April 2026 Next Fest Developer Q&A: Visibility, press preview, demo pages vs store pages, and more.

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:05]I'm Alden Kroll. I'm a designer here at Valve. Uh I've worked on Steam for a long time including helping create events like Next Fest and the tools and processes behind that. Um Yeah. And hi, I'm Ria. Um I sit with the Steam um business team and amongst many things including answering all of your tickets when you guys write in. Um I work a lot on sales and so um all the fest scheduling and the theming, a lot of that comes from my brain. So if you uh think the themes are weird, I'm sorry.

[00:00:35]Uh >> [laughter] >> Those are all from me. Um But yeah, um I think we can get started with a super high-level overview of Next Fest. There's typically two things you guys always want to ask about, so we'll just get that out of the way. Um the first um thing to be aware of is uh the press preview. So the press preview for the June edition of Next Fest um is starting on uh June 4th. So what the press preview is is a preview time where we send a link that includes all of your games um to certain members of the press for them to browse ahead of time. So there's nothing special about this uh this page other than it includes all of you guys who are going to be participating in Next Fest. So this means if you want your demo to be playable by press when the press preview goes out, you need to set your demo live for everyone. Um we don't give press any special override access to your demos, so um that's something to be aware of uh for the press preview.

[00:01:37]Uh the second thing that you guys um should be aware of is uh how visibility works in Next Fest. So for the first 48 hours of Next Fest, so that's going to be Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific to Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific or thereabouts, we have everything um on Next Fest set to completely random. So when you browse through the carousels um for any particular genre or subgenre, all of that is going to be completely randomized. Of course, there are sections um like on your wish list or um uh we think you're interested in these games based on what you've been playing, those are going to be custom to you and not um totally uh randomized. Um but other than that, the browsing sections of Next Fest are all going to be randomized. After those 48 hours, we're going to use um some smarts and some machine learning based on what people have been doing in Next Fest so far. Um and we're going to start sorting those um carousels a little bit based on what players like this person um have been playing. So when Alden and I go to Next Fest on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, uh we're going to have different sorting orders for all of our carousels because we play different games. Um we're interested in very different um genres and subgenres, and so it's going to be uh custom to the person who is viewing that page. If someone is not logged in at all, then it's going to go back to uh randomized, but um that 48 hour is sort of the mark between totally random and then um personalized for the user who's come in.

[00:03:09]Yeah, so every game should get a pretty fair start to Next Fest whether you come in with a hundred wish list, zero wish list, or a million wish list, it doesn't matter.

[00:03:19]Those first couple days are random and they're designed to give every game a chance at finding an audience and then based on that data we use to create recommendations and personalization for the rest of the event.

[00:03:31]Yeah. So we'll start getting into uh the Q&A. Um just to answer a question that came through, this session is recorded and will end up on YouTube at some indeterminate time after this is over.

[00:03:42]So um if you missed anything, um be sure to check that out. And again, please put your questions in the Q&A section and not in chat um and we'll get to it. Um so the first one is a question from a game dev. Uh can I have my story uh my store page go live on the 27th of April or would it be best to go live or more before the deadline?

[00:04:04]So this person is talking about the registration deadline. And for that deadline, uh what we ask is that you have your store page visible if you if it's important that you want to be considered for our marketing materials. So what that means and and marketing materials really only refers to one thing, which is a trailer that we produce for the purpose of promoting Next Fest as a whole.

[00:04:26]So in that trailer, we pick about a dozen games of different genres, themes, styles to represent and to show players kind of the breadth of different kinds of games that are going to be included in Next Fest.

[00:04:39]It's not super high um visibility [clears throat] for the individual I mean, a lot of people look at the trailer. Um it's hard to tell that it's super important or or adds a lot of wish list potential for those games that we select. And each game is maybe shown for I don't know, five or 10 seconds.

[00:04:56]Mostly as a way to give players a general sense of what is included in the event. So in order to be considered for that, you need to have your store page and a trailer live uh for your base game uh by the registration deadline, April 27th.

[00:05:14]We only select about a dozen games to actually be included in that trailer, so the chances that your game is selected is quite small. And if you have goals or priorities that dictate that you may want to put your store page live later, then uh that that's fine. You don't have to try to optimize for having that live in order to get in the trailer.

[00:05:34]Uh having said that, um it is useful to have a store page live and start building your audience as soon as you're ready to start talking about your game.

[00:05:42]And this kind of gets into one of the other questions that that that commonly comes up, which is uh when when should I launch my demo?

[00:05:50]Should I launch it right at the start of Next Fest? Should I launch it during the press preview?

[00:05:55]I guess I think our recommendation is actually you probably don't want to wait until the last minute to launch your demo. Um it's always useful to get it out there into the world sooner so that people have a chance to try it out and you can use the launch of your demo for as its own event um as an excuse to talk to your audience and and get information out there uh to the world about your game, the the fact that your game is coming. And if you do that right at the beginning of Next Fest, well, probably a bunch of other games are going to be doing that at the same time and so you just have more more noise uh to compete against at that moment.

[00:06:32]The other advantage to launching your demo sooner is having people play it and give you feedback and tell you where it's broken. And you probably want to do that well ahead of the fact when Next Fest starts and a bunch of people are all trying your demo for the first time.

[00:06:46]Um so I think our recommendation is use the opportunity to launch your demo sometime in advance of Next Fest, use it as an opportunity to communicate about your game, to get people excited about it, and get feedback, and make sure that when Next Fest starts or even the press preview starts, that your demo is rock solid and you know it's going to work across a bunch of different hardware and it's when people go and hit the play button that it's going to do what you expect.

