B
Blueman
Guest
Say I wanted to get a game on steam (if it were good enough). How hard would it be to get it greenlit, and is that even possible with just the studio standard version of gamemaker?
Thanks
Thanks
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Hey Guest! Ever feel like entering a Game Jam, but the time limit is always too much pressure? We get it... You lead a hectic life and dedicating 3 whole days to make a game just doesn't work for you! So, why not enter the GMC SLOW JAM? Take your time! Kick back and make your game over 4 months! Interested? Then just click here!
Distribution Get a game on steam?
- Thread starter Blueman
- Start date
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- steam
It's definitely possible to create Steam games, even so far as including support for achievements, trading cards, leaderboards, Workshop content etc!
As for Greenlight, it's not super difficult as long as you have a half-decent game that is visually appealing. You'll also want to make sure that you've got some interest in your game, and are willing to put the hours sending it out to hundreds of coverage websites both before and after you list it on Greenlight.
I kind of learnt the above the hard way. I've had two games Greenlit so far. The first was on Greenlight for around eight months - there was a decent amount of interest, there just wasn't enough people seeing the page to give it the Yes votes required to get through. It was only a promotion for a different game sending people to its Greenlight page that finally garnered the last bit of attention to push it over the edge and get Steam to approve it. The second game, we sent out to a ton of people and took a far better route with it, and it was Greenlit in under a month.
As for Greenlight, it's not super difficult as long as you have a half-decent game that is visually appealing. You'll also want to make sure that you've got some interest in your game, and are willing to put the hours sending it out to hundreds of coverage websites both before and after you list it on Greenlight.
I kind of learnt the above the hard way. I've had two games Greenlit so far. The first was on Greenlight for around eight months - there was a decent amount of interest, there just wasn't enough people seeing the page to give it the Yes votes required to get through. It was only a promotion for a different game sending people to its Greenlight page that finally garnered the last bit of attention to push it over the edge and get Steam to approve it. The second game, we sent out to a ton of people and took a far better route with it, and it was Greenlit in under a month.
S
squarebit
Guest
I'm just gonna pop in and say it's very individual and depends on your audience... I didn't really do any marketing at all for my game and was Greenlit in 14 days. I think I just made a tumblr and twitter post, which both got <10 shares, and that was it. A couple friends shared on Facebook but it generated like 10 upvotes in total, heh. So approx 99% of my votes were directly from the Greenlight queue.
Try to put as interesting videos and screenshots as possible on the Greenlight page. Short and concise videos are better. Informative and short description.
Think about what you'd want to know yourself, and don't get too technical with stuff.
Try to put as interesting videos and screenshots as possible on the Greenlight page. Short and concise videos are better. Informative and short description.
Think about what you'd want to know yourself, and don't get too technical with stuff.
D
Dani
Guest
Hello!
GameMaker Studio Professional is more than enough to put games on Steam, supporting services like Steam Cloud, Achievements, Leaderboards, etc. In order to get Greenlit, you must make a game that people wanna play (fun, polished, with some production values). Something quite important: launch the Greenlight campaign when your game is finished or almost completed. That will drive more positive votes and feedback. If you announce a game that won't be released in two years, you'll get negative feedback and No votes, though you could be Greenlit if the game is good enough. Almost 90% of all your Yes/No votes on Greenlight will come from the Steam community itself, so you won't need to make any intensive marketing (don't waste your time contacting gaming sites). Just show a polished product and it will sell itself. Obviously, having a community interested in your projects before posting the Greenlight campaign is useful (Twitter, Facebook), but it's not decisive (I'm talking from my own experience).
We have two games that have been Greenlit:
Super Star Path (Released, approved in 28 days, no intensive marketing).
Bot Vice (Upcoming, approved in 14 days, no intensive marketing).
It has finished, but you could visit the Bot Vice Greenlight campaign in case you're interested. What we did?
- Animated preview image.
- Two videos (trailer and actual gameplay).
- Animated screenshots.
- Description of the project and what it has to offer.
- Let people know that the game was almost finished.
