The state of Steam: 97 Page(!) survey

Phawx · Oct 27, 2017

Lars Doucet (https://twitter.com/larsiusprime) (Dev of Defener's Quest)) just released the survey of data from a bevy of Steam Devs:

Here it is:

http://www.pcgamer.com/state-of-steam-survey-2017/

Still digging through the info, will post more as I can.

Alexandros · Oct 27, 2017

Going through the data now. I'm sure we'll have a lot of things to talk about.

Cargo Shorts · Oct 27, 2017

That 'Top 10 Actionable Issues'.

Looks like they really knew what issues to ask about.

selfnoise · Oct 27, 2017

This is fascinating. I can't believe PC gamer went to this level of effort. Bravo!

Deleted member 5167 · Oct 27, 2017

Wow, this is some really good research here - very well done piece by PCGamer

e:
Some of these responses are a little baffling though; I'm not sure what Valve can do about creating a more sustainable "middle class" (articles phrasing) of game developers

JJoNak · Oct 27, 2017

Interesting to see the percentage differences between people wanting Itch to be a PC market leader and GOG. i was expecting GOG to be way higher.

Phawx · Oct 27, 2017

selfnoise said:
This is fascinating. I can't believe PC gamer went to this level of effort. Bravo!

It was actually all done by Lars Doucet. He is the dev of this game:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/Defenders_Quest_Valley_of_the_Forgotten_DX_edition/

PCGamer is just publishing his info (Lars removed names and such from the survey that is available to the public)

He's actually talking a bit more about it on his Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/larsiusprime

pantsattack · Oct 27, 2017

Not really sure I like Steamspy and their haphazard estimates of game sales in the critical first few
months / days post launch. I know influencers are heavily influenced by these numbers despite their own
warnings. I think SteamSpy should be shut down, helped, or Steam should make these numbers
available, but currently it's kind of a website with too much influence for too little accuracy.

Early Access / Indie sales dropped sharply with Discovery 2.0

While I do know that Valve makes money when I make money, I don't feel that they actually
care about individual indie developers. Most of their sales come from big name games, including big
name indie titles, but they don't actually care that I specifically make a sale, just that someone on their
platform does because it's the same money to them no matter who it comes from.

There are many many complaints about the store and discovery as well as shovelware.

Gestault · Oct 27, 2017

#1 on the Top Ten Actionable Items: said:
Remove ability for users to delete developers' comments on their reviews.

Am I understanding right that it's an issue currently that regular users can erase a comment (from devs or otherwise) on their reviews, and that it was the most pressing issue from their polling under that category?

dosh · Oct 27, 2017

I didn't know users could delete comments left by devs on their reviews. That seems counterproductive as hell.

Also interested by devs asking for a unified page for all their games. Landing on a nice looking page with screenshots, offers and infos sounds a lot better than the simple list we get when clicking on a publisher or a studio name.

pantsattack · Oct 27, 2017

Gestault said:
Am I understanding right that it's an issue currently that regular users can erase a comment (from devs or otherwise) on their reviews, and that it was the most pressing issue from their polling under that category?

Reviews are the second thing I look at on a game's page so it kind of is a big deal.

Giving curators a cut of sales will create a new class of middle-men, and yet another group of people who
seek to profit from game development without actually developing games.

A potential new or upcoming idea revealed in this quote.

I personally think that curators are not the solution to get visibility or find quality games on Steam, and of
course, they shouldn't get any revenue (that will lead to bad practices no doubt). The store should be
absolutely independent from third parties in order to work properly and serve customers and all legit
developers equally. Visibility should be based on customer interests and review score (the only measure
for quality right now). The review score is the sum of many opinions from paying customers, and has
much more credibility than a single curator's opinion of a game they may receive for free.

Yup, another mention of paying curators here.

Deleted member 5167 · Oct 27, 2017

pantsattack said:
There are many many complaints about the store and discovery as well as shovelware.

