The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Baron Dupek]

I didn't know there was a Cannon Fodder 3

And keep it that way.

I found some nice site in alpha state. Most interesing part of it - number of sold copies. No need to bargain from devs/publishers. In near future it may replace VGchart or what was it called...
http://steamspy.com/

Alpha Protocol - 392,530 ± 35,819
VtM: Bloodlines - 394,236 ± 35,897
E.Y.E. - Divine Cybermancy - 564,902 ± 42,954
Deus Ex - 948,045 ± 55,598
Wastedpotential 2 - 417,276 ± 36,929

paging Infinitron for opinion.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://steamspy.com/.

Geography stat is pretty interesting (or as expected).

 

[Clockwork Knight]

http://steamspy.com/country/BR

Just what I expected. :ehue: Surprised there aren't sports games (read: FIFA and PES) there, though.

 

[tuluse]

http://steamspy.com/country/BR

Just what I expected. :ehue: Surprised there aren't sports games (read: FIFA and PES) there, though.

FIFA is EA, no Steam version.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Sorry, Valve hides Dota 2, Team Fortress 2 and Alien Swarm stats from Web API. I can't show it.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=404111723&searchtext=shower

I'm getting pretty tired of zero-effort zero-fun bullshit being greenlit. One of Steam's value-adds for me was if I felt like gambling on some random game I didn't have to manually filter out the absolute bottom of the barrel crap. These days may as well trawl the latest releases on newgrounds.

Why do you hate dumbocracy democracy?

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Havoc]

Jabba the Bed

 

[LESS T_T]

Wadjet Eye's Dave Gilbert on Steam Spy's accuracy and risk of certain assumptions based on the data: http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/2015/04/05/lets-talk-steam-spy/

Let’s talk Steam Spy
5 APRIL 2015

Hi all. Dave here. It’s been awhile. We’ve been plugging away on Technobabylon and haven’t had a lot of time for blogging, but there’s been a new development recently that I Have Thoughts about. Thoughts that can’t be encapsulated in a 140 character tweet.

You might have heard about this new thing called “Steam Spy.” It pulls user data from Steam and allows anyone to see the number of people that own any particular game. What that means is that it lets you see the Steam sales statistics for any game that’s on the service.

Everyone is lauding it as this Awesome Thing, but I have to be honest – I am super conflicted. For most of Wadjet Eye’s existence, the majority of the profit went to me and my wife. So giving away sales stats was the equivalent of letting you peek into my bank account to see how much was in there. We are fairly private people, and giving away that kind of personal information was just not something we were mentally prepared to do. Even now, with several developers and two full-timers on our payroll, we aren’t comfortable with it.

So hello, Steam Spy. I guess that’s all changed. This is the new reality and I suppose developers like me will have to adjust. Fortunately, the service only gives the number of sales and not the actual money that exchanged hands. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of people looking at our sales stats and doing comparisons and adding things up and trying to determine how much money we have. Some are even going as far as to ask me personally if their estimates are correct. Some expressed worry that we are going out of business. So… yeah. Exactly the kind of speculation I wanted to avoid.

BUT, if this is the new normal, I will have learn to embrace it. So let’s nip all this speculation in the bud and discuss these sexy Steam Spy Stats:

Gemini Rue: 230,524
Blackwell Legacy: 118,446
Resonance: 47,760
Blackwell Deception: 68,138
Primordia: 57,949
Golden Wake: 15,920
Blackwell Unbound: 101,889
Shivah: 82,785
Blackwell Convergence: 98,705
Blackwell Epiphany: 7,005

(source HERE)

There is some margin of error and not all of these numbers are accurate, but they are close enough. Also, it’s very important to remember that Steam is not the only distributor out there. There’s GoG, direct sales, and various bundles like Groupies. So these numbers are in actuality much higher. But for the sake of simplicity, I am going to use ONLY numbers that are available publicly via Steam Spy and nothing else.

Looking at that list by itself, it’s easy to make some assumptions. Number one, it looks like Blackwell Epiphany totally tanked when compared to everything else. And yet, I have gone on record saying that game was our most profitable. So what gives?

