Why Steam REJECTED My Game - 3 Times!
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- Опубликовано: 28 июн 2024
- Billy's Nightmare is releasing in less than 2 months, but with Steam rejecting our game repeatedly, will we really be able to get it approved in time? In today's devlog, we're taking a look at some of the problems we're facing in preparation for our release date.
#devlog #gamedev #roguelike
Billy's Nightmare is a roguelike game where you use abilities & items based on child logic to help Billy fight his nightmare. Poison bullies with a pair of Stinky Socks, set creepy toys on fire with a Magnifying Glass or make them step on some painful Pego Bricks!
► Get Billy's Nightmare on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/16...
► Join the Billy's Nightmare Discord: / discord
► Get some good images of Billy for your thumbnails here: www.mediafire.com/folder/77jx... 
Игры
To Jonas: I love your game! My first video of it will be up tomorrow (9/23) at 1 pm Eastern. To everyone: If you are reading this comment, you should go wishlist the game. It's really fun, and the hard work that Jonas and co put into it is immediately obvious.
Thanks! I'm looking forward to your video :)
You bet; thanks for the pin.
Hey,
I mean it's great that Steam provides free feedback. As a gamer if I bought a game that features online co-op I would be disappointed if I had to download a third party program to play it, and steam also offers remote play, which is the same, however I don't think it will ever come near real online multiplayer. So I think if you had been allowed to have "online coop" it would probably have caused some negative reviews, so it was probably for the best.
Best of luck with the game release :)
Yeah, in hindsight I guess that Steam saved us some negative reviews and angry refunds :)
Yep! Wishlisted!
I would have been frustrated with the run around from Steam as well, but in the end, I think they saved you some support headaches or negative reviews. If they didn't get that they needed to finish the tutorial or have a connected controller, etc., then it's very likely players would have as well and complained. Alas, it won't be the last time someone misunderstands something about your game, I'm sure. Just remember: if no one is complaining about it, then no one is playing it or finding enough value in it to go through the effort to complain.
Thanks for the wishlist! Yeah, it was frustrating but also good that they helped us make the game easier to understand. Good point, complaints can be positive sometimes.
Congrats, it's been a long journey for sure! :)
As a fellow gamedev, I'm curious: Is it good to already send out keys to influencers a few months before release?
I always hear that it's better to send them closer to release and have an embargo on the video till launch day.
So viewers can also buy it, not just wishlist it. And it would also generate external traffic on launch week which is important for the algorithm, I heard.
Or are you doing it because you have relatively low amount of wishlists? And you are hoping that getting "enough" wishlists by launch day will protect you against being hidden by the algorithm, thus resulting in a much better launch week overall?
Sorry for the long question. :)
Thanks! I guess you could argue that sending keys early is both good and bad. But we really need wishlists to have a chance to get noticed by the alorithm, so we decided to send out keys a bit earlier. Our biggest mistake was to not have a Steam page at the time we released our demo on itch, 3 years ago. Then we could've funneled those people to our page and gotten som wishlists. So sending keys now is our Plan B. Hopefully, things will go smoother for our next game :)
Thanks for the answer, good luck! :)@@JonasBroman
to be fair steam had good reasons
Yeah, in hindsight I guess that Steam saved us some negative reviews and angry refunds
For the Online Co-Op I believe steam iteslf actually can and does handle that for a lot of games (like valheim) similar to how it does achievements, Also using their P2P networking appears to be safer then making your own custom one for most people
Awesome, I will check this out!
Lava Lamp
Spurts out globs of hot lava, sticking to the ground in pools, burning enemies that touch it.
Such an excellent video on your experience with this. You are extremely entertaining! Cheers!
Thanks, I'm glad you like the video!
I feel like the magnet shouldnt do damage, at best paralyz if u want the electricity part
As i feel it would be better as an item that is used to make a combo with a weapon that does AOE/splash damage, so u activate magnet all the enemies come close and then u use your weapon that damages all the enemies that are close by.
And i also feel thar some times there is too much clutter on the screen, with the particles and the details on the floor and walls and everything together
Might just be me, and maybe u can get used to it after playing a bit, but that might cause some difficulty into playing the game for the first time
Thanks for the feedback! We're actually planning on adding an option for hiding all the clutter on the floor, so hopefully this will help.