- Let people know that we will support several Steam services.
- Give an estimated release date.
If people like your product, it will be Greenlit no doubt.
Dani
GameMaker Studio Professional is more than enough to put games on Steam, supporting services like Steam Cloud, Achievements, Leaderboards, etc. In order to get Greenlit, you must make a game that people wanna play (fun, polished, with some production values). Something quite important: launch the Greenlight campaign when your game is finished or almost completed. That will drive more positive votes and feedback. If you announce a game that won't be released in two years, you'll get negative feedback and No votes, though you could be Greenlit if the game is good enough. Almost 90% of all your Yes/No votes on Greenlight will come from the Steam community itself, so you won't need to make any intensive marketing (don't waste your time contacting gaming sites). Just show a polished product and it will sell itself. Obviously, having a community interested in your projects before posting the Greenlight campaign is useful (Twitter, Facebook), but it's not decisive (I'm talking from my own experience).
We have two games that have been Greenlit:
Super Star Path (Released, approved in 28 days, no intensive marketing).
Bot Vice (Upcoming, approved in 14 days, no intensive marketing).
It has finished, but you could visit the Bot Vice Greenlight campaign in case you're interested. What we did?
- Animated preview image.
- Two videos (trailer and actual gameplay).
- Animated screenshots.
- Description of the project and what it has to offer.
- Let people know that the game was almost finished.
- Let people know that we will support several Steam services.
- Give an estimated release date.
If people like your product, it will be Greenlit no doubt.
Dani
Q
Quackertree
Guest
I'm currently in the Greenlight process, and I've been doing things a little wrong myself, aswell.
There's one thing that really stands out; The way your game looks. Visuals are so super important, and they decide on 80% of the votes. I've noticed that people who looked into it, took the time to write a comment, etc. voted Yes, whereas people who just looked through the queue voted No. First impressions is a really big thing here.
Also, another big thing I didn't do, was having the game being reviewed by several people before going on Greenlight. A couple of days after my Greenlight launch, people were complaining about the colour contrast being off, putting them off from voting Yes and leading them to voting No. The fix for this problem was extremely simple and was resolved in just one day, but the majority of people had already voted. After the fix, I noticed a drastic increase in Yes votes vs. No votes, but noone is really viewing the page anymore.
Finally, I've noticed that you as developer have to stand out aswell. If your game is "meh", but you're being a really nice guy and trying to do your best to help people, you'll get more Yes votes, because people trust you. Here's an example of a guy saying things, and me responding to them:
The above example has proven that staying in touch with people can get you more votes. After this, I got comments like these:
My three top tips, would be as follows:
Reference link to my Greenlight: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701612583
There's one thing that really stands out; The way your game looks. Visuals are so super important, and they decide on 80% of the votes. I've noticed that people who looked into it, took the time to write a comment, etc. voted Yes, whereas people who just looked through the queue voted No. First impressions is a really big thing here.
Also, another big thing I didn't do, was having the game being reviewed by several people before going on Greenlight. A couple of days after my Greenlight launch, people were complaining about the colour contrast being off, putting them off from voting Yes and leading them to voting No. The fix for this problem was extremely simple and was resolved in just one day, but the majority of people had already voted. After the fix, I noticed a drastic increase in Yes votes vs. No votes, but noone is really viewing the page anymore.
Finally, I've noticed that you as developer have to stand out aswell. If your game is "meh", but you're being a really nice guy and trying to do your best to help people, you'll get more Yes votes, because people trust you. Here's an example of a guy saying things, and me responding to them:
Some guy:
I respond with a fix:
My reply:
Suddenly, the guy comes in with more details:
Aha, so it's not the game's premise, but something completely different!
I respond with a fix:
And then:I've just responded and I've offered a solution where I've decreased the saturation of the terrain. Have a look and tell me if this fixes your issues with the graphical style.
The above example has proven that staying in touch with people can get you more votes. After this, I got comments like these:
It really shows that being interactive with your audience can help to get some extra votes! To be honest, I wouldn't do this just to get the votes; Developers should be doing this all the time, really.
