STEAM KEYS HOW TO
STEAM KEYS DOWNLOAD

The game balance may require some tuning but it should be mostly there. This should be done by a person who has never seen or played your game before, which means it should be (mostly) bug-free and have no unpassable situations or dead ends. It is a good idea to start your key distribution as soon as your build is ready for inspection. Yes, you may impress some audiences with early access, but most people do not like bugged and unfinished games. Do not rush with a fresh, raw, or unstable build. Some influencers will want to check out your new game as soon as possible, as they want to get some new content for subscribers, but you should carefully plan key distribution.įirst, make sure your build is playable and stable.

STEAM KEYS HOW TO

You can find more about Steam keys and how to get them directly from the Steam help page. At this point, all your Beta keys will deactivate, and you will be getting Release keys from Steam. You should normally have your build at the Release-Candidate stage 2-3 weeks before the release (or Early Access launch). You will mostly be dealing with these Beta keys during your promotion campaign. The influencer who activates a Beta key will see a note that the game is not yet released upon downloading it. The term “Beta” itself means the product is not yet released but is in the pre-release stage. The term “Beta” does not necessarily mean Beta version - an alpha build will be fine too.

STEAM KEYS DOWNLOAD

This key will allow influencers to download your game and play it, just like retail keys for any Steam product. Distributing Steam keys is a comfortable and secure way for both parties to have access to your game.Īs soon as your game is uploaded to Steam, you will be able to request Beta keys. You do not want to upload your unfinished game to a file-sharing server, as an influencer wouldn’t want to risk downloading unverified files. For instance, you can set up a Steam page and upload a playable and stable build of your game to Steam, then request Steam keys and give them to content creators. While you can send influencers your half-finished build, or even an invitation to your SVN like a repository, there are more effective approaches to promoting your game.

So can you get your game keys to the right influencers? Here is how. Getting your game on YouTube or Twitch will help grow a community for your game as well, so it’s important to give out Steam keys to those content influencers and at the right time. You could even be featured on Steam itself.Ĭontent creators can bring a loyal audience to you. This is important for sales and will lead to increasing your game page impressions. Steam, for instance, traces your game page views and therefore knows when you are doing a promotional YouTube-Twitch campaign. When you plan your marketing campaign, be sure to allocate resources to build relationships with video content creators.