[00:07:13]Having said that, you can wait until the start of the press preview to launch your demo. You could even wait until the very start of Next Fest itself to launch your demo. Um it's really up to you.

[00:07:25]We're we're quite flexible in that regards.

[00:07:28]Press preview, which starts 11 days ahead of the start of Next Fest, we find that the press are really only interested in writing about games that they can actually play. So if you don't have a playable demo for the press preview, then it's much much much less likely that press will write about your game.

[00:07:45]Of course, if you have a playable demo, there's no guarantee they're going to write about your game anyways, but uh having it playable during the press preview just gives you the best chance for that to happen.

[00:07:57]That was a long-winded answer for that one question.

[00:08:00]It's all good. It's all good. Uh we have another question from Alyssa. Can we update the submitted demo between the press preview uh deadline and the June 15th live date? Um and what does the press preview for demos entail? So uh we talked a little about this earlier, so this will be a little bit of a short answer, but yes, you can update your demo at any time. So that's true for everything on Steam actually. So um you can ans- uh you can change your demo, you can update it. Um our suggestion is to not do any major content changes during Next Fest because those are a little less likely to be QA'd fully and you might run into bugs or um crashes, and that's generally not a great experience. But uh we highly recommend that you actually update your demo along the way to address bugs. Um someone is going to find a bug that you didn't know about before um and it's going to be really good for you to make sure that no one else has to run into that bug. So um update your demo all the time, that's a great thing to do.

[00:09:00]Uh and then back to the press preview.

[00:09:02]Uh kind of as Alden was mentioning, um if you want your demo to be available to press when the press preview begins, then you're going to need to set your demo live at that time. Um press are only going to get access to that page on uh June 4th. Um the May 18th deadline is when you need to submit your build for review. Um there are many many many uh builds that are going to be coming in for review around that time, so the earlier you can get your build review in, uh the better. Um and as a reminder, that build review is mostly just to check that um you say that is on your store page um is actually present in the game.

[00:09:41]So we're not checking for bugs, we're not doing Well, we'll do some, you know, very light bug checking, but for things like um you know, flow of the game, major crashes, um unusual circumstances that might cause the game to bug out, we don't check for that. So, um as long as you're confident that your build is in a good place, you can submit for review.

[00:10:02]It doesn't need to be your final build for Next Fest. You can always update that after the fact.

[00:10:09]Next question is from Daniel who asks if he can register two different games for Next Fest event. Um absolutely. Yeah, if you have two games that are scheduled to release in the future and you're going to build demos for two different games, uh you can register each of those games for Next Fest. That's totally fine. Um and yeah, [clears throat] we we just need you to get both of those games registered by the registration deadline April 27th and then you should be fine.

[00:10:39]A note about registration deadline.

[00:10:41]If you think you might participate, you can go ahead and register and if you end up changing your plans and deciding you can't build a demo or you're not ready or you want to participate in some future edition of Next Fest instead, uh please cancel your registration and you can do that at any time up to the start of Next Fest. So, if you change your plans and you want to pull out, go ahead and go back to the registration page, cancel your registration by unticking the box at the very bottom of that registration page and saving and that will make sure that you remain eligible for future editions of Next Fest.

[00:11:18]Uh the next question, uh I plan to release by September. Now, should I participate in this June Next Fest or delay my release by 2 months and participate in October?

[00:11:31]Uh well, >> It depends on what you're trying to to do with your game. Um there's no like better Next Fest. Like You do you do have to release after Next Fest. So, if you're planning on releasing in September, then October will be too late. Oh, they said delay their release. Oh, I see. Yeah.

[00:11:50]Um so, uh in terms of should I choose February, June, or October Next Fest?

[00:11:56]Uh I would not think about it that way.

[00:11:57]You should optimize for what makes the most sense for your game. So, if your game is in a great spot, you really want to release by September to hit some milestone or anniversary, then participate in the June Next Fest. Um if you find that your uh game needs a little bit of uh polish or it could you know, spend some more time in the oven, um it's also totally fine to push it back uh and join October. There's no real right answer on which Next Fest is the right one to join. Um some people even join Next Fest a year out from release because they really want to get a lot of feedback about a specific um gameplay mechanic or they're looking for direction in terms of where they should take their story. So, um that all works.

[00:12:40]Uh it's totally up to you. Um what we would say is uh don't try and optimize for a specific Next Fest. You should always optimize for your game and see how you can fit things like Next Fest into your plans.

[00:12:54]Next question comes from Brendan. Were there any requirements on the max size of demo?

[00:12:59]So, this kind of feeds into I guess a genre of questions about how long should the demo be? How big should it be? All of these are going to be different for each game and the the file size of your demo is up to you. Um I mean, obviously, I I guess it makes sense to try to optimize where you can just so that players aren't unloading downloading a whole bunch of unnecessary files. Um but the the actual file size of your demo doesn't matter to us um and it may matter a little to players if they're on a rate-limited bandwidth or something like that. So, I wouldn't make a 100 GB demo. That's probably excessive.

[00:13:36]Um so, yeah, pair pair it down to what to and try to be reasonable, um but there's no limit to that.

[00:13:43]And then the length of your demo is really going to be up to you and your game. Um you probably want to think about crafting it as an experience that gets people into the gameplay loop pretty quickly and then maybe leaves them at a point where they have enough taste of the game to get excited about it, but they still want more. Um if you give them too much of the game, then they may feel like, "Oh, I've played the game and I'll move on to other things." Um and if you don't give them enough, then they may not be far enough into it to to feel like they understand where it's going and why they would want to keep playing it. So, there's an art to crafting kind of a good demo experience and definitely take take your time to craft that well and get that in front of people that can help give you feedback about whether that feels like a good place to stop your demo. But that's all entirely up to you and and your game.

