Steam Next Fest is cooked! It's the slop right? It is cooked slop?

Hey, it's Chris Ukowski here. Uh glasses mode, it's late at night. For some reason I always do these Steam Next Fest reviews uh late at night cuz I don't know, I've been busy. So, this is the one for October. Here it is, October 20 6th. There is it's October 22nd, it ends at 26th. Um I normally like to do these uh right on the first day to kind of capture the thing, but I was busy and it's not So, now we're on Wednesday, which is the switchover day. This is the day that we go from Steam Next Fest total no holds barred, you can see everything. You can see it all. And then now they've they've filtered the algorithm based on interactions. So, we're seeing a cleaned-up Steam Next Fest. This is the one that everybody's calling Slop Fest. Really is crazy this time. Um I'm going to be showing some numbers from a blog post. I'm going to be going through uh we're going to look at Steam Next Fest and just kind of look at it. Um so, we'll just continue on. So, let's look at how AI sloppy this Steam Next

Fest is that everybody's worried about. Uh first off, uh this uh this is the front page of Steam. You'll notice that this used to be See where it says Final Fantasy? That used to be uh Steam Next Fest, and then they've done what's called a take under. This is called a take under. Um and this always makes people freak out. They're like, "Oh my god, they took over Steam Next Fest, bully." Every single Wednesday of Steam Next Fest, they always do this. They always move it from a takeover to a take under. There's nothing different. It's not people are like, "Whoa, it's cuz Valve finally realized there's so much slop, so they did a take under." Nope, this always happens. There's always a take under. They'll and Valve will return it back up to the top, usually like Friday or Saturday. Tomorrow's Friday, so usually Friday or Saturday they pop this back up to a take over. This is called a takeover. This is a called a take under. All right, so we're going to click on it and we're going to go through it. But, um I've got some numbers for you. I don't just I'm not one of those YouTubers that just blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah. I give you stats, okay? I give you data, my opinions. I don't care. I I I've no idea what's anything. I go I go based on data. What I don't understand how other people can do this without going off data. Like I What am I? Just making this up? No, I look at this. Okay, so let's let's switch over to uh data mode, okay? Um, let me just push this, ready? Ready? We're going to draw this, ready? And Oops, pushed the wrong button. All right, let me try that again. One, two, three. There we go. We got it. Magic finger. It was I think it was using the wrong finger.
[clears throat]
All right, so here we are. Let me duck under that. Okay, so uh this is the history of Steam Next Fest. This data also comes from Game Discover Co. Okay, I can't cross over this invisible boundary. See, boop. Uh but Game Discover Co tracks how many games have been in every Next Fest. And then I did this last one cuz I've I'm scraping Steam uh for this study for Steam Next Fest. So, this is my scraped data list last day. So, everybody's

freaking out cuz it goes like this and then it goes this. Some people say it's exponential, but it's I think we need another data point to do exponential cuz remember exponential is increasing at an increasing rate. No, this is definitely an increasing rate, but it has to continue. I think we have to have three data points before we can tell if it's actually exponential. People throw around the word exponential without actually understanding what exponential means. It's increasing at an increasing rate. Before, we were just actually pretty flat. The increase of Steam Next Fest numbers was actually not exponential. This was not exponential. This is just growth. And then this technically is kind of exponential, but it's only two data points that are growing at an increasing rate. So, I think you need three. I don't know. Tell Don't comment down below. But anyway, so um this is the one that it's so hot and heavy. Everybody's Everybody's worried about this one, okay? Um, but but let me tell you um I like to give reassurance to you all and so uh one thing that we'll do what I did was um I made you a tool. So if you are in

Steam Next Fest, if you're in Steam Next Fest and you're wondering how am I doing? Am I Am I slop? Does AI Does Steam consider me AI slop? I got you covered. So I forgot to click it but anyway, so here it is. This is this tool that I made. You get to it at um how to market a game.com/snf. URL but it's Steam Next Fest/snf. Um and it's a tracker tool. You put in your your uh your your Steam ID um your URL and then you just click these buttons in it and it logs you into Steam Next Fest. I mean or into Steam works. You got to you got to supply the login but it drops you right to the data that we need to do this um and it'll give you all the data slots. So you just go boop boop boop and you download all the data from the day before and it does it automatically for you. So it's really cool. And then what what this what's cool is I've got data for at least well I just did I

