How to Get a Game on Steam // Creating a Steam Page
930Are you wondering how to get a game on Steam? Maybe you are planning on creating a Steam page but you have no idea what you need to do? No worries! In this video I will go through everything you need to do to create a steam page and then at the end I will also give you a few tips on what you should focus on the most.
⚔️ Mortal Glory 2: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2216660?utm_source=yt
⚔️ Chambers of Devious Design: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1650860?utm_source=yt
⚔️ Mortal Glory: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097530?utm_source=yt
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Zero Budget VIDEO GAME MARKETING // Going Viral on Steam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc6FPtgKQkY
Music by Harris Heller, StreamBeats.com
0:00 Intro
0:44 Steamworks Account
The first step to creating a steam page is to sign up your Steam account as a Steamworks developer account. You can use your own personal account for this and in some cases that might be a good idea, for example if you’re trying to build a personal brand as a developer and you feel like your own Steam account is an integral part of that. But in most cases I think having a separate company / developer account for this is a smart move.
Whichever you choose, you can still later on set your developer name as whatever you want as your account name won’t be visible on the Steam page. The developer and publisher names are separate things you can customize freely. But the account name will be visible on any Steam groups you are a part of, your Steam developer page for example and of course also on forums and wherever you can leave a comment. So, it’s good to give a quick thought to how you would like to present yourself and if you would like to have a separate account for that purpose.
You might now also be wondering if you need to have a company to register as a developer on Steam. The answer is No. It is not necessary. You can just as well sign up as an individual and release a game without a company. There are benefits to having a company though. It will differ based on where you live, but at least in my case there are many taxation benefits to doing business through a company and if for whatever reason my games would end up in legal trouble, my company would be the one that ends up getting sued. Not me as an individual. So the company sort of acts as a legal shield for me.
My recommendation is that if you intend to make money with games, it’s good to have a company. Even then it’s not really necessary in the beginning though. You can change your company status later on in Steam as far as I know and you can also transfer game ownership between different accounts if needed.
After you have signed up, you will need to fill in some details about where you are doing business from, your banking information and other basic information like that. You will also need to fill a tax questionnaire, which can be a bit intimidating. Especially if you are not from the U.S. From what I can remember, the instructions were pretty good for U.S. citizens and companies as Valve is an American company, but for international companies like mine, it wasn’t really always that clear what was required.
But, it’s nothing you can’t get through with a bit of fact finding, and in tough situations, I’m sure Steam support can also offer some help.
Once you’re done with these, you will need to pay the Steam direct fee, which is $100. This is a fee that you will need to pay for every game you put on Steam. So 3 games would be $300. But the good thing is, that you can actually get the fee paid back to you if your game sells more than $1000.
3:48 Creating a Steam Page
With the fee paid, you can now access the setup page for your game on Steam. There are many things you need to do before you can get a steam page up, but luckily Valve has given a handy checklist for you of all those things. Most of them are quick to check off. The most time consuming ones are the contents that will be visible on your Steam page. Descriptions, pictures etc.
(In the video I go through all the different fields you need to fill. But I couldn't fit the text in this description)
11:06 Two Quick Tips
#1. Copying what others are doing is usually a good way to learn and improve your page. Don’t look at just one other page but see if there are some common trends visible in many different pages. Pay extra attention to other popular indie games in your genre.
#2. Not everything is worth the same amount of effort. There can be differing opinions on this, but I would say that the effort order, so what you should focus on the most, should look something like this: Capsule images, First 3 screenshots, First 5 tags, The rest of the screenshots, The rest of the tags, Trailer, Short description, Long description.