steam games

Hey guys, I was curious, if I wanted to upload a game to steam, does it need to be a Standalone app or something else?

 

Yes, your upload should be a standalone app. You can upload your game for Windows/Mac/Linux if your game can run on those platforms. You are expected to integrate the Steamworks API in your game, such that your game is started through Steam (adding achievements is also a good idea). Adding the Steamworks API is pretty easy to do even after your game is done, so it is usually not something you would need to worry about early on. When you need to integrate, I suggest using Steamworks.NET for Unity3D projects.

Check out this link if you are still curious

 

wtf they dont talk about revenue split until after youve been greenlighted?? .. thats seems kinda shady to me (they change it from game to game, for "reasons" ???) ... but i guess whatever...

.. ive always hated steam...
but ill probably end up using it..

lol is it possible to Not have mandatory patch updates? .. i just hate that so much..

 

It is commonplace for publishers, let's face it Steam is as much a distribution platform as it is a publisher, not to speak of revenue split or exact figures until after a NDA is signed - which in this case would be the act of getting Greenlit.

You could look at it this way, you have a title which has been very successful on Steam and you're just finishing up a sequel which already has a huge following. You could approach your Steam representative and negotiate a deal for better royalties by swaying your titles previous success on Steam to X number of users converting providing a statistically proven number of sales to be had from the first day.

 

ugh... NDA?? ... no thanks... lol..

i have deep seated moral objection to that kinda thing lol

.. meh, steam doesnt deserve my revenue anyway

 

Unfortunately that doesn't pay the bills...

 

You morally object to promising someone that you won't share their private business information with someone else? And that they will do the same for you?

 

i morally object to being bound by contracts...
ah.. moreso.. if I come upon information that I feel that I should disclose, but Iam bound by a NDA.. I will disclose it.
this is incorrect of me to do.. and therefore, I cannot agree to Any NDA regardless of the situation.
(and i dont understand how anyone could, unless theyre a scumbag lols)

... ill become popular on my own, and make them beg me to share in my monies

LOL sorry... i gotta respond to people like a dummy....

 

Hmm, this turned into a debate of contracts I see LOL LOL...

 

Everything around here seems to turn into a debate about something! ;-)

It seems you need Unity Pro to publish to Steam, because Steamworks requires a native plugin. Although I guess if you get Greenlit, it should be safe to assume you'll make at least the $75/month you'd need for the Pro license. That's all speculation on my part though. I've seen sales figures from some moderately successful indie Steam games, but I haven't seen what the failures look like, sales-wise. I reckon you can guesstimate how well you may do on Steam from sales on channels like GOG and Desura. Of course, if you already have Pro it isn't a concern.

 

lol that one game Jim Sterling had a "thing" with recently has HORRIBLE sales figures.. (lol of course)

slaughtering grounds ... the kid? made a ridiculous counter video to sterling, horrible attention

 

Okie doke.

 

If we are talking about the same one, Air Control, it was removed from Steam recently. Finally. My current game is a card game, so I don't know how much of an audience it will find on Steam. But I can't imagine it being universally despised. I'd like to see the low end sales number for an actual functioning game. ;-)

 

Do I HAVE to integrate Steamworks?

 

hmm it says

hmm i thought it was required

ooooohhh nevermind.. this is talking about those features.. i see.

 

It needs to be a Standalone App, with the neccessary Steamworks integration.

 

Watch the following video for a better idea of what's involved.

 

What do you mean by "necessary". There's different way to interpret that, do you mean it's necessary to implement Steamworks to even be on Steam, or that it's necessary to implement steamworks to have achievements etc (which is obvious)?

 

Watch the video. It's necessary to "process" your build with their "SteamPipe" before uploading to your depots.

 

You don't have to do any coding or anything to integrate their features unless you want to.

 

Well I don't have pro, I saw someone mentioned you needed pro, well, I guess that leaves me out of the picture lol.
(I would watch the video, but kind of busy right this moment).

 

OK I'll watch the vid tomorrow, but you are basically saying I still need to throw in the plugins basically with the build but that's about it...?

 

You don't even need to do that. You just do a standard build with Unity. Then you use that "SteamPipe" process to bundle it all and upload it to your Steamworks developer account. There's no reason you'd need Pro, as far as I know.

All assuming you don't want to add achievements or any of the other extras. You just want to upload your game as it stands in Unity.

