Marketing Your Game Under the New Steam Rules

[Music] Let's get started here. This is the new Steam rules. Uh new Steam rules. I just realized it's kind of a double inandra like uh maybe a single entandra. I don't know. Um okay. So um just like on Thursday, just this recent last Thursday, Steam published this blog called the Steam Year in Review 2024. And they had this really really kind of interesting graph in there and it's uh this new release revenue and it's like up and to the right. Yeah. Up and to the right. Um this is new releases how much revenue they make. Okay. Right. And uh if if you look the 2023 oops uh they didn't make enough revenue the previous year. It they actually went down. It went down just a little bit. Um they didn't label their access their axes. Uh so I had to get in and zoom in. They lost seven pixels worth of revenue in 2023. I don't know how much that

translates to, but that's a big oops. Now, Valve famously flat structure. Somebody got called into somebody's office and like, why do we have seven pixels of lost revenue? Answer me that. I don't know if it was all the way up to the top. I don't know. Somebody got in trouble because if you look, I wrote a weekly blog. I couldn't keep up with all the changes in 2024 to fix up the seven pixel loss that they had last year. They released so many features. So many features last year. And if it the tail end of the blog, it went back up profit in 24 2024 for new release games back up again. No axis. So it went from 7 pixels down to 154 pixels up. That's a big increase. That's a good job, Valve. Or whoever was in charge there, whoever got the talking to took their lesson. Okay, so now if Valve adds a bunch of features and they get a 154 pixel increase, that

probably means you too should implement those changes that they did so that you also can get 154 pixel increase. Okay. So, um I bought my kid one of those choose your own adventure books. Uh, I don't know. Did you all read Choose Your Adventure? Pretty good, right? I just randomly picked on The Abominal Snowman. Um, and it's it's, you know, classic kid adventure. Kid climbs up Mount Everest. You shouldn't go up Mount Everest if you're a kid. Um, but it was really weird. Like one of the site I haven't read a choose your own adventure for a very long time since I was like 10 years old. And so we're reading it together. And there's a ch one of the choices gets to this part where all of a sudden these space alien cats show up and they they convince children to get into their spaceship and all these kids are like and then uh and then this line this is how it ends. This is the end of this chapter. It says remove your body and let your mind float free. Fear vanishes and before it know before you know it you are free. that I had to have a

father-son conversation about don't get into weird vehicles with strangers. I I don't know. This actually has nothing to do with the talk. I just thought this was really weird. Um but um very concerning. Very concerning. But okay, the the reason I brought this up was at the back of the choose your own adventure, they actually had the timeline because this was a reprint, a modern reprint, and they had a history of Choose Your Own Adventure, right? And they were like, "Oh, okay." Um, so they they first came out in ' 77 and for three years no sales. They couldn't get any publishers. Nothing was working. And what do they do? What they do is in 1980 they find a publisher and the publisher seeds America's libraries with a 100,000 free copies of Choose Your Own Adventures. And then in three short years, 10 million unit sales of this thing. And it's basically okay. So, like every every post on r/gamedev is basically somebody saying, "Marketing's changing all the time. Everything's different. Oh, I can't keep up. I'm that's why my game's failing." Um, here's the universal truth with an

interactive media like games of any form. Any interactive media, whether it's a book or something, you need to give away something because to play it is to understand it. And you really don't know how a game plays and whether you like it until you try it. I I'm convinced that's that's a universal truth. Okay. So, demos. This talk is basically a lot of people mention demos. Demos have the biggest impact for fixing low visibility. That's what it comes down to, folks. Valve knows it. I know it. And you need to know it. Okay? That's the only thing I want you to come away from here is you need to know that demos are cool, kids. All right. Right. Good. Now, there's three big changes in 2024 that increased that 174 pixel profit that they saw. Um, one is demo dominance, number two is post-launch boost, and three is nextfest visibility. Those are the big three changes that we're going to go through. Okay, so for the rest of this talk, when I say launch, don't ask the question. It's the same thing. Whether you're doing early access or full launch, whatever, this applies. It's the same thing. Early