Where are you reading that from?
Devs are more concerned about HIGH quality competition than they are about low quality competition, which implies the exact opposite that "shovelware" is their big concern

pantsattack said:
Yup, another mention of paying curators here.

It has more negative responses to that suggestion than positive ones though

Basileus777 · Oct 27, 2017

Paying curators would be a giant clusterfuck.

pantsattack · Oct 27, 2017

Dr Wily said:
Where are you reading that from?
Devs are more concerned about HIGH quality competition than they are about low quality competition, which implies the exact opposite that "shovelware" is their big concern
It has more negative responses to that suggestion than positive ones though

Discovery is a massive problem and understanding how, where and why traffic is routing to store pages is
a mystery.

Early Access / Indie sales dropped sharply with Discovery 2.0

More oversight in general, not permittig shovel-ware onto Steam

I would like better curation to prevent shovel ware to flood the store

It's in the report. There are about half a dozen hits for each of those terms, so I don't know why you're questioning me.

Another:

I'm a nearly unknown developer and my game was made to be quality but my competition is shovelware
that buried me in a day on greenlight and will do the same on full release without a doubt.

selfnoise · Oct 27, 2017

I've never seen a dev comment on a review. Guess that's why!

selfnoise · Oct 27, 2017

Phawx said:
It was actually all done by Lars Doucet. He is the dev of this game:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/Defenders_Quest_Valley_of_the_Forgotten_DX_edition/

PCGamer is just publishing his info (Lars removed names and such from the survey that is available to the public)

He's actually talking a bit more about it on his Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/larsiusprime

Ah, my bad. Thanks! Amazing that he chose to take this huge effort into his own hands as an indie dev.

Deleted member 5167 · Oct 27, 2017

pantsattack said:
It's in the report. There are about half a dozen hits for each of those terms, so I don't know why you're questioning me.

those are individual sample comments.
This is the aggregate response data:

City 17 · Oct 27, 2017

Nice to see that native Steam controller support seems to be one of the relatively high priority features among devs, it's right behind Steam Workshop.

pantsattack · Oct 27, 2017

Dr Wily said:
those are individual sample comments.
This is the aggregate response data:

Oh, I see what you are saying. It is only a 9% difference between quality and quantity concerns. I guess if the store was more curated there'd be less of the low quality concern.

Azar · Oct 27, 2017

Hey all, Wes from PC Gamer here. I was typing out a thread about this myself, but this saved me from the self-promotion! ;) Thanks for posting it—it's an awesome bit of insight for those of us who use Steam every day but don't see it from the same perspective that developers do. I've been talking to Lars about hosting this thing for more than a month now, and I'm glad it's finally out there for us all to learn from and talk about.

Lagamorph · Oct 27, 2017

What on earth is Itch? I've never heard of it yet it's the second most preferred PC platform?

Deleted member 5167 · Oct 27, 2017

Lagamorph said:
What on earth is Itch? I've never heard of it yet it's the second most preferred PC platform?

itch.io - its incredibly dev friendly, and its userbase are very indie-oriented, so its s very good place to gather early feedback on things like prototypes

e:
It also has a ton of useful features for things like selective early access, build pipelines that will be pushed to specific usergroups, analytics, etc

e2:
Bear in mind this survey was done by devs, not consumers.
If you think Steam is full of "shovelware" stay well clear of itch.io

fushi · Oct 27, 2017

Lagamorph said:
What on earth is Itch? I've never heard of it yet it's the second most preferred PC platform?

Think bandcamp for games.

pantsattack · Oct 27, 2017

Lagamorph said:
What on earth is Itch? I've never heard of it yet it's the second most preferred PC platform?

