[closed] Umbra... Now available on Steam

but if you track games on Greenlight, a lot of NO votes = never get greenlit.

it's hard to say though.. because inherently if it's a bad game, it's going to have more NOs than YESs.. and that could just be curation doing it's 'job'.. you don't know for sure if they are looking at the NOs.. it might be just 2 unrelated things pointing to the same thing.

EDIT: regardless, if there are way more NOs than YESs, it's probably a good sign your game isn't doing well!

— - that makes total sense; thanks!

Ruskul - In answer to your question in your other thread: yes! Some steady progress is being made - Umbra: Shadow of Death is now available as part of a Groupees bundle bundle 10. The Greenlight response has been quite favourable too!

Colludium nice, nice, Good to hear.

Actually, about Greenlight, I don't know how much I would worry about vote ratios or anything. In full transparency, my game's final ratio was 33% Yes votes. I wasn't anywhere near breaking any top lists, but a Valve curator liked my game and pushed it through. On the flip side of things, I have more followers on Steam for my game than the average top 50 on the list, so there's that.

Groupees Bundle has proven rather popular (to say the least)... Umbra is now showing as comfortably in the top 100 (No 63) out of almost 1800 games on greenlight, with >1000 yes votes (at 54% yes)! I think I need to sit down... But, instead, I'm going to start work on the Steam achievements events, in anticipation of someone making a plugin that will support them.

Thats good news

Colludium Great news! My game was also on Groupees and got the exact same ratio of yes votes and got greenlit a short bit after the bundle ended. So I think you'll get the same result

Just a heads up. There is a downside with the bundle which you'll probably see after the release on Steam. Because after your game is greenlit you'll have to send steam keys to everyone who bought the bundle (if you don't send keys you'll get many bad reviews) and many many of these keys will end up on G2A.com and Kinguin and be sold for a price far less than your steam price.

And more and more people buy their games from these sites and steam sales will go down until your free keys are sold out. So be careful with bundles and giveaways and think once and twice if the publicity generated is worth it.

Once your game launches you will be approached by MANY asking for giveaways to promote your game and you have to be careful so you don't end up giving away too many keys. Because that can hurt sales for months to come. You'll always sell a lot the first week but after that it might change. So don't get too excited the first days

I havent done much else than the Groupees bundle but most of my steam activations everyday is from G2A and Kinguin and I don't get anything from those sales. But I still sell enough real steam keys to keep it up so for me it was worth it to get Greenlit and I think Groupees is a really good Bundle to join during the greenlight process.

But I would never enter a bigger bundle where you might end up giving away 20 000+ copies of a game for a 95% discount. That would be like sending the game into the discount bucket even before the game is released. These bundles are better to enter during the end of a games lifespan.

Speedrunners is a good example of a game that have suffered from bundles. Most people knows about the game but they have entered so many bundles so you can buy the game from various sites for almost nothing now and that will hurt the sales for a long time to come and maybe forever.

So be careful and think once or twice before entering giveaways and bundles in the future. I'm not saying bundles are bad because they can be fantastic if used right.

There are many threads about this on the steam developer forums which I recommend you read the first thing you do after entering steam

Best of luck with the Steam release!

Anonnymitet, thank you - there's some very good advice in your post. I am not keen on giving the game away and, like you, I thought that Groupees would be the best compromise for gaining some visibility. I was promised by my contact that they would distribute the keys for me, and I hadn't really comprehended that after launch sales could be affected so much. For me this is a great experience, no matter what happens. It's interesting - launching a game that has a similar theme to Limbo brings out the worst is some people. The ratio of yes votes has gone down a bit after the initial craziness, with a few negative comments by people who clearly haven't tried it, but I'm still showing as inside the top 40 with about 50/50 yes/no ratio. Fingers crossed for a couple of weeks and then I can start fighting with NW.js and the Steam api!

Anonnymitet,

I agree with most of what you said but the part about reviews.

Giving away some copies won't hurt your business if you pick the right people to promote if for you.

The one thing that made Minecraft popular was the reviews and gameplays on Youtube.

With so many big channels talking about the game, a lot of people had a chance to see the game before the commitment to purchase it.

Also, it is much a cheaper way to promote it than paid ads.

jogosgratispro

it seems they pick you rather than the other way around. Getting people involved who have any sway at all seems very difficult.

Colludium Yes of course Groupees will distribute the keys. But you'll have to provide a file with a couple of thousand keys to them asap after the release before the groupees buyers come at you

jogosgratispro I think you misunderstood me. The part about the bad reviews is true. I didn't send out Groupees keys at first when I only had a "coming soon page" on steam because I wanted to wait until the game was released for purchase. And during this time I recieved many many emails from Groupees buyers that said that if I don't send them keys ASAP they will downvote the game. And believe me. Many downvotes during the first days on steam can kill your sales during the most important period during the launch.

So sending out a couple of hundred keys to promote the game on youtube and stuff like that is no problem. I'm talking about bundles and giving away thousands of keys that can hurt sales.

This is a brilliant achievement programmatically speaking. I would be very proud to be able to make something half as good as this.

Maybe you should think out of the box and market the game yourself?

Well I never.... I just received the email of good news - Umbra has been greenlit! More news to follow....

Anonnymitet - thank you again for some gems of advice.

planetserve - thank you!

Glad to hear! Congratulations!