According to data collected by analyst Chris Zukowski, Steam can afford to to promote actively about five hundred indie games every year, no matter how many are actually launched. Of course we are talking about promotion through algorithms, not direct marketing campaigns.
Zukowski: “More than 12,000 indies launched on Steam in 2022. If you can prove your game is hot, the algorithm places you in top slots like Discovery Queue and More Like This. How many games get this treatment each year About 550 and it’s not growing. Let me explain.”
Zukowski explained that he has worked with many indies, finding that if a game doesn’t convert well enough, Steam stops promoting it. “I’ve seen a lot of games stuck at 200-300 reviews. But the ones that convert the best get the best seats. If a game gets 1,000 reviews in a year, that means it has something the algorithm likes. All free games are subject to this principle. I’ve seen some free games stop at 300 reviews and others exceed 1,000.”
Zukowski also made a quick calculation of the revenues needed to be considered by the algorithms, multiplying the 1,000 reviews by 30 to get the amount of sales made (it’s not a very precise figure, but as a general indication it’s acceptable), then he multiplied by 10 .00 dollars, which is the average amount for which indies are sold, obtaining revenues of 300,000 dollars. This, according to him, is the number in which the Steam algorithms begin to consider games for promotions such as the Daily Deals.
Finally, Zukowski used VG Insights to find out how many games have received at least 1,000 reviews in recent years and found that, despite the increase in published games, the first ones never exceeded 600 units.
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