Jesus. This makes it reasonable to just buy $100 worth of your own game every month, just to make sure. Assuming that the number of real sales cover Valve’s percentage and then some. Yeah, that’s a non-zero opportunity cost for you, and additional float for Valve, however petty it may be. But for a small developer, maybe that makes sense.
The break even point would be at a balance of 23.08$. However, if the account balance doesn’t expire, buying your own game to put you over the threshold would be checking the couch cushions for loose change level of desperation.
Oh, it’s petty cash to be sure. If you have $100-ish bucks to throw around, you probably aren’t going to miss much by not doing this. Unless, of course, letting someone else take even one dollar from you in this way is against your religion or something (i.e. the principle of the thing). Conversely, if you need the handful of dollars this makes, you probably don’t have that kind of walking-around money in the first place.
Hey me too! I released my first game on Steam a month ago and by all objective measures it was a flop, but as a hobbyist I’m still proud of it. It honestly did better than I thought for a small niche game that I did a terrible job of marketing, and my one review so far was quite positive so I’ll count that as a small win as I move onwards to the next game.
EDIT: Here’s the game because my reply is getting harder to spot below - store.steampowered.com/app/2792160/SnowDown/ - It’s a small Jackbox-inspired party game (using phones as controllers) but with real-time action and physics as you throw snowballs around and destroy structures.
Unfortunately I’ve found that the latency over streaming makes the game less fun to play than when joining locally (or over a faster video call service like Discord), but for my next game I’m designing it to be more streaming-friendly so I’ll definitely be looking at building an integration then.
This is super cute! If I buy these now for my friends and family but set it to deliver the gift near Christmas, would you get the money now? Or not til Christmas?
This looks perfect for when everyone is over on Christmas eve! <3
I’m glad you like it! I actually made my first prototype right before last Christmas so I could play it when my family got together, and people enjoyed it so much I just kept working on it.
As far as gifting goes, I actually didn’t know you could get Steam gifts that deliver later, so I’m not entirely sure of the answer, but I assume if they charge you for the game right away it would process the payment then too.
Full disclosure though, only one person needs a copy of the game to run it and play with a group. Everyone joins the game by visiting a website (generally on their phone), similar to how Jackbox games work. So there’s no obligation to gift copies, but if you still do I will be quite honored and grateful!
Aww, you’re adorable. I will buy the games closer to Christmas for everyone, my reading tells me that if I buy the game and the person does not accept the gift then they will give me a refund, so I imagine you won’t get the money until everyone accepts.
As someone who is also awkwardly treading the line between being a soulless hack and trying to get my work noticed by literally anyone: please edit your top comment with a link to your game.
I mean it. I can’t even muster the courage to post my renders to Instagram without feeling like some desperate influencer goof.
I can relate though, I’ve honestly avoided actively using social media for the better part of a decade, so dipping my toe back in the waters has been a bit of a struggle. I can’t help overanalyzing everything I write, to the point it becomes exhausting trying to regularly post anything. And then it often feels like an exercise in futility anyway when you’re lost in the sea of other posts.
So I figure for now I’ll focus my energy on making games and especially improving with the visuals (admittedly I’m a programmer first and foremost, so art is not my strong suit), and hopefully gradually gain more confidence.
By the way, I’ve really appreciated yours and everyone’s encouraging comments here! Funnily enough, this is the most attention a post of mine has ever received, and I wasn’t even intending for it
Considering you’re a hobbyist and probably don’t have marketing, it’s too soon to say it’s a flop. Many games like that pop off later once it gets seen.
I appreciate the optimism! I hope it can find an audience over time, but it’s definitely tough to stand out. For now, I’m aiming to just keep making games and improving, rather than giving up after the first try, which sadly seems to happen a lot out there.
Glad you found the toaster! It’s probably my favourite too, though I also loved the jukebox having an affair with the light switches. I hope you’ll enjoy Lonesome Road, it’s my personal favourite DLC I think, though objectively OWB is probably better. I just love the vibes and the levels in LR.
Two very different games in the pipeline after. Alan Wake II was my GOTY last year so hard not to recommend it here. Have you played the preceding Remedy games?
I just sped through the entirety of Old World Blues today (I’m currently stuck at home). It was a lot of fun. I ended up sparing Ulysses but sacrificed ED-E to stop the bombs (I’m trying to be as morally good as possible for this play through, and though I didn’t side with the legion, idk if the fallout from the bomb would hit innocent people).
I played the first Alan Wake about 2012 when I was still in elementary school. Ever since then it’s been one of my favorite games of all time (Though, if given the choice between it and American Nightmare idk which I would choose). I currently have a save for control and enjoy it a lot, but I can’t find it in me to stick with it past maybe a few sessions lasting a week, so it has been a very slow burn game for me. I also have Quantum Break in my library from a Humble Bundle and I picked up Max Payne with the last Steam Sale, so those are lined up somewhere too.
Alan Wake 2 is amazing, but with the interconnected Remedyverse being what it is it also sort of wants you to “do your homework” - the experience is definitely enriched by having played Max Payne and Control before (with the AWE DLC of the latter being a direct bridge to AW2). The Quantum Break overlap is much more minor as they don’t own the rights to its IP. It’s fun for those who played it, but not necessary and not important.
I played a brief while after picking it up on Epic, but dropped it because it ate through my battery and I didn’t have time to figure out performance on launch. I did spoil myself on the connection of Control too Alan Wake (I’d rather sacrifice Control’s plot for the sake of my Alan Wake II experience), so I’m aware of a lot of the stuff, or can at least draw my own conclusions and fill in gaps.
Max Payne though I can’t say I know much about except I know the character Sam Lake plays in AWII is heavily inspired by Max Payne, that Max Payne takes pain killers to heal, and something about wife and kids I think?
Alex Casey (the detective from Alan Wake’s books) is essentially Max Payne - they had to change the name when making Alan Wake 1 because Rockstar had bought the IP.
There are callbacks in AW2 in both narration, atmosphere and character design that I really enjoyed, but you won’t miss out on anything story-relevant if you haven’t played it. Watching a couple of minutes of cutscenes from Max Payne 1 on YouTube is probably enough to get most of the references.
shouldn’t those service providers wait until the total is $100 before they started to receive my money due to cost associated to sending and receiving money then?
The service providers are the ones who dictate the costs. They provide the infrastructure. The costs for these kind of transactions are much much lower because of economy of scale they handle millions of transactions per day across all their clients. Because they handle so many transactions they can charge a small percentage fee. The loss they make on small transactions they will make up with bigger transactions.
While Steam uses a normal bank transactions to pay developers, because many of them are in the hundreds of thousands and some are in the millions of dollars so you don’t want to have a third party handling those that asks a percentage fee. You’d rather just pay the fixed fee the bank charges per transaction. Since it is cheaper for those large transactions. That fee can be $10-$20 especially on international transactions. That’s why Steam waits till that money is above a $100. And using a third party to handle those small transactions wouldn’t be worth the hassle. The percentage fee would be high anyway because of the low volume.
I was really fortunate to have been exposed to a lot of awesome video games in my childhood. Sonic 3 and knuckles, gunstar heroes, super Mario world, low g man, x wing alliance, and the xmen and simpson arcade games all transport me in time. 🥹
I was pretty upset that my grandma got me a Genesis instead of a Super Nintendo, but I played the hell out of Sonic 2, Sonic and Knuckles, and Mortal Kombat. No Super Mario World though. :(
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