I waited just the last two Next Fest cuz who knows? They change so much apparently. Um that this is the data of how your game does by impressions and by wishlists over time throughout the week and I base this off of the data sets from previous Next Fest and I built a little algorithm thing that that predicts how you're going to do at Steam Next Fest. So you just you fill in this data. It's better you can type it in manually but you're probably going to pick the right numbers and then you're you're just going to be inaccurate. But what you do is you just click these and it downloads the right data, loads it into the system and then it'll project Let me see. Shouldn't have deleted those cuz you kind of got a projection but it'll it'll map you on the projection show if you are above or below trend And I save none of your data. I think I said it up here. This is kind of my privacy policy right up here. Where do I put? I don't store your data. Your numbers are safe in the or stored in this

browser. I don't I don't even know how to I I don't store your data. I don't want your data yet. But I not without your consent. So it just stays in the browser, stays in a cookie so that if you come back, you don't have to re-enter it every day. So just use the same browser you're logging in. Anyway, use it. When the whole thing's over, when all Steam Next Fest is over, I'm going to enable this button that says submit data, and then you can send the data to me, but you have to consent to it. I won't I don't take your data unless you send it to me. And that way we can build the model to see if a slot fest really does change these numbers to see if like is this really how how your game does throughout the day. So I don't save your data now, but I will in the future. So let's get back to looking at some data here. Let me wait wait No, I didn't There it is. All right. So this is the charts of the past data. Let me let me show you some what this means. So why is it seven why why do we have 7,000 games this one? Now I was wondering like

well, what total is this? And so I did some analysis and it turns out only a third of games actually do Next Fest. Like two-thirds of games. So these are the previous ones. So 2020, 2024, 2025. If you add up all the games that participated in all the Next Fests and you compare them to how many games released that year, it's kind of back of the map napkin math because some some games do in Steam Next Fest, but they don't release until the next calendar year. I'm kind of slopping the numbers around, but in general it used to be only about a third of people would actually participate in Next Fest. And I talked to devs, indie devs, and I was like, "Well, what how'd your Next Fest go?" And they're like, "What's Next Fest?" I was like, "You released a game." Like they released a game. I was like, "Did you do Nextfest?" They're like, "What's Nextfest?" They didn't even know. Like 2/3 of people didn't even do Nextfest. They just released their game without Nextfest. I was like, "What are you doing?" So, I think part of the reason we're seeing is yes, AI slop, of course. But the other reason is because of uh uh people just finally learning this

stuff. They're like, "Oh, I see on Reddit all this stuff about Steam Nextfest and I and I read Chris's blog about Steam Nextfest. So, now I know I'll I know I'll enter." So, I think it's combination of slop and people just learning how Steam works, okay? So, um like I said, this is the slop fest when I something critical happened where I think the AI tools just got good enough to develop games and so everybody's just making AI games now. Um I did scrape AI disclosures and um I'll show you in a second. I I did some analysis of how many games were slop um in this Steam Nextfest. Uh but this is this is the the what they say I I scraped the disclosures that they do cuz disclosures are just text and I um ran it through some keyword analysis that I I worked I full disclosure, I used Claude an AI code up this stuff cuz I I would never do this. I would never be able to to do all this code. Like I did it in like 3 days. That's why it's a little late is cuz Claude did it. This would take me years

to do what Claude did in just a day. So, full disclosure. Um but [clears throat] the model what it does is it it looks at some of the keywords and it just says, "Oh, this is uh AI art and visuals. No, this text localization." Uh that's what they are. So, it's mostly all the AI slop is mostly art and visuals. Now, there's no code in here. Well, it does say code dev tools. Some people say that in their disclosure even though Steam says, "Hey, we don't even care. You don't have to say AI disclosure code cuz we assume everybody's doing cap code. We just know everybody's doing code, but everything else they don't have to." So, those are just those 579 devs didn't actually you that disclosure thing. They just disclosed anyway that they're using code. Good on them. Okay. So, we're now a few minutes into this thing. I'm just going to I'm just going to ham it up here just like nothing's going. This is a secret between you and me. You're still watching this. So, anytime I'm going to call this video AI's cooked nextfest, we're going to get people who are going to just see the title of this thing and maybe a little bit of the description and then they're

