Report 2024-11

First of all, you can congratulate me—The Better Deal has officially launched on Steam! Let me briefly remind you of the twists and turns of this drama:

In January 2023, Steam banned my first game, Beauty and the Thug. Being a greedy and stubborn bastard, I couldn’t bear losing the $100 I paid to apply. The only way to get that $100 back from Steam was to create another game. So, I started developing my second game, The Better Deal, making sure it was Steam-friendly. My friend Nev wrote the game scenario. It took over a year to create a version good enough for publishing on Steam, and on June 11th, 2024, I finally uploaded my game build. Steam accepted my Store Page without any issues, but I can’t say the same for the Game Build. A few days later, I found out that my game build failed the automatic review and would need to be tested manually, which would take longer than the promised 2-3 business days. For over a month, they dragged things out, telling me they don’t accept adult games in Early Access—an obvious lie. Arguing was pointless, so I renamed my game The Better Deal: Part 1. Communication with Steam staff was painfully slow. I had to wait ten days or more for their responses, but on July 22nd, they finally agreed to publish my game as Part 1 without Early Access. They found some technical issues and told me to upload the fixed build whenever I was ready. But despite saying that my build failed, they approved it! I don’t know if the tester clicked the wrong button or did it on purpose out of kindness, but on July 22nd, four days before the scheduled release, my game was finally approved!

By the time of release, my game was on 811 wishlists and had ten completed curator reviews, all positive. This is a very modest number of wishlists, which was my fault: because my first game was banned, I hesitated to publish the second game for too long, afraid of another failure. And, of course, part of the time that should have gone into promotion was lost because the game was unavailable due to the Early Access ban.

The first reviews showed that The Better Deal lacked many elements that Steam players are accustomed to, such as Achievements, Game Gallery, Cloud Saving, etc. As a developer, I don’t have time to play games myself, and I’ve never really been on Steam as a player. My only purchase there was 3D Mark for testing my graphics card. I spent another week figuring out how to add all these elements, and when I did, the game became much better.

I made many mistakes during the game’s launch, which cost me significant potential profit, but that’s not the most important thing. The main thing is that I achieved what I’ve been working toward for so long: my game is on Steam. After all, the only people who don’t make mistakes are those who do nothing, right?

The game has received mostly positive reviews. So far, not a single Steam Curator has given it a negative rating. The main, and practically the only, complaint is that the game has too little content for a final release, which I can’t disagree with. In my opinion, the decision to ban my game from Early Access was unfair, first of all, to the players.