Is is Worth to Release Your Game on Steam to Reach Wider Audience?

[tiya_nofurita]

I'm a mainly a freelance illustrator working with a small team to finish this visual novel

We are progressing into chapter 4, but the exposure here is not what we expected (we just like, getting 250 downloads on itch.io and no useful review for this past 3 months. LSF also has gone very quiet since the last time I mostly active here) , so I'm thinking, is it worth to reach larger audience by posting it on Steam? We have to think about this thoroughly because register fee on Steam is quite an amount for us (100 USD). But if it means reaching 100x, or hopefully more audience then it'd be fine for us, because our first target is to promote this visual novel as much as possible. And getting useful feedback for our next project, of course.

Also related, any other useful site to promote your VN beside itch.io?
Would love to see your opinion in this.

[papillon]

If you want to know what sort of exposure you might get, check out *recent* free VN releases on steam by small studios and see what sort of reactions they get. (I specify recent and small because old hugely popular ones or ones by big studios that already have an existing following would give you a skewed idea. There are so many more releases on Steam these days, the amount of exposure from a release is not the same as it once was.)

Certainly more people will play it. Will they give you good reviews, though? Or just complain that it's "not a real game"? Would it be 100x more people or just 100 more people? Look over some games and try to get a guess of what might happen so you can decide whether it's worth it for your case.

(I'd bring up examples myself but steam's site is lagging out for me at the moment so I can't see the list of recent releases right now.)

[tiya_nofurita]

Thank you papillon for your insight! I shall see for myself and try not to expect much.

[Imperf3kt]

A popular alternative to Steam is the polish site GoG
https://www.gog.com/

[tiya_nofurita]

A popular alternative to Steam is the polish site GoG
https://www.gog.com/

just browse a little, I only see visual novel from well-known publisher there, I'm afraid that's not my place to begin with
or can you explain the benefit of putting visual novel on that site? (exposure maybe?)
because I don't intend to sell my VN

[Imperf3kt]

Yes I intended it as a suggestion for exposure only. A lot of players are fed up with Steam and their terrible service, restrictive DRM and outright lack of support.
Many of the people in other groups I'm involved in have moved away from Steam to alternative markets, GoG was just one that came to mind as popular among them.

Note that te people I reference are consumers.

[tiya_nofurita]

Good to know, if it doesn't require me to pay some cash to register (or just a small amount I could afford) I will definitely consider it
Thanks for the info Imperf3kt.

[tiya_nofurita]

I just read regarding GOG indie submission. They are pretty tight about it actually, because not many indie games make it to be "chosen" in their platform.
Still it's good to know that only a select few could make it, it means less trash and more quality (although from what I can see, 99% of the game are not a freeware)

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_r ... is_service

[papillon]

It's highly unlikely that they'd carry a small free VN, it's not really a practical option to plan for.

Wouldn't hurt you to ask though.

[tiya_nofurita]

Yeah, I ask them anyway, but I doubt they'll accept my product though hahaha.

[VimislikArt]

As someone who just paid for a steam page a while back, I am keep refreshing this thread in hopes of someone validating my decision.

[Imperf3kt]

I didn't realise your game was marketed as a free game. I am not sure how that may affect their response.

[tiya_nofurita]

Yeah, it's freeware...I'm pretty sure the quality doesn't qualify for gog standard but I ask them anyway.
on the other hand, I wouldn't worry about steam release because they are not very tight with quality, or am I reading it wrong?

[tiya_nofurita]

Speaking of which, IndieDB can be an alternative for publishing VN, although the traffic is less crowded than itch.io and the community is not as active as here. Dropped my VN there too to see the development.

[papillon]

Yeah, it's freeware...I'm pretty sure the quality doesn't qualify for gog standard but I ask them anyway.
on the other hand, I wouldn't worry about steam release because they are not very tight with quality, or am I reading it wrong?

Steam is now more-or-less an open platform provided that you pay the listing fee and meet a few basic standards (game that runs, is not infested with viruses, and does not contain what they consider to be illegal content, pretty much).

People who've made more than a certain amount of sales on Steam can bypass the listing fee and just put out whatever games they want, so if you cannot afford the listing fee publishers are another option.


IndieDB is pretty much dead AFAIK. It used to have some decent traffic but not anymore.