access is your launch. There's no difference there. Okay? All the data that I show here is from me basic or here's where it comes from. Basically, it's either I surveyed all of you and I said, "Hey, how did you do in nextfest?" all that kind of stuff. People submit their data to me. Sometimes I scrape steam using like VG insights, that sort of thing. Sometimes I reference other writers who've done this research too, like game discover code or push to talk. Great blogs you should be following. Um Steamworks documentation. Sometimes it has this data like my pixel chart. And then um just individual stories on my Discord. Okay, so that's where it comes from. So this is going to be a wild talk that's going to take a lot. I'm going to go fast. You do not have time to take notes and take all the screenshots that you need to. I'm uploading this presentation to how tomarketagame.com/gdc2025. I want you all just to release your bodies and just just soak this in. You don't have to raise your your phones all the time. Just soak it in. Release your bodies. We're all going to release our bodies. Ready? Release your bodies. Okay. Demo dominance. All right. So, here's just a game. I'm going to show a lot of examples that are just awesome.

Okay. Uh Eden Crafters releases a demo and their wish list go crazy. That big flatline, that's when they try the social media, the Reddit posting. Nothing really works until you release a demo. Here's Parcel Simulator. Nothing really worked. They release a demo and their wish list chart goes crazy. I asked the developer, Dan, of Parcel Simulator. He said, "My Steam page has been live for 2 years and gathered 7,000 wish lists." Then he released a demo and he got 17,000 wish lists. In one week, he got as many wish lists as he did for an entire two years before that place. You have to release a demo. Many Lane, another great game. flat social media trailers, all that blah blah blah. Release a demo and the wish list go crazy. And this is what the developer, his name's Duke. It's It's not like I forgot it. His name is Dup. Uh he said the demo launch was also at the time when Wholesome Games started communicating on them, sending out to content creators. And let me just be clear, demos unlock visibility. It allows you to get content creators. It allows you to get festivals, word of

mouth, Steam, algorithm boost. This just comes for free with your demo. It's not by itself. Okay, so the big change that Valve introduced was they added front page visibility when you launch your demo. It looks like this. There's a new tab on the front page of Steam called new and trending free. Okay, if you launch a demo and you hit the numbers right, you can get up on this thing. Here's one of the first games to do it. It's called Clean Fall. Look at that last spike. I don't know if you can see it, but their wish list shot up when they got onto the new and trending free charts. It's huge, folks. You need to get on this chart. Now, we don't know exactly what it takes, the thresholds, but I've been interviewing a lot of devs who get it, and it seems like you got to get about a hundred concurrent users playing your game, and it seems like it's a winner stage. So, you'll pop on, and you'll kind of float on there for a little while, and then you'll drop off if you're not meeting your numbers. What those numbers are, I don't know, but you got to get up there. So, this is the tricky part. You need visibility to get on the new and trending, and you got to get a demo to get visibility. It seems like a circular logic. Okay, so here

this is how you actually do it. I'm going to give you the full thing. Um, this plan would cost you thousands of dollars from a PR firm or you just take a screenshot. So, get get your phones ready. I told you to release your bodies. Get your bodies back engaged and then take the screenshot and then I'm going to we're going to keep going. Okay, so here it is. Get ready. This is how you can launch your demo. Get ready. Here comes the timeline and we'll go through it. We'll go through it. Take your picture and then I'm going to move on. Okay, ready? Get ready. Three, two, one. Screenshot again. and it's on how to marketame.com/gdc2025. As soon as this talk's over, I'm going to upload. So don't don't yell at me right away. Okay, so here's step by step how you do it. You launch your Steam page. You need genre, art direction, 36 of gameplay, 30 second gameplay trailer. That's what you need to get your Steam page up. Do it. Don't delay. Get your Steam page up. Okay? Then develop like you're on fire. You need to get your demo playable as soon as possible. The longer you wait on getting your demo up, the longer that flat line where you don't get any visibility despite posting on Reddit, Facebook, whatever, any

