On PC, Steam has started holding Themed Sale Events which differ from the usual seasonal sales that everyone takes part in. The main way they differ is things like the Summer Sale typically involve all titles on the platform, so long as the owners of a game opt in to discount their packages on the backend. Themed Sales do not. They have specific requirements, and games that meet those requirements are usually automatically invited into those events.
If your game does not receive an automatic invite from Steam, this does not mean it isn’t eligible. It merely means that Steam’s algorithmically-powered curation for that event didn’t initially consider the game to be a fit.
Since their algorithms can only do so much, Steam has an appeal button at the bottom of each event registration page.
I have successfully appealed for the same game to appear in more than one such event and I will lay out that method below. Before doing so, we need to understand that we need to meet Steam halfway. Merely appealing will not be enough – the worth of the game must be demonstrated to Steam.
WHAT DOES STEAM CONSIDER “WORTHY”?
The lame answer is “does it bring in revenue” but if that were solely the case then things like Grand Theft Auto V and The Witcher 3 would be in every possible sale Steam ever arranges. Instead, one needs to understand what Steam itself wants out of being a storefront (aside from money). From reading Steam’s own documentation as well as putting on our thinking hats, we should consider the following four things:
User-set tags and developer-set tags
“User sentiment”
Content relevance
Wishlists and historical sales data
Tagging is how Steam categorizes games. Developers tag their game with up to 20 different tags and based on their arrangement it determines whether they fit into things like “FPS” or “Deckbuilder”. Steam users can also tag any products on the store too.
Steam values the tagging system, providing a tagging wizard to developers and even allowing developers the means to flag certain tags applied to their titles (as in the OBS screenshot above, sometimes it’s in jest, but in other cases the system has been abused). Tags are what allow users to find things that are More like this and it gives Steam the means to organize its store in ways that simultaneously serve Steam customers, game developers and the platform holder. So, if your developer-set tags closely match user tags - great! Steam wants that, and so do the users. Determining whether user- and developer-set tags are in concert and appropriate are the first thing to review when appealing a game’s eligibility in a themed sale event.
“User sentiment” is shorthand for “what are Steam customers saying about the product and do they like it”. On Steam this is shown via user reviews and the aggregated “positivity” score.
These numbers are visible pretty much anywhere on the store. Mouse over any single title, even if you’re not signed in, and Steam will show you this information (in addition to user tags).
Positivity, however, doesn’t matter that much. By Steam’s own admission, review score isn’t a factor so long as the game is at mixed and above.
For the purposes of this exercise, draw your eye towards the text of these reviews. The reviews section of a Steam store page can sometimes feel cliched or even a negative place to visit. However, opening lines like this one for Stardew Valley…
Or this one for Cookie Clicker…
Or this for Journey…
…Are extremely moving because they go way beyond the stereotypical “Gameplay 8/10, Graphics 9/10, Story 5/10” etc. Whether irreverent or serious, reviews that speak to the human experience are worth their weight in gold.
Of course, reviews and tags will not matter in the slightest if the content of the game has nothing to do with a themed event. It’s stated plainly in the documentation and registration page - the game needs to have something substantial in its design and mechanics to justify its eligibility in a sale. Take a look at the Steam Farming Fest as an example:
Translation: if your game is an action platformer and a few levels just happen to take place on a farm, that’s not going to cut it.
The final point is to look at your game’s wishlists and historical sales data. This will vary depending on the age of your game, but have you sold well? Are you still sitting on thousands of excess wishlists? When your game goes on sale for a weekly deal or in a seasonal sale, do you see a significant uptick in units sold? How many of those units sold come from people who have wishlisted? Steam will know all this information about your game when you approach them, and so should you.
SO WHAT IS THE METHOD?
Now that you understand a few of the things that Steam cares about and assuming your title ticks off the relevant boxes to be eligible for a themed sale, you can start writing up your appeal. How I have written my appeals come down to touching on four points:
Tags
I made explicit note that the game’s existing tags set by us as developers and those by users were in line with the themed event. Our tags were not changed or replaced with new ones to “match” the upcoming event’s theme. What this says to Steam is both customers and developers are saying this is what the thing says it is.