And the steam misunderstanding is pretty important, similar confusion will happen to the people who buy you game, and they will have similar or even more "confused" questions and they would complain ask for refund and/or give a bad review to the game which would hurt your sales
So i am actually happy of what the end result of the steam process was
(It must have been annoying from your end but still it would help u think about what else u could make clearer)
From the, requirement of tutorial to do coop u could say
Something like 0/1 item is required
And u get that item at end of tutorial or smt like that
@@vinaychekuri5043 Yeah, I'm thankful that they helped us make our game easier to understand, but the part where you have to wait 3-5 days everytime were pretty frustrating. So I'm glad that they finally approved the game.
Thank you for keeping your development, production and release processes open so that we can all learn from your hindsight. Wishlisted; best of luck with your marketing!
Thanks for the wishlist! I will probably do a video after the release where I talk about things we have learned about selling a game on Steam.
@@JonasBroman that would be very helpful, thank you. And good for marketing too as those kinds of videos tend to do really well.
Sorry for saying that, but I understand the steam perspective. If the steam staff don't understand the coop feature's text or buttons, neither will new players, because they didn't watch any devlog video. And I wouldn't want to download any third party software just to play online, that doesn't fit the quality level of steam. It sucks that they didn't point out those things together or just give you a quick call or something.
Yeah, their feedback was great but having to wait 3-5 days after each update was frustrating.
Have you wishlisted Billy's Nightmare yet?
YES
@@pyrogaming6278 That's awesome!
Absolutely. Thanks to Slade By Gaming
@@knerdknight9109 Awesome :)
Atleast they were willing to even test it. They accepted my page and all that, when I pushed my software for a review just to test the review process, I got an error after 2 days stating automated testing had failed... then a week later I got a message saying that they had re-reviewed my application and it doesn't fit steam so they retiring it... makes no sense as they approved the page and all the information about the app... it's a systems utilities app... all about pc hardware with in game overlays... not sure how it doesn't fit steam...
Nice! How many wishlists are you guys at? I know me and my friend are 2 of them haha
Thanks for the wishlists! We have 131 at the moment
Do you use player hosted servers to do online coop? If you use listen or peer to peer systems, that would count for online coop. But if players have to leave the game to set up anything for online play, yeah... I can see why they'd reject you. Players should be able to play multiplayer right from the main menu.
Anyway. Nice work getting your game this close to launch! That's exciting! Congrats!
Thanks! I will try to figure out how to set it up so you can join eachother via Steam
@@JonasBroman Steam's API in Unreal Engine makes it pretty easy to do. I assume you're using Unity though. So I'm not sure what the process is like there. Good luck! I hope you can get it working because that online tag helps a lot!
@@MichaelKocha Unfortunately we're using GameMaker, and there's not a lot of tutorials for Steam's API for that engine. For our next game, we will use Unity, as it has a lot more tutorials for these type of things.
@@JonasBroman Ah. I mean, I love Game Maker, but yeah. I'm not sure how viable it is for online multiplayer...
@@MichaelKocha Yeah.. I will do what I can for the online co-op, but if it doesn't work I hope things will go smoother with Unity for our next game
this is very informative. thanks.
Thanks, I'm glad you like the video!
It might be too "adult" for this game but a Molotov Cocktail explosive would be insanely cool :D
Thanks for the suggestion! We could perhaps make the attack similar to a Molotiv Cocktail, but use a more "childish" object
Them rejecting a giving reason is a bliss honestly
OFC! ♥️
Awesome!
Hey man! Your game's looking really good so far! I would love to get in touch to discuss how I can contribute to its growth and success of it as well as improve your online presence.
Keep up the good work! Cheers.
Thanks! You can help us by wishlisting the game on Steam
@@JonasBroman Already done! Let me know whenever you’ll be free to chat for a few minutes.
Looks interesting, added it to wishlist.
Thanks, I'm glad you like it!
Seems like Billy si full of Abillyties..........