social media platform that doesn't really work. It's not until you get your demo that you get your visibility. So, get that demo playable. Now, remember how I said you can only launch your demo once to show up on new and trending? That's the rule from the new Steam rules. But play tests don't count. You can do a play test. It's a new feature. It's not new. It's it's been around, but a play test feature doesn't count as you can just upload it. And when you do that, you can also upload on H.io. But you can also use your play test, reach out to streamers, get streamers to cover that play test. Okay? Then test, patch, do marketing beats. Just just keep repeating your play test like every month or every week, however fast you can develop. Keep doing the cycle and you're patching it. You're making your demo better, your play test better. You're just making your game better. Here's a game called Nomad Idol. They did a play test. Look, that huge spike looks just like a demo launch. You can get that same visibility boost from a play test that you can from a demo or just about. Now, the whole reason you're doing this play test cycle is to prep for your demo. Okay? Now, when you go to

Steam, this is new. This is the new thing. When you upload your demo, there's a popup that comes up and says, do you want a separate Steam page or not? And when you do a separate Steam page, if you search your name of your game, you actually get two results. Now, um one one page is for the demo, one page is for your game. I did a study from the Steam NextFest of all the people who some people did the separate page, some people didn't. It doesn't make a difference. I saw almost no difference in wish list gain from those two different pages. It's the same. The difference is that you can get reviews when you do a separate Steam page. And I think that is more valuable than anything. You need those reviews. I know it's going to be painful. People are going to say stuff sucks, but it's better when it sucks during a demo because you can fix it for the main game. So, I highly recommend separate demo page. Okay. Now, you're not launching your demo yet. You're going out to big festivals. PC Gaming Show is one. Whatever festival you can get into, okay? You want to launch your demo with a big event like one of these festivals if you can, if you can get into it. Um,

Zoliver Nelson Jr. launched I am your beast on the PC Gamer Show. Immediately launched his demo at the same time. Perfect synergy. It just like blew up. You can also coordinate with streamers to cover your demo launch. You want to do that. And then you want to do this new feature. This is the new feature. There's a new button where you can launch when you launch your demo. You push this button and everybody who wishlisted your demo before now gets an email that says, "Hey, a demo's live." That's the secret. Okay. So, what you're doing is they get this email. This is what the email looks like. Just looks like that. So, what you're doing is you're you're coordinating all those things, the festival, the streamers, that email wish list button, all those things hit at the same time. Hopefully, everything works and you end up on that new and trending thing. That's the whole goal. That's why we're doing all this. That's how you get on there. Okay, so here's Nomad Isle. Remember, they did the play test. This is what it looks like when they later launched their demo and then they shortly after that went into NextFest. See, you get that double spike. That's why you do these two different things. You get you get twice as much visibility from these two different beats. And then uh from once

your demo's launched, you just keep it up. And then you just do an endless cycle of applying to festivals, applying to streamers, just trying to get festivals and streamers, festivals and streamers. That's how you get visibility, folks. It's the demo, festivals, and streamers. my website how toarketame.comfree or how tomarketaggame.comfestestivals. Our community curates for free. It's not like I'm charging to do this stuff. You just get a free list of festivals that you apply for. Just do that. Just apply for as many as you possibly can. And then after a while of doing streamers and festivals, streamers and festivals, you then do NextFest. Okay, that's at the end. It's the grand finale. Don't launch your demo just before Steam NextFest. Okay, everybody launches during Steam NextFest. And remember how I said that that new and trending chart is kind of ranked and it's competing. Everybody launches their demo like the last minute before NextFest. So if you try and launch your demo before NextFest, you're fighting with everybody else for that limited slot on the new and trending charts. It's too much competition. Don't do it. Your uh NextFest appearance is your grand

