Steam Visibility: How Games Get Surfaced to Players
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- čas přidán 4. 10. 2023
- This video focuses on how Steam works to connect players with games they are likely to enjoy. Learn about the discovery mechanisms at work behind the scenes on Steam, which inputs matter, and how Valve approaches the operation of a PC platform where any kind of game can find its audience.
You can download an English PDF of the presentation here: steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam... - Věda a technologie
This kind of transparency is great to see, and important. Without it, rumors and false information will dominate the discussion. I think there's a very valid reason Steam is the market leader in PC gaming, and this video highlights part of why.
How is it transparent? Did they prove anything they just said to you?
Most storefronts are quite secretive by nature, how great is they are willing to share this information. True openness of PC gaming we are so accustomed to.
drm is not openness valvedrone
@@neilmallick20
It's barely DRM tbh.
"The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy [...]"
-Steamworks docs
I'd take Steamworks over any other DRM solution any day of the week.
@@guigs4467 you dont have to choose DRM at all when drm-free alternatives exist, what is this nonsense
@@neilmallick20 Steam does not enforce DRM. There are many DRM-free games on Steam.
@@guigs4467 yes, and very few games actually use the Steam DRM wrapper.
Valve is one of those rare game companies that seem to have held onto their soul after getting big.
Private company. Public companies sell their soul to investors with rubby hands.
That's because they never restructured. Most companies go through phases of investment, restructuring, and eventually going public as they get big. At each phase people, teams, departments, priorities, all change.
@@AdobadoFantastico Valve barely even has a structure. Anyone works on anything they want, unless you were hired specifically to do stuff like maintain Steam, it's a free range. That's one of the reasons they have such a hard time releasing games and then updating them. HL:Alyx still doesn't have all the promised features.
The fundamental reason is because Valve is not a public company.
man day after day I really appreciate the existence of Valve and Steam in the PC space
It's all because of GabeN
Id say its a team effort, but yeah love gabes leadership
AMEN
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
01:29 - Steam doesn’t sell advertising or placement
02:52 - How Steam figures out what to show players
03:25 - Which parts of Steam are curated vs algorithmic
04:11 - Featured & Recommended is algorithmic
04:55 - Special Offers is curated
05:52 - Your Discovery Queue is algorithmic
06:01 - Recommended Based on the Games You Play is algorithmic
06:15 - Curator Recommendations is algorithmic
06:28 - From Developers & Publishers That You Know is algorithmic
06:36 - Popular VR Games is algorithmic
06:44 - New & Trending, Top Sellers, Popular Upcoming & Specials tabs
07:07 - New & Trending breakdown
07:54 - Top Sellers breakdown
09:04 - Popular Upcoming breakdown
09:27 - Specials breakdown
09:40 - Steam algorithms
11:43 - Tags are important!
12:52 - How the Main Capsule is personalized to each player
13:40 - Content hubs
14:35 - Player interest drives visibility
15:33 - Curated featuring is earned with player interest
16:35 - Ways to make your game appeal to a broad audience
17:29 - Demystifying what drives algo visibility on Steam
23:53 - Ways to build momentum for your game on Steam
24:17 - Focus energy around big events
I also made an infographic that distills much of the information in this presentation. Feel free to download it on my website: indiewolverine.com/2023/10/29/how-steam-visibility-works-with-free-cheat-sheet/
Transparency. Nice
Thank you for sharing this information with the community Valve!
Love ya!
Im not even a developer but i love knowing how things work behind the scenes, i love this
Really appreciate everything you guys do for your customers.
Great, insightful video into Steam! I'm loving this new 'open' Valve we've been getting recently!
greatly appreciated. I'd like to see these kind of videos more often
Thank you very much for this video, helps a ton to understand better how the system works :D
thanks for providing more clarity on this
Great video, thanks for putting this out there!
Transparency is great ! Thank you.
Any details on how review counts are factored in to the algorithm? It's one of the most commonly shared pieces of advice in the indie space, and was surprised to not see it mentioned here.
Agreed. I'd love to know as well
Review counts are used as indicators of game revenue which isn't publicly visible but was mentioned to be a big factor in visibility.
Thanks for commenting. A limitation of the way that review score factors in means that until your game has enough reviews for us to give it a review score, it may have lower visibility in some places (like Discovery Queue). We plan to correct this in the future.
This won't be helpful for most times of games, but as a developer of a free SteamVR overlay app (a category that likely has very low thresholds compared to others): My app popped up on New & Trending the moment it hit 50 reviews (and is there to this day if you scroll far enough, as with everything else ever on there).
Review count definitely is being factored in, but I wouldn't be able to tell you if this wasn't just used as a metric instead of revenue as there was none of that in my case.