My three top tips, would be as follows:
- Have a couple of random people evaluate your game's visuals
- Have an interesting premise
- Keep in touch with the audience
Reference link to my Greenlight: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701612583
Tim
Member
Here's a post I made about getting Greenlit. It took approximately two weeks and in our mind that was a rousing success for our game, Boss 101. Below is by no means a guaranteed blueprint of success for every game to get Greenlit, but we think it covers many questions.
1. $100
The fee from Valve for Greenlight is 100 US dollars. No getting around that but once you pay you can apparently start as many Greenlight campaigns as your imagination will allow. For us – we paid the fee and setup Boss 101 way back in October 2014. Of course, we didn’t publish anything until nearly five months later.
2. Setting up the page
The first thing you will probably do will be to fart around with the page to see what you can add. I recommend checking out things like the way to add pictures, edit the description and format things. You might want to make a test post (you can delete it) to see exactly how formatting will look in the page. DO IT!
3. Your Video
Ideally you have a launch video. This is the main thing you show people to get them into Steam for a vote. This will be posted on YouTube and you can send the link around to the media and your friends. Here’s a list of things that seem to work well (at least they did for us)
It’s not exactly advertised, but you can use animated gifs on your Steam page gallery as long as they are under two megs. It’s probably worth tossing a few up if you have them of things like UI’s working or simple gameplay demonstrations.
5. Regular images in your Greenlight gallery.
You can upload regular images. Variety, composition and interesting subjects are a must. It’s better to show variety than 20 images of the same battle scene.
6. Creating your game description and writing announcements
You will want to create a description for your product (the body of text explain your product and its features.
Something I did not know nor was explained… You can link (via BB code) both animated Gifs and regular images from sites like Imgur. Imgur recently abolished the paid version and gave free access to all the features. Highly worth it and it makes the whole process easier. This is critical for adding things like banners and animated images to your page. I don’t recommend adding fifteen giant animated Gifs to your product description but certainly add images and nice banners to spruce up the look.
Also good to know… the first paragraph of your description is what Steam uses to blurb your product on the Greenlight page. People will see your animated icon and the read your first paragraph a lot! Make it count.
When you are crafting your description something that may get you in the correct frame of mind is imagine EACH PERSON visiting is a wealthy billionaire and might invest a load of money in your game. With that in mind you will want to do your best work, be precise and promise only what you KNOW you can deliver.
7. Animated Steam Icon for your game.
Another thing not really mentioned is you can use animated Gifs for your Steam game icon. They really stand out if you do a nice one and it is one of those touches that will help your game be set apart. There is a limit to the total size of the file but ours was about 700k with about a 150 frame animation. I don’t know how close we were to the limit.
8. Languages
Tell people right away what your language plans are so they won’t have to ask. You will have to address this no matter what since Steam is a huge global community.
9. Platforms you are shipping on
As with languages, you will want to lay out your plans for this. You will get asked regardless.
Getting to Publish
The best advice here is you are better holding off until you feel great about your Steam product. There is no reason to toss up a page with whatever you have. That will just lead to confusion and possible frustration for you potential customers.
Our process went something like this:
1. Create initial to-do list for Greenlight with all video and advertising needs
2. Pay Valve fees and get Steam page
3. Start work on assets for the page
4. When ready, create a cut of the video with your preferred editing software. Lay out the whole thing then let it sit for a couple days while you work on something else.
5. Come back to your video and look at it with fresh eyes. Finish up your editing if you have all your assets and put the video aside for now
6. Create and add art to the Greenlight page. Write up your descriptions
7. At this point if you have all the main things together, let is sit a day or two!
8. Come back and look at it from time to time and re-read it. You will probably find formatting errors or things you want to update.
9. When you are ready, hit Publish!
Note about hitting the “Publish” button
Ok – just so you know. When you hit the Publish button there are no verifications or acknowledgements at least that I saw. I guess Valve assumes you are OK with where you are at and simply dissolves the button and then… really nothing spectacular happens. Your game is published.
Just be aware you probably don’t want to dink around with that button until you are sure.
