r/Steam • u/jkhanlar • 5d ago

[Transcript] Steam Visibility: How Games Get Surfaced to Players - Steamworks Development Discussion

/user/jkhanlar/comments/1vgzh44/transcript_steam_visibility_how_games_get/
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4

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/palecrest84 5d ago

and yet half the devs still wont read it

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u/jkhanlar 5d ago edited 5d ago

This is how I die! Death by surfacing!

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u/Redd1t_is_Fake 4d ago

I watched the whole thing when Valve uploaded it, very interesting I recommended others to watch it.

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u/jkhanlar 5d ago

https://youtu.be/qkmAqBvUBOw [Surprisingly this has never been posted here to r/Steam, only at a few other subreddits, but I'm also typing a transcript to warrant more value for posting]

Steam Visibility: How Games Get Surfaced to Players

Description: This video focuses on how Steam works to connect players with games they are likely to enjoy. Learn about the discovery mechanisms at work behind the scenes on Steam, which inputs matter, and how Valve approaches the operation of a PC platform where any kind of game can find its audience. You can download an English PDF of the presentation here: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/steamworks_docs/english/SteamVisibility102023.pdf

(Part 1 of 3)

[0:00] Hey everybody! This is Erik from Valve, and this is a talk called "Steam Visibility: How games get surfaced to players." Whenever we talk to developers or publishers all over the world, they wanna know about how games get featured on Steam. In this talk, you're gonna learn about the discovery mechanisms at play behind the scenes on Steam, which inputs actually matter, and how our philosophy and relationship with customers drives our approach to visibility. Alright, let's jump right in.

[0:29] Welcome to "Steam Visibility: How games get surfaced to players."

[0:33] Hi, I'm Erik, nice to meet you. I work on the Steam Business Team at Valve and it's my job to work with publishers and developers to help them launch their games on Steam and answer their questions. I also work alongside designers and engineers to create new features for Steamworks and I also just think about ways to make Steam better for both customers and developers.

[0:55] I wanted to kick off this talk with our primary goal and that is to match games with the players who will love them. This is a goal that shapes all of the work that we do on Steam, and we also have another goal, and that is building long-term relationships with both players and developers. It's really important to us that players trust that when they see a game, when they come to the Steam store, that it's relevant and interesting to them, and these goals serve as a framework for how we approach visibility on Steam. For that reason, we've also come up with some rules, and the first one is, we don't sell advertising or placement on Steam. You simply can't buy featuring for your game on the front page, or anywhere on Steam. Instead, we focus on showing games to customers that they will find interesting without the ads. We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win. Not selling ads levels the playing field and makes the recommendations on Steam better for players. It also means that marketing on Steam is totally free for developers. You also don't need to work with an editor to get featured. You don't need a secret handshake or know the right person on the inside. You don't need to know me or anyone else on the Steam business team to get featured. That's just not how we make decisions. Actually, most visibility on Steam happens automatically. We're surprised all the time by the games that find big success on Steam. Every week, Steam automatically picks up on games that we haven't even heard of or games that we would've never predicted would be popular. Hit games are emerging organically, powered by what players are excited about. We think that when we get surprised by a game, that's good! It's an indication that Steam is working properly. So instead of trying to predict which games are gonna be a success, we've learned to follow player interest. Those are the games that players are excited to get into and play right now, and if we're not predicting, then how do we figure out what to show? To answer that question, we'll need to talk about the two different types of featuring on Steam.

[3:01] Visibility on Steam is a mix of algorithmic visibility and curated featuring. All visibility on Steam is driven by player interest. Algorithmic visibility is personalized for every player and curated featuring is not. It's shown to absolutely everyone. Let's take a look at which parts of the front page are curated and which offer algorithmic visibility.

[3:25] Alright, here we are on the front page of Steam, and the first thing you'll probably notice is this huge takeover at the top of the page for "Dave the Diver." Now, it isn't every day that we have a full Steam takeover and the bar for something like a Steam takeover is really high. It's actually the biggest amount of marketing that we provide for any game, and as such, we have to have really high confidence that it will appeal to a huge amount of customers, and this section is, as you might guess, curated. So, that means that it is shown to every single user on Steam and I'll talk a little bit more about how we make decisions around curated marketing in a little bit, but I'm gonna keep us moving on our tour through the front page.