Reviews are simply a reflection of sales, i.e. revenue. X number sales equates to Y number of reviews. Typically it is 30-50 sales per review. Whether the reviews are positive or negative has nothing to do with the algorithm (as far as I know).
Genuinely great to see the long-time aphasic Valve making a full recovery. Transparency is always the healthier choice in this business. Keep going! ^^
Great video! Really nice to get a sense of how the black box of visibility works on Steam
A damn incredible video for a developer, thank you very much
We really appreciate this dive in the store inner workings!
Love the philosophy in the beginning 👏
Thank you so much for the information and transparency here -- this is really useful!! :)
If only CZcams would take notes and be this honest with us.
This was a very good video to watch! Definitely a must watch if you are a game dev
Thanks for the insight, very valuable!
Thanks for this info. It's really appreciated.
nice video, I am concerned however with the slide during 14:52, isn't this unfair for cheap games that have no replayability? like puzzle games that you only play ones (ex: outer wilds)?
I think the idea is that, if your game is not being replayed then people are not excited about it. Similarly if people are not willing to spend more money for your game, that is not indicative of excitement. Steam using money spent I think is valid, since people (like myself) are willing to risk buying a game that doesn't interest me much if it's cheap enough, to see if I like it.
However, it's best to think of it as "plays" and not "replays". Maybe your game is never replayed, but many players bought it and played it all the way through once, that will also trigger visibility.
The visibility is on a day-by-day basis. So if you sell many copies all in one week because people are buzzing about your game online, this could push your small-cost short-playtime purchases into a total that gets featured.
Additionally, there are so many algorithmic sections on Steam based on player history, the players that like short games like that, or atleast have played one before, will see it.
That way if your game is tagged in a niche way (walking sim puzzle, for example), players who have played somewhat similar games will see it because there is simply no other competition for that kind of recommendation. Lets pretend walking sim puzzle games are rare, a player who's played some will definitely see yours because their personalized recommendation has no other game to pick that week.
Even if you have a slow start, those players buying and playing your game once, will trigger recommendations to other similar players. And if you use external marketing to trigger a burst of purchases, you'd still get visibility. Arguably it's easier to sell many copies of a cheaper game than it is a full-price game, that's why that bar is raised. To ensure the visibility matches the interest, as best as possible.
@@WIImotionmasher I think I fully understand now, thx 👍
Really great video! Thank you for it!
I appreciate the transparency
For the reviews affecting visibility, you didn’t mention what effect if any, there is if a game doesn’t get enough reviews to get a score.
He just said if it's below mixed, they are "less likely to recommend the game". I'm sure he's being vague because it changes regularly, but I think the word recommended means specifically player-based algorithmic recommendations. So if your game is mostly negative, it is unlikely to be put infront of players of the genre, and while it can show up in New, it won't show up in Trending well-after release.
That's how I interpreted it anyways. Things that recommend a game will not show it. "Because you liked" kind of demands this game is also liked. But if there's just no other games like it, I bet it'll push through. Like if a survival crafting player already owns all the other ones, they might get recommended the bad ones last.
I'm being a bit cruel I understand some devs worry about unfair negative reviews. But as a Steam user they are overwhelmingly reliable for me to get an idea of a game.
We just replied to another similar comment so I'll paste it again here: A limitation of the way that review score factors in means that until your game has enough reviews for us to give it a review score, it may have lower visibility in some places (like Discovery Queue). We plan to correct this in the future. Thanks for your question.
@@SteamworksDev Thanks for the reply.
Very interesting video! Thanks for being transparent and honest :)
Please do a cleanup of the curator system so that it can actually be a useful tool for your customers. As it stands the curator system is filled with spam, which makes it really difficult to find curators that actually put some work on the feature.
Not to mention outright theft toward the developers. Many of the curators ask for multiple keys in exchange for an act they may or may not do, but are quick to turn around and sell the keys elsewhere online.
Curators could easily be scrapped
This is huge! Thank you so much guys.
This was very helpful!
As an indie dev with a game coming out in Q2 of next year, I have to say that I’m mostly happy with my experience on steam.
My game has already gotten double digit wishlists without me doing a thing other than setting up the store page. I’m waiting for my game to come along a little more before I really try to bring more eyes in but even with what little I have so far it is getting seen by people.