After Publishing
You can find the URL of your Steam project by doing a share. When you first publish Steam doesn’t immediate kick out the URL for you so you will have to go back into the project and look for it with the Share button.
Send that link around!
Start sending out the link to your blogs and sites. Don’t expect everyone to jump all over your game. Most of us aren’t Darkest Dungeon or Crawl. Those games had killer videos that pretty well stole the show and helped them tremendously.
Interact with the community
Ok – from personal experience I can say it pays to interact with every person who visits your page. Respond to every person on Steam commenting using the “@userName” reply format. If someone writes a comment – THANK THEM. This is you building your fan base and being grateful to even have one.
Most people will not leave a comment but they will look down in the comment section to see what people are saying about your game. In an ideal world they see a bunch of positive comments and your grateful response! One thing to remember is – treat your friends and fans like the royalty they are. Each one matters!
Getting folks to look at your Steam Page
Let’s assume you aren’t a super-giant indie dev. Perhaps you are a one to five person team (like we are) and don’t have a lot of time or money to spend on a huge campaign. It is all the more important to in my opinion that you show people you are serious about your game. Ideally LONG before this campaign started you are keeping a weekly (or bi-weekly) blog going about your game. If you think you can get away with no dev tracking you will have to be in rarefied air to expect a huge response from the fans. For most of us – it is best to show a commitment to your game BEFORE you ever hit Steam publically.
Some recommendations:
Development Logs (big updates) – do one on your main site and get into some kind of habit of putting out regular weekly (ideally) consistent updates. Don’t just update when you feel you have something awesome. The point here is you want to get into a habit of talking about your game. Updates are a focus for doing that. You’re a small development group and news outlets aren’t tracking you daily.
Small updates – preferably things like screenshots, animated gifs, etc. Little things you think are cool or might spark some interest. They probably won’t all be gems but again the point here is to get YOU used to finding what parts of your game show well. Think of it as looking in a mirror before you go out. You are checking for what’s looking good and if you are at your best.
When we did our Greenlight we tagged every one of those updates with “Hey check out our Greenlight” icons and links. So, to be clear – we did TWO social updates EVERY week for months before, during and after Greenlight.
Really – I think the key is to be very active. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to message me here.
And as always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!
-Tim
1. $100
The fee from Valve for Greenlight is 100 US dollars. No getting around that but once you pay you can apparently start as many Greenlight campaigns as your imagination will allow. For us – we paid the fee and setup Boss 101 way back in October 2014. Of course, we didn’t publish anything until nearly five months later.
2. Setting up the page
The first thing you will probably do will be to fart around with the page to see what you can add. I recommend checking out things like the way to add pictures, edit the description and format things. You might want to make a test post (you can delete it) to see exactly how formatting will look in the page. DO IT!
3. Your Video
Ideally you have a launch video. This is the main thing you show people to get them into Steam for a vote. This will be posted on YouTube and you can send the link around to the media and your friends. Here’s a list of things that seem to work well (at least they did for us)
- Variety of Gameplay – This is a must. The video goal should be to show a slice of your game and all its aspects. Do you have story? Show it! Do you have high action? Show it! Cool characters? Show them. Show things in context and in action in your game engine. Mockups and rough art are best avoided. This is your first shot at making a great impression and you want your best work forward.
- Variety of Game screens – Along with the gameplay, look to sprinkle in a variety of the kinds of UI the player might navigate if you think it’s significant to the project you have. For instance – you might have a feature where the player can customize their character – SHOW IT!
- Music and sound FX – There are a ton of great free online places to get music and sound fx. If you don’t have any money you can still get free music and SFX for your video. You will want to pick something reflecting the mood of the game or use actual game music if you already have it.
- Length and Pacing – This is REALLY tricky but the best rule is short and sweet. You can always flesh out extra gameplay and stuff in subsequent videos or descriptions on your Steam page. We kept ours at the two minute mark and it was a good Hollywood trailer amount of time. You can go longer of course but every time you do something long you run the risk of people turning you off and missing something amazing at the end of your video.