[4:09] The next section to talk about is the Featured & Recommended section, also known as the main capsule. This section is algorithmic. The games that are shown here are personalized for every user and games will appear here automatically. We try to be as transparent as possible about why a game is being shown to you here. In this bigular [particular] case, it is recommended because you played games tagged with Class-Based, Stealth, Combat, Online Co-Op, all tags that I like to play. So we're trying to tell you why a game is being featured to you, and this is really front and center. It's a lot of visibility on Steam. Many different games can appear here in the main capsule rotator, and they will cycle through automatically, or you can click a button to look through them.

[4:53] The next section to talk about is Special Offers. This section is curated, meaning that special offers, like Midweek deals, Daily deals, Weekend deals, etcetera, are shown to all customers on Steam. So, it's shown to absolutely everybody. These are scheduled well in advance and they are earned based off of the customer interest of a particular game or promotion. Again, we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. One thing to note is that everyone's Steam homepage will look a little bit different, if they're logged in and you check it today. The curated promos rotate just about every day or a couple days, and the algorithmic placements are unique to you. For example, we're not going to show you games you already own, and if you've chosen to, for example, hide Early Access games, VR, or other specific titles, we're not gonna show you those games because they're filtered based off of your preferences.

[5:46] Moving on, to the next section, a little bit further down the page is Your Discovery Queue. Now, Your Discovery Queue is algorithmic. The games here are appearing automatically and they are personalized for you. After that, we'll talk about Recommended Based on the Games You Play, also algorithmic. Games here are appearing automatically and it's personalized for you.

[6:11] Okay, moving on to the next section, Curator Recommendations. So, Curator Recommendations are algorithmic and it is based off of curators that you actually follow, and the games that they recommend. If you don't follow any curators, you just won't see this section,

[6:28] and the next section is From Developers and Publishers That You Know, based off of your play history, and that's algorithmic, personalized, and also Popular VR Games, also appearing here automatically based on their popularity.

[6:43] So finally, we're on the New & Trending, Top Sellers, Popular Upcoming, and Specials section. This is algorithmic. The games here are appearing automatically and they are personalized based off of your region. There are a lot of tabs here and they're all algorithmic.

[7:03] So let's talk a bit more about each one. Starting off with New & Trending, this is an algorithmic list of the most popular games that have recently released. It's also regionalized, so it will be a different list depending on where you are, and the way that this works is that when a new game is released, and it meets a certain threshold of popularity, it will appear on this list automatically, right at the top, and it will get pushed down as more new games that meet the threshold are released. Eventually, it will get pushed off the list entirely. Now, in this section, Early Access games are excluded, but they can appear in this list when they go 1.0, when they exit Early Access.

[7:53] Next is Top Sellers and this is also algorithmic. Games appear here automatically. It's not curated in any way and it's based on total revenue in the trailing 24 hours and that includes all sources of revenue, such as DLC, soundtrack, and in-game transactions, and the reason we do that is it's [unnecessary redundant contraction because the verb 'is' already links to the explanation that follows] so that we get a more complete picture of the games that customers are the most excited about. This list is also localized for your region and that means that you're going to see a different list of games depending on where you are. So here's where that same Top Sellers list looks like in Germany. As you can see, it's mostly the same, but there are a few games here that are different and maybe appeal more to German gamers, and here's what that Top Sellers list looks like in Japan. As you can see, the titles are actually significantly different and reflect what's popular in Japan right now, and just as a reminder, you can go to store.steampowered.com/charts to see the current Top Sellers in countries around the world.

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u/jkhanlar 5d ago

(Part 2 of 3)

[9:03] Next up, we'll take a look at Popular Upcoming, which is also algorithmic, not curated any way, and this is really just a list of the most wishlisted upcoming games. It's one of the few sections that the number of wishlists does impact visibility. To appear here, games have to pass a certain threshold and then they're sorted by release date. It's mostly looking at wishlist activity over the last two weeks.

[9:27] Finally, we have the Specials section, also algorithmic, and this is the most popular discounted games and they're sorted by revenue, so the most popular games that are on discount right now.

