Yesterday it took place the Valve talk at the annual GDC with Tom Giardino, Alden Kroll and Ricky Uy, all three announced really interesting stuff for both players but also developers.
Let's take a look at the live blog in order:
First of all, Steam Link Anywhere, Stream your game wherever you are.
Next new library design was shown and explained, new features coming to customize your content.
Tom also confirmed that they already have a 5-year plan Road-map to keep improving the service and the community. They also released a past-to-present Road-map with all the changes and features that have been appearing on the platform over time.
After showing the big news the team answered some developer requests and concerns they have received over the time such as notify and engage with my existing customers, connecting with potential new ones or the steam review bomb debacle, let's take a look.
Details about the release were said:
-Release in beta state
-intended for Summer release
-wave release as we have seen until now.
Let's take a look at the live blog in order:
First of all, Steam Link Anywhere, Stream your game wherever you are.
The first feature announced was Events, a new page where players can opt-in to receive regular updates via mails about the games the own, design of this new page was shown."Steam link anywhere beta. Our goal is overnight your game can be available anywhere with less work for you."
"Steam is customers ability to subscribe to events so they can opt in to receive emails. This is huge. Email drives engagement better than any other form of messaging."
Event window design
Mail template for the reminders
Mail template for the reminders
Next new library design was shown and explained, new features coming to customize your content.
"Players can filter their library and save that filter as a "collection" so they can create custom groupings. "
"Steam wants to allow creators to define when and where your game appears within the Steam Store. Can also see better stats about visibility. Such as how many players saw my game because they saw their friend playing it. This allows you to figure out how to strategize "
General view of the new Library design.
Tag System
Individual game page on library
Tag System
Individual game page on library
Tom also confirmed that they already have a 5-year plan Road-map to keep improving the service and the community. They also released a past-to-present Road-map with all the changes and features that have been appearing on the platform over time.
After showing the big news the team answered some developer requests and concerns they have received over the time such as notify and engage with my existing customers, connecting with potential new ones or the steam review bomb debacle, let's take a look.
"Dev request: "When I release my next game how do I notify my existing fans?"
Answer: Developer Homepages. Build your audience over time. "
"Dev request "How do I show potential players what it's like to play my game?"
Answer: Store page broadcasting. So you can host a live stream on the store page."
Next section was about the API changes and Steamworks SDK, features, improvements and new services detailed."Dev request "Impact of off-topic review bombs"
Answer: "we will automatically hide review bombs. So if we see a surge of comments we will review them. We have the ability to see if there is a review surge, so we will contact the developer and ask them if they are ok. There will also be a "help" button that devs can push and it will alert valve moderators to check it out"
"API improvements: - View player download speeds around the world.
"API improvements to operating an online game. Valve network. "
"Valve network is built on the same content delivery network but online game packets are prioritized so that online games will run faster. You just need to integrate the steam API into your game code."
And now some business data that was given to the audience in order to give more perspective of how their potential customers use the service."Steam network provides protection from DDOS attacks. If there is an attack, they will re-route traffic. To implement this you use Steamworks SDK. "
"Valve is traveling around the world to see what customers need around the world. Emerging markets are defined as one with a growing economy (India) or a potential to grow a lot more (Japan)"
"10 Years ago steam was available in Russia so Steam tried to improve market: price, convenience, language, day and date launches, support for local developers, fast network, feature parity, community. All of these things helped improve penetration in the Russian network."
This one about the 90-10 in payment methods is for Asia"Countries like Japan pay for their games that are different than the north American model. Japanese customers prefer to go in store to purchase a voucher. Japanese customers prefer to use cash. So Steam retail cards match the Japanese model for purchasing games."
"Steam provides 100 Payment methods. Only 10% of purchases are done via credit card, paypal, paysafe. The remaining 90% of purchases are mostly done via cash. Your customers probably don't use credit cards."
PC Cafes are the preferred way for Korean players to interact with steam. So Steam rolled out a PC cafe model. You can make any of your games available in the PC Cafe program. Just click "create a commercial Page", then chose how a you want it paid for. You must opt in to do this
Details about the release were said:
-Release in beta state
-intended for Summer release
-wave release as we have seen until now.
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