One of the game marketing strategies, Charles Zukoski, spoke at one of the pinnacked questions for big and small developers at the Game Developers Conference 2025: How do you feel your game on steam?
Of course, there is no answer to this question. There are factors such as a blind way to make an excellent game, beyond the initial access, desire list, user reviews, demo and back and tools valve supply. Although Zukuski a universal marketing, though. He has seen through the matrix, and has seen the “real steam”.
We leave at an encouraging start. Zukoski (I don’t know what art is, “Thanks, Gamesrader) “I have no concept of art. There is no state.” Nevertheless, he kindly admits that some sports make it special, such as “seeking true love”, and it opens the door of “real steam”.
“Some sports have magic, and I don’t know what it is,” says Zakoski. “But we can see … the results of magic.” The audience’s reaction to the example of the example given here is in the line of Steam’s discovery. If they are good or bad that “tell you whether you have magic.”
And if you get magic? “(Steam) is an engine that turns magic into money … The real steam is the purpose. Don’t tell the valve I have told you.”
I am sure that we are talking about Gabie for his yacht’s bat phone while talking. More seriously, it is difficult to combine real insights from this observation that the games either fire or they do not do, and it is clearly described to attribute it to some kind of steam magic. What can you ask “Real Steam”? This is the “mainly” Daily Delis program, which lives here on your hats – often increases sports sales.
Zukoski offers suggestions for developers who are not welcomed in the real steam gates, or they can get at least 250 reviews in the first month: apply it because you are cooked, brofine.
This is the area of ​​the conversation that has a little more substance, because Zukoski has explained what it means here and there are some statistics to back it. “Real Steam” should be considered as a pursuit of overall income of 000 150,000 within six to nine months of release, though the 74 % of sports they get in their first three months.
“I saw 114,000 games that released last year, which did not have magic, which did not come into real steam,” says Zukoski. “Only one recovery. I found it. I found a game that had pulled between us last year. It is called Beltomatic.”
The exception of any steam rules between us can be considered largely (its popularity exploded two years after release, and the reason is attributed to the lockdown of 2020). Belt Matic, on the other hand, is a factory SIM that had 51 reviews, three months after his release. But after nine months, “they somehow pulled it” and there were more than a thousand.
One thing to indicate here: Belt Matic user reviews, which are now only less than 1,300, Are very positive. This is clearly a good game.
Zukoski says, “I will be honest with you all, if you do not hit 250 reviews in the first month, it is unlikely to be more likely to be.” “It’s not just. It’s time to move forward. Plan B, whatever it is. It doesn’t work. After that you can’t do it. There was a game, a ballotamic, the only game that pulled it. I’m just going to be honest. I am sorry.”
Of course Many is a lot of high quality games that will never succeed on steam, for a reason or any other reason. The important thing that developers should take from this is that the review figures are fine and suggest that even in the initial access, a product needs to be launched in a state where consumers feel compelled to review it. In other words, which is easy for someone to say, make a good game that resonates with people, and then when the valve “detects that you have magic in the game, they will give you all the things they can collect.”
The steam de facto is the PC gaming platform, and as the valve, its stewards have done a better job for the developers than bad. He has been given smaller teams a small chance of accessing global audiences, incredible backback tools, and life -changing breakdowns. What it does will remain forever debate and can perform well in search of lost jewelry and perform better in the light of it. But if just calling success is a “real steam”, I am not sure this is a useful question.