It’s not exactly advertised, but you can use animated gifs on your Steam page gallery as long as they are under two megs. It’s probably worth tossing a few up if you have them of things like UI’s working or simple gameplay demonstrations.
5. Regular images in your Greenlight gallery.
You can upload regular images. Variety, composition and interesting subjects are a must. It’s better to show variety than 20 images of the same battle scene.
6. Creating your game description and writing announcements
You will want to create a description for your product (the body of text explain your product and its features.
Something I did not know nor was explained… You can link (via BB code) both animated Gifs and regular images from sites like Imgur. Imgur recently abolished the paid version and gave free access to all the features. Highly worth it and it makes the whole process easier. This is critical for adding things like banners and animated images to your page. I don’t recommend adding fifteen giant animated Gifs to your product description but certainly add images and nice banners to spruce up the look.
Also good to know… the first paragraph of your description is what Steam uses to blurb your product on the Greenlight page. People will see your animated icon and the read your first paragraph a lot! Make it count.
When you are crafting your description something that may get you in the correct frame of mind is imagine EACH PERSON visiting is a wealthy billionaire and might invest a load of money in your game. With that in mind you will want to do your best work, be precise and promise only what you KNOW you can deliver.
7. Animated Steam Icon for your game.
Another thing not really mentioned is you can use animated Gifs for your Steam game icon. They really stand out if you do a nice one and it is one of those touches that will help your game be set apart. There is a limit to the total size of the file but ours was about 700k with about a 150 frame animation. I don’t know how close we were to the limit.
8. Languages
Tell people right away what your language plans are so they won’t have to ask. You will have to address this no matter what since Steam is a huge global community.
9. Platforms you are shipping on
As with languages, you will want to lay out your plans for this. You will get asked regardless.
Getting to Publish
The best advice here is you are better holding off until you feel great about your Steam product. There is no reason to toss up a page with whatever you have. That will just lead to confusion and possible frustration for you potential customers.
Our process went something like this:
1. Create initial to-do list for Greenlight with all video and advertising needs
2. Pay Valve fees and get Steam page
3. Start work on assets for the page
4. When ready, create a cut of the video with your preferred editing software. Lay out the whole thing then let it sit for a couple days while you work on something else.
5. Come back to your video and look at it with fresh eyes. Finish up your editing if you have all your assets and put the video aside for now
6. Create and add art to the Greenlight page. Write up your descriptions
7. At this point if you have all the main things together, let is sit a day or two!
8. Come back and look at it from time to time and re-read it. You will probably find formatting errors or things you want to update.
9. When you are ready, hit Publish!
Note about hitting the “Publish” button
Ok – just so you know. When you hit the Publish button there are no verifications or acknowledgements at least that I saw. I guess Valve assumes you are OK with where you are at and simply dissolves the button and then… really nothing spectacular happens. Your game is published.
Just be aware you probably don’t want to dink around with that button until you are sure.
After Publishing
You can find the URL of your Steam project by doing a share. When you first publish Steam doesn’t immediate kick out the URL for you so you will have to go back into the project and look for it with the Share button.
Send that link around!
Start sending out the link to your blogs and sites. Don’t expect everyone to jump all over your game. Most of us aren’t Darkest Dungeon or Crawl. Those games had killer videos that pretty well stole the show and helped them tremendously.
Interact with the community
Ok – from personal experience I can say it pays to interact with every person who visits your page. Respond to every person on Steam commenting using the “@userName” reply format. If someone writes a comment – THANK THEM. This is you building your fan base and being grateful to even have one.
Most people will not leave a comment but they will look down in the comment section to see what people are saying about your game. In an ideal world they see a bunch of positive comments and your grateful response! One thing to remember is – treat your friends and fans like the royalty they are. Each one matters!
