I successfully published my first game, 1-Bit Explorer on Steam right before Christmas 2024 (YAY!). The point of this was to understand the Steam publishing process first-hand in a low risk situation, since the game is free and has already been out on Itch and Newgrounds for over a year.
What were my expectations?
Considering that I went from planning the Store Page to publishing the game in the span of about a month, you can say that I didn't put a lot of effort into making this release a "Steam Hit". All the game development had been done for a long time and I already had plenty of feedback for improvements for future releases.
So... why do it? Well, I thought that if I plan to make any advances in gamedev, I should understand how Steam works, being the biggest platform in the market and all. I watched videos and read articles about it, but nothing beats the first-hand experience. Turns out this was a good idea, because I ran into issues that no video or article prepared me for, so...
How was the process?
For a first timer, publishing on Steam is contrived, complicated and seems to be working against you at all times, but once you understand it, it is ok.
The Store Page creation is pretty straight forward, not much different from other platforms, but uploading the actual game on the other hand...
To publish on Itch or on Newgrounds you simply type a description, upload a ZIP file, change a few settings and you're done. On Steam you need to:
- Download an SDK
- Configure the SDK and successfully connect it to your SteamWorks Account
- Configure your depot(s) with the game files and publish it
- Make a build for your game on Steam and publish it
- Test your build and depot(s)
- Wait for the reviewing process
- If the reviewing fails, you need to fix whatever needs fixing and apply for review again
- Publish the game
What issues I encountered?
When you are publishing on Steam you get a big checklist of stuff to do, which is pretty easy to follow and has videos explaining everything in detail. Maybe this as bad luck on my end, or that I failed during my research, but the problems I found were not mentioned in any tutorials, articles or videos I could find.
The problems were:
SDK wouldn't link to one of the depots
Since my game had 2 available languages, I was instructed to create 1 depot for each of them. This worked great with the first depot, but not so much on the second... Why? No idea. The SDK simply said that the upload of the depot failed and that I should try again.
How did I fix it? I manually created the depot on the SteamWorks page and tried again. Now it worked. Lesson learned.
As a dev, I did not get access to any of my game builds for testing
Every tutorial, video or article said that, as a dev, you get access to playing your game right away, no questions asked. The thing is... I didn't, and no settings I changed gave me access to it to test anything.
How did I fix it? I sent a Steam Key for myself as if I were a third-party dev instead of the main one. That worked great and I could access and test my game. Another lesson learned.
No play button available on store after release
After everything was tested and Steam gave me the go ahead, there was no play button on my store page. The game was released and everything was looking good on my end, but there was no play button!
How did I fix it? After searching for a bit I found one reddit post where a dev faced a similar issue, and the way to fix this is... contact Steam. This apparently is a bug that can happen to you, but I got no reasons for it. Although Steam Support was great and fast, this was not fixed immediately, so this could really derail a game launch.
What I take away from all this?
Steam is a great platform, providing distribution, game key management, a store front and more, but it does have downsides, some of which could really break your game launch.
I am glad I did this and now am a bit more prepared for future releases.
Thanks for reading!