Steam knowledgeable says devs need 250 opinions “in the first month” after launch or else it be doubtlessly “no longer gonna occur,” but admits one ingenious manufacturing facility sport defied the odds: “They by hook or by crook pulled it off”

One Steam expert asserts that developers will “know right away” if their game “has that special something” to succeed on Valve‘s online marketplace, but asserts there is often merely a brief opportunity for a title to rise, as if they fail to reach 250 reviews within the initial month, “it’s probably not going to happen.” Nevertheless, one particular game last year stood out as an exception to this trend.

During a panel at GDC, game marketing consultant and strategist Chris Zukowski mentioned that developers will know “within a week, maybe a month” if they have a bestseller on their hands. He clarifies that if Valve “senses that your game has that special something, they will provide you with the maximum visibility available,” and this usually occurs rapidly. Zukowski reveals that he analyzed “all the titles that hit real Steam” last year – with “real Steam” representing the “goal” that he believes developers should target, which he estimates is achieved after generating about $150,000 in initial revenue within “the first six to nine months.” Of those games, an astounding 74% achieved this within their first three months. “It happens very quickly,” he adds.

Of course, there are exceptions – Among Us, for instance, became extremely popular in 2020, two full years after its 2018 release. Zukowski emphasizes that this is not the standard, stating: “I examined 114,000 games that debuted last year that didn’t have that special something, which didn’t make it to real Steam. Only one managed to recover. I discovered it. I found the one game that experienced an ‘Among Us’ moment last year. It’s named Beltmatic.”

Created by Notional Games, Beltmatic is described as “a casual factory game where you combine numbers using mathematical operations,” and in its initial three months, it received only 51 reviews. “This is not real Steam,” Zukowski remarks. However, Beltmatic’s journey did not end there, as “after reaching 1,000 reviews in nine months, they somehow made it happen.”

Moving beyond last year’s extraordinary exception, Zukowski continues: “I’ll be honest with you all, if you don’t reach 250 reviews…