[00:14:31]Dan asks, uh demos can have a store page or a no or no store page specifically for the demo. Is either setting fine for Is either setting fine for participating in Next Fest? Uh the answer is yes. So, demos can have an optional store page or you can choose to forego that and just have it attached to your base game um store page. Um we have no requirements um either way.

[00:14:55]Um it's hard for us to really see any trend in terms of one is better than the other. Um I think the biggest difference is whether you want to start collecting reviews for your demo or not. Um that is the major difference between having a standalone demo store page and not. Um so, if you're at a point in your demo where you think it's representative of um the final product, um you're ready to get reviews for that demo, then having a standalone store page could be a good idea. Uh but there's no requirement either way. So, do whatever um feels best for you and your game.

[00:15:31]Andrew asks, in terms of registering for Next Fest, we need to have the store page Steam store page public and live.

[00:15:37]Does the store page need to be complete with final uh about {slash} summary text or can it be abbreviated version and can be updated later?

[00:15:46]Um yeah, so the the base the store page for your base game, we ask that that's live by the time you register um and part of that is to help make sure that you're ready for this and then part of that is for us to be able to review games and consider games uh for inclusion in our trailer that we produce.

[00:16:03]What you put on that store page should probably be accurate, but it's up to you and how you want to describe your game.

[00:16:10]Um [snorts] some store page descriptions are quite short and kind of vague. Um you'll want to get better at that and and iterate on that. Um so, probably uh certainly by the time Next Fest starts, you want to have a pretty good description of your games so that interested players have enough information. Um but if you want to start with kind of a smaller version of that and update it as time goes by, that's totally up to you and and fine.

[00:16:37]Yeah. Anything to add to that? Small asterisk, um our uh the the team that reviews this is going to push back and tell you to redo it if you don't provide enough information for your customers to understand what your game is going to be. So, some amount of abbreviation is okay, but it still needs to be pretty clear to the customer what they can expect when they're playing your game.

[00:16:59]Um and our build our review team will not let you get away with less than that. So, uh again, feel free to update at any time and at any point, but um it does need to be fairly um complete before we'll let it pass.

[00:17:13]The next question is from Kolacho. I hope I hope I pronounce your name uh reasonably well. Does having a localized demo significantly impact our reach and success during Next Festival?

[00:17:26]Um Yeah, this is a good question. So, localization in general will help your game simply be accessible to more players, especially if you have a narrative or text-heavy game um or audio, I guess, word word-heavy game um where people that is going to, you know, understanding of the story is going to be core to enjoyment of your game. Um so, having localized version of that will just mean that more people have uh are able to understand it.

[00:17:56]Um the way Steam works is there's not hard language filters necessarily, but it does try to prioritize games to people in that are available in languages that those people uh speak.

[00:18:09]So, when we get to parts of Next Fest where we're personalized and we're recommending games, we're more likely to recommend your game to people that speak the languages that your game supports.

[00:18:21]Um so, it's useful to take that into account um and it's also just useful to take into account um you know, if if it's a English-only language demo, then you know, folks that don't speak English very well won't be able to enjoy your demo. So, it's always worth kind of thinking about how you want to approach that and and uh what languages you plan to support in the final game down the road as well.

[00:18:47]All right, we've got a question from Oh, man, I'm getting old. Belia. Uh are the press previews embargoed for June 15th? Um you know, I actually don't know the answer to that, but I have never seen anyone post about Next Fest from press before the event starts. I think um press is very aware that a game can pull out at any time before the start of Next Fest. So, I I'm kind of under the impression that they all hold it for the start of the event. There's not much use in them posting early anyways. So, um I hope that answers your question. Yeah, we we don't impose any hard uh embargo on on the press, but thus far we we've seen that they mostly I mean, they I think entirely wait until the start of Next Fest to post their articles.

[00:19:35]And really this is geared towards, you know, you see a lot of press articles that come out right around the start of Next Fest that says, you know, here's our top 10 favorites for Next Fest or here's a cool game we see in Next Fest and we're excited to play.

[00:19:47]That that's exactly what the press preview is designed to help support and encourage is give press access so that ahead of time so that they can be ready on day one of Next Fest to write to post those kind of articles.

[00:20:00]Uh question from Christian. Is play time the primary metric on how a user specific Next Fest feed is generated? Um Uh how do I put this? No.

[00:20:12]>> Play time actually Doesn't matter.

[00:20:14]>> So ever For during the first couple of days uh of Next Fest when it's all randomized, what we're what our systems are looking at is what games people are wish listing and then it's using that information to figure out other players like those people and use it to recommend to those other people. So you can imagine uh if I play these five games and then I wish list game A and if Ria happens to also play those five games, then Steam is going to do its best to recommend game A to Ria as well. So it's trying to fit these these profiles. That's a really uh simplified version of of how that works. Um but yeah, the the length and the time and the game play of your demo doesn't matter because some demos might be 5 minutes and some demos might be 3 hours and that really varies from game to game and we don't want to create a system that favors a certain kind of game over some other kind of game. So we do our best to make sure that that is not the case. And just saying this out loud, this is true for all of Steam as well. So we don't use play time as a metric for recommendation or visibility anywhere on Steam um because again, same concept, you know, we believe that we don't want to incentivize a certain type of game and we don't think longer games are necessarily better than shorter ones and so we don't look at that metric at all.

[00:21:38]The next question is from Mona. Is there anything that can be done to help the game get more attention?