The only complaint I have would be the profit split. The cut taken is pretty large and just based on some indie devs I follow on CZcams it seems like you can end up with less than half of your total revenue as profit. It seems like other store fronts and consoles give way better splits, but consoles are notoriously hard to develop for and other store fronts just don’t get the same traffic
Bit of a follow-up question to localization if you guys are still replying to questions: you mentioned a lot in regards to languages but does location matter in a situation where, for example, I'm releasing a video game with English as the primary or only language, but I am located in Asia or a non-English speaking region? Will the game primarily be promoted to Asian users who fall within the region I'm geographically located in?
Thanks for sharing this!
This was super useful!
Can you add a link of the downloadable PDF in the video description please? I am watching CZcams on my PC and cannot use the QR code.
Edit: Thank you for adding it!
Thanks for the suggestion!
Taking notes as we speak!
Thanks for the informations!
Are there any plans to clean up the tagging/recommendations of certain genre games? During the recent "shmup fest" i heard complaints that there were a lot of Survivor style games that were being pushed to the top because of their broad popularity, and it was hard to find the traditional shoot em ups in the mix. Some genres like 2D and 3D fighters often get lumped together with generic action games in algorithmic listings, and you can't even browse by those tags in some of the newer Steam Sale list views ("experiment 12" specifically)
If the goal to match players with the games they will love, and that's informed mostly by revenue, maybe thats why it feels like its getting harder to find recommendations for games in niche interests (e.g. shmups, fighters) compared to more popular ones (survivor games, roguelike deck builders, etc)
I'd like to know if there are other Review count visibility thresholds besides the 10th review
thanks for this!
Steam needs a true new release tab like it used to. Just chronological. The fact that it isn't on the front store page and you need to navigate multiple pages for a chronological list is a design flaw.
Really wish "Has Demo" would play a big role in visibility.
very cool video please more of this should be made as it really shows us the truth about steam : P
What about restricted games vs unrestricted/trusted? Ive talked to few solo devs and they didn't even know what restricted game was
In the end we're partners. There is no meaning in following these "urban legends".
Great video. More algorithmic than I thought.
I wish there was endless scrolling on the "more like this" section. This section seems to favor popular games over similar games. Also wish less popular, but well reviewed games got more exposure
How do free games get recommended? Do they count as having 0 revenue or is there some other factor that gets applied instead?
"from developers and publishers that you know" doesn't appear on my store page. Would love an explanation on that!
2:52 thanks for the flashbang
When a big game launches, like recently Cyberpunk or Starfield and there is a big banner on Steam frontpage - is that also not paid for? That would be surprising, I would assume so many games would like to be featured like that. edit: never mind, it is explained later in the video (and indeed it is not paid). Impressive!
What's mentioned in this video has also been the common response of regulars who have been with Steam for a long time.
Like they are saying, it is purely player engagement, which includes wishlisting ahead of release, I imagine.
Nothing paid for, which is kind of genius and kind of unthinkable at the same time.
Those are on the front page because Valve expects lots of people will get it. They don't need to sell ad space when they get 30% from any sale.
On the topic of secret handshakes, I find interesting that shortly after I posted my comment here, that a Freemason gave me my first negative review after playing my game as badly as he could. After checking his other reviews he gives a mix of recommended and not recommending games, even when his comments contradict his score.
Thanks for the video! As a mod developer, we have run into the fact that mods (ones with their own appid) cannot be featured anywhere on Steam and must be searched for manually to be found. Are there any plans to change this so that popular mod releases can get recommended to users?
A mod is not a game ....
Ok, I'm confused. I have some many +18 games in those lists but I never bought a game like that or opened the game page.
Chapters would help
*immediately pushes Diablo4 to the top banner of the steam store despite awful reviews and not matching players preferred genres*
Hmm.
How can players show interest in particular game if that game requires player interest to come to front lage. Seems like circle logic to me. Admit it that player interest starts based on steam's kindling
Front page*
Are steam keys treated the same as someone spending money on the steam platform generating revenue??? This is very important to make clear, as you've stated it directly effects steams algorithm.
This is interesting, but long term relationships with Devs and Publishers would be greatly enhanced with better visibility and access to Valve / Steam team members. Automation is all well and good, but having an open dialogue would surely enhance the relationship with all stakeholders. Oh, and accurate attribution from digital media channels would be a game changer. Is that evergoing to happen? Thanks.
I wish it was possible to mark a game as "not interested" without ignoring it to affect my algorithmic recommendations
Can we get Development visibility : How Gordon get surfaced to players ?
I was just told by a marketing company that I should relaunch my early access game (with a different name) as it didn't have 7000 wishlists at luanch... Can I assume this is rubbish then ?
How do you determine that I like the games that I've played and that I want to see more of them? It's possible that I don't like the games or my tastes have changed. In that case, I wouldn't want be recommended similar games.