User review citation
This is the time-consuming aspect of the process and involves a couple of steps. Browsing your own game’s Steam reviews is not very easy to do on Steam. Fortunately, Josh Hills created a brilliant tool called Steam Review Explorer. Stick in your game’s appID and the tool will pull all of them. I suggest you download the full set of reviews and open the file in an excel spreadsheet for the sake of convenience.
Once in Excel, Ctrl+F to search for keywords in the reviews. Whatever the themed event is, find those words that line up with it. If your game is a deckbuilder and you’re applying to a deckbuilder fest, then search for “deckbuilder”. I skew towards user reviews that are both positive and have longer playtimes, and also from a broad range of dates to show that the sentiment isn’t temporary. I also cap the citations at five and hyperlink to each review cited (the generated spreadsheet will contain links to each review).
Why I do this is to further indicate to Steam the sentiment that the game is an obvious match for the themed sale - and here’s all these customer testimonies saying so.
Content relevance
This depends on the theme of the sale but in one case, not just the text of our store page description but the game’s capsule, splash art and loading screen on launch very plainly indicated that the game was in line with the theme of the event. While visuals are obvious, it’s not the only factor about a game that can matter. Using the Steam Review Explorer or the Steam partner backend to look at user playtime can also be helpful.
Wishlists and historical sales data
What is pointed out in our appeal is twofold: the first is a substantial number of people still have our game wishlisted. The second is that whenever we take part in any sale on Steam, we always bring in more revenue compared to a non-discounted period, and our sales data tells us that approximately half of the units sold come from people that wishlisted the game. This means our game has a habit of performing well during promotions and there is an incentive to everyone (customers, we the developers and Steam) to give the game visibility, because it’s apparent we have not reached the ceiling of potential customers.
WHAT IF MY GAME ISN’T OUT YET?
Game marketing consultant Chris Zukowski has put together some excellent tips on this topic in this post. If I was appealing for a game that has not yet been released to appear in one of these themed events, I would change the following things about about my previous four points:
Tags
No major changes here but in any instance prior to appealing, make sure your tags are relevant. If it’s a cozy cat-themed festival but your game’s tags are all related to city builders or 4X, the person reviewing your appeal is probably going to raise an eyebrow.
User review citation
Steam states in the video cited above that direct store page traffic (i.e. traffic coming from within the Steam platform) is not a factor in a game’s visibility. External traffic is another matter. There’s plenty of details in that linked article about what constitutes external traffic and how you might go about generating it.
In lieu of having no user reviews, I would be drawing attention to sources that could be considered “buzz”. Maybe it’s a popular article from a reputable website, a post that went viral on social media, or a Twitch stream that drew a lot of eyeballs. Be sure to look at the posting date of the external sources and then look at the traffic stats for your game’s page to see whether the former drew traffic on those dates. My goal would be to prove in the appeal that the game has garnered substantial attention outside the platform.
Content relevance
I think this point remains largely unchanged. It will vary with theme but prior to making an appeal it’s useful to update your capsule and carousel images, and review the copy in the short and long description for the store page. If you happen to have demo stats that show impressive playtime numbers, cite them. Why you do this is because Steam loves having demos on its store, and it’s been a lynchpin of every single Next Fest.
Wishlists and historical sales data
If the game has been receiving a steady amount of wishlists since a Steam page has been launched (consult Chris’ benchmarks), this will give you an idea of how hotly anticipated your game is. The Popular Upcoming section on Steam’s front pages primarily uses wishlists to determine what ends up in that list.
As for sales data, we may not have any Steam sales data to go on, but if your game has already been released on another platform like Itch, then sales data from there is something we could use in an appeal. Even though Itch has a fraction of the audience of Steam, a game selling well on there is much more likely to take off when it comes to the platform. There are countless examples of games that have spent time on Itch before successfully making the jump – two that come to mind are Valheim and the more recent Slice & Dice.
Lastly, in any appeal you make to Steam – be courteous, professional and succinct. Hundreds, possibly thousands of other games will be filing appeals like yours. Don’t bog Steam down in a two thousand word essay about your game. That’s what Substack is for.