just going to spout down below their their opinions on AI without even watching this video. Okay, this is what's so funny. Um So, here's our secret. This is a test to see how much YouTube sucks. Cuz YouTube does suck. Um Most people comment and they complain and they never actually consume the media that they're commenting on for some reason. So, I will know if you have actually watched this video because we're going to use the word carnival. I just picked that word carnival randomly. Um This is kind of secret between you and me and watch it. So, if you comment below and use the word carnival in any context. You're like, "Hey, this Steam Nextfest is sure of a carnival." Or "Hey, you know what? After I After I sell my game and I do well, I'm going to go on a carnival cruise." You can use the word carnival in anywhere in your comment in any way. Like, "Hey, my nickname in high school was carnival." Whatever it is, uh you can use that that phrase carnival and I'll know that you actually watched this video and we're going to see in the

comments below all the people who actually didn't watch this video. They're just commenting cuz they saw the thumbnail that said AI Steam Nextfest and they're going to spout their opinions without actually watching this video. So, it's a fun experiment as to how much people comment without actually consuming the media they're commenting on. So, it's funny how much uh YouTube sucks. And we're going to we're going to do a live experiment here. But, one thing, don't tell people. I will delete your comment if you go, "Hey, by the way, Chris says uh use the word carnival and you won't be considered an idiot." Um don't don't disclose that. That's just a secret between you and me. If I see somebody disclosing the secret about the carnival thing, I'll just delete that comment. But it's just a fun social experiment to see how few people actually watch the videos that they comment on. Anyway, we're carrying on so that those people who do that don't actually pick up on our little scheme here. If we look at what genres have the most slop, it is this. So what I did was I said, "Well, the AI disclosures per genre." Because Steam We'll see it in a second.

Steam does this genre breakdown. I'll show you what I mean by that. It's a pair of a main genre and a subgenre. And the developers opt into it. They say, "My game is this genre plus this subgenre." And I'll show you where that where we see this. And so what I did was I grabbed the classifications that every game did. And then I looked and I cross-referenced that with the slop, like whether they AI disclosed. And this is what it is. So like half of all RPG strategy RPG games said, "Yeah, we got some AI in here. We got We got AI up in here." All the way down. So look at all these strategy RPGs. Most of the slop stuff is like RPGs, strategy games, simulation games, those kind of things. The games that are least likely are the platformers. These these and dating sim.
[gasps]
You know, it is late. Like I I'm not I'm up late. This is late for me. So you see these puzzle platformers. I think these are cuz these are the very artisanal. Like I would never do

anything like that. Uh those are the artisanal people. So um So um I'm going to I That was a preview. I'm not going to talk about that now. We're going to go look at Steam Next Fest. I'm I'm coming. I'm going to tell you I also did the cross-reference analysis of what genres are the best, what are doing the best in Steam Next. We'll get there. We'll get there. But I want to look at Steam Next Fest cuz part of the reason I do this, and let me let me do my snap here. Wait, that was a prank. Okay, wait. Now, that was also a prank. So, wait. Wait. Let me 3 2 Wait, hang on. I'm not I'm not snapping it. Okay, ready? 3 2 1 Did it. Um Part of the reason I do this is I like to document this for posterity reasons so that I can go back and say, "When did they change it and what did they change?" Um so, here's the big change. This is the big change that they did in the Steam Next Fest. Let me just kind of move this around a little bit. Yeah. Okay. So, the big changes that they did this Steam Next Fest is they used to

have and I'm going to turn off the audio here. I am sorry if that Let me just see if that I think we're safe. I was just doing a a quiet sound check to see if uh the sound carries over, but I don't think it does. Sorry if it ducks over. I try to make sure that the audio doesn't bleed through from this stuff. Okay, here's the big change. Look at this. By genre, by theme, by feature charts, live streams. That is the same except for one thing that Valve did this Steam Next Fest. I took a picture of my last video, which I'll link in below. Let me just do a quick snap in here. See this? This is what the old one looked like. See where it says for you? No for you. Steam is Steam Next Fest is no longer for you. No, what they did was cuz for you was like an algorithmic thing that said like you have these preferences, you are going to like these games. Well, Valve says, "I think we have that. Let's just use that algorithm for all of our things." And so, um when we go to genres and then we click these

