Steam Launch Campaign Templates

Raising money is a skill. It's one that every creative has to learn unfortunately including how to self-market. Being a former PR I thought both would come naturally to me, but I found out that I'm more comfortable lifting other people up than I am lifting myself up. Money men want sure things and content (film, tv, video games) are not sure things. So creatives should focus on the basics - vision, the team, the customer and why the game passes the "box test".

The box test is a throwback to the days when games sat on shelves. Steam is crowded by copies of copies of copies of the same type of games. How do you stand out, why players care/buy and why someone would stream your game.

Having crisp answers to these questions will get you half of the way there.

The other more challenging thing is that publishers/investors want to basically invest when you are a true vertical slice, much further along then the old days. Basically everyone is in the finishing funds/marketing funds game. That is when we creatives need to ask ourselves - "is the juice worth the squeeze".

This week I’m in Amsterdam and nearly got Amster-scammed. I won’t bore you with all the details but Family offices are hard to background check, especially overseas ones. After talking to one for weeks and feeling like we are in agreement, I flew to Amsterdam to finalize the deal only to have a kickback crypto scheme get introduced at the last minute. Sometimes we can want the money to finish our games too much. We can overlook red flags. Luckily know when to walk away and take a loss on a trip rather than take a reputation loss. I’ll take an Orange flag instead and chalk it up to an improptu vacation to this wonderful country.

Robbie Ferguson and the Immutable team are putting out some banger content.

Free Publishing Launch Templates and Resources From Mad Octopus

“These resources are free because we believe indie devs deserve real information. If you want a publisher who actually does the work (100% revenue until 1,000 copies, then 10%, zero upfront fees), let's talk.” - Mad Octopus

This is an example of the new wave of marketing publishers that don’t invest but they invest their expertise.

Competitor Marketing Analysis Tool By Immutable

I swear this is not sponsored content. Immutable is just building things that we all used to do by hand based on gut feelings and data. Paste your Steam store link and instantly see what your competitors are doing — their trailers, screenshots, marketing copy, pricing, and social presence.

I plugged my own studio’s game (Unyverse) into it and honestly agree with the feedback 100%.

You prompt. The agent builds. Then it asks for a database.

Ghost is postgres made for this. Spin one up in seconds. Fork it like a branch. Delete it when you're done. Pay nothing when it's idle.

Your agent gets full sql, mcp support, as many databases. No dashboards. No provisioning. No forgotten dev databases draining your card at month end.

Build a weekend app. Fork the schema three different ways. Throw two of them out. Ghost doesn't care. The next prompt can spin up a fresh one.

You're already vibe-coding the app. Stop wiring up the backend.

Unlimited databases. Unlimited forms. 100 compute/hrs a month. 1tb of storage. Free.

Download Ghost

Festivals, showcases, influencer and media showcases and their submission windows.

All the best links that usually disappear into the Reddit ether only to be reposted by the most diligent Redditors and game development and marketing gurus. Link to the website archive of these great resources (GDMR)

Have a win, a learning, a question, or an opportunity worth sharing? Send it in. If it helps the community, we’ll surface it with credit. [email protected]