Steam Ensuring your release date does not clash with something major

You know how sometimes when two movies are released on the same day, the less popular one tends to get swamped by the hype from the other one? I'd like that to not happen with my game. Does anyone have any experience or tips about preventing that from happening?

I've heard that steam has a release queue where you have to go through a whole process and wait in line before your game hits the front page. I don't know if that's accurate. Can anyone shed some light?
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
I don't know if its possible to completely avoid this issue. The best you could probably do is to be aware of games(especially AAA) that are of the same or close to genres as yours, and just avoid the planned releases of those. But those aren't always advertised as such so its never perfect.

I've also seen it recommended that you try to cultivate your audience even before the release. The reason I mention it here is simply that if you have your target audience ready to go and paying attention to your game, then hopefully they will feel invested since they spent time paying attention already, and would hopefully not want to "release" that investment just because a competing project suddenly releases close by. There is no guarantee of any sort of course, but I think the best bet is to just to what you can and not sweat the things you can't control.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Does anyone have any experience or tips about preventing that from happening?
First of all, avoid all holiday seasons (that's where most industrial game releases are made). Yahtzee Croshaw usually talks about the "post-E3 drought" so the time between E3 and the end of the summer seems to be where the least big releases are made (and the safest release period for indies).

If your game is from a completely different genre than an upcoming big release, you probably will have less issues with clashing (since players invested in either won't care about the other anyway). This year, both Animal Crossing: Time Travelling & Spiders and Doom: Fanservice got a lot of attention despite releasing the same day because they have very little overlap.

Checking social media (e.g. discord gaming channels) and storefront pages with "PREORDER NOW" on them might give you some idea about what games are coming out soon, but so many games come out all the time that your samples probably won't be enough to find the safe spots - usually their effect ripple out over a pretty good chunk of time, even if the lion's share of the sales are the first week (according to DRM effectiveness analyses) - venues of attention like streamers will be especially busy with the big games for weeks after their outception.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Wait is this to do with a cracked version being unavailable?
Factors include:
  1. People being hyped up and wanting to play immediately
  2. Legit purchases being the only option until a cracked version is available
  3. Pre-purchases taking effect immediately when the game releases (they can be cancelled up to that point)
  4. There's so many ****ing games being released these days, everybody will have forgotten about it in a week
Consensus pretty much is "DRM just wastes everyone's resources" these days (many big releases has theirs broken the same day these days and it probably took more than a day to implement it) but that doesn't stop the bean-counters from forcing it into games anyway hoping to maximize profits. As an indie, just rolling with Steam's built-in DRM instead of rolling your own or paying for a third party DRM license probably is your most cost-effective option.
 
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