I think, the problem is rather that they have no budget for marketing. If they become visible on Steam, that’s significantly more visibility than they can hope for from a few social media posts…
Comment on Ori studio in crisis: No Rest For The Wicked could be their final game
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day agoIt’s always lack of advertising. The unfortunate fact of life is that 99.99% of indie studios have no clue how to market their game. They think they just have to make a good game, and boom, people will flock to it.
Steam is there to make sure users have a platform to download their game. It’s not there to market it.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 23 hours ago
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Steam is a marketing machine. The developers just need to do the leg work first. Steam will heavily promote games that have high wishlists and sales momentum. All those personalized recommendations you see on Steam is Valve doing marketing.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
It’s not one you should rely on. People don’t stare at their Steam page every day.
This should have been promoted through the usual YouTube and Twitch channels. Find all of the YouTubers that review indie games and start sending emails.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Yes of course you have to market outside of Steam. But actually most traffic to the game page will come from people discovering it through Steam. Especially for an indie who can’t afford a traditional marketing campaign. A feature on the front page will blow the traffic you’d get from a Tuber or Twitch play out of the water. But you’d only get featured if you have high sales momentum or high wishlists before launch. That’s what the pre launch marketing campaign is for. Getting on YouTube and Twitch channels is just to get the snowball rolling. The rest comes from the Steam algorithm and word of mouth.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Right, and that’s what this game didn’t have. You have a trailer and some people who happened to discover this game and decided to play it. No real marketing campaign push to get indie streamers to play it. The name makes it even worse because it’s not a unique phrase.