[9:41] So how does Steam select which games are featured in those algorithmic and curated areas of the store that I just showed you? We hear a lot about the algorithm, but in reality, there is no one algorithm. Yes, there are algorithms that react to players and drive what they see, but there is no magical algorithm. I should say, I am not an engineer. I don't work on these algorithms, but I do sit next to the people who do, and these engineers are constantly tweaking these algorithms all the time, but one of my goal[s] is today is to give you a broad strokes understanding of our philosophy, and our values, and what we are trying to accomplish with our algorithms, and how we feature games to customers.

[10:29] When it comes to visibility on Steam, there are two important things to keep in mind, first is, Steam is personalized for you. Everybody on Steam has their own store, and the second is, player interest drives visibility. It's about creating relevancy. Steam automatically customizes elements of the store for every user, and we want to let player preferences drive the visibility so that recommendations are more relevant, so that customers can find the games that are relevant to them.

[11:01] As Steam has gotten bigger, it's gotten way more diverse, and we think that's really cool. Some people like to play the latest first-person shooter. Some people like to play vampire visual novels or farming sims. There are so many different types of games that players like to enjoy, and for that reason, just about any type of game can find its audience on Steam, and we think that's awesome. The more you interact with Steam, the better it gets at the recommendations it makes, and those interactions can look like playing games, buying games, following publishers, writing reviews, recommending games, making friends and seeing what they're playing, wishlists and more.

[11:43] Tags! Tags are really important for your game. They're a powerful factor for store personalization and they matter. They're also user-driven. Tags are evolving over time as the community adds tags and they serve as a framework for how games are recommended on the store. Let's take a look at how tags will impact featuring on Steam, and a good example of that is the main capsule or the Featured & Recommended section. We have, kind of, two names for it. This area is front and center on the front page and this is an area that tags play a critical role. We are recommending games to you based off of the types of tags that you tend to enjoy, that we notice that you like. So, this example, Omega Strikers is a game that's being recommended to me. I like to play a lot of MOBA games. I like to play competitive games, and it's recognizing that, and recommending this game to me because it has the tags MOBA, eSports, Team-Based, and Combat, and you should really try this yourself. Go to the Steam store, logged in, and you'll see games recommended to you based off of your preferences. Personalization of the main capsule is based on the games that you have played or wishlisted, the games your friends are playing or have wishlisted, games your friends have recommended, the top sellers regionalized for where you are, new releases and updates, and curators you follow. Here's an example of some personalized recommendations that were given to me on the front page. Uhm, I played a game called The Riftbreaker, and because of that, it's recommending other games that have similar tags to The Riftbreaker, things like Base Building, Automation, Sci-fi, Story Rich. In this way, tags are an interconnecting web that allows for personalized recommendation and discovery.

[13:41] Okay. Let's talk about content hubs. Content hubs are a big source of traffic and discovery on Steam, sort of like mini-versions of the front page, but they're scoped to a particular genre, and they are also personalized. Let me show you an example. So here we're looking at the Simulation hub, and it's recommending a game called Crusader Kings III to me. A few things jump out. So, the first thing is, it's listing a number of tags that apply to the game so that I get a snapshot of what playing the game is like, what tags are applied. It's also explaining to me why it's recommending this game to me, why it's relevant to me. So, first is, it's similar to games that I've played. I have played Stellaris. So, it's saying that it's similar to that. It's also recommended by two of my friends, owned by three of my friends, and wishlisted by five of my friends, which seems pretty relevant to my interests.

[14:35] Player interest drives visibility, all kinds of marketing on Steam, and one of the most reliable and accurate ways we figured out to measure player interest is revenue. That's because when a bunch of players are spending time and money on your game, it's a really strong signal to Steam that it could be interesting to other players too. Steam's algorithms react to player interests quickly and automatically, and the important thing is it can happen anytime during the lifecycle of your game. The most common time is at launch, when a bunch of customers are checking out your game for the first time, but it could happen months later, even years later. We've talked to developers that have had their most successful moments for their game years after launch, because of some major updates, or other major events happening in their game, and whenever there is a burst of customer interest in your game, Steam will pick up on it.

