With the transition to Steam Direct, there are many questions to be answered, which is why rumors and speculation arise among consumers and developers. As a developer who has been very familiar with the Greenlight process since 2015 and has successfully completed it twice with Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion and HD Renovation (with a total of over a million users), I'd like to talk about Direct and first impressions of it. There is a lot to talk about, including the changes to protect against abuse of Steam Trading Cards, pricing, and what the new system will mean for developers and consumers.

The old way: Steam Greenlight

Let's start a conversation with Steam Greenlight. This will be just background information, I will try to summarize it briefly. Steam Greenlight is a Steam feature implemented by Valve to help indie developers sell their games on Steam. How this process worked: The developer paid Valve $ 100 to participate in Greenlight. The developer had to pay this fee only once, and then could upload any number of games to Steam Greenlight. Money was not returned back.

After payment, the developer was given access to the Steam Greenlight portal, in which he could create a Greenlight page with information about the game (name and description), upload videos, trailers and screenshots to it, useful links (for example, to a demo of the game) and links to pages in social networks ... In addition, it was necessary to add to the page everyone involved in the creation (if there was someone else besides you), after which everything is ready to publish the page in Greenlight.

Now about how the approval process worked - after the page was published, your game ended up in Steam Greenlight, where users voted Yes, No, or Maybe to express their interest. In addition, they could subscribe to and share links to the page, leave comments, read blog posts and announcements from the page creator. All games in Greenlight were ranked by "Yes" votes, and if your game made it to the top 100 on Steam Greenlight, then you could count on potential success. If a game made it to the very top of the popularity contest (one of the top five spots), your game was approved by the community and given the green light. Congratulations! What happened after is not very important for this article, so let's stop there.

New way: Steam Direct

Now let's talk about Steam Direct and what we know about this process. Remember the $ 100 Steam Greenlight donation? By paying it, you could publish any number of games. Well, now you have to pay $ 100 per game ... The contribution is no longer one-time. The bright side, so to speak, is that if your game itself earns more than $ 1,000 on Steam, then that $ 100 will be returned to you.

After payment, you need to fill in information about yourself: name, social security number, etc., so that you can make sure that you are really who you say you are. Valve also requires tax form and banking information to be completed. During the filling process, you will be required to sign several non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). After all this bureaucratic work has been completed and the company has verified that you are a real person, you will be allowed to enter commercial information - game name, description, cost, etc. In the Greenlight process, you didn't have to do this until your page was given a green light.

Once you've figured it out, you'll be invited to the Steam Developer Portal. Here you can upload your game: files, achievements, Steam Trading Cards, and the like. It is necessary to submit a nearly finished version of Valve's game for testing so that the company makes sure that you are not trying to publish malicious software or anything similar to the platform. This usually takes several days. The same applies to Steam Trading Cards and other add-on files for the game. Valve recommends doing all of this no later than 30 days before the game's scheduled release so that all files are approved within a reasonable time frame and no one has to panic. The term "game" doesn't have a strict definition, but Valve will take a few days to check if your game matches the description on the page. Once approved by Valve, you can release your game to Steam. Congratulations!

The price of fame

Yes, there are problems with that. Most importantly, before your game was supposed to gain some interest in Steam Greenlight. In Steam Direct, you just need to pay, and that's it - you're already in business. The problem is that Steam is practically turning into the PC version of the Google Play Store.

This is a very dubious move for me as a developer and a consumer, because there will be more games on the platform. It doesn't seem so bad, does it? But in fact, this is so, because on Steam it is already difficult to find worthwhile games in the general heap - 40% of games on Steam were released in 2016... Steam Direct makes it even harder to find new games that will grab your interest. As a developer, you will have to compete with a bunch of substandard games taking up the homepage that you should have taken.

Steam Direct adds a new continuous stream of games, but finding games is also tricky due to user-added tags. Anyone, troll or not, can visit the game's Steam page and add tags to it. Oftentimes, very low quality games are labeled as "horror" or "scary" even if they are not horror. It could be a 2D side-scroller about a unicorn collecting cakes, but if the game is of poor quality, the trolls will add a horror tag to it. If you look for new games labeled "horror", you will surely find horror games or scary games, but there will also be games that are definitely not related to this genre. This problem already exists, but the more low-quality games appear on Steam due to the constant addition of new ones, the more users will abuse the tagging system.

Another opinion of mine may be unpopular. I spoke with several developers and they, like me, believe that the price game publishing on Steam Direct should be slightly higher than $ 100... In my opinion, it should be at least $ 500, especially considering that you will get money back by selling more than $ 1000. Thanks to Patreon, developers' streaming channels on Twitch, and simply donations from the site, a good developer and a good game can easily collect the required amount of money.