Getting folks to look at your Steam Page
Let’s assume you aren’t a super-giant indie dev. Perhaps you are a one to five person team (like we are) and don’t have a lot of time or money to spend on a huge campaign. It is all the more important to in my opinion that you show people you are serious about your game. Ideally LONG before this campaign started you are keeping a weekly (or bi-weekly) blog going about your game. If you think you can get away with no dev tracking you will have to be in rarefied air to expect a huge response from the fans. For most of us – it is best to show a commitment to your game BEFORE you ever hit Steam publically.
Some recommendations:
Development Logs (big updates) – do one on your main site and get into some kind of habit of putting out regular weekly (ideally) consistent updates. Don’t just update when you feel you have something awesome. The point here is you want to get into a habit of talking about your game. Updates are a focus for doing that. You’re a small development group and news outlets aren’t tracking you daily.
Small updates – preferably things like screenshots, animated gifs, etc. Little things you think are cool or might spark some interest. They probably won’t all be gems but again the point here is to get YOU used to finding what parts of your game show well. Think of it as looking in a mirror before you go out. You are checking for what’s looking good and if you are at your best.
When we did our Greenlight we tagged every one of those updates with “Hey check out our Greenlight” icons and links. So, to be clear – we did TWO social updates EVERY week for months before, during and after Greenlight.
Really – I think the key is to be very active. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to message me here.
And as always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!
-Tim
C
Charyb
Guest
Steam Greenlight is all about your presentation.
Within the first few days your game is basically featured, meaning a lot of people are going to be viewing it.
A campaign is not something you slowly update with more content, you have to show as much content as possible when you first launch it.
I've currently had 2 games greenlit. My first game Trouble In The Manor was greenlit after 3 months of being on greenlight.
My second game Take Thy Throne was greenlit this month after being around 2-3 weeks on greenlight.
Why was the second game greenlit faster? Mainly because over time less and less people have been using greenlight to vote for games, which means
Steam is looking at fewer number of votes needed to have it greenlit. Also the overall appearance of my second game is a lot brighter and a bit more visually appealing, mainly due to the fact that my first game when I launched it on greenlight wasn't as finished as my second. Always make sure you have a nearly completed game before you go on greenlight, otherwise it's going to take a lot longer to get it greenlit and also the hype will die down.
Also, don't worry about how many 'No' votes your game has, Steam doesn't look at that. Try to aim to get in the top 100 games, that's usually where most games get greenlit. However I've seen some pretty bad quality games get greenlit, either because they simply over-hyped their game or because it's part of some big funny joke.
Also just remember there are more stores than just Steam.
Within the first few days your game is basically featured, meaning a lot of people are going to be viewing it.
A campaign is not something you slowly update with more content, you have to show as much content as possible when you first launch it.
I've currently had 2 games greenlit. My first game Trouble In The Manor was greenlit after 3 months of being on greenlight.
My second game Take Thy Throne was greenlit this month after being around 2-3 weeks on greenlight.
Why was the second game greenlit faster? Mainly because over time less and less people have been using greenlight to vote for games, which means
Steam is looking at fewer number of votes needed to have it greenlit. Also the overall appearance of my second game is a lot brighter and a bit more visually appealing, mainly due to the fact that my first game when I launched it on greenlight wasn't as finished as my second. Always make sure you have a nearly completed game before you go on greenlight, otherwise it's going to take a lot longer to get it greenlit and also the hype will die down.
Also, don't worry about how many 'No' votes your game has, Steam doesn't look at that. Try to aim to get in the top 100 games, that's usually where most games get greenlit. However I've seen some pretty bad quality games get greenlit, either because they simply over-hyped their game or because it's part of some big funny joke.
Also just remember there are more stores than just Steam.
S
SuperSlim
Guest
How did you advertise your game?
F
fonchifox
Guest
Just want to say that his thread is Super useful! I'm happy the community is this good and I'm glad I chose this framework.
Genetix
Member
It took about a month to get Rogue Harvest Greenlit on Steam. During that time I started sharing the Greenlight page everywhere I could - Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Google Communities (Those helped a ton), Youtube, and more. People really respond well to screenshots from what I can tell.
Do you have a project on Greenlight yet? It helps to share it on the Forums also!
Do you have a project on Greenlight yet? It helps to share it on the Forums also!