How to make money developing games for steam

Treat this as a disclaimer for my blog: You are reading the thoughts of a guy who was coding since age 11, has 36 years coding experience, has shipped over a dozen games, several of which made millions of dollars, got into indie dev VERY early, knows a lot of industry people, and has a relatively high public profile. With releases building upon the game, Kingdom: New Lands and Kingdom: Two Crowns , updated versions of the title, the two men have tapped into an essential part of the indie development cycle. Luckily with the rise of game engines we no longer need to worry about porting games or building our own engines. Danny says:.

Earn Free Gift Cards!

What’s the name of the game? This wouldn’t earn you money from sales per se, but could perhaps boost player and viewer base synergetically, so that you get more people to follow your channels, social medias. Which in turn supports your sfeam at future projects. But realistically, I presume donations and MT are the most likely sources of income, if any. Sometimes free games have trading cards on Steam and the developer makes money whenever a trading trade is sold or traded.

Cliffski and Solo Game Developing

If you read my account of being sucked into the madness that is Steam Trading Cards , you probably thought to yourself «Wow I wonder if I can make money out of these without going crazy like this idiot did? Making money from cards is simple: Get cards, sell them on the market, and never actually use them to craft anything. The trick is to act fast, because right now, thanks to the Steam sale, the trading card market economy is crashing so fast it makes Greece look healthy in comparison. Get your cards quickly, sell them cheaply, and get out. Don’t ever bother waiting for prices to go up, because that isn’t going to happen soon. What’s the best way to get cards? What’s the best Steam level to reach before trading?

Steam gets its cut, but that doesn’t mean you’re making money

If you read my account of being sucked into the madness that is Steam Trading Cardsyou probably thought to yourself «Wow I wonder if I can make money out of these without going crazy like this idiot did? Making money from cards is simple: Get cards, sell them on the market, and never actually use them to craft.

The trick is to act fast, because right now, thanks to the Steam sale, the trading card market economy xeveloping crashing so fast it makes Greece look healthy in comparison. Get your cards quickly, sell them cheaply, and get.

Don’t ever bother waiting for prices to go up, because that isn’t going to happen soon. What’s the best way to get cards? What’s the best Steam level to reach before trading? How does one get booster packs? Here’s a simple breakdown containing the info your need to do some quick ‘n dirty Steam profiteering, and hopefully make enough to pick up something new in the Steam sale. You can get around three to five cards for each game you own just by playing. If you don’t know which of your games support trading cards, go to the ‘Badges’ section on Steam for a list.

On the top right corner of each game should be developong little message saying something like «4 card drops remaining. The only exception is Free to Play games, which award you drops for spending money in the game. Given that the cards typically go for a few pence, it isn’t worth buying items specifically for this reason. But if you’ve bought stuff before or if you used to own TF2 before it became free then you’ll probably have a few drops to spare.

Once you’ve earned all your regular drops, you become eligible for a Booster Pack. Each pack contains three random cards, including a small chance of finding a ‘foil’ card, which is worth ten times as. Booster Packs are awarded at random, you don’t even need to play the games to get one, you just have to log into Steam once a week.

Unfortunately leveling up suffers from diminishing returns. Every ten levels the amount of experience needed to go up one level goes up by xp. Mak it costs xp to go from level nine to level 10, but xp to get from level 10 to level Thankfully you’ll probably start at at least level 7 or 8, because you get some free experience for how long you’ve had your Steam account and how many games you. This means you can easily get to level 10 by crafting a couple of badges, or getting the ‘Pillar of the Community’ badge by doing things like posting screenshots and leaving comments.

Going any higher devrloping that doesn’t seem to be worth it, just sell your cards instead. Summer Getaway cards are a special kind of trading card created for developin summer sale. You can get them in three ways: Crafting a badge has a chance to drop one, but since that means destroying nine how to make money developing games for steam to get just one, which is a terrible idea.

Finally you get one for every three times you amke in the ‘Community Choice’ deal. If you’re near a PC once every eight hours, drop into Steam to cast your vote and grab some free cards. The final way to get cards stesm the most obvious, you can buy them on the market, or trade them with friends. During my article I tried stwam cards cheaply and selling them at a markup, and while you can make money that way I find it simply takes way too much time and effort to be worthwhile.

Trading is a better bet, because not developung cards are ga,es equal. If hhow friends care more about making a set than making money, you can trade cheap Team Fortress 2 cards for expensive Trine 2 cards and make a reasonable profit. Just be prepared to lose some friends if they ever find out like say if you wrote about it on the dveloping. Everything listed here steeam only take you a few minutes, and should net you enough cards to pick up a cheap indie game for free.

Good luck! Please steqm your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer. Idling You can get around three to five cards for each game you own just by playing. Booster Packs Once you’ve earned all your regular drops, you become eligible for a Booster Pack. Summer Getaway Cards Summer Getaway cards are a special kind of trading card created for the develkping sale.

Buying and Trading The final way to get cards is the most obvious, you can buy them on the market, or trade them with gamfs. See comments. Topics Steam. Steam Trading Cards.

Making Money on Steam with Gems

Save Up Your Trading Cards

The most recent release yow iOS in Octoberand Androids at a later date. He had 36 years of coding experience, shipped over a dozen games, several of which made millions of dollars, deeloping into indie development makke early, knew a lot of industry people, and had a relatively high public eeveloping. I notice its reduced price often for Steam sales, attracting new players. Sounds like someone is desperately trying to dissuade other indie devs from becoming competitors. None of tgese have made hundreds of millions sometimes millions. June 29, at am. The most important thing is providing developers with the opportunity to receive their fair share of their hard-earned money and providing them with the tools to promote games without feeling that they work for an evil corporation that mistreats. The key is what it takes to get to the top. My question then: how come there are these huge indie communities. Feeling the heat, are we, Cliffski? Kirill December About 15 new games a day. This can lead to the wrong expectations for indie devs. Now, a very important metric is how long it takes to develop a game. In every game you play, you typically receive three cards.