genre pairs like I was talking about, this is essentially for you. See? Games for your selected categories and they kind of are apparently doing an algorithm matching based on what I've played and what I what I like, apparently. So, there is no longer for you. It's just mixed in now. Okay. So, So, we've not That's a big change. Here's the other change and this is what I was talking about in my stats when I was like, oh these genre pairs. So all Valve made these pairs of genres where you go like puzzle hidden object, puzzle logic and people could classify their games. Now this is Valve's idea of how they're going to get past they knew slop was coming. They knew it was coming so they're like, okay let's prepare let's try and personalize it because this is very similar to personal calendar and personal calendar has been a success. It's really it's given more personal recommendations and that's what Valve is trying to do here and that was their theory of what would

work this time. We'll see. Why do I see yawn so much? Anyway, so that's the experiment. That's what we're going to test um by doing all this. So that's where this pairing and all that stuff is coming through. So that's what Valve's hoping is going to fix a lot of this stuff. So we'll see. We'll see. Um one interesting thing if we look at genre here and again I went back let me do a little mini snap right there there's me from February. I think this is from February. I looked at these genres and I put red spots if they carried over. They took out idler and rhythm and music for those genres. I don't know they're like get that idler and rhythm and music what were we thinking. So they took those out and they just left it with these kind of core genres of these top these top ones. So I took these visual novel they kept. And then psychological horror. Now one thing I did do is I turned off porn games. I just I said no porn games.

It's just so that I don't have to go in and edit out if there's like a boob or a something else going in here. I don't know I don't want to have to come back and edit that out or blur it out. This is I'm just making this whole thing. So anyway, other than that everything else is the same. Other than this is the big change, this faceted browsing, I think is what they call it. Uh they took out for you and they just blended for you. And one thing that's always wonder funny, uh horror I always say make horror games. Um we got themes here. There's uh they don't consider horror a genre, they consider it a theme. This is for you or so. Survival. That's a sub genre right there. Okay. Um now the big thing that is always good to see. So let's see um I'm going to go through real quick. This is my fun fun favorite thing to check. So we are now in filtered mode. We are now Wednesday, it's after the time. See how it says personalized or random? Monday, Tuesday, it was pure random. And

then at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, they turned on this personalized thing. And so now all the things, let's just see what happens if I click random. Does it change? Yeah. So this is random. This is where you start to see the slop if it's fully random. And if you see your game in here, I'm not saying your game is slop. I just mean it's like they don't have any filtering, they don't care. But when then they when you switch on personalized, what it does is it goes like, well these games people actually wanted. They clicked on this. Um they somehow interacted with it enough to do it. This game by the way is interesting. Slap bound. We'll talk about it. Um so that's it. One thing I always check is for some reason, they've had the same text box every single next fest for the like last year and they always are missing the period on onward. I don't know why. It one of these days are going to add the period to the onward here. I don't know why they don't have a period there. Every time. Watch the other video that I did. They don't have a period there. I I just don't tell

Valve though. I just want to see how long it takes them. You would think their AI would just like, oh you're missing a period here on onward. Anyway, the interesting one is charts, too. Okay, so charts are competitive and they're filtered. And so there's three things trending upcoming and you if you hover they tell you what the rules are. It's upcoming games sorted by trending or recent wish list counts only included games not released on Steam. So if you were to release this week and you're in Steam Next Fest, you're kicked out. Popular upcoming total wish list count. Who has the most wish list in this Next Fest? This is This popular upcoming is why I say wait till your last Next Fest to do it last Next Fest before you release cuz you'll have the most wish list and if you're a competitive good game you might have a shot a shot at this. Trending upcoming is basically like which games got the most wish list within a certain period of time before Steam Next Fest. And then if we do top demos, that's just who has the most
[snorts]
CCU. I'm not editing out those yawns. I'm keeping them in. I'm real. I'm not an AI. AIs don't yawn. I'm a human. I yawn.

