Steam just made a change that's really gonna hurt future indie games.
The Popular Upcoming page used to list games chronologically by release time. As long as you had enough wishlists to make the cut (~6k to 7k), you'd get some time at the top of the list for people to discover your game.
Now it's listed algorithmically, with far more large games from major companies and publishers on the list, even those releasing two weeks away. The lowest wishlist count on there right now is 80k, when before it would've been 10 indie games as low as 6k wishlists.
Feeling very lucky our game's early access release barely made it out before this changed. It was worth probably 1k wishlists for us, and we had some really unfortunate timing/positioning too. It can be worth thousands of wishlists and sales for smaller games.
Steam is more heavily prioritizing larger games, with the budget and time to grow to enormous wishlist totals, or the rare indie viral hit.
The small to mid-sized games just lost a way to find players. Steam players lost a tool to discover cool smaller games.
POV: People are finally playing the game you worked on in silence for months.
Released the first internal demo of Relicfall on Discord today.
As a programmer making my own game art for the first time, hearing positive reactions to the visuals honestly meant a lot. #Indiedev
Classic Diablo 2 grid inventory or simple 1x1 slots?
Honestly inventory systems change the entire feel of a game more than people think π
#gamedev#indiedev