First of all, remember the age we live in. This is the age of bundles, extreme discounts, and rock bottom sale prices. The older the game, the most likely it has been on sale a number of times, or been in a bundle. All of our games have been in various holiday deals, Humble Bundles, flash sales, and so on. So it’s only natural that their sales numbers are significantly higher, but it’s important to remember that those games were sold with steep steep discounts during that time. In some cases as low as 35 cents a copy during a bundle sale!

Blackwell Epiphany, on the other hand, is still fairly new and has NOT been in any major sales yet. So 7,005 copies were sold on Steam at retail price or close to it. So if you do the math… 7,005 copies at a cost of $14.99 each… it yielded us a gross profit of $105,004.95 for that game alone. That amount will only jump higher once it starts the rounds of sales, bundles, and promotions. Also helping us is that Blackwell Epiphany is a game we own, versus one we publish; so there are no developers to give royalties to and all of that money stays right in our coffers. We’re a small mom and pop operation, so that money goes a long way. None of our other games earned us that amount of money so fast without going on sale first, so that’s why I’m not lying when I say Blackwell Epiphany is our most profitable game.

Nobody knows more than me how easy it is to collate data, study it, compare it, and then come to the absolute wrong conclusions. I’ve discussed this before, but there are several other instances of me being SURE I cracked some kind of code and then getting bitten in the butt because of it. This new data trove is no exception. Steam Spy is a useful tool, there are many many unknown factors to consider.

Anyway, the data is out there now. If anyone has any questions about it, feel free to ask!

-Dave

Dave Gilbert on 05/04/15 @ 5:02 pm
Oh yeah. As I said to a previous commenter, GoG is a actually solid chunk of revenue for us. But since that data isn’t public, I didn’t bring it up.

 

[Diablo169]

How the fuck does Gemini Rue have almost FOUR times the sale Primordia does?

 

[LESS T_T]

How the fuck does Gemini Rue have almost FOUR times the sale Primordia does?

First of all, remember the age we live in. This is the age of bundles, extreme discounts, and rock bottom sale prices. The older the game, the most likely it has been on sale a number of times, or been in a bundle. All of our games have been in various holiday deals, Humble Bundles, flash sales, and so on. So it’s only natural that their sales numbers are significantly higher, but it’s important to remember that those games were sold with steep steep discounts during that time. In some cases as low as 35 cents a copy during a bundle sale!

Let's see. Gemini Rue has been released in October 2011, bundled 5 times, only 36.34% of owners launched it at least once.

On the other hand, Primordia has been released in December 2012, bundled 2 times, 55.86% of owners launched it at least once.

 

[Diablo169]

Damn logic. Still upsetting though. such a great game and so few people own it?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Precisely.

Of those 10 titles that he brings up, Primorida has the 7th-highest sale figures. But again, we're only going by Steam sales here. It's almost a given that the GOG sales push it higher up.

 

[tuluse]

Precisely.

Of those 10 titles that he brings up, Primorida has the 7th-highest sale figures. But again, we're only going by Steam sales here. It's almost a given that the GOG sales push it higher up.

Would you expect sales from different sources to have different ratios for the games listed? I'd expect them to be about the same. IE, if Primordia sells 1 GOG copy for every 5 Steam copies, Gemini Rue would as well.

In addition Gemini Rue got a mobile release so that would actually push it higher.

 

[Infinitron]

MRY seems to know something about Gemini Rue's sales vs Primordia's, and I think he would have mentioned it if it had only sold more because of bundles.

 

[MRY]

Gemini Rue is a much better selling game than Primordia by any metric. That is unsurprising since (1) it was in a Humble Bundle (far and away the most important bundle) and (2) is vastly more critically acclaimed. It is the only WEG game that has a fanbase as rabid as Primordia's in terms of posting Steam reviews and so forth. I'm not a huge fan of the game, but it's certainly WEG's biggest commercial success by an order of magnitude, and it reached a lot of people in a powerful way. If anything, I suspect that the Steam Spy numbers understate Gemini Rue's success relative to Primordia.

Dave's post clears up one misimpression (that WEG is in a crisis), but may create another (that the Blackwell games are far greater commercial successes than the third-party titles, and that Primordia was one of the weakest games in the WEG catalogue). Primordia has sold over 106k copies. As I've noted elsewhere, I consider only around 70k of those sales legitimate, because 35k were in a trash bundle where it might as well have been given away (Dave makes the same point in his post). Even assuming those 70k sold at half off on average, that would be over $350k.