See, top demos are just highest CCU. Okay? Those are That's how you get in the top charts. Now um you're going to be like Chris, what does it take to get into these? Because I've been scraping Steam, I've looked. So let me let me pull up the data here. I'm going to show you the charts based on based on follower count. So a lot of these are based off wish list and then but I can't see wish lists are private but what's public are follower counts and so I scraped Steam and I check the follower counts every day right around Steam Next Fest so I can see what all these games are doing. So follower count is a roughly and I'll refine this when I get the survey data back in but it's roughly about 10 wish lists per one follower. So all the counts I'm going to show you are followers which closely map to a wish list but you could if you've got a game coming up you could look at followers. This is a real number follower count. Let's look at it. So these are all followers follower counts for all these games. So let me let me do another snap here.

All right, so to get on trending upcoming, that's the one where it's like hot This is what people call momentum. It is the two weeks before Steam Next Fest, how many wish list did you get? And we think it's like we think it's two weeks. It could be a month, could be three weeks. They don't tell us. But I I'm guessing two weeks because press the press preview was two weeks. So maybe Valve got it in their brain they're like, "Two weeks is a good amount of time for the press preview and this and a couple of other things." So I think it's two weeks. I actually just filtered this down. This is just a one-week sample. So what I did was I looked I tracked every game that showed up in the trending upcoming chart. And I sampled what was there. If you showed up if you somehow managed to hit trending upcoming, the scrape that I did, I said, "Well, what were the follower counts for the two for the one week?" I did one week before Next Fest. Turns out it was zero to 4,076 followers for all the games that showed up in trending upcoming. The median game had 147 wish 147 followers

in the one week prior. The mean, which is kind of like average, is 354 in the week prior. The top was ArcheAge Chronicles and it had zero. Now that Oh, you know what? That zero That zero I forgot to add that. That's a mistake. It looks like I just put a smiley face in there with the big nose. Um That is game. I can't remember what the game is. I'll link to it below. You'll see. Um no, I think I'll link to it below. I'll link to all these games down below so you can kind of see what kind of games are popping off. Um there was a game that had zero wish lists in the week before Steam Next Fest. But then on the very first day of Next Fest, they got like 10,000 or they got like a lot, but that was outside my window of sampling. I only sampled the first week and it ended my sample ended the day Steam Next Fest started and this game immediately got like 4,000 followers, somewhere around there I think. I'll comment below when I do the research. And that bumped it up on the top trending upcoming. So trending upcoming though in this is the interesting thing

by doing the scrape trending upcoming includes during Next Fest. So, if you get a ton of wish list during Next Fest, even if you did no prior marketing before Steam Next Fest, they'll still pop you on the charts. That's what I learned by that Zero, that game that ended up on trending upcoming and had zero wish list in the week before Steam Next Fest. Anyway, let's go on to the next one. Popular upcoming, the range to get on there is a follower count of 2,000 to 50 57,000. That's the top one was 57,000. That's Arch Age Chronicles. It got that 57,000. Remember, this is followers. Just add a zero onto it. That's kind of how many wish list. So, they have 570 something thousand wish lists, thereabouts. That's amazing. Just to get on that, you need at least 2,103 like follower count at that time. That's a pretty high amount of number, but it's not insane. So, that's how you end up on popular upcoming. Um top demos are CCU counts. So, I also was scraping CCU

counts for all these games. The top demos the lowest was 25. The top was That number is a mistake. That is a mistake. There's no way that 25 I think is correct. The 57,000 I got to check my numbers. I'll put them down below. I'm doing this live. I'm not editing this out cuz I I'm tired. But I'll put the right numbers on there. I think that's a copy and paste there. But anyway, Arch Age Chronicles got the top CCUs as well. I know these median and and mean are correct for CCU. That is how many people simultaneously peak. This is the peak CCU for these games. So, to get on top demos, you have to like the median is like 3,700 people playing your demo simultaneously. And people did this. Like the There's like 150 games that showed up on top demos. People are achieving this. So, the reason I show this is like a lot of people are very negative about Steam Next Fest this year. There's so Like you browse Reddit and the comments down

