One Steam expert claims devs will "know immediately" if their game "has the magic" to be a hit on Valve's digital storefront, but claims there's generally only a short window for a title to fly, because if they don't hit 250 reviews within their first month, "it's more than likely not gonna happen." Despite this, however, one singular game last year managed to be an exception to that rule.
Speaking at a panel during GDC, game marketing consultant and strategist Chris Zukowski says devs will know "within a week, maybe a month" if they have a hit on their hands. He explains that if Valve "detects that your game has the magic, they will give you all the visibility they can muster," and this generally happens very quickly. Zukowski reveals that he looked at "all the games that got into real Steam" last year – "real Steam" being the "goal" that the consultant says devs should aim for, which he estimates happens after hitting around $150,000 in gross revenue in "the first six to nine months." Of those games, a whopping 74% of those made it within their first three months. "It happens very fast," he adds.
Of course, there are sometimes exceptions – Among Us, for example, became wildly popular in 2020, two whole years after its 2018 release. Zukowski reiterates that this isn't the norm, noting: "I looked at 114,000 games that released last year that didn't have the magic, that didn't get into real Steam. Only one recovered. I found it. I found the one game that pulled the Among Us last year. It's called Beltmatic."
Developed by Notional Games, Beltmatic describes itself as "a casual factory game where you combine numbers using mathematical operations," and in its first three months, it'd only garnered 51 reviews. "This is not real Steam," Zukowski says. Beltmatic's story didn't end there, though, because with "1,000 reviews after nine months, they somehow pulled it off."
Moving on past last year's singular exception, Zukowski continues: "I'm gonna be honest with you all, if you don't hit 250 reviews in the first month, it's more than likely not gonna happen. It's just not. It's time to move on. Plan B, whatever. It doesn't work. You can't do it afterwards. One game, Beltmatic, was the only one that pulled this off. I'm just gonna be honest. I'm sorry."
It's a rough landscape to have to deal with, but at least there are a couple of examples of games making comeback stories. Stats show that Steam is making more money than ever before, but apparently only 2.6% of games made more than $250,000 in their first month, while roughly 200 games made over $1 million in their first 30 days.
While you're here, be sure to check out our roundup of the best Steam games for even more to play.