If you think a game you own doesn't represent your tastes you can tell steam to not take it into account by going into the game's store page and then selecting "Ignore"
hm, interesting. I'll have to try this. Is there a way to do the opposite, like a "show me more of this" button? @@guigs4467
Why sort some lists on revenue? Players don't care about the revenue of a game. Shouldn't "popular" mean the games played by most players?
Steam is goated
interacting because i love this. stay the way you are steam.
this whole thing with google, browsers, windows, and mobile is going backwards. accurate information is being assigned lower weight and paid space is being assigned higher. this whole AI push is going to make it worse... because the fake stuff will be fluffed and look real. examples are shopping for products, DIY household fixes, financial and political news, and the biggest one the past few years has been video game reviews. every no name game has tons of youtubers hyping it up these days, impossible to tell whats real and not.
anyways. end rant. thanks again.
Excellent, I now understand all the clutter on the Store page.
How do we get rid of it?
Hello, I'm the dev of Placid Plastic Duck Simulator and my game is 75th as the best rated game of ALL TIME on Steam.
I'm coming for that huge first page banner.
Expect the ducks.
Nice touch with the Review Score not affecting visibility. The amount of bot reviews are staggering.
tag spam is out of control
i saw a tetris that was marked "roguelike" the other day :(
That's called Blocky Dungeon. It's a cool game.
In short: "Build it great, and they will come!"
"The top sellers list includes in-app purchases to ensure we show what gamers want" and also to make sure Counter Strike is there at all times I'm sure.
Thanks for the video, but this strikes me as making the Top Sellers list basically pointless, as it's always the same eight or so games with big in-app purchases and then some random recent release.
I have looked at over 6000 games in my discovery list, my account is 15 years old, I own nearly 200 games, written many reviews, used the interactive recommender... and most of the games steam recommends to me are still so far off my taste that I have to search for hours to find something that really interests me. I feel like the whole core tag system is so flawed that it never will get better.
unfortunately these algorithms rely on quality input to work correctly and steam has very little of that. users like you are rare and the vast majority just want to post a funny review and upload le funny tags
If you only "own" 200 games after using the platform for 15 years than your taste is probably just super specific.
I'm on steam for 10 years now and "own" ~800 games while having been trough 4000 games in my discovery list with ~3000 games on my wishlist.
If your taste is games is that specific then maybe there is not much to recommend to you.
Judging by the 200 "owned" games and the 6000 you went trough on your list you are probably not keen on Indie games I suppose? So I don't really know how steam is supposed to help you there.
It's incredible. At 19:02 he explains that the rating has no impact on visibility. Unless there was an update, that wasn't the case for me.
I can clearly link the visibility of my game to the rating. In my case, below ~70%, launch day (after an early access rated at 85%+), the game became invisible. About twenty idiots (yeah, it's not a lot, it's a niche game) downloaded my game (f2p), we played for 5 minutes and reviewed it negatively. And bam, the work of several years of development destroyed.
The following days, the game resurfaced a little thanks to some positive reviews and the planned game advertisement, but the damage had already been done. The launch was a failure, fewer players online that expected, and therefore inevitably other negative reviews quickly dropped the game below ~70%.
I like the SteamSDK, but the store and moderation is things that I'm not sure to publish another game on Steam.
If "twenty idiots" can anyway have the potential to kill your game, the problem is not with Steam.
Can you track how much game were recommended? Or only installs? Maybe those reviews just scared people from getting into the game.
Thanks for the video and the insights. But I think "Not a factor*" is a bit misleading. If having a bad score affects your visibility, than it is a factor. If you wishlists only affect visibility during launch, than it is a factor...
They are emphasizing that exact review score are not important as long as it's good enough. And you imagine publisher would create steam page right before release to be wishlisted, but there are no game to buy yet when it featured in coming soon. It's literally only place where wishlist counts.
21:15 I feel like you are putting early access developers at a very unfair disadvantage. You treat it like its not important enough to be seen and oh, its just a development tool attitude. No, the development tool is the software and game engines we use to make our games. You say early access is not a marketing tool and then you contradict the meaning by saying were supposed to use it to engage with our community and get feedback. Well how are we supposed to build an audience in order to get the community and feedback if you are blocking the attention our early access games need?
New Devs can't build an audience anywhere else, because we get shadow banned or outright banned while being accused of advertising. This is massively unfair.
Why don't you speak on why you don't require AAA studios to follow your policies? Why are you so desperate to sit there and waste indie devs time by forcing them to do things that other people selling on your platform don't need to do?
Some examples?
As much as I like the idea of "room for everyone" it's an objective fact that there is shovelware on the Steam storefront. "Games" that aren't really games, but things someone slapped together and has little to no merit existing with a price tag. I'd definitely like to see a minimum bar of some form added onto Steam to get rid of all of the absolute trash that's been infesting the store front for a long time now.