below the people who don't say the word carnival, they're very doomy. But there are games that are simultaneously getting like 7,000 people playing them simultaneously from Nextfest. Like there are people playing games. It's not 100% slop, okay guys? Just chill. Chill with the doom. You can look at Reddit and it's so doomy. Um that's why I like I'm not trying to clickbait. I just trying to get this as a social experiment to see how many people just see this thing where I say Steam Nextfest cooked AI slop. That's what the the caption's going to be. I just want to see how many people just comment without saying the word carnival. Don't tell anybody else. Um okay. So that's that's what it takes to get on there. Um these are some games that I think uh that I pulled cuz when I did my scrape I was like, "Well, what was the top game? What was the lowest performing? What's the median?" So I just pulled a bunch of games. Um ArcheAge Unchained was the one that came in most heavy. It's heavy. It's the top of the charts. Um it got a lot of stuff. So these are

just in The reason is I just say go play demos during the Steam Nextfest. Just go play them and understand what is popping off. There are games that do well. I It's not all AI slop. People are actually playing demos during this. There's one NS not safe for work game. It's called Peeping Office Worker. At first I I I checked that I I was like, "Okay, peeping office worker. Maybe he's like hiding or something." Oh, it's that type of peeping. Ho. So um just be warned if you try that one out. But the other ones are all fine. Um Mortis, that is not a typo. It really did have W. I don't W. Um So these are some of the games. Just check them out cuz they kind of ranked in the thing. The the mean and the median for Re-Shine and Peeping Office Worker. I was just like those were median CCU. I was like, "What kind of games are median and hitting the mean and the median. I just there's nothing key about these games other than that's like they're like right in the middle of the pack and that's always good to just to sample the middle of the

pack. So, try these games out when you're Steam Next Fest. Just watch out. Just don't do this one during work unless your boss is cool. Um I think that's it. So, those are all the I'm just this is just my notes. I'm just going to copy this put this in the comments so you can just click on them and leave there. So, that's Steam Next Fest. I'm going to stop it here. Uh let me do one more stop here. Boom, there's Steam Next Fest. Uh people ask like what can I do to improve my numbers? Let's say I'm right here. I'm right here. You're cooked. Like you're just cooked. You're and cooked in the sense of your cake is baked. Like it's done. Like if you're in Next Fest, there's not much you can do. It's your game. It's your demo. It's everything you did before. At this point, you're just riding out the storm. So, instead of doomscrolling on Reddit and stuff and F5ing all the time, a better use of your time is honestly folks, don't don't doomscroll Reddit. It's just so negative over there. Play a lot of these games. Just play these like the ones I linked below because they're they're hitting the numbers.

Um for this AI sloppy game. Oh, the yeah, let me let me I said I would go back to it. No, don't let me forget. This probably uh probably stolen demo. Probably stolen demo. I think they kind of meta this one. They're like this demo is probably stolen, but it's stolen and as in the electronics. Um so, just play some of these top demos and don't just do the top tops. Like go down here a little bit and play some of these. Oh, Tropico. There's a Tropico and I love Tropico. Um play some of these down here. Just try a bunch of demos to see what it is. Like 10 million pixels that that was on my wish list. That game's on there. Where did it go? Uh getting up there on the wish list and this is an idle game. Pixel art idle game and it's it's on the top charts. Like how many What's their CCU on this thing? Look at that. 1,000 Good [music] for them with this game. See, I like I know we're all doom scrolling, but that's this [music] This is encouraging. Look at this. Sorry, I was going ahead with my

We got 1,000 CCU for this game, 10 million pixels. That's awesome. That is cool. Yeah. Good for them. Um okay, so let me go with the most popular genres that I saw. Um let me do a little snap here. Let me go back to my slides cuz I was pulling numbers. So, what I did here what you're going to see when I do my snap here, make sure I get the right chart up before I do it.
[sighs]
Okay. One thing that I was going to do was like um because I tracked CCU, I was like, "What are the top genre pairs?" Remember, genre and subgenre specified by the developer. And I cross-referenced it with the CCU that the peak CCU during Steam Next Fest, during Next Fest. Um and these are the top genres. The top ones are RPG or action RPG. um you know, uh adventure, crafting, RPGs,