[00:21:43]So this is a super broad question and really not uh not entirely about Next Fest. This is about generally thinking about your game and and and getting visibility and word out there.

[00:21:56]Um many uh marketing gurus have talked at great length about different ways that you can build audience and build awareness for your game.

[00:22:04]Certainly people explore Steam and discover games that way and um and then but also people learn about games all over the internet. So it's useful to think about how you can reach and engage players in places around the internet where they might uh be discussing or learning about kind of games that you make.

[00:22:24]Um there's much more to be said about that.

[00:22:27]But like within Steam, we don't we try very hard to not set up things in a way where there's like some secret that you have to know to click this certain button to get more visibility. Like you should make a good game and uh probably get word out so that, you know, the day you launch in Next Fest is not the first time anybody has ever heard about your game.

[00:22:50]It can be useful for helping you get off the ground and and start finding an audience.

[00:22:54]Um but along the way if if that is if the start of Next Fest is the first time anybody has ever heard about your game, you've probably missed a bunch of opportunities to get people excited about your game and start telling the world about your game. So it's useful to think about what are those opportunities, where around on the internet can you engage with with fans and start building awareness and excitement. Use your trailers, use new screenshots, you know, use those all as excuses to make people care about your game and pay attention and and get excited for the release of your demo and your game.

[00:23:30]Yeah, we could talk for hours on this topic alone, so we're not going to try to do that here.

[00:23:36]Uh the next question is actually kind of related to that because someone asked um is there a recommended minimum wish list count for entering Next Fest since you can only enter once? Uh no, there is not a recommended minimum wish list count um on our end. As mentioned, you know, we don't look at wish lists as an input um uh in terms of like where you're showing up or who you're getting recommended to.

[00:23:59]That being said, um kind of like what Alden was saying, um your wish list entering Next Fest are kind of a reflection on um you know, who knows about your game, where you've been able to reach customers. Um it's a pretty risky proposition, I think, to start Next Fest completely fresh without having done any sort of outreach anywhere um because Next Fest is only one of many many options that exist out there and Next Fest and a lot of things on Steam tend to be amplifiers of existing um interest or trends in your game. So um I would advise not starting Next Fest like as your very first activity for the game. Um but no, there's no recommendation on our side on terms of how many wish lists you should have before you feel comfortable joining.

[00:24:50]Christian asks if we can be bribed with baked goods to be included in the Next Fest trailer. Uh no. No, >> [laughter] >> please. Please don't.

[00:24:58]Please don't send us baked goods to our office. Uh >> [laughter] >> Uh I I guess the the serious answer to this question is uh we really uh we just look through the registered games for Next Fest. We look through the games that have visible store pages with good trailers on them and we're looking for a set of trailers that represent the diverse breadth of genre and theme and style of games. Um some of them may have zero wish lists, some of them may have hundreds of thousands of wish lists. Um we're we're really just kind of glancing through a bunch of different trailers and and trying to pick a good assortment of things to highlight. Um so there's not really anything extra that you can do except make sure that you have a visible store page with your excellent trailer on it and that is that is the only thing you can do to be considered for our use in our trailer.

[00:25:50]I wouldn't obsess over it. Uh we only pick a dozen games. So statistically, your game is unlikely to be one of those.

[00:25:57]And also like just cuz we put it in the trailer doesn't mean it's going to do well in Next Fest. Um we don't have a a great track record in picking the winners of Next Fest necessarily for the trailer cuz we're trying to show that there's a bunch of different types of games in Next Fest. Um we don't want to say that this is necessarily the best one because, you know, our opinion is going to be different from everyone else's. So um yeah, really really don't don't worry about that one too much.

[00:26:21]Uh we've got a question from Sabatical Games. Any advice for discoverability for games that don't have clear tags or game categorizations? So this is a an interesting one. Um if there is a tag that you think your game needs that we don't have on Steam yet, um please go up into the support portal that exists on the top of the Steamworks um website and um tell us. Um things are evolving all of the time.

[00:26:45]Sometimes uh new genres are popping up and we need to add better tagging for that. But um the best thing to do is to look at games like yours and see what tags they're using. This is really good advice for Steam in general because we do have that um more like this section on the bottom of store pages and we do look at a combination of things like tags for that um sorting. So I think it's pretty difficult for me to conceptualize a game that is so unique and so different that there isn't some combination of tags that gets approximately close. Um so in in the example here, you know, it's a horror anomaly game. Uh horror is a really good tag to start with. Um hidden object, depending on the type of anomaly, could be useful. There are many other games in this category um that exist out there and I would just take a look and see what those guys are doing and sort of copy their homework a little bit.

[00:27:39]Uh next question. Even if my store page is not ready by the 27th, can I still participate in Next Fest?

[00:27:46]Um you can register by the 27th uh even without a visible store page. Uh the only reason we ask that you have a store page >> [clears throat] >> is for inclusion potential inclusion in our uh marketing trailer.

[00:28:03]It's also probably a good idea not to wait until the very last minute to put up a store page. Um but really that's up to you. Um yeah, I think I would I would have a store page up and be already talking to people about my game and showing off what my game is um much farther in advance, but that's really I mean, maybe that's more of a personal thing.

[00:28:24]>> [laughter] >> Uh we've got a question from uh UBL Crew. Will hosting developer live streams during Next Fest help boost our game's performance during the event? Uh maybe, maybe not. Um so uh for those of you who have been um watching Steam for a long time, we used to have live streams sort of front and center in Next Fest. You'll notice um as of the last maybe year or two of Next Fest, we've moved it to its own separate tab. Um if you are really good at live streaming, if you are um an influencer in that way or if you've got other influencers you know who you can get to play your game and they can make an engaging and interesting stream, that is a great reason to broadcast during Next Fest.

