Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Wishlist Unaware in The City on Steam! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-19 13:16:42
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Hey lads!

Just letting you know that my game has finally been accepted on Steam, and you can add it to your wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2532340/Unaware_in_The_City/

Being honest and as transparent as possible, I'm totally clueless about how to navigate this process. When I planned for a Steam release, I didn't anticipate UiTC2, which complicates things even further.

Basically, I'm selling the game on itch.io for $20, and the fees there aren't too bad. Now on Steam... well, Steam charges a lot more than any other platform I use. I'm going to go with regional pricing because the wage gap between countries like the USA, Poland, or Turkey is significant. The problem is, after all the fees, taxes, and everything else, selling the game on Steam for $20 would net me less than $1 in some countries, lol. Yeah, I know, even $1 is better than nothing, but it would open the gates to piracy and other issues. I plan to support this project for years without any DLCs or microtransactions, so selling my game on Steam doesn't seem worth it. However, I'm doing it because many people asked, and I'm really curious about the experience of releasing anything on Steam (it's my personal milestone).

There's a reason why Patreon developers rarely release their games on itch.io or Steam while still developing them—the monetization process is totally different. On Patreon, I have a monthly income, and I release at least one update per month so you get something in return for supporting me. On Steam, I get a burst of money upon release and during sales, but in-between, it's just pocket money, which needs to be enough to finish development or push for microtransactions and DLCs. Seeing that after a year on itch.io I haven't sold 500 copies, I'm pretty sure my game won't go viral on Steam either. It makes sense to finish development first, give all my supporters free Steam keys, and then try to sell it to new people.

So what should I do about it? Should I increase the base price to $30 to make up for the fees and issues? I already feel bad charging $20 on itch.io despite working on it full-time and hiring more people now, and I doubt many would buy it for that much anyway. Another option is excluding the poorest countries from buying it at a lower price, but that feels even worse, as I've been hit by such policies living in Poland. Maybe something in-between, like $25 with slightly higher regional pricing? Or should I just let people buy it at $20 and a few bucks in some countries? I have no clue! But I'm aware that you would like to buy the game as cheaply as possible, while I need to sustain enough monthly income to keep working.

But I knew all this going into the Steam release, right? So what's the new problem? The problem is announcing UiTC2 before releasing UiTC1 on Steam. If I release UiTC1 in early access, charge money for it, and then move to UiTC2 a few months later, it could lead to massive backlash (people still complain about Unaware of the World being abandoned, giving me a bad name, even though I made it clear that work continues in Unaware in The City). Should I release UiTC1 and update it to UiTC2 later? People might complain that the game changed completely, and outdated info and screenshots could confuse and harm my reputation and sales (I've already had a few people get mad about UiTC2 instead of continuing on UiTC1). Should I skip UiTC1 and just release UiTC2 when it's ready? This was my main idea, but everything is set up and ready, I've wasted a lot of time on it, paid registration fees, and promised it would come out on Steam, so it feels wasteful not to do anything.

So my current plan is: UiTC1 will hit Steam with the release of v37 (late July?), and it will be a public release, thus the Basic version, and the Extended version will not be for sale. I'll try to make up my mind before then.

The Steam release will follow the same pattern as on itch.io - free Basic and paid Extended versions, while beta releases will remain exclusive to Patreon/SubscribeStar. Yes, it is also tagged as Early Access on Steam.

Cheers!

Files

Comments

A M

Steam releases are cracked and torrented all of the time. Possibly even on newsgroups, although it's been more than a decade since I'd used one. "Bad Boys, Bad Boy. Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"

A M

You are doing this as your income, so don't sell it for $1 just to be on Steam. Not enough rewards. Yes, you have exposure, but unless you have something else to fall back on, $1 now is giving it away for free on Steam. Find a compromise to the price, what you need and build it in (maybe $5? $7?) My opinion.

Katherine

You could tell there's a free upgrade to UITC2 when it's ready then stop updating UITC1.

Mr. Unaware

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't charge people twice for buying UiTC1 and UiTC2.

