8 ms·

There's also grey areas with Steam like when you buy a Steam key for a game outside of Steam through places like GreenManGaming and get your reviews discounted

by kmfrk 10mo ago

There's also grey areas with Steam like when you buy a Steam key for a game outside of Steam through places like GreenManGaming and get your reviews discounted or otherwise flagged arbitrarily based on an opaque authenticity heuristic. https://www.greenmangaming.com https://www.greenmangaming.com

SXX 10mo ago
Valve get no fees from non-Steam key sales and developers can really request any reasonable amount of keys so tens and hundreds of thousands. It make a lot of sense to discount all these reviews to avoid abuse. A lot of developers would abuse reviews hard otherwise.
- ragazzina 10mo ago
  Why are hundreds of thousands keys a reasonable amount for a developer? I am not in the video game business so I fail to see the use case.
  - llbbdd 10mo ago
    Developers can sell those keys outside of Steam and they are redeemable for a copy of the game on your Steam library.
  - the_pwner224 10mo ago
    Yeah, you need a much smaller number for e.g. giving access to journalists/media pre-release. But the key mechanism is also used for any legitimate sales or giveaways that happen outside the Steam platform. If you buy a Humble Bundle, you get a set of Steam keys for the games in the bundle. If Intel/AMD/Nvidia are doing a promotion for a free game with a purchase of their product, they give you Steam keys. Etc.
  - SXX 10mo ago
    How keys are used explained in other answers already. Number of keys you can request would obviously depend on how successful is your hame on Steam. E.g I doubt Valve would generate 100,000 keys for a game with zero sales, but likely under 10,000 is possible. Other than selling keys they can also be used for marketing. If you for instance have a game with multiplayer, lots of DLCs or IAP then giving away keys for base game make a lot of sense: even if only 1% of people who grab the key gonna play it they can still eventually buy other copy for a friend, etc.

by kmfrk 10mo ago

SXX 10mo ago

Valve get no fees from non-Steam key sales and developers can really request any reasonable amount of keys so tens and hundreds of thousands. It make a lot of sense to discount all these reviews to avoid abuse. A lot of developers would abuse reviews hard otherwise.

ragazzina 10mo ago
Why are hundreds of thousands keys a reasonable amount for a developer? I am not in the video game business so I fail to see the use case.
- llbbdd 10mo ago
  Developers can sell those keys outside of Steam and they are redeemable for a copy of the game on your Steam library.
- the_pwner224 10mo ago
  Yeah, you need a much smaller number for e.g. giving access to journalists/media pre-release. But the key mechanism is also used for any legitimate sales or giveaways that happen outside the Steam platform. If you buy a Humble Bundle, you get a set of Steam keys for the games in the bundle. If Intel/AMD/Nvidia are doing a promotion for a free game with a purchase of their product, they give you Steam keys. Etc.
- SXX 10mo ago
  How keys are used explained in other answers already. Number of keys you can request would obviously depend on how successful is your hame on Steam. E.g I doubt Valve would generate 100,000 keys for a game with zero sales, but likely under 10,000 is possible. Other than selling keys they can also be used for marketing. If you for instance have a game with multiplayer, lots of DLCs or IAP then giving away keys for base game make a lot of sense: even if only 1% of people who grab the key gonna play it they can still eventually buy other copy for a friend, etc.