Steam game's 1.0 launch marred by bug, leading to over a decade of work being undone, as per developer; Valve acknowledges the mistake and grants a Daily Deal slot to compensate for the decreased visibility.
In the vast landscape of digital gaming, a small independent title named Planet Fitness found itself in the spotlight, not for its success, but for its struggles. Developed over a span of nearly ten years, the space sandbox game had already sold 103,400 units in its lifetime before the highly anticipated 1.0 launch in December 2024.
However, the launch was anything but successful. The 1.0 launch of Planet Fitness led to startlingly poor sales, with the game managing to sell just 581 copies in the first five days. The developers, Lechat and Robert Menzel, were left bewildered by the sales figures, especially given the game's previous updates and following.
The developers attributed the poor sales to the game being 'invisible' on Steam trends, a flop of a release. But it wasn't just Planet Fitness that faced such challenges. Valve, the creators of Steam, confirmed an issue with Steam wishlists that affected less than 100 game releases since 2015. In these affected releases, email notifications for the launch of a game were not sent, a significant blow to visibility and potential sales.
Lechat found it incredible that only 100 games out of the 86,000 on Steam were affected by the issue. Despite this setback, the developers shared their plight with the gamedev Reddit community, seeking solace and advice.
In an effort to make up for lost visibility, the developers of Planet Fitness were invited to a Daily Deal, a feature on Steam that offers 24-hour visibility to selected games. While Daily Deals can be powerful visibility tools, they generally can't make up for a whole 1.0 launch. The 24-hour visibility offered through the Daily Deal is not considered special, as there are 6 slots available for this visibility every day of the year for various Steam invitations.
Chris Zukowski, a game developer, emphasized the importance of leveraging any visibility tools possible to reach 'Real Steam,' a term used to describe the active and engaged player base on the platform. Despite the challenges, Lechat and his team have since moved on to a second project due to financial difficulties in continuing to patch Planet Fitness.
Meanwhile, in a stark contrast, a new developer's co-op roguelike game became a top 10 seller on Steam with 100k copies sold in a day. This feat was achieved right after Silksong, a day before Borderlands 4, and just ahead of Hades 2, demonstrating the unpredictable nature of the gaming industry.
The sales gap between Planet Fitness and other indie games, especially given its previous updates and following, is considered an outlier. The story of Planet Fitness serves as a reminder of the challenges faced by indie developers in the competitive world of digital gaming, and the importance of visibility and timing in achieving success.
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