Mr. Unaware

Yeah, just by releasing the store page on Steam, my game was automatically added to various websites for tracking, so it's also gonna get easily pirated and spread, while Steam won't bring me much money.

Mr. Unaware

The way regional pricing works, I set the base game price, let's say $20, and Steam advises me to set different prices based on the region, like to 40-50% in some cases (didn't check & compare them all, so dunno which one is the lowest), so you can buy them for $8 for example (trivia - in Poland it sets it to $23, and you can compare our minimum wage with rest of the world xD), and then Steam takes 30%, then USA takes another 10-20% (being double taxed is fun), so I already get around $5 instead of $20, and then you have other fees like currency exchange rate, payouts, or taxes in my country, and stuff that I'm not aware of currently. For comparison, SubscribeStar takes 5%, you pay a up to $1 transaction fee, and then payout costs me up to $25, so if you paid me $20 via SS, I would get like $18, instead of $5 on Steam with regional pricing.

Mr. Unaware

So in other words, I need to sell like 3-4 copies in poor countries to get the same amount as I would for one Aware tier monthly subscription. If I need like 600 subs to be able to work and pay some freelancers monthly (and no, it still wasn't enough, that's why I went with loan), then I would need to sell a few thousands copies monthly on Steam (a lot of people use VPN and switch countries to buy cheaper) if I wanted to resign from Patreon/SS and live from Steam sales solely. Yeah, totally doable :P

Snow Piercer

Well Mr.unaware! a dilemma you are in my friend, I a while back that you were going to upgrade the game engine to a newer one so in the future your life is easier, its been a while since i read that conversation when i posted in discord irrc, but going off of that alone, you need funds, especially since as it has been mentioned above, this is your source of income; i would charge a reasonable rate, in the other countries, somewhere between 5-10$ because if you think about it, somebody who is poor will pirate games usually, I'm not discriminating here but its a simple fact, they cannot afford to waste money when they can just get a free copy, so with that said, you should price it appropriately for those who are actually going to buy it, say 10 people bought the game for 1$ or less like you said above with the taxes etc, you would still make more money if you made the game more expensive but only 5 people bought it. and if its for morality since you live in Poland yourself and know the pain of not using USD, Release it at a proper money making amount, then have a sale and make it cheap for those who struggle to pay in the poor countries, there your morale's have been taken care of :P companies have sales all the time you can too.. anyhow for releasing UTIC1, if you don't want that strong of backlash, you could always release UTIc2 first, and then release UTIC1 as a "prologue" or its predecessor, heck i could even see you using the excuse that "because UTIC2 was so successful i have released the first game for you guys if you want to support me" there's nothing wrong with trying to make money, especially when its your main income source, I myself support you still for that reason besides the fact that i want the game to be successful, find your target audience my friend, i hope this helps you.

Mr. Unaware

Sorry for the late response. Sometimes I lose track and forget to reply, especially right before releasing an update during crunch time. I don't know your Discord nickname, though. Upgrading the engine itself won't do anything out of the box, but it's really important for multiple reasons. I'm glad I can keep it up to date because it's going to make my life much easier indeed. For example, I was scared that I wouldn't be able to optimize UiTC (if you played v30, you remember the loading times and FPS drops). Unity dropped support, and didn't fix old bugs, so I couldn't make features work. I found a lousy workaround, but the outdated engine almost killed the whole project... I don't know the exact costs and other fees on Steam. For example, Patreon/SS charges $0.30 whenever you pay me, so $0.30 out of $1 vs. out of $10 is a huge difference. On Patreon, I would get much more from one $10 subscriber than from ten $1 subscribers. Releasing UiTC2 before UiTC1 won't work because UiTC2 is supposed to be a better remake, just like nobody plays UotW now. Whatever I do will always piss some people off, and they will create a narrative about me being a real asshole, which is funny to read, but also annoying when people believe their crap. Right now, I'm thinking of releasing the public version of UiTC1 for free or charging something like a symbolic $1 for it to test out Steam's payment system, sales, and so on. This way, I'll have some basic experience when trying to release UiTC2 on Steam next year. Cheers!