Speaking of payment, what about those developers who sell games for 99 cents or even is free? They will not get their money back, and if they do, then for 99 cents they need to provide a solid amount of sales. The situation with free games is even worse because in-game transactions are not counted when refunds are made. Someone might say: “Why return the money? You get ADVERTISING! " Or: “Why do you want your money back? Are you making games just for the sake of making money ?! " To both of these claims, I can say that game development isn't always cheap. Well, when you get a return on your work, it helps create new games.

An interesting (to say the least) situation with developers releasing free games. I sympathize with those who want to put the game on Steam, make it free and will not get anything with this new system - this is not very fair to them. Developers making small profits may not get paid at all. My first game on Steam was free. I understood that I could not return the money, because: 1.) It is impossible and 2.) None of the developers will return their money. If the Steam Direct system had been introduced then, I would have envied those who returned their money, because I would not have been able to do so. Hopefully there will be some system to help such free game developers. It might be worth giving the money back if they have X downloads like it's a $ 1,000 paid game.

And another topic: abuse of Steam Trading Cards

A major issue with Steam Greenlight was the abuse of Steam Trading Cards. Developers generated thousands of keys and passed them on to bots that launched Steam games to farm cards. Then they put a high price on the cards and received their interest on their sales.

This problem exists on several levels, including two of our favorite words - Steam's algorithm. If you didn't know: the more time they play the game, the more Steam considers it to be more popular, so they advertise it more on the main page, recommends it to users, etc. It is clear that this is a serious problem. Steam shows us unpopular and low-quality games, because bots farming cards break the whole system.

With the introduction of Steam Direct, Valve changed its approach: now a game with cards needs to achieve a certain number of hours of gameplay for all players, plus it must meet some other indicators that Valve is hiding from us. As soon as the game reaches these indicators, cards begin to fall out. After that, all players who have played time in this game will receive cards. Sounds cool, right? Well, not quite. Especially when you consider that we do not know the indicators that the game should achieve. Not to mention, Steam Trading Cards are a serious reason for abandoning a purchase - if users can't get the cards right away, this can be a problem. Even in the current system, consumers complain that cards don't fall out. It hurts the store, achievement hunters and collectors, all for the sake of fighting the small number of people farming cards to make money. But I am confident that even with these changes, the card farmers will still find ways to continue their machinations.

Hey! This is my game!

The last problem that popped into my head was probably the most important of all. This is the problem of stolen jobs and DMCA bans. During the Steam Greenlight process, attackers sometimes completely copied an existing page in Greenlight and published it in Greenlight. Why I call them "intruders": The link to the demo of the game actually led to malware. Greenlight had fake pages that tricked unsuspecting users into downloading malware.

It happened least once with the original Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion in Greenlight. What should a developer do when he sees this? On Steam Greenlight, a page with a copy of his game could be complained about by the developer and the community, in addition, it could be asked for a DMCA ban, and if the game received enough complaints, it was blocked. Ditto for fan games and games with replaced resources. What about Steam Direct? How carefully will the search be conducted so that no one steals your work or replaces resources in it? When using Steam Direct, you will no longer be able to ask for a DMCA ban until the game is released and starts making money, which scares me quite a lot.

In the worst case scenario, a malicious developer can take someone's game, make money from it, and disappear. They might even take games from free sources (like itch.io or gamejolt) and pass them off as their own. Hopefully Valve will be very careful so that the solution to the problem is not too difficult for the developer, otherwise we will be inundated with such content.

Where to go next?

This is all the information we have so far, plus my thoughts. We just have to wait for the details to do a more accurate analysis to decide if this is a good idea or not. I understand where Valve is going to make these changes. It seeks to reduce obstacles to developers, but I'm not sure that such a system is well protected from people trying to exploit it in order to "cut down" easy money.

In this article I will outline my experience in developing and selling the first game on Steam with a small team and without a budget. The article will be useful for those who have a poor idea of \u200b\u200bthis complex process as a whole and for those who want to know some details related to the development and sale. I do not pretend to be absolute truth, but I will only write the truth and try to be as short as possible. And yes, there will be no pictures, sorry.

What you need to develop a game

Everyone knows that there are 3 main tasks in development:

Design

Programming

Graphics

Therefore, to develop a game that is more difficult than Tetris, but easier than GTA, 3 people are needed. Less is a compromise, more is a crowd, and the crowd must be managed. You can do everything yourself, but most likely you are not a genius, and it will take a lot more time.

Everyone should be a professional, or desperately want to become one, and therefore learn. Lack of experience is a minus, but not critical, the main thing is that there is a desire to "plow".