[00:29:06]Some people are going to look at that live stream tab and a lot of people are probably not going to. So you should play to your strengths. Um one of the reasons that we took live streams off of the home page of Next Fest is because that's not a skill set that everyone has and I think a lot of people were spending a lot of time um on that live stream component sort of the detriment of the quality of their demo, for example. So now it's a little less important. There are still going to be um customers, obviously, who are looking at that, but um it's not so important that you should focus on that over making sure you have a polished demo. So great to do if you've got time, space, energy for it, but certainly not required and I'm not not even necessarily recommended as something you should be focusing on.

[00:29:51]Next question is from Victor who's wanting to know a little bit more about how discovery discoverability works during Next Fest. Um So, yeah, the the first couple of days Steam Next Fest is entirely randomized.

[00:30:06]So, when a customer comes to Next Fest, what we show in the different carousels and sections is going to be shuffled around for each user that comes.

[00:30:14]And what we're looking at is what games are people wish listing and what who are the group of people that are similar to those people. Where they wish list from doesn't matter. We're just looking at wish list data during Next Fest and the people who wish list games that are included in Next Fest. Um we're not we're not trying to restrict that all the game has to be wish listed in a certain way to count towards this. We're we're looking at a at a bunch of data however people wish list the game.

[00:30:46]This is true across Steam in general. Um we try to build and design systems so that there's not some special trick or secret hidden way that people need to do things in order to count for certain recommendations or or visibility. We try to make systems as simple and easy to follow as possible um so that like there's not some secret thing that you need to try to optimize for or try to uh tell players how to interact or anything like that. So, it's it's the most straightforward thing that you could imagine in almost every case.

[00:31:23]Yeah.

[00:31:25]Uh we've got a question from Brian. Um if a store page has a set of languages we plan on support on launch, um does the demo also need to support all of those languages for Next Fest? Uh I believe if you have a separate demo uh store page, then whatever you've got written there needs to be accurate, but the demo itself does not necessarily need to match the uh languages set for your base game. Um the important thing is to make sure it's not confusing for customers. So, let's say a German customer um looks at your store page, um it would really suck for them to think that the demo is going to be available in German if it's not. So, I would just say make sure that um you're not um confusing any customers and that it's pretty clear um what your demo has available and what it doesn't um and you should be all good to go.

[00:32:13]The next question is about the build review process for demos and I guess this applies in general to to games on Steam. Um so, so the question is what are the most common mistakes that lead to a demo being rejected during technical review process?

[00:32:29]Um I think the most So, when we do a review of the actual build and this applies to demos, this applies to games, our team is looking for a couple of things. One, when you hit the launch button, does it actually launch and play? Um does it have all the dependencies specified that the player needs? So, like the DirectX whatever dependency and those kind of things, are those properly flagged so that they install all the right stuff for the user to be able to launch and play the game?

[00:32:59]The our team is also looking at when you get into the game or demo and start playing it, does it look like what's described on the store page and does it seem to have the features that are described? The review in that regard for demos is a little bit less stringent cuz we know that a demo is not the entire scope of the game, um but it still should be roughly what you are describing on the store page. Um so, you know, if I if if your store page says it's a uh turn-based puzzle game and then our review team gets into the demo and finds that it's a real-time strategy game, uh then they're probably not going to approve that for launch um cuz we want to make sure that customers understand what they're getting.

[00:33:40]Um so, those those are some of the kind of broad strokes of things you want to pay attention to. So, my advice is generate some test keys for your game and create a brand new blank Steam account, sign into it, register that key, and hit play, and make sure that the game or demo actually plays.

[00:34:00]Um you want to make sure that out of the box when you hit the play button everything's going to work.

[00:34:05]And then make sure that your store page is up to date and describes your game properly uh and and matches what, you know, roughly what's what's in the game.

[00:34:13]Um so, I think those are kind of the broad strokes of things that I would make sure to to test for.

[00:34:19]Most most games don't fail the technical review process. Um just yeah, try to try to dot your eyes and make sure that your your build is solid and and works.

[00:34:30]>> [snorts and laughter] >> Uh Angela asks, can you walk us through what we should expect to do during Next Fest? Are there specific times we need to be available? This is actually a really fantastic question. So, Next Fest starts at 10:00 a.m. Pacific on a Monday, always. So, that's um uh about 40 minutes ago in your local time zone is when Next Fest is going to start. Um obviously that's not ideal for everyone in every time zone, but it is pretty important I think for you to check on your game's presence in Next Fest in like that first hour. Um those are daytime hours for the US, which is a huge part of the player base that participates uh in Next Fest. And if there are any major bugs, if someone points out a really embarrassing typo, if your screenshots are actually showing um the wrong language or are spoiling a boss later on, um this is the time for you to get all of those fixes out quickly before a lot of people play the uh the wrong thing for your game, right?

[00:35:31]Um there's also a couple of things you probably want to check. Um are all of the tags correct? Are you uh appearing where you think you should be appearing?

[00:35:40]Um 10:00 a.m. on uh the start of Next Fest is the first time you're going to be able to confirm um a decent amount of that live. Obviously, we are going to give you the developer preview and so you can do a little bit of checking ahead of time, but it's good to be around at 10:00 a.m. just to make sure that everything is looking good. Other than that, um I'd say um make sure you're checking in on customer feedback um throughout that week and addressing any major bugs. Um if there's um a major bug that you can't get to, it can be good to say something about that out loud so customers coming in feel like you're responsive and that you know, their their feedback isn't just going into a void. Um but those are kind of the the two things that I I would suggest. Make sure you're checking um when Next Fest launches that everything is good and then you're checking in periodically um just to make sure that everyone coming in and trying your demo is having a good experience.