finale. That's the end of your demo. You've done all this marketing up to this point. The final thing is NextFest. It's not the debut of your demo. Hold it. All right. So, here's what you do when I do the big red. This is all stuff you got to do, but release your bodies. Keep your bodies released. Start thinking about your demo as soon as you begin development. The faster you get your demo out, the better. Get that demo out as soon as you reach the necessary quality bar. What is it? I don't know. That's up to you to figure out. You're the game designers. Okay. Demos done right. That's another talk I gave about how to design a demo. Some basic facts. How long? I know somebody's going to ask how long should I make my demo? As long as you can. Um, do look at demos done right. I explain some of this stuff. It's another It's on the GDC vault. It's free. Uh it's my other talk. Um and then some people say, "Oh, publishers will hate me. They're not going to sign me. I'm looking for a publisher. How can I get signed if I publish my demo?" This is the game. He is coming. They published their demo. They got covered by Splattercat. And he said, "Some This is the This is the title of this video. Something tells me this Dark Rogike is

going to be a big hit." Um guess who saw that? Hooded Horse, one of the best publishers in the world, saw that SplatterCat video and was like, "Yeah, you know what? I think this is going to be hit. I'm going to sign them. And they got signed. And I know for a fact, I talked to Tim and he said, "We signed this game because of Splattercat's video." Your demo drives the visibility. It's not the other way around. You guys, you all have to get a demo out. Okay, just get a demo out. All right, let's talk about post-launch boosts. Okay, this is how Steam works. I'm going to explain it real quick. I get this comment a lot. Hey, we just launched your game. We we we sales are a little slow, but we're ready to start marketing. Okay, how do we promote it? Here's the deal. There's something called real steam. Okay, real steam is where stuff actually happens. This is your goal. You're trying to get over real steam. The actual promotion you do after launch is locked behind this barricade of real Steam. Valve only gives you access to all these tools. These are the tools you use to promote your game after launch. They're only available if you've reached certain sales goals. Okay? It's locked.

Okay? You don't get to use them until you land in Real Steam. Real Steam is the goal. Don't tell Valve I told you this. It's around $150,000 gross revenue pre- Steam cut within the first six to9 months. And the reason I say don't tell Valve is because they always are like there's no there's no benchmarks. There's no delineation. They're right. Their code never has like a number. There's none. People always say like, "Oh, I heard you get an extra boost at $500,000." There's none. That's not true. Valve never codes in hard numbers. But statistically, like I've seen enough games, I'm like, "How much have you made?" And they're like, "Oh, 150." I was like, "Go ask Valve for a daily deal." And they're like, "I did and they gave me it. It's around $150,000." Okay, that's what Real Steam basically is. Okay, so back to our oops where Valve kind of messed up in 2023 and then fixed it in 2024. The way they fixed it, the way they got that 174 pixel recovery was they did two things. Okay, they pushed more games into Real Steam. They didn't change, they didn't

lower the bar, they just did more to get more games into Real Steam. And then they added more tools to Real Steam. Let me explain it. Okay, so I did this. This is my graph. Every year, every January, I look at all the games that released in the previous year and I do some estimation to figure out how many games made it into real Steam. I've been doing it since 2022. And when I was going through January 2024, I was like, I think they're doing more games. Like I saw it there. I counted 91 more games than 2023. And I was like, something's up. Something is up. And Valve pushed it. That's why I wasn't I'd like to say I wasn't surprised when they released the oops chart. They were just like that explains so much. Um here's what it is. They just pushed more games. How did they do it? Demos. I They really push demos. They added all those new demo features that I just described. That whole system. And they also allowed more festivals from these third parties. They said this is from their blog post. They said we had 900 festivals in 2024 like Wholesome Direct and stuff like that.

