[Blog] Valve just took away a valuable visibility tool
Blog post by Chris Zukowski (How to Market A Game)
https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/08/21/valve-just-took-away-a-valuable-visibility-tool/
I mean, Valve has a vested interest in keeping game devs active on the Steam forums.
But also, can we stop fucking replacing support forums with Discord servers? Discord isn’t searchable by engines, so when I have an issue and search for “[game name] [issue]” I can’t easily find support topics from others who have had the same issue. All I get is a generic “jOiN ouR dIsCorD SerVer FoR sUppOrT” page instead.
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Has anyone actually read the article? It mentions Discord once, in passing.
It’s about how iframes used to promote upcoming games/games by the same publisher aren’t allowed anymore. This has negative implications towards indie devs because upcoming games in particular are less likely to be recommended already and in order to get into the “New and Upcoming” tab, a certain amount of wishlists is required.
Fewer wishlists => fewer recommendations => fewer wishlists
IFrames are still a thing? I’m actually shocked. I thought they were as dead as the marquee tag!
Why do game devs and publishers who exclusively publish to steam use discord? Steam has searchable forums, chat rooms, screen-sharing, and voice chat too. There’s no need for a third party client.
Discord is a piece of shit
Meh, I’m happy to have all external links in one place.
Once the community adapts that is where everyone will look as second nature if they want to check their website, social media, or whatever.
This feels like engagement bait
Can the next step be deprecating Discord entirely? Trash.
Good riddance. Discord sucks.
It won’t be too long until users get used to the standardized locations for socials. And it cleans up a lot of spam
@Boomkop3 Yeah I guess 🤔 I wish they could provide an optional image-button UI for the socials widgets so theyre easier to see at least…
Chris also wrote that his next blog post will be about alternative strategies to cross-promote games. I’m curious what he’ll come up with
Except the only socials they support are Discord, YouTube, Facebook, X and Twitch.