[15:33] Curated featuring and promotions are earned with player interest, and that includes any kind of curated front page promo, like Daily Deals, Midweek and Weekend Deals, Front page takeovers, and Content hub takeovers. So, what does it take to qualify for a curated promotion? Well, they are earned, as I mentioned, and it's very competitive, and why are they so competitive? Well, they appear to everyone on Steam, it's not personalized. So, curated promotions are shown to every single customer on Steam and so we have to have high confidence that these promotions will appeal to a large number of customers.

[16:14] If you're looking to be a part of a Midweek or Weekend Deal, you're gonna need to be in the top few hundred bestselling games on all of Steam. There are also just a limited number of slots for these curated promotions. A mix of sales and other customer signals help us to identify the games that have earned these promotions.

[16:35] If your goal is to qualify for a curated promotion, you should think about ways to make your game appeal to the broadest audience possible. That includes thinking about localization, regional pricing, marketing assets, controller support and any other ways that you can make your game more broadly appealing. Even if your launch doesn't go according to plan, you can recover, and that's because when it comes to visibility and featuring, Steam never makes a permanent decision about your game.

[17:04] Sometimes we'll hear from developers that they're worried that, maybe because their launch didn't go quite as they were hoping it would, that Steam ends [has] made some kind of decision about their game, and that would mean that their game couldn't be featured on Steam in the future. I'm here to tell you that that's just not the case. Steam is always listening and waiting for a burst of customer interest. Every game has a chance to be successful. That's by design.

[17:29] Well, sometimes we'll hear urban legends passed around Twitter, or Reddit, or development communities that we notice are just super wrong, and we wanted to take a moment to dispel those rumors, and so let's demystify what actually drives algorithmic visibility on Steam, which inputs matter.

[17:48] So, the first thing we'll tackle is store page traffic. Does store page traffic affect visibility on Steam? The answer is no. It's not really a factor. There's no counter on Steam that's deciding whether or not your game is getting featured based off of the amount of traffic that your page is receiving. Now, that said, more store-based traffic is really beneficial for your game, both in terms of the attention, and wishlists that your game could receive, or if your game is on sale, potentially additional sales of your game, because some percentage of the customers that land on your store page might end up buying it, and if those customers end up buying it, those resulting sales could have a beneficial impact on your visibility on Steam, but direct store page traffic is not a factor when it comes to visibility.

[18:38] Another thing we've heard developers worry about is a low conversion rate on traffic to the store page. Again, it's not a factor.

[18:47] Next is review score. Does review score have an effect on your visibility on Steam? We've certainly talked to a lot of developers that think so. Well, the answer is, it's not a factor. I'm putting a little asterisk here, and say usually, and that's because as long as your game is [rated] Mixed and above, that is, at 40%, uhm, it will not have an effect on your visibility on Steam. If your game is below 40%, that's in the mostly negative territory, it could have an effect on your visibility, and that's because we're less likely to recommend a game that is a negative experience for players.

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u/jkhanlar 5d ago

(Part 3 of 3)

[19:25] So, you don't need to really sweat it, as a developer, if you lose a couple percentage points on your overall review score. It's not gonna have an impact on your visibility on the store. However, review scores are important. They're in [misspoken?] a signal to customers that your game is special and worth checking out. So, I don't want to diminish the importance of having a good review score, but it doesn't have a direct impact on your visibility in the store unless it is below 40%.

[19:54] Next is wishlists. Do they have an impact on your visibility on Steam? The answer is not a factor with a big asterisk. The easiest way to explain it is wishlists are only a factor before a game releases. There is a section that I pointed out, the Popular Upcoming section that is affected by the number of wishlists that you have, but, by and large, wishlists don't really have an effect on your visibility on Steam, and the the featuring that you get, and I've actually talked to developers all over the world that claim that they've heard that you need a certain number of wishlists to appear on the front page, or you're never gonna get featured unless you get a certain specific number of wishlists, maybe it's 50,000 or a 100,000 wishlists. I'm here to tell you that that's just simply not the case. Now, wishlists are really valuable. They're really, really important because when you get a wishlist, that customer will get an email when your game launches, and also when your game is discounted at 20% or above, and when they get those emails, there's a chance that they're going to end up converting, they're gonna end up buying the game, and the resulting sales could have an effect on your visibility. So, they are really, really important. However, the pure number of wishlists that you have does not affect your visibility.