Lot's of smaller devs talk itch up all the time. They seem to be treated really well and have a lot of control over their store pages.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-05-16-open-marketplaces-can-work
https://www.pcworld.com/article/318...indie-pc-game-havenand-steams-antithesis.html

Azar · Oct 27, 2017

Phawx said:
It was actually all done by Lars Doucet.
PCGamer is just publishing his info (Lars removed names and such from the survey that is available to the public)

Also, wanted to point out for anyone who doesn't want to dig through the 97 page report, I did work with Lars to commission and edit this article, which is a much more digestible breakdown of the Top 10 issues and other key topics:

The biggest issues with Steam in 2017, according to 230 developers

shimon · Oct 27, 2017

Basileus777 said:
Paying curators would be a giant clusterfuck.

Have to agree on this.

BasilZero · Oct 27, 2017

Never herd of itch

Will check it out

BernardoOne · Oct 27, 2017

Nickolaus said:
Interesting to see the percentage differences between people wanting Itch to be a PC market leader and GOG. i was expecting GOG to be way higher.

Itch.io is a much better place for devs, to be fair. GOG has horrendous curation that blocks a lot of good games, and besides that, itch.io has really awesome revenue sharing model where devs decide the percentage they want to give to them.

You get to decide how much you want to support itch.io by choosing what percentage of your sales should go towards our operational costs and continued development of the platform. We call that open revenue sharing.

Itch.io is the one platform which has the tools and attitude to be a actual competitor to Steam.

Sblargh · Oct 27, 2017

Stuff like worrying about the high quality of other games seem to point out more at a market that is less friendly to new players than at Steam in particular.

demosthenes · Oct 27, 2017

Amazing work by them, will digest some of this.

GhostTrick · Oct 27, 2017

Nickolaus said:
Interesting to see the percentage differences between people wanting Itch to be a PC market leader and GOG. i was expecting GOG to be way higher.

Devs would be more likely to like GOG if GOG actually respected them.

More_Badass · Oct 27, 2017

Nickolaus said:
Interesting to see the percentage differences between people wanting Itch to be a PC market leader and GOG. i was expecting GOG to be way higher.

Same. I love itch.io but I didnt expect it to be so popular/known

Shard Shinjuku · Oct 27, 2017

That is not a small number, that is a big number.

Alexandros · Oct 27, 2017

City 17 said:
Nice to see that native Steam controller support seems to be one of the relatively high priority features among devs, it's right behind Steam Workshop.

Yup, great news. On the thorny issue of game discovery and promotion, I'm not sure what kind of solution would be effective. Judging from my own discovery and purchasing habits, I almost never go to Steam with the goal of finding something new to play. I go through a couple of discovery queues every month or so but unless there's a sale going on I will usually open Steam already knowing which game I'm interested in.

What this means is that unless the developers have already managed to bring the game to my attention through other means outside Steam, they're screwed. I'm the type of customer that should have a very clear picture of what interesting games are being released and when but even I can't keep up. I am constantly surprised by the number of quality games unearthed through the discovery queue that I have never even heard about.

Deleted member 5167 · Oct 27, 2017

More_Badass said:
Same. I love itch.io but I didnt expect it to be so popular/known

Amongst indie devs? It's a borderline essential service at this point, it just has little to no 'mainstream' appeal.

JJoNak · Oct 27, 2017

47Ways said:
Itch.io is a much better place for devs, to be fair. GOG has horrendous curation that blocks a lot of good games, and besides that, itch.io has really awesome revenue sharing model where devs decide the percentage they want to give to them.

Itch.io is the one platform which has the tools and attitude to be a actual competitor to Steam.

TIL. Thanks. I'm not really that familiar with the Itch platform.

Slythe · Oct 27, 2017

This is fascinating, and I'm excited to dive deep into it in this thread. However my biggest takeaway is that Itch is much more popular than I ever knew. I will need to look more into the service.

Amzin · Oct 27, 2017

Alexandros said:
Yup, great news. On the thorny issue of game discovery and promotion, I'm not sure what kind of solution would be effective. Judging from my own discovery and purchasing habits, I almost never go to Steam with the goal of finding something new to play. I go through a couple of discovery queues every month or so but unless there's a sale going on I will usually open Steam already knowing which game I'm interested in.