What else is needed is free time. Making a medium sized game after work / school is very difficult. We tried, we didn't succeed and all three of us quit our jobs. We put 3 computers in one room and began to go to a new unpaid job - the development of our game. We lived on savings and freelance jobs.
The last important thing that you will definitely need is knowledge of English. If none of you can even read without a dictionary, then it will not work to make and sell the game on Steam.

Total needed: 3 people, at least 6 hours every day and knowledge of English.

Ambition and motivation

The main thing is not your genius as the author of the idea, the main thing is the release of the game. Therefore, ambitions must be shoved in one place and compromises with your comrades. The bravado turned out to be 95% what I wanted and it is much better than if it was possible to play it only in my imagination.

Also, one should not forget that other people in the team also want to see something of their own in the game, they are also participants in the creative process. They should be especially respected if you are a beginner game designer / writer yourself, in this case the benefit from you is actually much less than from a programmer or artist. Do not forget that most likely everyone works for free, which means that no one owes anything to anyone. The game must be liked by all participants, otherwise you will not be able to reach it. No need to persuade a person to join. He himself should be interested in making and playing it. Otherwise, halfway through, he will give up everything, it is difficult to find a replacement, and most likely the game will not be completed to the end.

What game to make

The simpler the better. Your task is to make a full cycle, get experience and maybe some money. After that, you can master a more difficult game, and then even more difficult. If you choose an initially overwhelming idea, then you will overstrain and the game will not be finished, and you will get an incomplete idea of \u200b\u200bwhat problems await you, how to push the game to the final quality, what is going on in stores and much more. You and your colleagues will be demotivated.

Do not disdain to do Tetris, Pacman and stuff like that, add your ideas, wrap it in a nice picture. Of course, copying someone else's is not necessary, there is a good original idea - great. It is important that the scale of development of the game is simple. If all you can do is come up with features for an MMORPG, then you are a very bad designer. Design is work, you have to learn how to make simple things interesting.

For example, we immediately made an average game and I will mainly talk about such a scale. On the one hand, it was very difficult and long to hold the game until release. On the other hand, we managed to get the very first game into Steam. But it's better to choose something simpler first.
It is also very important that you have a clearly expressed idea in your game. Our idea was “quick control in a turn-based game”. It should become a reference point for all development, all game design ideas should be subordinate to it and work to improve it.

Name

The name is of great importance. The team may be called whatever, but the game ... here you need to think very carefully.
Gradually, with getting to all sorts of sites, YouTube and your other achievements, your game will be higher and higher in the search engine results. If your name consists of very popular words, then the game will argue with a lot of other things on the Internet. Let's say you called the game "Just do it". In this case, your game is unlikely to be found at all, because Nike will take all the lines in the search.

Since so many beautiful and simple names like Dark Souls or Street Fighter have been taken for a long time, a name consisting of words that are not in dictionaries would be a good option. You can take a real word and change it a little. For example, as we did in Terraria or we, choosing the word Bravada. In Russian, this word exists, but in English it is written through o - Bravado. It turns out that the name reflects in some way our game, this is a meaningful word, but due to the difference when searching, you will almost certainly see links to our game first. It is also not a word that can work well, but some unpopular phrase or combination of words on the Internet.

As a result, if a good name is chosen and someone likes the game, then gradually the search engines will give out links to your site, Greenlight, Steam, Metacritic and so on.

Is it possible to organize work remotely

Yes, but it’s less efficient than sitting together in the same room. We did the lion's share of the project in one room, and then I moved to another city. Now, due to hostilities, all three of us are scattered around the map. That is, we did it remotely, at the same time, despite the fact that half of the game was already ready and the fact that we know each other from early childhood, the process is much slower. In short, if you can - work in the same room, otherwise by all means fight the problems of remote work.

Useful tricks:

It is imperative to keep a document where tasks will be recorded. There should be both global tasks and current ones. Each of you should have a current task assigned. As soon as the task is completed, you need to immediately assign a new one. Those who take time off from work should be scolded \u003d) Tasks should be set as small and specific as possible. For example, "program a test main menu (play, settings, exit)", "draw a plan for the first level of the game", "make several concepts of the protagonist's face"

Use Google Docs for documentation. It is convenient that everyone always has the latest version of documents, edits are visible, you can edit together immediately during the discussion

We need Skype calls every day. All should call up at once in the form of a conference. Conversations can be short, just check tasks, or they can last for hours when discussing features or long arguments

There is nothing more enjoyable than seeing how your teammates make a small contribution to the game every day. Do not shirk, please them too. The development process must be continuous, it is very pleasing when the game gets better every day

You will need a collaborative online drawing room where you can see and draw everything at the same time. There are enough such sites on the Internet. In fact, it is like a drawing board on it, you draw diagrams, formulas, explaining drawings, etc. Together with Skype, they can be a good substitute for direct communication

Version control system. If you don't know what it is, be sure to find out, configure and use

About problems in development

Game development is, in principle, a set of various problems that have to be solved. The first time, most will be new to you. The main thing here is not to give up. If you don't know how to solve it - search in Google, if you don't find it - think for yourself, look for a non-standard approach, if you can't come up with a solution - get rid of the problem itself!
Since there are only three of you, each of you will have to solve many problems, often outside of your profession. We'll have to learn to do something else.

