Weve written before about why reviewing games on Steam can help out your favourite game studios, and today were talking Steam Wishlists, and why theyre also important. Are Steam Wishlists ACTUALLY important to developers? In some instances yes, definitely, and in other instances we think so, yeah. This sounds complicated... Like most companies that own game distribution platforms, Valve isnt open about how their stores various chart algorithms work, or what theyre looking for when choosing to promote titles. When you look at the games that perform well in the charts or are featured in the Update News pop up, they tend to be games that either has a fair bit of a following already, or are from well-known publishers and developers with a dedicated following or a large ad budget. Its likely that these games have high Wishlist numbers, but we cant know this for sure and we dont know if Valve uses these in relation to either the charts or Update News features, so its a bit of a black box. Weve heard completely conflicting reports on how Valve interprets this data too. Some developers weve spoken to have claimed that a Valve rep told them that 5000 is the number of Wishlists needed for a game to be taken seriously when it comes to featuring on Steam. Others told us that the person they know at Valve said it was closer to 10,000. Others have claimed its much more like 50,000. Weve also been told that Valve doesnt care about Wishlist numbers at all. And others that its the only metric Valve uses. And weve been told that Wishlists are part of a mix of data Valve uses. So are Wishlists important when it comes to Valve providing featuring? We think so, yeah, but honestly we cant know for sure. But you said that Wishlists were definitely important! Theyre really important to us as a studio. While Valve doesnt tell you what it does with Wishlist data, it definitely encourages developers to use this feature of Steam. To quote their documentation, using the Wishlist feature gives you a sense of the level of interest by potential customers and a way of notifying interested customers when your game releases or goes on discount. These two elements - gauging the interest of our titles, and directly notifying people interested in our products - help us make decisions about our games. For example: so long as youve verified your e-mail account with Steam, and that youve opted-in to receive e-mails, Valve will send you a message whenever a game on your Steam Wishlist launches, or leaves Early Access. This helps us to get as many people buying our games at launch, which definitely has an impact on how high we climb up the New and Trending and Top Selling charts, which in turn helps reach more potential customers who happen to see the game in these sections during this period. So well make decisions about our marketing activities ahead of a launch that are based (partly) on how effective those activities are at increasing our Wishlist numbers on Steam, so we can make that launch splash as big as possible. Should we do another season of the podcast? Should we put money into Facebook advertising? Should we give out alpha access to our game? If something increases Steam Wishlist numbers, then its a good indicator that we should do it. Valve will also e-mail you if a game on your Wishlist is currently discounted, and again this is great for us because people who are price sensitive can pop a game of ours on their Wishlist, and keep track of its price until it reaches the point where theyre happy to jump onboard. It helps with other areas of our business too. If we have a game with a lot of Wishlists, it might be a good indicator that there are a number of people who are interested in buying it, but arent yet convinced its worth the asking price. We can use this data to help decide if the solution is to add more content to the game to increase the value proposition, or to rethink how we communicate the games value, or to simply put the game on sale. Its really easy. First, make sure youre logged into Steam, either here via a web browser, or via Steams mobile app, or the Steam desktop client. Second, navigate to the game youd like to add to your Wishlist (like our upcoming Mars Horizon), and click the Add to your wishlist button thats just beneath the screenshots carousel.  Third, double-check your e-mail preferences to ensure youre receiving the right e-mails from Valve. If you ever need any more help with this, Steam has a great guide all about it, and if you have any questions for us specifically, pop on over to our lovely little Discord. Thanks for reading! |
