SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Has anyone any experience on selling games on Steam?

Just wondering if you've more chance of selling a few more copies of a game via Steam than the mobile market?. I know the mobile market is highly saturated with freemium games and without a advertising budget / luck your game is more likely to get buried very quick. Does the same apply to games sold on Steam?

I know in an ideal world you'd release on every platform available but I don't want to fall into the "support all" mentality.

Answers and thoughts on a postcard

There was this gdc video on sales on steam. It does not have good news.

https://youtu.be/WycVOCbeKqQ

I ported my mobile submarine game over to PC (Steam).

Good thing about Steam is you can aim for higher prices. In my case the mobile version is out for $7.99 while the Steam was at $14.99

All in all it was a mixed experience especially as it's a mobile port (with slightly better graphics for PC).

Revenue wise it: Apple: 50%, Android: 20%, Steam: 30%.

So yes I think it's worth it to try. Especially now as the hurdles are quite low. The years back I had to go the greenlight route.

Having watched some YouTube videos it kinda feels like you'll spend more time trying to get your game noticed than actual development time

I know the whole indie market is swamped these days and it's more likely any game released will just get buried. Think I'll try some simple to play mobile games to see how quickly they vanish into the night and if downloads exceed double digits

Is it still £100 to get a account on steam? I'm thinking maybe it's time to try it . Itch.io is good for free but as for sales not so good but I'm thinking steam is the  route to take. Maybe I'll do this before Christmas. If you think I'll be wasting my money please let me know why and maybe save me some cash. I do need to do something though. As for games being buried on itch.io You're looking at a few days . I think the release day matters as well . 

Quote from: Qube on July 24, 2022, 01:03:01
Having watched some YouTube videos it kinda feels like you'll spend more time trying to get your game noticed than actual development time

That's true. Don't expect any stellar results, best is to go for a niche, don't expect to get any downloads for a match-3 game.

@Pfaber11: It's $100 per game now.

@qube - there are some good marketing and branding books on amazon and such. Having some insights into how to sell and market a product can help. Some books are only around 10 dollars.

I'm reading Hooked(Nir eyal) and Marketing Made simple(Donald Miller) right now. And I have more books that I'm going through.