This is what I mean by festival. And um basically people always say like I wish Steamer curated. It would fix everything if Steamer curated. Well, it is. It's just Valve outsourced the curation to these festivals like Wholesome Direct or something. Like do you really want somebody valve telling you whether your game's wholesome or not? No. It's better to let Wholesome decide what's wholesome. Okay. So, um that's that's basically what they did. That's what they did. They were outsourcing curation. And so, you apply to wholesome games and they they curate whether you're worth if you're wholesome enough or not. That's up to them. Uh, but Valve does do some like idlerfest. These are these fests that boost games into real Steam. Okay, so get a demo and apply to festivals. How to market agame.com/festivals. Free list. All right, so if they push more games into real Steam, isn't that wish list inflation? Wish inflation. Um, this is what I think. This is this is my mental model of how wish list actually work. Okay, if your game's a paper airplane and the further you get it, the more into real steam you are, wish lists

are basically like going up floors in a building and then throwing it your paper airplane off that floor. So, if you go to 50,000 wish lists, you can throw it pretty far, but then it coasts. If you go up 100,000, your chances are better of getting all the way over there. But every game's different. There's different types of games, right? You could be a crumpled ball. That could be your game. Who knows? Maybe that works. Nobody's ever tried it. So when you go to launch, you are standing when you get that many wish lists, you are standing on that floor and your your launch is basically throwing that game and figuring out whether it works or not. And then the paper ball didn't work. It didn't work. Um that's essentially what it is. And so the paper airplane says, "I got 20% conversion. This is great. I love Steam. I got so many wish lists and it converted and it worked." But the 2% conversion is what it looks like when it fell off. And so that guy is going to post on the paper guy is going to write on on r/gamedev. That guy's gonna say, "Wish lists are inflated." It's like, "Well, you kind of had a paper ball." Um, but then the other guy I And here's the thing, folks. Here's the thing, folks. I see lots of games that have very good conversion and

they launched like a month ago. It's still You can still convert wish lists. It just valists aren't a guarantee. They're just like I said, going up to the top story and throwing your game off. That's that's all a wish list is. So, why do some convert at two versus 20? Why? It's the magic. magic. I'm a filthy marketer. I have no idea what art is. I have no concept of art. That's there's no stats. I can't draw a graph that says, "Well, if you add if you make your character blue, 25% chance of increasing." No, it's art. This is art. We are making art in its design. Ask an artist. Ask a poet why one game doesn't work. Don't ask a filthy marketer like myself. Okay? And I'm just going to handwave it. It's the magic. There's some games have the magic and I I don't know what it is. Okay, so but we can see it. I can see the results of the magic. Okay, Discovery Q is huge. Discovery Q makes up about half I've

surveyed tons of games about the Discovery Q. It's this widget that nobody no game designer has ever used, but every player uses. Um and it gets about 45% of your traffic comes from it. Okay. Now, um we're going to follow uh I can look at the stats that came from Discovery Q. whether uh discovery Q gen generated a wish list or not. And we can look at the impressions generated by the discovery queue. And here's two games that got into the discovery queue. If you do decent with wish list, I'm saying like 10,000 wish list, you get your 10 reviews. Valve when you launch a game gives you 25,000 impressions pretty much thereabouts. The first two days, day one, day two, you both both days you get 25,000. Then they watch how those two days do. And what happens in Discovery Q if you as a developer you've never used this but everybody else does add click. Some people click add to wish list some people say ignore. Some people buy the game. Valve watches how those stats go. And if your game performs well in the discovery queue they give you more. The hot games get 70,000 wish lists on the

third day. It's really the third day that's the magic day. And if the game doesn't convert well, it goes down. You get dropped. And it goes on and on and on for the days and days after your launch. The games that get the magic, Valve knows and they just keep funneling more and more visibility. And so really um the discovery queue, you can't influence it. You can't like tweet and say, "Hey everybody, do the discovery queue and wish list my game and and buy it." You can't. Nobody knows about your game. The discovery Q is for new people just to see it. So it's your game versus potential customers. There's no in between. You have no say in it. So, you might say, "Well, that's probably just just clickbait games that get it. All those cheap games." No, I look at the again, I look at every game every year, every January that make it into real Steam. Wide diversity of games. So many different types of games. Real nice games, not stupid clickbait, easy, hyper casual games. No, real games make it into real Steam. So, if you recently launched and you're like, "Oh my god,