In addition to graphics, code and design, we personally had to do the following:

script - the artist was engaged in it, i.e. me and this is my first script in general

humor - I also invented it, it turned out specifically, but fun \u003d)

english translation - I did it roughly, edited by our fans, for which we are immensely grateful for free.

all sorts of special effects - it was mainly our designer who did them, did he do them before? - not

video editing - it was also done by the designer, has he done editing before? - not

website creation - of course the programmer did. and this is his first website, learned html and php at the same time

sound effects processing - done by the programmer and designer. could they do it before? - not

music - great musicians made music for us, the money was symbolic. many thanks to them

There were many more different smaller tasks, not to mention a bunch of small problems within each task.

About engines

You don't need to make your own engine, just take the finished one. If, instead of a game, the programmer builds the engine first, then the chances are very high that you will not get to the release. An exception can be only if ready-made engines simply do not allow you to implement your idea. But in this case, perhaps this is not the best option for the first game and you hardly understand what the engines are capable of and how important their convenience is. Players do not care about the engine, they will not see it, they will not appreciate what a fine fellow you are and how beautifully your code is written in your engine. Therefore, convince your programmer to forget about the engine, and so there will be plenty of cases to realize his genius.

Documentation

A design document is like the Holy Grail in game development, but it's only a tool, not an end in itself. Correct documentation appears naturally; without it, it is impossible to make any kind of complex game. And if you write a design document simply because everyone says that you need it, then it will be sucked out of your finger and full of "water". In the process of discussing ideas and trying to solve future problems in theory, it will become necessary to take notes, at least in order not to forget which solution you left off last time. This will show the outline of the scenario, interface diagrams, tables with parameters, gameplay descriptions, and much more.

Timing

Often people making their own game do not pay attention to the timing and this is a big mistake if you plan to make money on this game, and do not make it just for your own pleasure. You need to have both global deadlines (to complete the demo by May 1) and to set deadlines for yourself for each task (to finish the window with the settings by the evening, to make a model of the protagonist in two days). It is not easy and you will constantly break these deadlines. But putting them on and striving to fit is very important.

First, the longer you make the game, the more it costs you. After all, every day of your work is worth something.

Secondly, if you work on enthusiasm, then it also does not last forever, the fuse disappears, people get tired when there are no results

Thirdly, the timing and regular communication set a kind of continuous rhythm for development, something new appears in the game, something improves, moves somewhere. It strongly motivates the whole team.

Saving

You will have to save your resources. First of all, your time that you can spend on the development of the game. I will use graphics as an example, but the situation is similar in other tasks.

For example, I know I can make detailed characters and animate them. Even with a minimum of animations, such a character will take, say, 3-5 days. And they needed more than 200 pieces. Ie this is at least 800 days of work only for characters? It turns out that you need to save and this savings affects the schedule. So I decided to do more old-school graphics, where I could do on average 2 characters per day. Therefore, we ditched bone character animation in favor of simpler animation. By the way, this was often called a flaw in the game, but we just couldn't afford bone animation.

That is, we saved on quality, partly passing it off as stylization and most people still like the graphics. Saving on quantity might be another option. I am sure that without calculating and saving resources, it is simply impossible to make an average game, without a budget and a small team. And I have no doubt that big companies are also engaged in economy.

Where to sell and how to get there

A medium-sized PC game needs to be sold in Steam. It will not be easy, but there are a lot of people there, and therefore money. I don’t want to scold other sites (we also launched on IndieGameStand, Desura, Windows Store), but in our case Steam brings the lion's share of the profit.

To sell on Steam, you need to either go directly through the publisher or through selection in Greenlight. Its idea is that Steam does not have time to filter out the entire stream of applications themselves and they decided to blame it on the players. As a result, players vote for new games, and Steam moderators just occasionally look through the top 100 and choose what they like.

To get into the top 100, you need a lot of votes, tens of thousands. Not everyone will vote, which means that hundreds of thousands of people should visit your page in Greenlight. Quite a lot of them will come in the first couple of days, while the game hangs on the first pages of Greenlight.
You will need a Steam account with at least one purchased game, and you will also need to pay Steam $ 100 to participate in Greenlight. At first there was no contribution at all and people happily poured in 10 "Half Life 3" and "GTA 6" a day.