In terms of the ranks, Steam Spy ownership stats are misleading where a game has been given away for free (like Deception) or put into a massive bundle. All of the games spike during Steam seasonal sales -- including Epiphany, which was sold at 50 and 60% off at Christmas and Thanksgiving -- the real question is whether they've made it into the Humble Bundle, which moves a vast quantity of copies. (For example, The Shivah moved 180k copies in the Humble Bundle, more than Primordia's sold everywhere put together, but probably for < 30 cents a piece. I assume the Humble Bundle with the Blackwell games moved even more copies.) To date, I believe Resonance, Primordia, and Epiphany are the only ones that haven't made the Humble Bundle, but WEG is tirelessly working at fixing that! Once Epiphany is bundled, it'll shoot up past that 7k figure. In terms of moving copies, bundle buyers are great, but in terms of playing the game, they are often illusory; they buy the bundle for another game, install yours on Steam for bragging rights, and never engage with it.

I think looking at the number of players is a bit more informative (around 24k for the Blackwell games vs. around 50k for Resonance and Primordia). So the fact that Primordia is "seventh" on the list is misleading. Steam Charts shows that, in playership, Gemini Rue crushes Primordia, which beats Resonance, which beats Blackwell, which beats The Shivah, which beats A Golden Wake. (Da New Guyz, Puzzle Bots, and Emerald City Confential probably bring up the rear.)

Because Dave is a very generous publisher, how much a game sells doesn't equate to how profitable it is for WEG. What is most profitable for WEG depends, primarily, upon what share of the revenue WEG keeps. Using made up numbers, if Dave kept half of Primordia's revenue, then Primordia would need to sell twice as much as a Blackwell game for it to be equally profitable. If he kept a quarter, it would need to sell four times as much. If he kept a tenth, it would need to sell tenfold.

My own opinion is that I mostly want people to play Primordia, and engage with it, and we've been successful along those lines. But I've also made a tidy sum, too.

--EDIT--

Would you expect sales from different sources to have different ratios for the games listed? I'd expect them to be about the same. IE, if Primordia sells 1 GOG copy for every 5 Steam copies, Gemini Rue would as well.

Per GOG's list of best-selling adventure games, Resonance outsold both Gemini Rue and Primordia on GOG. So, yeah, I think the sales rates are different. It has to do with when a game got put on Steam, what sales have been, where bundles have been, and how a game appeals to a particular demographic. The stereotypical GOG customer is a bit more oldschool than the stereotypical Steam customer, so you could imagine some divergence.

Gemini Rue outsold Primordia on GOG, but if you look at the total ratings, Primordia has more (725 vs. 751). On Steam, Gemini Rue has more (741 vs. 596). Moreover, because Steam reviews were implemented well after Gemini Rue's initial sales on Steam, I suspect its total reviews are lower than they would've been otherwise. That suggests that Gemini Rue outsells Primordia on Steam more than it does on GOG, which would fit with my impression of the respective demographics (and with the effect of bundles).

But no matter how you slice it, Gemini Rue is more popular and more successful than Primordia!

 

[DaveGilbert]

Hi all! Dave from Wadjet Eye here. I don't post often these days, but I do lurk and read the discussions on here. I wanted to jump in to reiterate the point of the blog post - which was that it is very easy to look at the data and leap to the absolute WRONG conclusions. So speculating is fairly pointless. I decided to write that post because I was getting lots of concerned emails and tweets regarding the supposedly low numbers of Blackwell Epiphany, which I had gone on record as being our biggest earner. Some people thought we were going out of business, others went so far as to call me a liar. After several days of answering these emails it became tiresome, so I decided to just address it publicly. Since the data was publicly available information anyway, I figured what the heck. I didn't like it, but if you can't beat 'em join 'em, etc. The tool exists, people are using it, ignoring it won't make it go away. Unless, of course, it does. In which case I'll feel realllly silly.

Regarding Primordia, it's easy to look at that list and think that Primordia is only our 7th highest seller. That would also be wrong. Primordia has done extraordinarily well and nobody has any complaints. It's second only to Gemini Rue in terms of gross earned.

