Steam - Winter Sale Big for Smaller Games

[Aubrielle]

Despite all of its issues, Steam's winter sale was a really big deal for smaller indie titles. RPS has some numbers.

​

Steam sales are renowned for cleaning out the wallets of many, but the last two have felt slightly lower key than previously because they featured neither daily deals, nor flash sales, nor complicated metagames. Perception can be misleading, though: a report by Valve – perhaps released accidentally – states that the recent Steam Winter Sale was the most successful ever.



The post was first made to the developer-only Steamworks group, then for some reason mirrored on the public SteamVR page. It was quickly taken down, but not before someone copied it and pasted it onto the SteamDB forum. As its introduction explains:

“As you already know, the format of discounts in this year’s Winter sale was a little different from past years. This year’s sale was centered around discounts that ran for the full length of the sale, rather than changing from day to day for featured titles. Our hypothesis was that this new format would be a better way to serve customers that may only be able to visit Steam once or twice during the 13-day event. We also saw this change as an opportunity to showcase a deeper variety of titles to customers each day, while having confidence that any game being highlighted would be at its lowest discount.”

The rest then goes on to back it up with graphs and numbers: a 197% increase in the rate of wishlist additions; 35% of traffic delivered to games outside of the top 500 best sellers; 45% growth in revenue generated by the same group when compared to the last winter sale, and more. In short: it was good for business.

Why do you care? I don’t know, but I care because I want to know that smaller games can still find an audience amid the quantity and noise of present day Steam. It’s in everybody’s interest that Steam not be solely hit-driven, that Valve are interested in spreading attention around, and that more unusual or niche experiences aren’t disappearing without trace.

More information.

More information.

 

[Deleted member 18181]

obviously user base increase=more sales; and about the wishlist thing, main reason was those shit queues to get cards :lol:

 

[luj1]

wish we could get more detailed data... like how many people bought Underrail

 

[Terry]

By rewarding you for checking out your discovery queue with cards it brought a lot of unnoticed games to light. So it is not surprising there was a big increase in wishlist additions and even a significant increase in sales. Quite smart marketing.

 

[Deleted member 18181]

wish we could get more detailed data… like how many people bought Underrail

Player Data
Owners: 34,410 - 43,168
Players total: 25,027 - 32,573 (74.25%)
Players in the last two weeks: 4,920 - 8,572 (17.39%)
Average playtime: 19 hours, 29 minutes
Average playtime in the last two weeks: 11 hours, 23 minutesPowered by steamspy.com

i remember it had around 20k owners before leaving early access; so by that numbers, didnt sell good.

 

[forgottenlor]

Player Data
Owners: 34,410 - 43,168
Players total: 25,027 - 32,573 (74.25%)
Players in the last two weeks: 4,920 - 8,572 (17.39%)
Average playtime: 19 hours, 29 minutes
Average playtime in the last two weeks: 11 hours, 23 minutesPowered by steamspy.com

i remember it had around 20k owners before leaving early access; so by that numbers, didnt sell good.

Comparing it to similar releases: It has around the same numbers of owners as Legends of Eisenwald, more than Age of Decadence, and significantly more than Serpents in the Staglands. There are very few indie games that sell more games than that and most of them are featured in mainstream game magazines and on almost every major internet site. I would actually say the numbers are pretty good considering that Underrail has had a lot less press coverage than either Age of Decadence or Legends of Eisenwald and has been out a much shorter time than either of those games.

 

[Drithius]

Comparing it to similar releases: …Legends of Eisenwald… Age of Decadence… Serpents in the Staglands…

Ugh, so many games to get caught up on.

Personally, I found this year's Steam Winter sale very boring. Two weeks of the same deals... I was done looking at the site after the first day.

 

[luj1]

Player Data
Owners: 34,410 - 43,168
Players total: 25,027 - 32,573 (74.25%)
Players in the last two weeks: 4,920 - 8,572 (17.39%)
Average playtime: 19 hours, 29 minutes
Average playtime in the last two weeks: 11 hours, 23 minutesPowered by steamspy.com

i remember it had around 20k owners before leaving early access; so by that numbers, didnt sell good.

thats actually pretty good !

 

[Radorin]

From what I`ve read of Steam analysis persantage of people owning more then 10-20 games is minor. These less then 5% generates most of Steam sales. Milions of people own only League of Legends for example. And of these less then 5% many tend to buy only AAA class. Avarage indie game may interest very limited number of people and selling 25-50.000 copies should be considered a success. Inspite of 125 or now even 130 milions active accounts.

 

[Darkheart]

Yeah, they kinda took the fun out of Steam sales. On the first day I checked general discounts and then my wishlist, bought games for maybe 50€ and that was that. Whole bunch of indie games I still have to find the time to play.
So far I had a huge amount of fun with Death Skid Marks (not an RPG, more like an action road warrior rogue-like).
I played Heroes of Steel for many hours, but the level system is weird and the fights got boring at some point.
Thea - The Awakening I just tried for a few hours. It's something I definietely will have to get back to.
Highest profile game I bought was probably Satellite Reign, which I haven't tried yet.
Oh, and I got Shadows of Mordor GotY, because I bought for 20+€ from Indiegala store. Will have to give that one a whirl, when I need some action.