- Connor Brush
Should I Release My Steam Game For Free
Steam is one of the most popular platforms for game developers to release their games. Steam has over 47 million users and has made notable improvements over their 16-year life span. This has made them one of the biggest platforms for gaming. As millions of gamers use Steam daily, having a game on the platform gives developers a great chance of success.
In this article we explain how developers price their games on Steam and how they can make money from free games.
How Should I Price My Steam Game
Developers spend many hours creating their games and fixing bugs in order to release the best possible game.
One area game developers forget is pricing. Many new developers want to release their first game on Steam but have no experience when it comes to marketing their game and pricing their game.
Steam is a popular platform which means there is a lot of competition from other developers. Many new developers believe once they list their game on Steam, that’s the work done. They hope gamers will randomly find their game and install it.
With thousands of other games listed on Steam, its almost impossible to get a new game noticed without doing any promotion. When developers release their game and nobody installs or purchases the game, they often just quit developing games. This is a big mistake, if your game is the best game in the world but nobody knows about it. You aren’t going to get any sales or downloads.
Pricing Your First Steam Game
Pricing your Steam game is a very important and overlooked aspect of being a game developer. As mentioned above, you have to think about competition and marketability.
A good example of marketability is offering your first Steam game for free. Yes, we know what you’re thinking. How can I make any money offering a free game?
There are actually a lot of methods to make money from a free game and you may make more money from your game if its free. Look at Fortnite for example, it is free and its now one of the biggest games in the world.
How Do I Make Money From A Free Game
Offering your game for free can be very beneficial for your sales, testing and brand. Firstly, more gamers are likely to try your game if its free. They know they won’t lose any money by installing it so may decide to try it.
The more users you can get onto your game, the better. This lets you become know as a developer and build a brand. If your first came is a success, you’ve now created a market for your game. The next game you release will do well and you could put a price on that game too.
Offering your game free allows users to play and test it for bugs. This means you can release patches on Steam and ensure the game is performing well before you add a price to play it.
In terms of earning money from a free game, there are two main methods:
Many free to play games are powered by ad revenue. This means ads are placed throughout the game such as on loading screens or in lobbies etc. You can then charge for placing these ads on your game. The more impressions and clicks you drive through these ads the more money you can make.
In game purchases – this is a great method to making some money from your free game. You can release new skins for characters, weapons or rewards for users that purchase certain items within your game.
Players often compete to become the highest rank, best kitted character and have the best items. This causes many players to buy additional packs that you as the developer can release. An example of this is Fortnite, they have tons of in game ad-ons that users can purchase such as skins and emotes.
Marketing Your First Steam Game
If you’re completely new to marketing or promoting brands, you might not know where or how to market your own game. Many developers overlook this aspect of releasing games but wonder why nobody has downloaded their game. There are a number of cheap methods you can follow in order to promote your game.
The best method to do this is via social media.
Facebook/Instagram
By creating your ad campaign on Facebook Ad Manager, you can directly target the audience you need. Firstly, you need to create an ad, we recommend creating a short video or use a collection of images showing your products uniqueness.
Once you have the ad designed, you can create the ad campaign on Facebook Ads Manager. From here you can create a number of different ad sets targeting different Facebook groups and audiences. This gives you a wide variety of reach that you can then narrow down when you see how each ad set performs.
Select a budget that suits your plans such as $20 per day. This will be averaged out over the day to ensure your ad is live throughout the entire day.
Ensure you have connected a Facebook pixel so you can get customers information so you can retarget customers etc.
As Facebook Ads Manager is very well known, there are an abundance of tutorials that you can follow in order to create ads and targeting campaigns. This is what makes Facebook/Instagram one of the best methods of advertisement today.
TikTok
TikTok is a newer platform that can now be used for running ads. You can use TikTok in a variety of way such as creating organic content, using influencers to push your product and using TikTok Ads Manager.
Using Ads Manager is similar to Facebook platform and there are some different variations of ads you need to be aware of. In-feed ads are ads that you make yourself. Types of in-feed ads include image ads (which are like a billboard), video ads (like a TV commercial) and spark ads (boosting the content you already have, so it shows up on more people’s feeds).
As TikTok users are mostly a younger audience, targeting campaigns such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day would be great. If a custom print on demand Mother’s Day product appears on a user’s feed, they might impulse buy which is ideal.
Influencers
If you want to get an extra boost, contact influencers and gamers with a following. You can get them to try out your game and if all goes well, they’ll recommend your game to their followers. This can instantly get you a number of players and give you the kick start you need.
Be aware that if the influencers do not like your game and find bugs with it. They could inform their followers which immediately gives your game a bad reputation. This is a gamble, and this is why social media advertising is the safest choice when starting out.
Conclusion
Overall, whether you release your game for free or for a price. There are benefits to both, we hope this article has highlighted how free to play and paid games can make you money.
Advertising is a very important aspect that developers need to consider, Steam will not advertise your game for you. They list it on their platform and the rest is up to you. By using social media and influencers, you can build your audience and get players onto your game (especially if its free to play).
Steam is a great platform for developers because of how simple it is to use. If game developers wish to update or fix their game, they can use Steam to release “game patches” for players to download. This allows game developers to improve their games without enforcing a recall of their product.
