
Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales - doppp
http://greyaliengames.com/blog/steams-discovery-algorithm-killed-my-sales/
======
TheGRS
Some very dismissive comments on here. For context, Grey Alien is responsible
for one of this year's best GDC talks about how to survive in the indie world
for 10 years without a hit. He's been doing this for a long time and so I
think he's a really great resource for this type of discussion.
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/286091/Video_How_to_survi...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/286091/Video_How_to_survive_in_indie_game_dev_for_10_years_without_shipping_a_hit.php)

Steam is a bit of a linchpin for indie game success for better or worse. The
audience is there, understands the platform, and uses it extensively. But just
as is the case with any marketplace, they do not serve the interests of indie
developers first, they serve the interests of the marketplace owner first (in
this case Valve). I think indie devs mostly understand this, but I think its
totally reasonable to call out what the current situation is. Grey Alien
points out considering other avenues of revenue, but how they mostly just
don't show the same level of sales.

My take is that if we want both indie games to be a thing and have _good_
indie games, then maybe Valve should pay attention to this sort of feedback
and make sure the hard-working, full-time indie devs are getting enough
attention to be sustainable. Otherwise you basically get the Youtube model of
lowest common denominator drivel.

~~~
nindalf
Rather than being a case of the developers' interest not being aligned with
Valve, it is _possible_ that they're not aligned with the users. You point out
users use Steam extensively, could that be attributed partially to the users
liking the recommendation algorithm? If the algorithm was changed to favour
hardworking indie devs at say, the expense of AAA studios, would Steam users
still use it as much?

~~~
TheGRS
As a long-time Steam user, all I can say is an anecdotal response that the
algorithmic recommendations on Steam are not why users stay there. They stay
because they have huge libraries of games already built, so there's a bit of a
lock-in effect going on.

I wouldn't dismiss that developers are still responsible for gathering user
data, observing trends and marketing their product, all that is still there.
This post is merely highlighting how changes to the platform can have some
huge cascading effects downstream, and that sucks for those trying to build
followings and businesses.

~~~
BEEdwards
Yup, I actually kind of hate steam and yet the library grows... It's basically
an accretion disc at this point.

------
netcan
Private, centralized 3rd party marketplaces are responsible for some of the
biggest commercial successes of the web boom(#1 and 2.0).

But, they haven't "done good" by vendors, by and large. A YouTuber with
viewerships as high as mainstream TV shows can barely afford "2 guys and a
mic." App store purchases is a fairly meager market, and not a place to build
a serious business unless you have other "monetisation" plans.

Steam is somewhat of an exception but still, being beholden to a discovery
algorithm like that is disheartening.

Recommendation engines are such an important part of any market these days.
Besides recomending stuff, it's an incentive structure for the market.. a la
google-> seo spammers, fb-> kgb spammers, etc.

~~~
criddell
The discovery algorithm serves the consumer first and foremost. When users
start complaining about not being shown interesting stuff, then Valve will
jump into action.

In this case, how do we know that the algorithm change isn't correcting a
problem? I'm sorry for the game developer in the article, but every time his
game was being promoted, somebody else's wasn't. How do we know he wasn't
being over-promoted with the old algorithm? Without seeing everything that
Valve sees, can we really know?

~~~
j-c-hewitt
Steam's discovery and categorization are pretty awful. Despite never having
purchased an anime visual novel, played one, or even looked at a store page
for one, Steam advertised them to me nonstop on the front page. I blacklisted
anime. Problem solved. But then I just get lots of trash tier roguelikes. A
couple years later, I realized that blacklisting anime actually blacklisted
all Japanese games entirely -- even those without an anime art style, which is
too bad.

My guess is that because those games are so inexpensive, they probably sell a
ton of units irrespective of price and category, and if the system is
optimized to show stuff that is moving a lot of units in a short period of
time, it will bubble to the top.

The other day, the only good recommendation I've seen in a long time came up:
Battle Brothers has a new DLC, even long after the devs said they were not
going to make any. But that's the only one I can really think of.

I think most personalization features on marketplaces are kind of overrated. I
care way, way, way more about sales than I care about 'personalization.' I am
just about never going to buy something at full retail apart from daily
essentials.

I think his problem more realistically is that his category is extremely
weird. Adventure solitaire RPG? How would you even begin to SEO that product
page in a way that didn't cause a ton of confusion?

Even something like Thronebreaker, which is basically a solo player card game
RPG, does not try to distinguish itself on search. It promotes itself based on
the strength of the Witcher brand and on Gwent.

~~~
saulrh
> Despite never having purchased an anime visual novel, played one, or even
> looked at a store page for one

I'm going to be honest, given this information I'm wondering how you know you
hate them. Any individual recommendation is likely low-quality, but that's
mostly thanks to Sturgeon's law - Steam _certainly_ has a good enough grasp of
what I'm looking for in a game to point me at the right _genres_.

~~~
bfrydl
Honestly man I don't need to play an anime visual novel to know I won't like
it. I don't like visual novels and if it's anime it's probably about high
schoolers.

