Creating games for Steam Greenlight and making money on selling them

 

Most of the advanced Internet users are familiar with such a service for the distribution of various digital goods as Steam . Many associate it as a store selling various games in different genres from popular manufacturers such as Valve, Ubisoft, RockStar and others. But Steam is unique in that users themselves can put their game on a free platform, and the community decides for itself whether to help the author of the game promote it or not. This community is called Steam Greenlight . Today we will discuss most of the topics related to this site.

Are you ready to work with Greenlight?

To develop your game and promote it qualitatively, you need certain knowledge. You have to be ready to accept a huge amount of new information and invest in this business. For example, even to submit your game to Greenlight, you will have to pay $ 100. You must be prepared for any challenge and have the skill of teamwork.

What games are best promoted on Greenlight?

Quite a common question that is fundamentally wrong. Why? The answer lies on the surface - good and high-quality games are best promoted . There is no need to try to adjust and be like those games that have already passed and got green color, because it is not a fact that your product will be better. In addition, if a similar game already exists, then why buy a clone of it? In any case, there will be comments of the type: "plagiarism, kill the author!", We do not need this. You have to do what you are sure of, what your friends and acquaintances will play, something really usable and unique.

How do I publish my product correctly?

To start a quality advertising campaign for your product, you will have to create a huge amount of graphics and write a decent amount of text. I will not pour tons of text about this, I will briefly say what you will need to create for the normal publication of your product:

1. Launch trailer. This is a video that should fully reveal the essence of your project in a minute or two.

2. Write a complete description of your product in English . This is very important, the more you describe, the more people will be interested, but you don't need to write a ton of text about the plot, write in a nutshell all the interesting things and novelties of your product.

3. Screenshots of the game. They need to be done without an interface, for example:

 

How to promote your product?

There are many methods of PR and promotion on Steam Greenlight. I will describe the most working and fastest ones. I don’t want to say right away that some of them can get banned:

1. Classic promotion. Everything is simple here: we pay for advertising on YouTube videos, VK groups and other media places in order to get thumbs up, a working but expensive way.

2. Search for potential buyers. You are looking for any gaming forum that is closely related to the topic of your game and post information about your product so that they would vote to unsubscribe a comment, and in return you will provide them with a key after receiving the green color.

3. Collaboration. We find some kind of public or YouTube channel and offer them such a barter: the administration publishes information about your game, and in return you provide them with the keys for the draw.

4. Bots. Everything is clear here, we are looking for people who have a lot of Steam accounts and ask them to vote from all accounts, in return we give the keys.

How to work with the community?

When you publish your game, you will receive a sea of ​​criticism of various kinds. Each person has his own attitude to games and to your particular theme of the game and he will express his opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. If you see that someone is not completely satisfied with your project, then you do not need to argue with him, just agree with this and say that in the future you will take into account his criticism or simply ignore it. You have to be as cold-blooded and patient as possible, remember, there are a lot of trolls on the network, just let them pass.

What happens after receiving the green light?

After your product receives a pass and the coveted plate is displayed, then you have to get the status of a Steamworks partner. This is done once and in order to achieve this status you will have to:

1. Fill out tax form W-8BEN.

2. Send a scanned copy of any document that proves your identity.

When everything goes well, you will receive a letter like this:

How to make money on it?

There is nothing supernatural here, everything is very linear. Your income will go, so to speak, from two streams:

1. Purchases of your game on Steam. I will say right away that Steam takes% from this.

2. Informal sales. The fact is that when you become a Steamworks partner, you will be able to make requests to create keys with the game. But, I will say right away that this request can easily be rejected and you will not make the keys indefinitely. Everything should be done in moderation, we got the keys and sold them to groups for draws / buyers / farmers, etc. There will be income, but not sky-high.

That's all, I wish you the best in creating your super game.