 

Sorry, that was me. I was under the impression that you had to integrate Steamworks. I didn't realize it wasn't a requirement. I'm interested in watching the video as well, but my bandwidth limit doesn't lift for a few hours. Satellite internet is horrible for impatient people such as myself.

 

Ohhhh okay, I appreciate the info!
I'll watch video as soon as I can.

Right now my game is a Mobile game, but I'm thinking of either changing back to PC all together or porting it for steam. But I don't know yet.

But I need to decide very soon as it takes forever to recompile everything to a different platform LOL.

 

That video saved my life. The Steam builds were killing me and I pretty much got everything sorted JUST using that video. Definitely worth bookmarking

 

You'll be my go-to Steam guy if I actually make it through Greenlight!

 

Screw it, I'm gonna go for it eventually, I can't stand mobile development, it gets so complicated to just do something that on a PC would be one line of code turning into 50 lines of code lol. (Figure of speech).

So I'm going for trying steam.
Maybe in the future I'll port it over to mobile, shouldn't be too too much work (just controls).

But, yeah lol.


I'm assuming selecting the Standalone build automatically makes it work for PC/Mac/Linux.. or do I have to change E.G. - If(input.GetKey(KeyCode.W) to something else so Mac and Linux can read it?

 

As far as I know all PC, Mac and Linux computers have a W key.

 

Hahaha, yeah I know, I was just talking about if I had to use a different logic to make these different machines understand. (Never used a Mac or Linux), well I've tried to use a mac, but couldn't figure out how to leave the desktop, I hate macs lol.

 

I've just grown frustrated with the mobile market, where everything is expected to be free or cost less than a candy bar. I was going to give in and go the freemium route, so I had my card game all integrated with Facebook and IAP and all that jazz, but I don't want to spend time figuring out how to con people into giving me money. Plus, my game is more fun in the editor than on a tiny screen. So I'm yanking all that and going the desktop route. I still suspect a card game will do better on the Mac App Store or Amazon than it would Steam, since Steam users seem to be geared more toward hardcore gaming. I didn't see too many card games with a lot of reviews on there. But at least I can charge $5 or so without people screaming that I am greedy. It would be nice if I could reuse some of the FB friends code I have in already with Stream friends, but not worth the $1500 for pro if it isn't otherwise needed. I can always add that later if it does sell well.

 

Ideally, if you can build ALL your games with every platform in mind, then that's the best way to go. It's not always possible, especially on smaller casual games, but it's obviously the ideal solution. The new RPG that I'm building now is like that - planning to just release on EVERYTHING, whereas the last one I built for mobile and then released on Steam as an afterthought.

Releasing FIRST on Steam is also ideal. Steam users get really bitchy about any game that came out on mobile first... whereas mobile users always seem delighted when they get a "PC Game" on their devices

 

Always happy to help, but honestly - that was about the extent of my knowledge!

 

I'm building a game like Crash Banditcoot. (however you spell it).

I was working on something like Frogger, but it wasn't something I had passion for, so I gave up on it because I was bored lol.

But I know a game like Crash would be good for mobile, but again, PC Development is so much easier, I saved all my Mobile code, just a few bugs to fix and it will be alright, but as long as it's all saved I'm good lol.

Are there any other places to advertise game aside places like IndieDB?

 

Yeah, for now I'm only commenting out mobile specific stuff, or wrapping it in preprocessor directives. Eventually I'll permanently rip out the ads and IAP, because those are never going back in. But I'm not ruling out the possibility of bringing it to mobile after I see how it does on desktop. Desktop sales also allow for the possibility of alpha funding through Desura and such (or Steam if you are lucky) which allows for a more refined product when it gets its actual release, or when it gets brought to mobile. It was almost finished except for the graphics when I decided to ditch the freemium model and move to desktop, so hopefully I'll be ready to see if one of those alpha funding outlets will take it soon.

 

So it seems like this thread is dead, but i thought I'd ask. I'm using C# to code my unity game, but when i was reading through the FAQ about greenlight, it claimed you needed to have a a game in C++... I'm not sure if the steamworks pipeline thing will fix this for you or not.

 

The native Steam API is C++, but you can write your own wrapper or use an existing on like: https://github.com/rlabrecque/Steamworks.NET -- so that you can call it from .NET (i.e.-C# -- Unity or otherwise).

 

Hello! Greenlight on steam dosent exist anymore. Pay a 100 bucks and you get yournappId and start intergrating steamworks within your project..

 

This topic is several years old, the info in it is long out of date.