Steam (Valve)

Overview

This note is typically about developing games for Steam, not about using the platform.

One-liners

• To find a user’s Steam ID, you can simply paste their URL into https://steamid.io/
• If you need to download your existing assets, it’s easiest through SteamDB (e.g. this link)
• To modify your community icon, use a link like this
  • To see this, go to https://steamcommunity.com/ after clicking the hub for a game (e.g. this link)
• To modify your client icon, use a link like this
• To make GIFs, I highly recommend Gifski. It’s so easy, and you can preview export sizes to make sure you’ll fit Steam’s requirements.
  • UPDATE: videos are now supported (reference), so just use video files.
• Revoke/ban a Steam key via this link (which is under Tools → Ban Steam Keys on Steamworks)
• To see traffic sources for your game, use a link like this

Playtests

Note

It took ~3 days for Valve to review my playtest app’s store page, then it takes another ~1-2 days to get keys (although mine only took a few hours), then it takes 3-5 business days to review the actual app, so budget time for this!

Steam has a playtest feature (reference). There are two main ways to use this:

• Add a “Request Access” button to your Steam page that will allow people to sign up anonymously. From there, you can allow in some number of people.
• Give out playtest keys to specific people.

Assuming you have a demo online already, playtests takes slightly north of an hour since you have to make a new page, make new depots, upload assets, etc. You could probably speed that up if you know how to do this stuff without consulting notes/documentation.

Note: when setting everything up for the first time, I don’t think I properly had builds, but that doesn’t matter for the store review; the documentation says this:

The store review checklist for a Playtest only consists of capsule images and icons.

However, you also need them to review a build of your game.

Once your store page has been reviewed:

• Go to your main app → Store Page Admin → Special Settings → click the text link that says “click here to set up visibility” about halfway down the page. If you just want to give out keys:
  • Set the visibility to “Hidden”.
  • To give out keys, go to your playtest app’s App Data Admin → Manage Keys → Default Release Key. I chose “Giveaway” as the option and “Playtest” as the tag. Once you’re done requesting the keys, you’ll have to wait a day or two.
• Submit the build for review.
  • This is required to set the playtest to playable (e.g. via this link).

Troubleshooting

SteamCMD updates instead of running my command

If an update is available, then running commands will typically just automatically perform the update and then not run the command. It will exit with code 42 when this happens. What I’ve generally done is to run steamcmd --help just to make sure it’s up-to-date, then run my actual command.

SteamCMD fails with a generic “FAILURE” message

This was maddening:

ERROR! Failed to commit build for AppID 3838630 : Failure

…but I finally found my specific cause: I was trying to upload to a branch named alphatest despite not having created that branch on Steamworks. You do this from the “builds” page (e.g. this). If it’s basically empty, then you need to upload a build to the default branch first. Once you have that, you’ll see:

Once the default branch has a current build set, you can create other branches.

…so make the build live, then you’ll see “Create new app branch”. You should probably password-protect this branch if it has your alpha builds on it.

The Mac version shows a warning right in Steam

E.g. this:

This is caused by not checking the right boxes on a page like this:

“Missing game executable” when launching from Steam

E.g.:

First, make sure you as a developer don’t get this issue.

• If you do get the issue, then I’m pretty sure it means that the file it’s looking for doesn’t exist (e.g. a bunch of people online had Game.exe.exe and didn’t realize the double extension due to Windows’ default settings).
• Even if you don’t get this issue, there may still be a problem! For example, in the case below, I’m guessing I was using the “Skeleseller Playtest Developer Comp” package, which did have all of the depots, but the “Skeleseller Playtest” package didn’t.

If players get everything to work through a compatibility layer like Proton, CrossOver, WINE, etc., then it points to you having a Windows depot but not Mac/Linux depots.

Anyway, as mentioned above, I had these packages set up:

Clicking “Skeleseller Playtest” → “Add/Remove Depots” showed that not all of the boxes were checked:

I just ✅‘d them all, published (which I don’t think was necessary), and it fixed the problem for people affected by this. Note that I had asked them to reinstall, but the installation still showed “0 B” at first and they had to restart Steam.

Note that I think you’ll see Note: this depot isn't referenced by any packages for this app. Please check your package configuration. right on the “Manage depots” page if this will be a problem.

Launching your prerelease version shows the playtest version running

My scenario was this:

• Preconditions
  • Skeleseller Playtest was out and installed on Steam
  • Skeleseller (release) was not out but could still be installed on Steam
• I launch the release version
  • 👍 The release binary opens (I know this because I have version numbers showing on the title screen).
  • 👎 Steam shows the playtest version running
  • 👎 Steam grants achievements for the playtest version

This is because your game specifies the wrong Steam app ID.

You can test whether you’ve fixed this without even uploading your build to Steam; just run it locally, and if Steam shows that the correct version of the game is being played, then you can upload it.

Checklist issues

”Store And Devcomp Packages Match” (reference)

To complete this checklist item:

• Go to a page like this and click “All Associated Packages, DLC, Demos And Tools”.
• Make sure to include the same depots in your devcomp package as you have in your release version.

Achievements or cloud saves

If you’ve added achievements or cloud saves to your game but it’s still showing in the checklist as incomplete, then you need to check the box for “Steam Achievements” (e.g. this link, which is via the dashbord → your gamme → Edit Store Page → scroll way down to “Supported Features”).