RTS strategy games, RPG dungeon crawler, simulation life sims, strategy city builders. You hear that? Crafty buildy strategy simulationy games. I'm telling you, folks, I don't make this stuff up. This is what the data says. Every time I slice the data, like anytime I'm like, "Hey, this is kind of my gut." "Well, how do you prove it, Chris?" "Oh, uh follower counts or review counts or anything." Anytime I slice this data, I look at any feature, like review counts, estimated sales, estimated reviews, well, actual reviews, player counts, CCUs. Anyway I slice the Steam Next Fest performance, the top games are always the crafty buildy strategy simulationy, no matter which way you crisscross the data. This is what Steam wants is crafty building. And then I I did dot dot dot, what are the lowest I said what are the lowest genres cross-referenced with CCU? Puzzle platformer, 3D platformer, puzzle games, walking simulators, 2D platformers, precision platformers. Lowest was precision platformer.

[gasps]
With and then what this is is so the median Okay. Um share of demos peaking 10 plus CCU uh 10 highest and six lowest paired. Um the lowest are these right here.
[laughter]
I know I know it's all platformers. I don't hate platformers. I really don't. I wish platformer I hey I honestly wish platformers worked. I've made All the games I've released on Steam are platformers. They just don't sell and then these keep making them. So just don't um Um let's see what number this is. You know what it is? I think you know what I'm I might be looking at the wrong chart. Let me just Let me just stretch up here cuz I kind of stretch. Wait wait wait wait wait. Let me just double-check. Okay, yeah. This is it. This is based on this. Uh peak CCU during the first 3 days next That's what I did. I just grabbed this from my blog post. If you want the real stuff, go to my blog post howtomarketagame.com/

blog and then click this one and you'll see that the full write-up. So I've looked at this data so much it doesn't quite make sense to me anymore.
[laughter]
Um I don't remember why it's percentage. I think it's like I don't know why I don't remember why I put percentage. But anyway, so this is peak CCU who had that good peak CCU. Um all demos are at 7%. I I don't remember why it's percentage. I've looked at this stuff too much. But anyway, these are the genres that most people are playing. And these are the ones that are least being played. Um now you might be like, "Well, my genre isn't crafty building and it's not platformer, so where do I land? When Steam Next Fest is over, notice how I said first 3 days first 3 days of Steam Next Fest I'm going to let it cook. I'm going to pull all the genre pairs and I'll do one gigantic chart and I'll rank them and figure out why it's a percentage. I'll forget I'll forget why it was.

Um but anyway, it could be over median percentage over median. So the seven If I remember right, 7% is like the median CCU and then I think this might be percentage over that anyway. I'll get it I'll get the answer right. But anyway, I'm going to do all of them by the end of Steam Next Fest. I'm just doing a check-in preview at Wednesday so that there's more time for all this stuff to go in. So I'm going to end it there. This is a good video. Remember mention carnival. That's how I know you actually watched this video and you're commenting on real stuff, not just because I wrote in the title AI Slop [clears throat] Fest. Yeah, Steam Next Fest is cooked. That's what you do to farm engagement is you be negative. I'm not a negative person. I think there's still opportunities here. I'm a optimistic glass half full um type of person and I don't like how so many these uh Reddit posts and YouTube they just are so negative to farm engagement. It's messing with developers' brains and I don't want to mess with your brain. The only mess I want to do is clean up

this mess where I forget why it was percentile percentages. I just want to give you the data and let you make the judgment instead of like doing this trying to make you scared and paranoid so that I can get upvotes. That's that's tacky. Uh if you want real honest feedback, how to market a game.com/ um free, join the newsletter. Don't subscribe to this YouTube channel. Do not reward YouTube by subscribing to this because YouTube feeds on fear and paranoia and they just want you to be scared of AI slop and stuff and Steam Next Fest and indie game dev mail development is cooked and all that stuff. Don't don't feed that. Don't feed that algorithm. So, don't subscribe to YouTube. Subscribe to my newsletter howtomarketagame.com/free. Bye. I'll catch you later at the end wrap up of Steam Next Fest. Bye. When I'll do a better job at this chart. Bye.