I see what you did there ;)
Oh wow, so steam are the good guys:) i guess they do have to explain better but the features should be clear to use and understand. Now you have all the experience you need to do it all over again with dlc:)
Yeah we still have a lot to learn about Steam. We won't really sell any dlc, all future content for Billy's Nightmare will be free updates :)
While it sucks it took that long to get approved, I must say I'm glad Steam is finally taking stuff like this seriously. There's so much rubbish that's been published on their platform with blatant lies in the descriptions, especially among Early Access games listing planned features as already being in the game and such.
Yeah, in hindsight I guess that Steam saved us some negative reviews and angry refunds
I think an open fridge is better than fan for freezing....
If i play this game i would though that the fan is just pushing enemies and maybe stunts + damage them when they hit a wall....
Thanks for the feedback! There's a description on the Desk Fan in the game that explains what it does. A small mini-fridge could be fun for another new weapon though.
Steam denied my game like 5 times because more short description didn't give enough information about the game. Like what else can I possibly fit in the short description?????? It's full and is described.
Haha sounds like more people than us have problems with Steam xD
I kinda understand and agree with what steam did. Everything should be idiot proof in a game. Most people ignore tutorials, after all, they're mostly just telling you "WASD to move. Mouse moving around moves the cursor around. Shoot with M1." And honestly, Hamachi is not online coop. That's like last resort when devs shut down the servers. And yea, if these features have requirements to use them, you should have a pop-up saying you need them.
And lets face it. If Steam didn't make you do this stuff, you probably wouldn't unless there was a riot in your game. Despite what devs say, they hate listening to their fans outside of the input they've asked for. Like you asked for fan ideas for weapons, not implementation. Honestly, you should be thanking them for pointing out some very poor implementations you had that would've led to endless forum threads asking "where's multiplayer? Refunded!"
You should be going through the whole game with the mindset Steam had. Is it intuitive? Is it idiot-proof? The whole game should be clear like that.
Yeah, in hindsight I guess that Steam saved us some negative reviews and angry refunds
I am....surprised. Surprised that steam has a human based quality control. Considering what i've played on steam, i didn't think there was any.
Haha any stories you want to share?
@@JonasBroman Just basic "a new instance of the menu is spawned every time you hit Esc with the all of them visibly overlaying" or the main menu not working or none of the settings doing anything and stuff like that. The things you get when the game probably never has been played outside of editor mode or on any pc other than the developers laptop.
@@sealsharp Weird, I don't understand how stuff like that could slip by the Steam quality control
@@JonasBroman do updates get reviewed by humans as well?
@@sealsharp Once they have reviewed your store page and game build, I believe your allowed to update the game by yourself
It was a big mistake to put it on steam so late into development.
Yeah I know. This is the first game that we will sell on Steam, so we didn't really knew how the store page works. We believed that once you create a store page with a release date, you can't change it afterwards. But we have learned a lot, so hopefully our next game will be a bigger success!
Your game looks really cool but tbf I dont think steam is in the wrong. If you have to portforward to play online then saying the game has online coop can be misleading to some. Usually coop is peer to peer or through a non client hosted server. It also wasnt very apparent the first two times that you included local multiplayer support. In general you should assume that most people who will be playing your game arent as knowledgeable as you and I think thats the assumption that steam goes in with. If the icon is greyed out or says the game needs an update for it to be playable its very reasonable for someone to be confused especially someone that has to look at probably 100 games a day.
Yeah, in hindsight I guess that Steam saved us some negative reviews and angry refunds
@@JonasBroman Id say so. That said congrats on getting approved after all your hard work.
@@theavpman4834 Thanks! It feels good to finally get the game approved for sale
All of steam's problems with the game were extremely valid lol
Yeah, in hindsight I guess that Steam saved us some negative reviews and angry refunds
plastic bags? :)
Hmm how do you mean?
@@JonasBroman it would be kinda cool as a weapon/enemy.
@@Elcomedordepan Ah I see, thanks for the suggestion!
I'd suggest to create a different youtube channel for your game. Looks more professional instead of a profile with a selfie picture and your name ;)
I'm glad you got it sorted in the end but (no offense) I think Steam/Valve were right.
Thanks! Yeah, in hindsight I guess that Steam saved us some negative reviews and angry refunds