The info about Blackwell Epiphany nonwithstanding, I have never been a huge fan of giving out super detailed sales stats. Although lots of indies are becoming more and more transparent about this kind of thing lately and eventually I might give in, but we're not quite ready for that yet. As I said in the blog post, we are fairly private people most of the time. Mark's been a good sport about not giving away that information either (at my request) and I appreciate it.

Anyway, back to lurking I guess. Thanks!

-Dave

 

[tuluse]

Thanks for the post DaveGilbert

I know it's scary, but it actually does the indie community a lot of good to have rough ideas of how well games sell.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

But no matter how you slice it, Gemini Rue is more popular and more successful than Primordia!

You forgot the most important angle of all. I've played and finished Primordia while I haven't Gemini Rue.

(i will at some point, i do own it, but my adventure game playing comes in bursts and primordia was moved to the top of the pile when i got it)

Thanks for the post DaveGilbert

I know it's scary, but it actually does the indie community a lot of good to have rough ideas of how well games sell.

I would tend to agree with that. You might get some people saying "You sold X copies? Well that means you're rich and why does this new game look like shit? RIPOFF" but the counter point to that is people tend to like rooting for companies that put out games they like. Doesn't really bug me either way though. I like when companies/people put out concrete numbers but at the same time doesn't bother me if they don't.

Except the fact that Sunless Sea sold so well. God damn.

 

[pippin]

I would also suspect Wadjet Eye's games sell better on GoG rather than Steam. If I remember correctly, one of the Blackwell games had some problems being released on Steam, with the Greenlight system and all that jazz, while the response from GoG was more diligent. Wadjet Eye's games seem to fit better in the whole "spirit" of GoG, and there's the fact that Steam has a lot more games from companies of all sizes, which could also be very tough for a company like this.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I would also suspect Wadjet Eye's games sell better on GoG rather than Steam.

Bullshitz. Everything sells better on Steam. 9 to 1!

 

[MRY]

pippin Steam will almost always outsell GOG. Also, since Bundle sales tend to get reported as Steam sales, that further amplifies the effect. It is not 9 to 1, though. GOG performed pleasantly well compared to Steam for Primordia.

tuluse Multi-headed Cow Remember that Dave is juggling both his own privacy and his developers' when he's acting as publisher. That complicates the analysis. For me, I'd just as soon everything be transparent, but you can imagine why, for example, he wouldn't want to encourage a ranking of the WEG stable in terms of sales. Also, I'm reminded of something a judge (who happened to own a cattle ranch) once told me: telling someone how many cows you own is more or less like telling people how big your bank account is. There's a purely academic curiosity about WEG's sales, but to he'd also be basically broadcasting his earnings to his friends, families, etc. as well.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

tuluse Multi-headed Cow Remember that Dave is juggling both his own privacy and his developers' when he's acting as publisher. That complicates the analysis. For me, I'd just as soon everything be transparent, but you can imagine why, for example, he wouldn't want to encourage a ranking of the WEG stable in terms of sales. Also, I'm reminded of something a judge (who happened to own a cattle ranch) once told me: telling someone how many cows you own is more or less like telling people how big your bank account is. There's a purely academic curiosity about WEG's sales, but to he'd also be basically broadcasting his earnings to his friends, families, etc. as well.

True. To people not at all involved like myself it's academic curiosity like you said, but it could potentially create jealousy or other weirdness with developers/publishers.

Surprised to hear it wasn't 9 to 1 either. I've heard roughly that amount for Steam vs all non-Steam from a few other people (Most recently was Vault Dweller talking about Age of Decadence, IIRC. Admittedly AoD is only direct sales VS Steam at the moment). Sounds like it did do better on GoG VS Steam than most things then.

 

[MRY]

I was very surprised when I ran the GOG vs. Steam number myself a few months ago. I had assumed something like 5 to 1, but it's a closer parity and, like I said, apparently even closer with Resonance than with Primordia. It makes me quite happy because I think GOG does a better job of curating its games, interacting with customers, and promoting smaller titles. Steam is a great marketplace and has tons of great features, but as between the two, GOG feels more like a brick-and-mortar bookstore and Steam feels more like Amazon.

 

[Destroid]

Does GoG have a more favourable royalty arrangement than steam?