[00:36:34]Next question is from Zach. Have you seen success with titles releasing demos halfway through Next Fest, meaning demo goes live maybe for [snorts] business reasons halfway through the event and not at the start?

[00:36:46]Um we we don't track this very well um and part of this is the way that we run Next Fest is uh we expect that demos exist at the beginning of Next Fest. Um and >> [clears throat] >> we account for games that are are developers that are maybe a little bit late in hitting the release button on their demo. So, we have kind of a buffer period for the first day or something um where we're we're updating Next Fest to make sure we include games that have launched their demo within that first day. Um but after pretty much after the first day of Next Fest, we're not checking for that anymore. So, if you launch your demo halfway through Next Fest, you probably won't be included in Next Fest. Um so, if if you can't for whatever reason you can't launch your demo until that point, it is probably better to wait to participate in a Next Fest than the next edition. Um so, in that case it would be October.

[00:37:44]Uh question from Brendan. Is it okay or recommended to have any uh upsell screen at the end of the demo pointing back to the base game? Um we don't consider that an upsell at all. It is very important to make it super easy for customers to wish list your game. anyone who wish lists the demo is actually wish listing the base game. So, you're going to be good to go there. But if you aren't running a separate store page for it, um it's super important that you make it easy for customers to go back to your game and wish list it. So, yes, we would highly recommend that you uh make it easy for customers to uh do that. Um and you didn't ask this, but I'm going to say it anyways. Also make it really easy for customers to give you feedback during Next Fest. Um a lot of people come into Next Fest at this time um expecting to give a lot of feedback. So, make it easy for them to do that whether you're collecting that on the Steam forums or a Discord or a Google form or or whatever um you know, other tool you want to use. Um all of that is fine, just make sure it's really easy for someone to pop in and say, "Hey, you know, enjoyed the demo, here's a little bug I found." Or for them to give feedback about the game itself. Um this is the best time to make sure uh you're you're um hearing all that um feedback and making the game better with it.

[00:39:03]Next question is from Katie. Uh when looking at results from Next Fest, I really like that you've started sharing results at uh on the well, I guess actually on the Steamworks dashboard. Um so, what what this person is describing is uh when you sign in to your Steamworks portal where you configure your game and and all of that, on the main dashboard we show a calendar and uh for the week or two after Next Fest, we'll show a row at the top that shows you the the number of people that played your demo, the number of people who wish listed, the number that people that did both. Um and I believe you can click on that for and see some more details about that. Um especially if you have more than one game that you've participated in Next Fest. Um and so part of Kitty's question is, do we have access to those from previous Next Fests? Um and I actually don't know the answer to that. I don't know if we have any way to get back to the the stat recaps from previous Next Fests.

[00:39:59]I suspect if you could guess at the URL, it might work, but I'm not I'm not super sure actually.

[00:40:06]We'll ask uh we'll ask some technical technical folks here.

[00:40:09]Yeah, I don't I don't have a great answer to that question. I'm not entirely sure whether you can get back to those after long after uh Next Fest has ended. So, maybe take a screenshot of it so you have it saved.

[00:40:22]Uh our next question is from Craig. Um actually a few people asked this. For the press preview, are the games randomized like the first 48 hours of Next Fest? And the answer is yes. Um it is going to be totally random. We don't have any machine learning um ready uh during the press preview and so yeah, that's going to be totally randomized. Um of course, again, we do have those, you know, personalized carousels that are based on things like um it's the ones that like because you play games like X, um that is still going to be um customized and personalized in a little bit of a way, but um the the main um browse page of Next Fest is going to be completely random.

[00:41:00]There's two questions now that are I'm maybe they're maybe they're actually different enough. So, I'll I'll just start with the first one. Um what question do you wish wish more first-timers would ask? Um something maybe we've seen mistakes uh or or things like that that people didn't realize.

[00:41:16]Um so, we we try to document as much as we can in uh the Steam Works documentation, um and we'll drop a link to that in the chat just to make sure that you have it, but it's also uh you should be getting it in all the email communications that we're sending you.

[00:41:31]Um we try to document everything so that there's not like hidden secret like things that that people are missing. We also try to design and build systems so that they work pretty well without having to know hidden special tricks.

[00:41:45]That being said, I think there are some uh some things that maybe if you're a first-time developer, you're not you haven't thought about the whole the whole process and kind of um thinking about how to build an audience and start communicating with an audience.

[00:42:02]Um it's tempting to look at and this is I think true of Steam in general. It's tempting to look at Steam as like a checklist of like, if I build a store page and launch my game, it's going to do great or that's that's what I should do and uh I can find success or that's everything I should do.

[00:42:21]And the reality is, if you think about your own experience as a game player, a customer of games, where do you learn about games? Some of that may be [clears throat] browsing around Steam and and exploring the different genres and and partici- you know, exploring different Next Fests and things like that. But undoubtedly, some of that also happens on YouTube or Reddit or TikTok or whatever.

[00:42:44]You're probably learning about games all over. Um so, I I would I think the single most uh common piece of advice that I would have for kind of new developers or or developers that haven't been through this before or mistakes that I've seen made is thinking that just releasing the game on Steam is the extent of what they should do or could do um to set themselves up to be successful. When the reality is, there are so many different ways that you can and should think about making people excited about your game and getting word out about your game. Um and so that when you get to an event like Next Fest, that people have already heard about it, people are excited about it, they're going to talk about it. So, think about everything you do that is interesting in the development process. When you create a new trailer, when you take some cool new screenshots, where can you share those to help people get excited about the game? Where can you tell your story?