There should be a good video, screenshots and English text without errors. At first, we had a text in bad English, people didn't like it very much and a lot of people voted against in the first days, because of this, we went through Greenlight for a long time and our vote statistics were so-so until the very end. This is how important the first couple of days are.

Additionally, you need to attract people from outside. We personally shoveled through several databases with contacts, a bunch of sites and other good things, collecting our own database with contacts of the press and youtubers. As a result, we had a table with more than 800 contacts, the table contained the person's real name, web address, email, and other notes. Then we compiled a letter template that was sent by a script to all contacts, the script picked up the email and the real one from the database. name. It turned out something like "Hi, [real name]. We're making a game here, check it out. Here's our greenlight page. All the best." The exhaust from this is minimal, but it is impossible to find out in advance who to send and to whom.

The main thing is not to forget to test the letter before sending it - send it to yourself on several different mailboxes. It is better to send from a gmail account. In some places, instead of letters, you have to fill out forms on websites, here you won't be able to automate.

We also wrote to the reviewers directly in a PM on YouTube, but in my opinion this is not very effective. There are also specialized sites for gaming press releases, they are monitored by some journalists, upload a press release there and wait for the result.

Participation in bundles especially themed with games from Greenlight can also help a lot. Ie people buy a bundle for, say, 1 dollar, there are several games. Rather, a pack of promises that the buyer will receive the key when the game is released in Steam. Such people are interested in going through and voting. It's effective, but it turns out that you are essentially giving away a copy of the game for a few cents + a vote. To the organizers of the bundle, you will give a bold bundle of keys when you release. Surely, such bundles are sometimes bought up and the key that you sold for a couple of cents, after the release, someone will sell for a few dollars.

Also communicate effectively with the local gaming press. They happily write, do interviews or stream with good developers from their countries (or their neighbors). Even if viewers don’t buy your game in the end (but download it in torrents), many will vote to support it. If the game is very small, they may not want to write about you, in our case the game was of a medium scale, so some people were interested.

It's just that reviews on English-language sites give practically nothing, except to amuse yourself and read useful criticism. Some sites are good for prestige. For example, when Rock Paper Shotgun wrote the preview for Bravada, we were really excited and waiting for a jump in votes. The jump was scanty, but we used quotes from RPS many times in letters, press releases and so on, because RPS is cool, everyone knows them.

As a result, you should slowly crawl into the top 100 and this is almost a guarantee of getting into Steam. We climbed the maximum to the 56th place. Recently, games were skipped directly in packs, and our game was included in one of these packs. I remember it was evening and our designer Kirill called me and said that they let us through ... I had such a feeling, which I hadn’t experienced for several years, as if I had defended my master's work. Satisfaction with the great work done and outright joy.

Steam

Steam takes 30% of the profits, this is a lot, but nothing can be done about it. There will also be taxes and in order to avoid double taxation on income from Steam (to pay tax only in your country), you will need to obtain a US taxpayer number.

There are guides on the Internet how to do this, I will briefly tell you how it was with us. We downloaded and filled out the W8-BEN form, replenished our Skype account for 5 bucks (to call a landline in the USA), then I called the desired number. The answering machine answers, you need to listen carefully and press the desired tone dialing button. Then I waited for the operator on the line for about half an hour listening to boring music. Then the operator asks what I want. You need to explain and insist that you want to read your W8-BEN form to her, and not send it by fax. You will have to read out the entire form character by character, you hear poorly there, Americans speak quickly and you need to be able to speak yourself, it is better to prepare the words and find out what the different characters are called in English.

I can't tell you about early access, our game was ready and we were released 3 weeks after passing Greenlight. We carefully prepared, implemented their API, achievements, and prepared something else there. And in the end, they were released a couple of days earlier than planned - because I mistakenly clicked the "Release" button in the settings \u003d)
After the release, you will have a lot of work to do. There will be bugs anyway, there will be questions from players. You need to develop a habit at least once or twice a day to check your mail, go to Steam, read everything, answer and react (the same thing during Greenlight). They will write mainly in English.

In Steam, reviews of the game on different sites are useful, because Steam shows a rating from Metacritic, and Metacritic takes numbers from some sites with reviews. Reviews in Steam will be even more useful - write them yourself, ask your friends. It's good if the first reviews are positive.

About Intel and contests

You will have to advance yourself and by any means available. One of them is all kinds of competitions. We took part in two such competitions.

Ludum Dare. In this competition, you need to create a game on a predetermined unknown topic in 3 days. We plowed for 12 hours a day and managed to do it. Our game did not win, but we took 12th place out of several hundred participants from all over the world. The experience was interesting, it is a very good test of my capabilities.