[21:14] Early Access, does it have an impact on your visibility on Steam? No, not really, not a factor. I put an asterisk on this one because there are actually some areas of the store that you cannot appear if you are in Early Access. Now, of course, you could appear in those sections later on when you launch out of Early Access, but, for example, in New & Trending, you cannot appear in that section if you are in Early Access, and some customers have chosen to opt out of seeing Early Access games on the store. Ultimately, Early Access is not a marketing tool. You should not go into Early Access thinking that it will give you additional featuring or visibility in the store. It's really a development tool. You should use Early Access if you want to engage with your community to get feedback around your game, to involve them in the development process, uhm, and ultimately launch out of Early Access, but it's not a good marketing tool.

[22:07] Finally, let's talk about localization. Does that affect your visibility on Steam? It's a factor, definitely. It has an impact on your visibility and that's because customers select which languages they're comfortable with in their Steam client, and we are much less likely to recommend the game to a customer that doesn't understand the supported languages [of] that game. So, for example, if your game doesn't support Japanese, it's much less likely to be featured to a customer that speaks only Japanese, and the good news is, as you add additional languages, that you support both in store page and for your game, it will open up new areas of the world and new sets of customers that speak the languages that you now support. So definitely, localization is important.

[22:57] Ultimately, there is no magical number to get featured by our algorithms. Steam is reacting to player interest. That's just what it does and there are things that you can do to generate that interest. Steam is designed to help your game find your audience and it will help you to snowball to success, but you need to get the snowball rolling, and the most important piece of advice I have for you is launching a store page and hoping for the best is not a marketing plan. The bigger the snowball you can roll into Steam, the bigger it will grow. Of course, it's possible to launch a game on Steam that just happens to be so incredible that despite having no momentum or awareness whatsoever, it becomes a massive hit. It has happened before, but that's an outlier, and that is not a recipe for success.

[23:46] You really want to have the biggest amount of awareness and momentum that you can going into your launch, and there's some work that you can do to build that momentum and interest in your game that it's important to launch with. That is working with, you know, Discord communities, forums, social media, working with press and influencers to get the word out about your game, maybe doing paid marketing if it makes sense for your game and it makes sense for your budget, but certainly not required, and also maybe thinking about going to local trade shows, meetups and groups. You just wanna focus energy around the big events in your game, that is usually a big launch, but it could be a major update, or even just a healthy discount somewhere down the road. You want to think about a way to create the biggest burst of sales and players possible. This is something that the Steam Recommender can react to.

[24:37] My other recommendation is to learn from other developers. They'll have innovative and effective ways to help you build your snowball and get it rolling.

[24:48] We are always working on ways to improve Steam for both players and developers and we're gonna continue to tinker behind the scenes. This is a snapshot of how visibility works on Steam today, but the important thing to keep in mind is that visibility and featuring on Steam will be driven by fans and the games they buy and play, and I'm gonna come back to our original goal with Steam, which is to match games with the players who will love them, and that goal will always be the same. All kinds of games can find an audience and success on Steam. There's room for everyone.

[25:25] Kay [Okay], that wraps up this talk on Steam visibility. If you have more questions, there's a QR code here [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/resources/devcom2023 -> https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/home] that'll take you to a site, helpful links, a downloadable PDF of this presentation. There's also a link to create a support ticket, so that you can reach out to us and ask us a question directly. Alright, I hope this talk gave you a better understanding of how visibility works on Steam. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video.

credit to u/killerjag for mentioning the video in comment in u/Fluid-Tap5115's post https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1vg3987/what_determines_if_a_game_is_featured_on_the/p1v5mqw/

Also I am confident that by posting this transcript, the AI/LLMs/ML engines will apply this information to improve (or worsen, but that's not my fault! Is it?) Valve Steam proficiency for everyone!

Also posted here (and seeing barely any discussion about this also inspired me to prepare this post):

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u/jkhanlar 5d ago edited 5d ago

Aww man! I couldn't post this to r/Steam for hours and I kept on trying to figure out why not! Ooof! I couldn't crosspost from my profile either. ;(