I thought valve's policy was to tell devs who ask about getting featured to read a condescending whitepaper on what marketing is, has this changed?
I don't want my friends to influence what I see or get recommended. How do I opt out of that? Do I have to unfriend everyone?
I kinda want to downvote so other folks won't see all the cool stuff in here... I didn't though :P
If Early Access is not a marketing tool, then why do you unfairly promote and market "some" early access games and not others?
Could you be more transparent about your censorship policy, why some low quality budget purely only porn content games are completely uncensored on steam store and why novel games from bigger budget japanese publishers are forced to alter their contents? And don't "because they are wearing uniform/they look young" to me
There are already cheap low effort porn games with character with uniform explicitly available on steam.
What hell Valve? I always thought Featured was paid advertising because it always recommends me at least 50% trash that I have no interest in or games already on my wishlist. I bought like 1 sports game 10 years ago on sale, did not really play it, and I get recommended FIFA and some stupid sports management games all the time.
Please stop showing games I already own in the storefront. That eats up valuable real-estate that could be displaying other games for sale. Thanks! :)
There is an option in your "Store preference" tab where you can turn off that owned games are shown in the store.
Under Your Store -- > Preferences, I see under Search Options -- > Hide Items in My Library. I am not finding anything to filter out games in Store that are already in my library. @@KillerOfLight
PORTAL GUN 🤤🤤🤤 cut the chit chat and show me it in details.
NO games should have pay 2 win.. eks: I throw in 2000 dollars and have the strongest planer with best weapons... One more thing.. When I play a game and they try to predict other games for me.. It never hit my Interest, beacause Im extreme spontaneous..
You can't really design systems like they have (or need) around the type of spontaneity you describe.
They have popular section, maybe that can tickle your fancy.
With over 1800 entries on my ignore list, i'm not sure this is going great. So much shovelware, so much porn. You need to do a purge.
Under account details -> Store preferences -> Mature content preferences, you can fine tune what level or none of that you want to see in your store/community.
@@Rakenclaw I would, but it apparently blocks real games with adult content, like CP2077.
In any case, why should they allow an endless amount of porn and obscene garbage? I'd be ashamed to work there
@@dwightschrute2822 Not everyone shares your sensibilities. People obviously buy them or otherwise they wouldn't be there. Also if you selected Games or content that contain some nudity or sexual themes, but not as the primary focus, you would see CP2077, i know this because i just checked.
@@dwightschrute2822 Not really. Mature content preferences only blocks adult only games. CP2077 is not one of them. You can tell because the store page shows adult only on those types of games. CP2077, Witcher 3, and the likes doesn't have them.
Steam is a trash
I don't even use steam to find game. It's thanks to various streamers or games recommended by players. Anyways Steam doesn't deserve 30% cut. Why should indie pay 30% tax for nothing?.
For nothing? In what world do you live where all of Steam is nothing?
Nothing? Seriously? Everyone is free to publish their game on their own website and get 95%, with 5% going to paypal or Visa or whatever. But I guess there is "something" Steam offers that makes it valuable to developers. I wonder what it could be..
@@8Paul7 Even then you have constant hosting costs.
If you think so you should view the Video from ShamusYoung "Epic is Not the Hero" in which he explains why Valve does way more things for the customer and the devs. Also if they would take a lesser cut, Valve would lose Money if for example you would buy a game with a gift card.
Also additionally, other stores like the Epic Games Store are Marketing Blackholes. Bellular News did a Video about it. In short many games that launch in the EGS don't get as much as attentions as if they would launch on Steam. I would never knew that a new Sins of a Solar Empire is in the Making and even in EA on Epic if I didn't saw a YT about it. There would probably more pople knowing this if it was on Steam.
It is of course clear that many people would rather pay less and get the money them self, than give it to Valve. However, I think that many people don't know what Steam does in the background and what functions are only available through the cut. Like the Steam content delivery network, Forums, Steams API for MultiPlayer, analytics, Linux Support, currency conversion, the workshop, handling of returns and so on. The only option they have here would be to take away features from the developers for a lower cut. Or they could also go the unity way and charge the dev every time someone downloads the game from Valves servers.
You should try the Steam Labs function of the interactive recommender. It's a good way to find new games.
Well, if what they do is nothing, just dont use it 😂😂😂
Nice! Now let me use the old client again without downgrading and blocking updates.
Are you still on Windows 7? Or maybe XP?
The one company not letting us down in the gaming world. Meanwhile over at the dumpster fire that is Blizzard