The Intel competition was much easier for us. We read about it somewhere, just filled out a questionnaire and uploaded our ready-made demo. Everything. As a result, Intel chose our Bravada as the best Adventure / RPG. We received a lot from this competition, from monetary rewards, promotion on their website and in Steam, a demonstration of our game at Penny Arcade Expo, and ending with the fact that Intel sent us a number of different equipment completely free of charge as part of supporting its partners.

So be sure to participate, perhaps you will be lucky to win. The main thing is that the competition does not distract too much from your main task - the completion of the game. Competitions provide experience, prestige, promotion and sometimes even material gain.

Publishers

If you are planning to find a publisher, you need to already have a good demo and it is desirable that no one knows about your game yet.

At the moment we have no experience of working with publishers, but we have some experience of correspondence with about a dozen of them. It seemed to me that they really do not care about other people's games. That is, they will be happy if part of the income from your game will go to them, but they really do not want to do something themselves, they rather rely on luck. Why should they strain, promote someone else's game and studio when they have their own inner ones. But if suddenly the game itself becomes popular, this is what suits them.

Many publishers behave very detachedly, as if letting you understand that they are superior, that it will be a great honor for you to cooperate with them, but they are not yet sure whether it makes sense for them to contact you. Of course, maybe the fact is that our game was not quite in their format, or maybe they are just another corporate machine, for which you and your game are just a line in the statistics.

However, I'm sure there are good publishers too. Good signs in communication are: clear participation and interest of the publisher, specific answers to what they, as a publisher, will do (many of them simply copy the marketing text for you from their website to such questions) and the willingness to amend the terms and wording of the contract.

Agreements and contracts

You will have to deal with contracts in English. Google Translate is relatively good at digesting legal texts. The contracts will be different from a couple of pages to a couple of dozen and they will need to be read deliberately.

Contracts with sites are usually fixed, it is impossible to change something in the contract, with Steam, for example. In such cases, this is usually not scary, the contract is standard, hundreds and thousands of other people have already signed it before you. But you still need to read and understand.

More interesting are contracts with publishers and various other partners. Finding these agreements online or chatting with other people who signed them is much more difficult. Moreover, such agreements often contain clauses on which you will not be able to divulge anything to anyone.

The agreement will be drawn up with maximum benefit for the publisher, the text is drawn up by their lawyers, they will certainly exclude all risks for themselves, your duties will be spelled out in detail, their duties are as vague as possible. But in theory, as an equal partner, you can try to change the conditions or wording and this will be the subject of your negotiations. Only the agreement is in force, so turn a deaf ear to beautiful words, write, they say, "yes, we don't
against partnership, send a draft contract, we will study. "

For example, the publisher says that we will divide everything equally - 50% to you and 50% to us. This does not mean that you will receive $ 5 from each copy if the game costs 10. This means that the publisher will first pay off all its expenses (you can specify anything there and you will not check it), and only then the net profit will be divided 50 by 50. That is, from one copy you will receive, say, $ 2.3. (I took the numbers from my head)

In general, read the contract carefully, if you are ready to sign it, it would be nice to show it to a lawyer. Insist that the wording is clear, that your risks are excluded, the responsibilities of the publisher are clearly spelled out in terms of items and costs, and the final formula for calculating your share is as clear as possible.
Will the publishers agree to amend the contract? I don't know, but at least some people don't mind doing it.

About deceivers

If the author writes from the site, compare the mail on the site and the one with which he wrote, if the reviewer from YouTube see information about the channel, ask to write in a personal on YouTube, if the admin of the group in Steam ask you to add you as a friend and group, you can ask to tweet about you something. The person has already written to you of his own free will, if he is interested in the game and he really is who he claims to be, he will confirm his identity. The deceiver will steal the keys from you and sell.

Conclusion

Making a game is like putting together a puzzle, a strange puzzle where you yourself have to come up with a picture, carve out each piece, make sure that all the finished pieces fit together, assemble it and prove that your puzzle is at least as good as the others.

This is a complex creative collective work, with a very high threshold of entry, requiring specific knowledge, self-discipline, a significant amount of time and effort.

Therefore, I can recommend doing my games only to those who cannot live without it. To the same madmen who do decide, I wish you good luck, patience and most importantly - never give up.

Steam allows you not only to add all the games purchased in the store of this service, but also to attach any game that is on your computer. Of course, third-party games will not contain various dynasties that are present in Steam games, for example, achievements or receiving cards for playing a game, but still a number of Steam functions will work for third-party games. To find out how to add any PC game to Steam, read on.

Adding third-party games to your Steam library is essential for everyone to see what you are playing. In addition, you will be able to broadcast the gameplay through the Steam service, as a result, your friends will be able to watch how you play even in something that is not in the store. In addition, this feature allows you to run any game that is on your computer via Steam. You do not have to look for shortcuts on the desktop, just click on the start button in Steam. Thus, you will make a universal gaming system out of this application.