what happened? Why are inflated?" Look at your discovery Q traffic. Look at your week. Look at your discovery queue. Look at your third day. Did it go up or did it go down versus day two? That tells you so much. That tells you whether you've had the magic. Okay. Um, when Valve Valve is basically, well, Steam is an engine that turns magic into money. Okay, that sounds like that's actually that sounds really good. I should tell them to say that. Okay. Basically, what happens is if Valve detects that your game has the magic, they will give you all the visibility they can muster. Okay. And I looked at the games that got into real Steam, all the games of last year that got into real Steam, 74% of the games that got into Steam or into real Steam did it within 3 months or less. 74%. Okay. The next set of games, it took them six months, but they still got it. And then it's a much smaller for the rest of the year. It happens very fast. You know immediately whether your game has the magic like within a week, maybe a month.

But what about Among Us? People are saying, "Uh, our game failed, but what about Among Us?" You know, Among Us, they they sold later, not right away. You know, it's like we just pushed the ball into real Steam. Okay, I looked at 100 had 14,000 games that released last year that didn't have the magic, that didn't get into real Steam. Only one recovered. I found it. I found the one game that pulled the Among Us last year. It's called Beltmatic. Okay, this is what happened. In three months, they had 51 reviews. That is not real Steam. A thousand reviews after 9 months, they somehow pulled it off. Okay, it was streamers and they didn't market their game in the original, but whatever. But here's the thing. No other games, one game. I found the one game that did it. Nobody else did it. Okay, here's I'm going to be honest with you all. If you don't hit 250 reviews in your first month, it's more than likely not going to happen. It's just not. It's time to move on. plan B, whatever. It doesn't work. You can't do it afterwards. One game. Belmnatic was the only one that pulled this off. I'm just going to be honest. I'm sorry. It's not me. It's a

data. I just pulled in the data. I'm really sorry. That's not me. I didn't make Steam. All right. Increased benefits of Real Steam. This is how Valve fixed it all up. They just added more money to Steam. Once you get into Real Steam, they have six titles per day. They added six titles to be appearing in the daily deal. If you don't know the daily deal, this is it. It's on the front page of Steam. Um, Miami Lane when they got a daily deal, they've sold as many copies basically as their launch day. Daily deal is a big deal. You get about 10,000 to $30,000. Um, I worked with Lombbe of totally human.io, really good guy. Follow that guy. 400 reviews, six months. That's basically if you hit that number, ask for a daily deal. Valve has added part of their new deal, their new Steam deals. Uh, they just give you a calendar. You get to pick your daily deal. They automatically do it. You'll just get a note. It says you can now pick a daily deal. Wow, do it. Um, but in all that scraping, I found there were some games, 10% of games that got a daily deal didn't really seem like they were real Steam. Okay, so if you're at about a 100red reviews, why not just let

Valve tell you no. Just apply for it. What you do is you go to Steam support, just open a support ticket and say, "I'd like to be in real Steam." No, don't say that. Just say, "Can I get a daily deal?" Tell them that. Can I get a daily deal? But al access games can do it, too. So don't you don't have to wait for full release. You're translated, right? Because Valve really daily deals are public everywhere. So they got to do that. Okay. Um uh so featuring during Steam sales, this is a new change. Now during a Steam sale, they'll put games in there. How do you know? You'll just get an email. See, there's that featuring right there. Um you'll just get an email a few days before it just says, "Hey, you're invited to the Steam sale. Do you want to do it?" Always say yes. Don't you don't even have to do it. You make so much money. This is a game that got that featuring. Look at that. It looks kind of like a cat, but uh that's what it is. So, if you get that email, always say yes. And this is not for you all. I know all of you would say yes. I've literally had devs coming in and they say, "Our publisher said no." Was that smart? That is so wrong. Okay?