~~~
saulrh
...Right. Okay. Stereotypes and a failure to do basic research is not a reason
to disregard an entire genre. Go play Umineko and Steins;Gate. Have fun.

~~~
RugnirViking
You're missing the point here; If I wanted to block shooters, would you try to
defend shooters - saying that they don't influence young kids to shoot up
school etc.

You would be right of course, but thats not the point. It's not harming
anybody, and nobody has to use such a feature.

~~~
saulrh
If you'd told me you had a library of 3d action-adventure games and fighting
games and hated shooters because they were plotless, mindless gorefests, I
would recommend Portal, Half-Life 2, and Halo. They are dissimilar enough from
genre's stereotypical dreck that I'd recommend them even assuming your
statement was completely accurate, and good enough in absolute terms that I
think you'd be likely to enjoy them. I agree that there are a ton of awful VNs
out there, just like there are a ton of awful shooters, but I hate seeing
people throwing the baby out with the bathwater based on sweeping
generalizations that simply aren't correct.

If you want more specifics: You complained about VNs as being "anime" and then
said that all anime was about high schoolers. I provided recommendations for
high-quality VNs that were neither anime nor about high school.

------
adnzzzzZ
For completion's sake, here's another developer of a popular game saying his
game is seeing unnaturally high sales
[https://twitter.com/RaymondDoerr/status/1069004011309867009](https://twitter.com/RaymondDoerr/status/1069004011309867009).
It might just be that Valve changed the algorithm slightly to show more
popular games more and less popular games less. This is already what the
algorithm did to some extent but it might be doing it even more now.

In my view I generally trust Valve to best serve their audience first and
developers second, even with me being a developer. If people are complaining
all the time that Steam isn't showing them good games then it's probably for a
good reason.

------
Ntrails
When it was physical stores, what mattered was shelf placement and magazine
reviews. Which, by the way, were worse by far than anything Steam will ever do
in terms of being based on merit.

I acknowledge that the risk to developers from changes to a black box
algorithm are significant - but as a steam user the only thing I care about
are "top sellers" (under £5) because that's where I'm occasionally likely to
find a good game on sale.

~~~
TheGRS
Interestingly that stuff doesn't bubble to the top for me. I see mostly indie
recommendations I've never heard of and maybe a scattering of AAA or bigger
indie titles. It feels very random to me these days.

------
adanto6840
We [0] saw a similar drop happen after what appeared to be fairly aggressive
adjustments made by Steam in early October. It improved throughout the first
half of October but still ended up being between ~35-45% lower than what we'd
have expected to see versus the curve we had been seeing prior to the changes.

I posted a comment here yesterday [1] about Steam's incentives, but it's worth
posting again:

Sometimes I wonder what Steam _actually_ optimizes for. If their algorithms
always show the "best" games (ie ones that players spend hundreds++ hours
playing), then I'd expect that to actually hurt Steam revenues, at least short
term if not long-term as well. In theory they'd be better off
marketing/optimizing to push games that 'satisfy' users (read: does not cause
exodus) _but_ that have low play-time/hours on average -- so that they can
sell the player another different game that much sooner.

It's a strange set of incentives & it's hard to tell how aligned they really
are (with _either_ players or developers).

0 -
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/598330/SimAirport/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/598330/SimAirport/)

1 -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583254)

------
ivanb
Yeah no, you are supposed to do marketing. No app store is going to do much
for an unknown title. Run some facebook ads, see what happens.

~~~
babuskov
I don't think Facebook ads would work for many games. Here's an example:

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/949790/Rogue_Bit/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/949790/Rogue_Bit/)

How do you market such game outside of Steam? How do you reach the
programmer/hacker niche that would be interested in playing this?

~~~
PeterisP
How do Zachtronics games get the word out?

Is the game _good_ ? Are the people who have played it mentioning it to
everyone they know and don't know in social media, because it's so much better
than others? If not, _is_ there a niche that would be interested in playing
this?

I mean, if I haven't yet got the time to play, say, #5 best game in some
niche, then I'm probably not _that_ interested in #15, and hearing about #50
would simply be unwanted spam. The function of some curation or recommendation
engine that I want is to act as a gatekeeper, to direct my attention to the
best games in such a niche and away from merely decent, okay-ish games in the
same niche, no matter how their developers might want to reach me.

~~~
babuskov
> How do Zachtronics games get the word out?

Zach spent 10 years building his reputation one small game after the other. In
a time when there weren't that many game developers around and there was no
flood of games like today.

> Is the game good ?

100% positive rating on Steam should answer that.