[00:43:41]And even thinking about the story that you do tell about your game, how like practicing that and getting better at that storytelling so that people understand what is special and unique about your game, why why should people care about your game? What makes it special? What's different about it?

[00:43:59]What is the hook that's going to get people into it and excited about it?

[00:44:03]Um so, think about that and and I would think about that way ahead of participating in event like Next Fest because I think along the way, you have all these opportunities where you're creating cool things and doing cool things in your game, where when you start sharing that, like [clears throat] the people are going to care about it and they're going to get excited about it. Um so, look for those opportunities and um yeah, don't I think it's a mistake and a missed opportunity if you uh do everything and you're totally silent until the day that you hit release demo for Next Fest. Uh I think you've missed a bunch of opportunities along the way ahead of that.

[00:44:43]We've got a question from uh Nerd Point.

[00:44:45]Uh if I participated in a Next Fest, but I didn't receive the response that I was looking for, um is that going to hurt my game when it releases? Uh so, the good thing is Next Fest, like many other things on Steam, is just a point in time. Um Steam doesn't have any concept of, oh, this game didn't do well during Next Fest, therefore we're not going to give it more visibility down the line. That's not a thing. Um Steam is always looking at what's happening in the here and now, and we don't look at how the game performed in the past for basically anything. Um that being said, if it didn't do well in a Next Fest, it can be good to take a step back and reflect on why that is. Um was the store page not appealing? Did people get to the game, but didn't have a good experience with the demo? You might want to consider was the demo a good representation of the game? If it wasn't, then you could fix that. Or if it was, then maybe something about your base game needs to change to be interesting to the customers that you've been able to find. Um there's a lot you can read into um but um yeah, if you haven't done well during Next Fest, um remember that, you know, Next Fest in a way is kind of like a microcosm of the larger Steam store. Um so, if you're not going if you didn't do well in Next Fest, um I think you should reflect um and see what you can do better before you release your base game because that level of competition is still going to exist on the store as well. So, um yeah, it's definitely not going to hurt it, but um if you don't learn from the experience, then um you might not see much of a change when it comes to full release.

[00:46:18]Next question is about dedicated store pages for demos. Um will the re- reviews user reviews uh collected on dedicated store pages carry over to the base game when launched? Uh and the answer is no.

[00:46:30]Uh if you have a dedicated store page for your demo, that unlocks the ability for people to leave reviews for your demo, and that is just just attached to your demo. It has no bearing on the the full game itself. Um so, you can get the worst reviews on your demo and Steam doesn't care about that as far as promoting uh the the base full game itself.

[00:46:54]Um obviously, you should listen to those reviews and see why people are leaving you a bunch of negative reviews uh and try that might inform improving your your game in general. Um but yeah, those two things are totally disconnected and separate.

[00:47:09]Uh we've got a question from Benjamin.

[00:47:11]Previous Next Fests have specific genre tabs at the top of the Next Fest page.

[00:47:16]Um are those curated or are those due to the volume of games within those genres?

[00:47:20]So, um a little bit of both. So, um uh we curate what goes up there based on how we think customers are interested in shopping for games. So, um one thing that we do for sure is, if there is like a subgenre or a category that has only two uh games uh in this Next Fest that match that, we might take that out um just because we want to make sure it's kind of a seamless browsing experience for customers. Um but otherwise, it is a little bit based on what's participating in Next Fest. We want to make sure that there's um a good visibility sort of across the board for the games participating in any particular Next Fest. So, it's important to us that every game has at least a few locations where it's going to show up in that big genre page. Um so, uh we will sort of tweak the way things are shown um just to make sure we're we're matching that goal.

[00:48:15]Next question is from Shawn uh regarding localization. Um can you scroll back uh >> Sorry.

[00:48:21]Uh Shawn is asking about full audio versus interface and uh subtitles.

[00:48:28]And the question is, if all the text that ever gets displayed on screen, regardless of how and when, is localized, does that count for interface and subtitles?

[00:48:37]So, localization for your game can come in a a couple of different and we we break that out um into three categories: audio, subtitles, and interface.

[00:48:48]Um so, interface is like the elements of your user interface, the menus, the the HUD elements you see on screen, are those localized? Subtitles is about any of the spoken text uh whether, you know, players are uh well, I guess whether whether characters are are saying it uh in audio, and then like subtitles are a printed out text version of that. Um I think we would we would consider that that's what subtitles generally means, and then full audio would be, you know, actually having different audio versions of whatever the characters are saying.

[00:49:23]Um so, like pick the categories that apply to your game, but yeah, if you if you've localized all the text that's displayed, um if you if you don't have any characters saying anything, then you probably don't have subtitles. So, if it's just a puzzle game and all of the interface is translated, then that would mean interface has been translated. Um and if you have characters that are speaking to uh on screen and and you have subtitles for those, then then that's what subtitles means.

[00:49:52]Uh Simon asks, "Can I communicate the planned price of the game and what's the best way to do that?" Yeah, I mean, you can totally do that if you'd like. Um pinning a post in discussions is one way to do it. Um posting an announcement about the uh price is another way to do it. Um I would say uh just be careful.

[00:50:12]Um it can often be useful for you to hear how customers are talking about your game before they before you announce the price. For instance, um let's say you have a really cute little game. It's pretty short. You have an idea of the price in mind, but when you go look at people talking about it in your discussion forums, um they all think it's worth twice as much as what you were planning on. You will have painted yourself into a bit of a hole um if you have pre-announced the price. So, um it's up to you there. Um I don't know that we would uh we've seen um either way, whether it's uh useful to announce it ahead of time or not, but um that's totally up to you. And there's a couple locations on Steam where you can sort of pin your post, so customers coming in can see it.