What this means is that unless the developers have already managed to bring the game to my attention through other means outside Steam, they're screwed. I'm the type of customer that should have a very clear picture of what interesting games are being released and when but even I can't keep up. I am constantly surprised by the number of quality games unearthed through the discovery queue that I have never even heard about.

I have just over 300 games on my wishlist, and about 700 in my library. I would play every game on my wishlist if I had time to and I know there are more good ones out there I've never heard of. The problem is a game has to really stand out to me to make me spend my time on it, since I like most types of games, competition is tough. I feel like there's not a lot that can be done to help out people like me. What can be improved, however, is for gamers who have more niche tastes, if your interests are limited to 2 or 3 narrower genres you still don't get a lot of help from Steam right now, even though you should.

thyy · Oct 27, 2017

Allow developers to "target" the discovery algorithm for their game

Developers should have the option of slightly nudging the discovery algorithm in the right direction.
Example 1:
My last game is a Action-Strategy game that was inspired by Mount & Blade and Dynasty Warriors so it would
be great if I could tell that to the algorithm and it would then surface that game to people who enjoyed those
similar games.
Example 2:
Starship Theory looks pretty interesting. Based on the store page I think I would enjoy it based on the fact that I
enjoyed FTL with 13hrs played. According to the algorithm it only says: "Because you've played games tagged:
Indie Strategy Simulation Survival". Tags are great but not as great as specific similar games.
If the developer of Starship Theory could tell the algorithm to target people who enjoyed FTL it could improve
clickthrough rate.

Interesting Idea to let developers explicitly say: "Our game is most interesting to players of these other games".

But seems like developers would than be incentivised to always mention the biggest selling games, to increase their reach. Any ideas how you could try to keep the devs honest?

Deleted member 2840 · Oct 27, 2017

All things considered, devs have a more positive view of Steam than I thought.

larsiusprime · Oct 27, 2017

Hey! Finally got my shiny new ResetERA account!

I'm the author of this survey. Anyone got any questions for me?

larsiusprime · Oct 27, 2017

Dr Wily said:
Wow, this is some really good research here - very well done piece by PCGamer

e:
Some of these responses are a little baffling though; I'm not sure what Valve can do about creating a more sustainable "middle class" (articles phrasing) of game developers

So, I sourced all the issues to raise from the community members themselves, and in the discussion phase we went back and forth on "action items" vs. "value statements." It's a lot harder to get consensus on concrete proposals like "solve problem X by doing Y" rather than the simple value statement "X is a problem", or "X is something we value." The "provide a sustainable middle class" thing is a value statement. Basically, those who agreed with that issue want to communicate to Valve that's something developers value, and they want Valve to value it too. Yes, in terms of rubber meeting the road one can argue how effective that is, but it's what the community chose to communicate. We separate items into their own categories in Appendix B, where you can compare various concrete proposals with value statements and a bunch of other stuff.

Gestault said:
Am I understanding right that it's an issue currently that regular users can erase a comment (from devs or otherwise) on their reviews, and that it was the most pressing issue from their polling under that category?

You are understanding correctly. Everybody voted twice on each issue, once for whether they agree, and once for how much importance they placed on the issue. The purpose of this was to find issues that weren't just uncontroversial, but also high priority. I think my methodology could use some tweaking, but it seems to have mostly worked. The executive summary contains only issues that had top-tier consensus, and then I ranked them in order of importance. The Methodology section has the exact formula and Appendix I has the raw issue scores in a spreadsheet.

Luxorek · Oct 27, 2017

Will definitely dig into this in the morning. Some fascinating stuff to be found there I'm sure

Nickolaus said:
Interesting to see the percentage differences between people wanting Itch to be a PC market leader and GOG. i was expecting GOG to be way higher.