> Are the people who have played it mentioning it to everyone they know and
> don't know in social media, because it's so much better than others?

So, what you're basically saying is word of mouth, not Facebook ads that was
suggested.

> I mean, if I haven't yet got the time to play, say, #5 best game in some
> niche

Then you are not the target market anyway. That's why game developers need
Steam. To access people who actually have time to play games and focus on a
particular niche.

What you wrote just proves the point: without Steam the developer are bust.
The market of people who barely have time to play 5 games per year is just too
small.

------
flankstaek
What confuses me is their reluctance to attempt to use other third party
distributors (itch.io, GOG, etc.) when Steam clearly isn't working in their
favor.

~~~
wccrawford
That's because despite all the complaining about Steam changing things, it's
still _far_ better than all other ways of selling their game.

Personally, I think Steam is correct to change their algorithm whenever they
think it'll help the buyers find games that suit them better.

It's also very possible that other developers have seen a bump in sales that
correspond with the decline for this developer.

~~~
llukas
For start: to get on GOG your game cannot be shovwelware. I buy from GOG
first.

------
SubiculumCode
AAA games are starting to avoid Steam, opting to hosting it themselves for a
number of reasons. Steam has taken a few actions lately that would favor big
companies, including lowering Valve's take from biggest sellers (1). I think
they are trying to keep the name brands in Steam.

1\. [https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/3/18123649/valve-steam-
reven...](https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/3/18123649/valve-steam-revenue-
sharing)

~~~
EamonnMR
Please, no. As someone who actually wants to play games on PC the
proliferation of launchers has become a huge pain. You have to log in to them
separately, they all want to update about as frequently as I want to play the
games in question, and they all have their own unique ways to annoy (let's all
use different key bindings for overlays! Let's all embed web browsers! Let's
all have our own friend management!) If it weren't for Loot Boxes, I would say
that launchers are the worst thing to happen to PC gaming in the 10s.

~~~
bytematic
That's what happens when you want 30% of sales

------
village-idiot
I used to just browse Steam and collect games that looked interesting. Over
the years I've slowly stopped doing that.

For certain, part of it is that adult life gives me far less time to enjoy
"dedicated" gaming. I have plenty of time for mobile games on my commute (I
walk), but I no longer have dozens of hours a week that I can dedicate to CS
or Eve Online.

But part of it is that the Steam store is anxiety-inducingly overwhelming. It
feels like there's more than a lifetimes worth of content in there, and I have
absolutely no idea how to find the good stuff. Something about Steam's design
appears to provoke this response, because I do not have similar issues with
the similarly large Apple store. I think a redesign might be in order.

And the recommendation algorithm just keeps sending me the same games that
don't look interesting to me.

~~~
kochikame
> I have plenty of time for mobile games on my commute (I walk)

Er, do you mean you walk and game at the same time? Coz I am constantly
walking around people like you and tutting if that's the case

~~~
village-idiot
Low density area, and I lower the phone when crossing streets.

------
lbj
If its possible for Steam to kill your sales, its because you've put your main
sales channel(s) in the hands of another company. This is unwise in any
business.

~~~
cwyers
The majority of businesses, even really big businesses, do this. Very few
businesses control their own sales channel, and the ones that do are generally
smaller than the ones that don't. Apple doesn't control their main sales
channels:

[https://9to5mac.com/2017/10/19/apple-store-sales-
cirp/](https://9to5mac.com/2017/10/19/apple-store-sales-cirp/)

So it's unclear why you think anyone else should, either.

~~~
lbj
My point here is, that if you have a single sales channel only, you need to
control/affect it. Apple has a myriad of sales channels all boosted heavily by
Apple advertising.

~~~
cwyers
And that is an _entirely unreasonable expectation_ even for large, established
companies. Vlasic Pickles and Levi Jeans are both large brands that are parts
of larger conglomerates, and they both got pushed around by Wal-Mart:

[https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-
know](https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know)

Asking indie game developers to challenge the domination of Steam as the sales
channel for PC games where EA/Ubisoft/Microsoft have all failed to do so is
absurd.

~~~
lbj
I dont know about reasonable, but its a practical necessity. Consider Google
Ads. There are a maximum of 13 spots available on the frontpage - How do you
chose the 13 out of the billions of possibilities? A mix of quality/relevance
and advertising dollars.

------
nkrisc
I wonder what his sales would look like if there was no discovery algorithm
and Steam was instead a simple directory of game listings.

~~~
jpfed
I can only wish! "Aardvark Adventures" would finally get its due!

~~~
bytematic
Nah, the rise of "....!!!Rowboat Dungeon" would quickly outshine.

------
torgian
I have some games that I bought through steam, but I refuse to buy any more
games through steam. I’ll either use GoG (which is a better interface anyway)
or buy directly from the developer

------
clickme_zsh
Have you tried Discord Store?