[00:51:00]The next question is asking about whether we would recommend having a press kit available. So, this is a developer thinking, "Should I create a press press press kit for my game? And should I put that in maybe the the right-hand column of my store page where there's other links to things?"

[00:51:18]Um I Yeah, I think I don't think we have a specific place to put a press kit there, but we do have a place to link to your store page. Uh sorry, to your own website. Um and so, you probably want to think about making it easy to have a a press kit off of your own website. Make that easy for press to find their way to that press kit. That's probably the right way to do that.

[00:51:44]Um next question from uh Sag Sag. Uh we're planning on uh planning on a major update to our existing demo for Next Fest. Does the Steam algorithm treat an updated demo differently than a new demo launch? Uh no.

[00:51:57]Go ahead and update it. Um also, just in case anyone else is wondering, um Steam Next Fest does not require a new or a exclusive demo. So, if you've got other events that you can participate in, um if your demo is already out, um that's totally fine. You don't necessarily need to update it for Next Fest. Just make sure that um it's a good experience and it's representative of your game.

[00:52:19]That's the only thing we ask. And that's even that's not technically a requirement, but you should you should consider it as one.

[00:52:26]The next question is from Yugoshi. Uh for the press preview, can you share general information about the kind of press? What uh let's see. Does the output consist of written articles, videos, etc.? Is there a range of press across different genres and types of games?

[00:52:42]Um yes. It's It's I think around 100 press outlets that we've worked with uh closely over many, many years of running Steam. So, they're kind of the the set of press that we know best. Um and it includes press from the US, Europe, Asia, all over, different languages, different audiences.

[00:53:03]Um we try to get a pretty pretty broad set of coverage. You can also do your own outreach to press. And especially if you know of outlets that cover exactly the kind of game that you are making and are most likely to be interested in your kind of game, you should absolutely reach out to them and let them know that you're going to have a demo available in Next Fest and uh get them excited about your game.

[00:53:25]Um we we do the best to to reach out to the set of press that uh that we've seen uh handle this kind of stuff well and that we think will serve players well across the broad spectrum of genres and and styles and languages.

[00:53:42]I just want to say out loud, we are approaching the end of this hour. So, we're going to get a few more questions in, but if we didn't get to yours, um uh we are still available um to answer your questions. Uh if you look at your Steamworks site in the top uh bar, there's a button that says support. Um if you've got any questions, feel free to ask them there. Um we are answering those all the time. There's also a big team that helps us answer those as well.

[00:54:08]Um don't feel like you have to keep on wondering forever. Um so, Also, this session is recorded. It will be up on our YouTube channel, uh Steamworks developer uh YouTube, if you search for that. Um and then also, we have I don't know, a bunch of these from the last few editions. I think we've taken down some of the older ones cuz some of those questions are no longer relevant, but for at least the last few, uh we have put up uh and and we have recorded.

[00:54:34]So, if you want to know all the questions, you can probably watch through those and get everything.

[00:54:40]Uh I'm going to cherry-pick some of the last questions. Um so, Daniel asks, "What is the recommended length of a trailer and should it be marked as cinematic?" Um this is something that we feel very strongly about here on Steam, and I'm going to get on my soapbox, but people care about the gameplay. It can be good to have a beautiful cinematic about what the in-game cutscenes are going to look like, but people want to know what's like to play your game. Um they're not here to watch a movie, you know? They want to play a game. So, please be sure that whatever you put up there for customers, you include gameplay. People do not need 5 seconds of your studio's logo. I know that that makes a lot of marketing people kind of unhappy for me to say, but please uh get to gameplay fast. So, please and thank you.

[00:55:29]You do this one?

[00:55:30]Uh yeah. Okay, so question, do we need to have a release date on our store page to be able to uh participate in Next Fest? Uh no, you just need to have a future date set on your in the back end for your base game. And then how you choose to display that date on your store page, there's a couple of settings there. So, you can set your release date to 2028, and you can choose to display that simply as coming soon on your store page. Um so, there's settings for all of that as you uh configure. So, by nature of having a coming soon page, your date needs to be in the future, otherwise it's not a coming soon page anymore. Um so, yeah, pick a date in the future sometime after Next Fest, and then however you display that, you can you can make it very specific and and tell people exactly when you intend to launch, or you can make it super vague as coming soon or available 2028.

[00:56:23]That's up to you.

[00:56:25]Okay, we are we are we have hit the end of the hour.

[00:56:29]I guess I should have said all of that right now, but yeah, again, it was good to see you all. Thank you for coming and asking your questions. Any more questions, please reach out to us with the support link that's on the top of Steamworks. Um we've got uh YouTube videos. Go watch those. Um if you haven't seen it already, our co-worker Eric put out a video called how visibility works on Steam. As you guys all approach launching your game, um go watch that video. Um Next Fest is just one part of um the larger Steam ecosystem, and the way we do things in Next Fest is not necessarily um the same as the rest of the storefront. So, it can be good for you guys to get an understanding of once Next Fest is over and you're into launch, what to expect. So, we've got a bunch of videos in our YouTube channel.

[00:57:14]Um we've got a lot of uh written words in our um documentation, but um please don't um hesitate to reach out if um those things don't answer your questions. Um and we will hopefully um see you guys again.

[00:57:28]Have a good day. Thanks all for joining us.

[00:57:30]>> Bye, guys.

[00:57:33]>> [music]