If your publisher ever says, "We don't know if we're going to opt into this." You send them this video. Okay? When this goes up on YouTube or the vault, send them this video. Publisher, I'm talking to you now. Let your developers into this. This is free money. I don't know why publishers always do this. So, say yes. Okay. Longer launch discounts. You can now do two weeks as your default when you launch your game for the discount. Do it. It's two weeks. Just do it. That's the thing. Um, you should pair your second week with a big festival like a Steam winter sale or something. It it it's a good boost. Okay. So, in short, Valve fix the oops by increasing the number of the games that get into it and how much money you make. Okay. I've had devs ask me, "We made about $300,000, so we're ready to move on to our second game." Getting into real Steam is like finding true love. It's true love. Don't let it away. Don't give it up. It's It's true love. Some people never even find true love. So many devs want to be in Real Steam.

If you ever get into Real Steam, you can live your rest of your life on Steam. Okay? Every year you can update it. DLC. Hire an intern to just keep adding DLC. Never give up real Steam. Steam will promote you for years if you get into real Steam. Your mission is to get a demo, then get into real Steam. Okay, finally, let's go real quick through NextFest. Um, basically, Nexfest, the new the new way they do it, it works exactly like the discovery queue. They just took they must have copied and pasted the Steam discovery Q algorithm and they just pasted it into Steam NextFest. I looked at this is the median wish list that you typically get in NextFest and those tiers are how you know how how much of the magic the game has. Um if we follow four games you'll notice that the top tier games all get 50,000 visit impressions on next the first day. Silver bronze games are kind of like if you come in with lower wish list you kind of end up at 15,000 but it works just like the discovery queue. The first day huge increase. They show every game

no matter the tier no matter how weird it looks. They put you on nextfest. They'll show you this is the next next fest impressions. In fact, journalists got freaked out. They're like, "Why are there garbage AI games on Steam? What is this? This like a guy from I think he's in Kotaku." And he was like blue skying about this. And it's like, "No, this is this is real. This is all the weird stuff you find in Steam." Um, but what happens is the Steam algorithm, just like on the discovery queue, if that bronze tier, if they see that people are clicking away and not liking the game, they hide it. They really hide it. That's the way NextFest works. And so this is the stats that came from my community. They they share their data. This is what it looks like on NextFest. What that tells me is you need to get a high quality game into NextFest. You do NextFest at the very end. It discovers the magic in games. In real games like the seat taking your Yeshua Graves, they got into the diamond tier. They did very well because they're wonderful game. Steam turns attractiveness into money. That's the engine of dreams. Okay. So,

always do the last NextFest. Okay. Um, and finally, Trailer TV on NextFest. This is all new. It's wonderful. Just make a good trailer. Don't make a long slow in a world trailer. Just get right to gameplay right away. No logos. Take all that garbage out. Just go straight into it and launch your demo months and months and months and months before NextFest. Again, NextFest is the final say. It's not the beginning. Okay? And then they cleaned up Steam pages so that you can't do all these links. All you do is create a developer page. Everybody needs to create a developer page. Everybody forgets to do it. create a franchise and then link to your other games from within your game. That's the only way that Steam now allows you to crossromote that way. Grey Alien Games did a study. Their best link was a pop-up that when you start the game says, "Hey, try our new game." It works. It works. Also, you can just sell merch. Baldersgate 3 just sells you merch when you start the game. Why not? Why not? Let's just do it. Also, bundle with your friends. Bundle with your friends. It's good. Every marketing activity is a blip compared to demos. Get your demos out, folks. Just make them. All right. remove your bodies. You can bring them back,

but go sign up from the mail list. How toarketame.comfree. I don't have time for questions, but I'll be out there. Thank you so much. Thank you. [Applause] [Music]