Itch takes only 10% cut versus GOG's more standard 30%.

larsiusprime · Oct 27, 2017

More_Badass said:
Same. I love itch.io but I didnt expect it to be so popular/known

RE: Itch, I don't want to inject my personal opinions TOO MUCH, but I do think I need to clarify/contextualize Itch here. Basically, Itch is a super tiny boutique digital distribution platform that is run by two guys as a lifestyle business. It's privately owned and they don't seem to have any ambitions to take Venture Capital (as Humble did) and get acquired/IPO/etc. That means they're free to pursue whatever values they want. Right now, their values are laser-focused on developers' needs. So it's got no barriers to entry whatsoever, their (open source!) tools are widely considered the best (their patch-based uploader is a dream, better than SteamPipe even), and of course, you can set your own revenue share. Even 0% to Itch.

The big downside to Itch is that.... it's got few customers. You have to drive traffic yourself. You're not going to get rich using Itch. However, Itch makes a pretty dandy direct sales platform; if I were starting today I would be using the Itch widget rather than the Humble widget for my own game, but I don't want the hassle of moving all my customers over, etc. Maybe for the next game.

The question itself was basically "wave a magic wand and this platform has the same power/influence/size that Steam has." So it's not "which platform do you like best," it's "if someone were to magically snatch the crown from Steam, who would you like to see, even if it's implausible?" And a lot of people said Itch. That's not the same as them saying they think Itch is actually going to pull it off (many who voted for Itch actually expressed this exact skepticism). That said, good luck to the guys at Itch, a lot of people seem to like them, myself included, even if I doubt they're a huge threat to Steam.

But you can look at it this way -- for a dev who basically makes no splash on Steam, they might be asking themselves, "if I have to drive my own traffic anyways, why not just launch on Itch and drive traffic there? Then I can take a bigger share." That might be one reason some people voted that way, but I admit I'm speculating here.

sauce · Oct 27, 2017

Bug reporting / technical support should be built into Steam/Steamworks. Filter issues that are Steam issues to Steam support team instead of to the developer.

I don't understand why this isn't a thing already. Volvo pls.

Alexandros · Oct 28, 2017

larsiusprime Thank you for this great survey, there are tons of interesting stuff in there. I would like to hear your own opinion on how to solve the discoverability issue and how to boost sales for niche and mid-tier developers. As a turn-based strategy and cRPG fan, two relatively niche genres, I would like to see small developers get more exposure.

zoku88 · Oct 28, 2017

Looking a the top ten issues, they all pretty much make sense to me. Not sure why Valve would think it was a good idea for users to be able to delete developer replies to their threads. The only thing I don't really like is the 'send direct messages to forum users'. I think it would be better for topic deletions to not be invisible to users and for it to just empty the thread and have the ability for the dev to comment on that.

Deleted member 5167 · Oct 28, 2017

larsiusprime said:
So, I sourced all the issues to raise from the community members themselves, and in the discussion phase we went back and forth on "action items" vs. "value statements." It's a lot harder to get consensus on concrete proposals like "solve problem X by doing Y" rather than the simple value statement "X is a problem", or "X is something we value." The "provide a sustainable middle class" thing is a value statement. Basically, those who agreed with that issue want to communicate to Valve that's something developers value, and they want Valve to value it too. Yes, in terms of rubber meeting the road one can argue how effective that is, but it's what the community chose to communicate. We separate items into their own categories in Appendix B, where you can compare various concrete proposals with value statements and a bunch of other stuff.

Sure, its just there are a few "aspirational" statements that its unclear whether they're just wish-listing, or if people are approaching steam with a fundamental misunderstanding of what steam is and its place in the market, and assuming Valve are some Google type company that has extensive non-optional user telemetry and data across multiple sectors and can easily direct users attention from one product to another.

larsiusprime said:
But you can look at it this way -- for a dev who basically makes no splash on Steam, they might be asking themselves, "if I have to drive my own traffic anyways, why not just launch on Itch and drive traffic there? Then I can take a bigger share." That might be one reason some people voted that way, but I admit I'm speculating here.

From a personal perspective, itch is the only marketplace that adds features that its users (producers and consumers) request, rather than adding features and then telling its users its what they want.

The state of Steam: 97 Page(!) survey

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