probably heard of this series before. It's popular and back for it's 11 edition with more detailed fighting action. Released April 23rd, 2019.

Imperator: Rome, deep grand strategy game set in Roman times. Released April 25th, 2019.

MORDHAU, a multiplayer medieval slasher with horses. This game hovers around the #11 position for most simultaneous players on Steam at any given time. Released April 29th, 2019.

And that's the list of the top 20 Steam games released in April.

As always, let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions.

-The Steam Team

 

[DalekFlay]

Literally like 2-3 games on there I'm at all interested in. I is a man out of time.

 

[A_boring_GOG_bot]

* troll mode on *

* troll mode off *

 

[LESS T_T]

STILL MORDHAU. (MUST BE ALL CAPS!) But Total War is coming up...

#10 - Risk of Rain 2
#9 - No Man's Sky
#8 - RAGE 2
#7 - RAGE 2 - Deluxe Edition
#6 - A Plague Tale: Innocence
#5 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#4 - Grand Theft Auto V
#3 - RAGE 2 (pre-order sales)
#2 - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
#1 - MORDHAU

As expected, it's Total.

#10 - The Elder Scrolls Online - Crown Packs
#9 - Risk of Rain 2
#8 - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
#7 - The Elder Scrolls Online - Elsweyr
#6 - Cities: Skylines - Campus
#5 - A Plague Tale: Innocence
#4 - Grand Theft Auto V
#3 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#2 - MORDHAU
#1 - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS

Also Rage 2 rage quit like other recent games from Avalanche Studios. But Bethesda is okay that ESO is silently making money.

 

[Sentinel]

Valve has banned over 18 million accounts generated by bots and re-added reCAPTCHA for account creation.

 

[ZeniBot]

Imperator Rome
Top Steam Game

Wh.. ..what

 

[LESS T_T]

As expected, it's Total.

#10 - The Elder Scrolls Online - Crown Packs
#9 - Risk of Rain 2
#8 - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
#7 - The Elder Scrolls Online - Elsweyr
#6 - Cities: Skylines - Campus
#5 - A Plague Tale: Innocence
#4 - Grand Theft Auto V
#3 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#2 - MORDHAU
#1 - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS

Also Rage 2 rage quit like other recent games from Avalanche Studios. But Bethesda is okay that ESO is silently making money.

Void Bastards is doing fine.

#10 - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
#9 - Watch_Dogs 2
#8 - BATTALION 1944
#7 - Grand Theft Auto V
#6 - Devil May Cry 5
#5 - Void Bastards
#4 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#3 - MORDHAU
#2 - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
#1 - Total War: THREE KINGDOMS (pre-order to week 1 edition that comes with DLC)

 

[Infinitron]

New Valve trademark - DOTA Underlords: https://trademarks.justia.com/884/17/dota-88417315.html

Now there's a website: https://underlords.com/ (nothing there yet, but registered by Valve)