Solving possible problems

Sometimes the procedure does not go as expected - the user is faced with certain problems. Let's consider the most common ones.

Game is not being added
Quite a rare problem, in fact. In most cases, this means that the game being added is already present on the account in one form or another. If there is definitely no game and cannot be on your account, problems with the client itself cannot be ruled out. The best solution in the latter case would be a complete reinstallation of the Steam application.

Steam does not work correctly with the added game
On the net you can find messages that with a third-party game added to Steam, some "chips" of the client work: Overlay, Steam Link, in it you can use the Steam Controller and the like. Alas, this information is outdated - as part of the fight against piracy, Valve has disabled such functionality for games that are not available in the service and added by a third-party method. There is no solution to this problem, and most likely there will not be, so all that remains is to accept.

Conclusion

Now you know how you can add a third party game to Steam. Use this feature so that all your games can be launched through Steam, and also so that you can watch your friends' gameplay.

Today the number of Steam users exceeds 150 million and all of them have at least one game on their account. However, immediately after installation, the client is delivered clean, that is, the owner of the personal computer needs to add suitable applications on his own. You can choose a game from an existing library or add a program that is installed on your computer. The service also supports the installation of third-party applications that are not available in Steam. Details on how to add a game from Steam are later in the article.

The steps required to add a game depend on the user's goals. All 5 known installation methods are described below.

Adding a third party game

The method is intended for those cases when the game is downloaded from the Internet and installed on the system, but without using Steam. In order for it to be displayed in the library, as well as to be able to take advantage of your own account, you need to add the application to the Steam catalog.

How to add a third party game toSteam:

1. Launch the Steam client.
2. In the bottom left corner, click on the plus sign with the caption "Add a game".
3. Select "Add a third-party game" from the drop-down list.
4. The next window displays a list of all applications that are installed on the personal computer. Check the box next to one or more games.
5. Click "Add Selected".

Helpful! Sometimes the game does not appear in the application list. In this case, you can click on the "Browse" button and specify the path to the application directly. Through the explorer, you need to select the exe-file of the game, and not its folder, then press the "Open" button.

After completing the procedure, all added applications are displayed in a list in the "Library" tab. To start a program, you should select it from the list and click on the "Play" button.

Adding a game with a key

If there is a digital key, then it is possible to add games to Steam using it. The code can be received as a gift from a friend, won or purchased in the store.

How to add a game to the librarySteam:

1. Open the Steam client and click on the "Add Game" button (slightly above Start in Windows).
2. Select the option "Activate on Steam".
3. In the new window, click "Next".
4. After the "Steam Subscriber Agreement" appears, click "Agree".
5. Enter the key and click on the "Next" item.
6. If the code is correct and it is valid, then a window will be displayed with the successful completion of the procedure. It remains to close it with the "Finish" button.
7. Open the "Library" tab and go to the page with the game.
8. Click "Install".

After downloading and installing the game becomes available for use.

Add game via explorer

Steam always adds all installed games to one place. By default, available applications are stored in the path: Program Files \\ Steam \\ steamapps \\ common on the system drive. If the user manually changed the storage directory, the link type may differ. If you create a folder with the correct name in the destination directory and place the files of a previously installed game in it, it can appear on Steam. After launching the platform, the service will automatically find the application and start updating or fixing it, if some user files are missing.

In a similar way, you can add free Steam games or previously purchased ones. But paid applications without a key will still not work. In this way, you cannot add programs and games that are not supported by the service.

Installing from another computer

If the speed of the Internet or limited traffic does not allow downloading the game directly over the Internet, then you can take it from another personal computer. As already mentioned, all games are saved in one place, you only need a flash drive with sufficient memory and you can copy the installation files. For the method to work, you definitely need another computer with the current version of the game.

Instructions:

1. Open Steam \\ steamapps \\ common on the computer with the game and find the folder with its name.
2. Copy the entire directory and transfer to a USB flash drive.
3. Connect the drive to the target PC, transfer files to a similar location.
4. Go to the Steam "Library" tab, select the game and click "Install".
5. Indicate the path to the transferred game.
6. After checking and updating the game, it will be available for launch.

Adding previously installed games to the Steam library

This method is useful when reinstalling the operating system. It allows you to save games even after installing another version of Windows. By default, all data would be deleted from the system drive. To secure applications and eliminate the need to download them again, it is enough to move the required directory to another logical drive.

How to add an installed game toSteam:

1. Open Steam and activate, update available games.
2. Create a "Games" folder on the disk (not the system one).
3. Inside, create the "Games1" and "steamapps" directory.
4. Transfer data from the original "steamapps" folder on the C drive to the one you created yourself.
5. Open the Steam client, go to the "Library" and click on the "Install" button.
6. Manually specify the installation location in D: \\ Games \\ Games1.
7. After the installation starts, close the platform application, including from the tray.
8. Transfer the "steamapps" folder to Games1.

Now reinstalling the operating system will not harm, the games will remain in the system. The exception is full disk formatting.

Solving possible problems

There are situations in which things don't go according to plan. The good news is that launch problems can be solved.

Known issues when adding games to Steam:

• The game is not being added. Failure is rare. The most likely source of the problem is that the game is already in the account. Reinstallation should help. If the application is probably not in the profile, then the source of the malfunction is the Steam client itself. Reinstalling the app should help.
• Steam does not work correctly with the installed game. Users often complain that third-party apps don't have access to Overlay, Steam Link, Controller, and more. The thing is that the company deliberately turned off such opportunities to combat piracy. The problem cannot be fixed.

Found a typo? Select the text and press Ctrl + Enter

The majority of advanced Internet users are aware of such a service for the distribution of various digital goods as Steam... Many associate it as a store selling various games in different genres from popular manufacturers such as Valve, Ubisoft, RockStar and others. But Steam is unique in that users themselves can put their game on a free site and the community decides whether to help the author of the game promote it or not. This community is called Steam Greenlight... Today we will discuss most of the topics related to this site.

Are you ready to work with Greenlight?

To develop your game and promote it qualitatively, you need certain knowledge. You must be prepared to accept a huge amount of new information and invest in this business. For example, even to submit your game to Greenlight, you have to pay $ 100. You must be prepared for any challenge and have the skill of teamwork.

What games are best promoted on Greenlight?

Quite a common question, which is fundamentally wrong. Why? The answer lies on the surface - best promoted good and high quality games. You don't need to try to adjust and be like those games that have already passed and got green color, because it is not a fact that your product will be better. Besides, if a similar game already exists, then why buy a clone of it? In any case, there will be comments like: "plagiarism, kill the author!", We do not need this. You have to do what you are sure of, what your friends and acquaintances will play, something really useful and unique.

To start a quality advertising campaign for your product, you will have to create a huge amount of graphics and write a decent amount of text. I will not pour tons of text about this, I will briefly tell you what you will need to create for the normal publication of your product:
1. Launch trailer. This is a video that should fully reveal the essence of your project in a minute or two.
2. Create a complete description of your product on english language... This is very important, the more you describe, the more people will be interested, but you don't need to write a ton of text about the plot, write in a nutshell all the interesting things and novelties of your product.
3. Screenshots of the game. They need to be done without an interface, for example:

How to promote your product?

There are many ways to promote and promote Steam Greenlight. I will describe the most working and fastest ones. I don't want to say right away that some of them can get a ban:
1. Classic promotion. Everything is simple here: we pay for advertising on YouTube videos, VK groups and other media places in order to get thumbs up, a working but expensive way.
2. Search for potential buyers. You are looking for any gaming forum that is closely related to the topic of your game and post information about your product, so that they would vote to unsubscribe a comment, and in return you will provide them with a key after receiving the green color.
3. Cooperation. We find some kind of public or YouTube channel and offer them such a barter: the administration publishes information about your game, and in return you provide them with the keys for the draw.
4. Bots. Everything is clear here, we are looking for people who have a lot of Steam accounts and ask them to vote from all accounts, in return we give the keys.

How to work with the community?

When you publish your game, you will receive a sea of \u200b\u200bcriticism of various kinds. Each person has his own attitude to games and to your particular theme of the game and he will express his opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. If you see that someone is not completely satisfied with your project, then you should not argue with him, just agree with this and say that in the future you will take into account his criticism or simply ignore it. You have to be as cold-blooded and patient as possible, remember, there are a lot of trolls on the network, just let them pass.

What happens after getting green light?

After your product receives a pass and the coveted plate is displayed, then you have to receive the status of a Steamworks partner. This is done once and in order to achieve this status you will have to:
1. Complete Tax Form W-8BEN.
2. Send a scanned copy of any document that proves your identity.
When everything goes well you will receive a letter like this:

How to make money on it?

There is nothing supernatural here, everything is very linear. Your income will come, so to speak, from two streams:
1. Purchasing your game on Steam. I'll tell you right away that Steam takes% from this.
2. Unofficial sales. The fact is that when you become a partner of Steamworks, you will be able to make requests to create keys with the game. But, I will say right away that this request can easily be rejected and you will not make the keys endlessly. Everything should be done in moderation, we got the keys and sold them to groups for raffles / buyers / farmers, etc. There will be income, but not sky-high.
That's all, I wish you the best of luck in creating your super game.