The premiere of Witchfire Early Access on Steam went well. Actually, it went better than we dreamed.
- We have over three thousand reviews with a 91% user score. For an Early Access game! We could not be more grateful. And thank you for reviewing; this really matters for the Steam algorithm.
- We have sold enough copies not only to secure the studio's future, but also to be able to invest more in the game and make our Witchfire dreams come true.
- Across Steam and EGS, we now have one million wishlists. Actually, as soon as we announced this, that number jumped to 1.1 million.
We've put a lot of passion and hard work into Witchfire. I want to use this opportunity to bow down to the team, who not only never lost its faith in the project nor ever left for greener pastures but continues to work as if the best is yet ahead of us. And they are right.
Overall, since our EGS debut in September of 2023, I think everybody won.
Epic got a pretty unique, good-looking game for a year to strengthen their shop's presence. The deal with Epic allowed us to keep our independence and continue development without selling part of the studio. And last but not least, gamers who purchased the Epic version got to play a truly different version of Witchfire, one that will never be seen again. More brutal, raw, unforgiving.
And when we were ready for Steam, Steam players got a game that, sure, is still unfinished — that's what Early Access is — but is in a better state and has more content than the initial release. What's there not to like? I would genuinely recommend any indie studio that can go this route to go this route. I am glad we did. We have just copied what Supergiant has done with Hades, and it seems to have worked well.
As for Steam, we were content with the way things started, but then they started to get ...even better. Thanks to the Steam reviews from the players, our helpful Discord community, Steam forums, and a few prominent streamers and YouTubers who simply enjoyed the game, our player count more than doubled. We literally were throwing the number in our team chat every ten minutes or so, enjoying the news.
We are also impressed with the Steam algorithm. It really does seem to work. As an example, when the initial two-week 10% off promo ended, we expected the sales to cool down until the next big update or news or sale. But ...no. Daily sales are still great, relatively to where we are, of course.
Rest assured that the success of the Early Access premiere will neither slow us down nor make us complacent. We are the type of studio that quickly tunes out the praise and focuses on the critique, and we have a vision of Witchfire that we want to execute as soon as possible. So, good premiere, gg team, thank you players — but now it's back to work.
Is there anything new we've learned thanks to the Steam premiere?
We certainly did. We learned how and when to let go, and what happens when you respect your players.
Let's start with the former.
The most painful thing for any game developer is not when someone screams at you on X/Twitter or when people fight ugly over a feature on a Steam forum or when someone trolls the comments under your YouTube video. Sure, these are not fun, but the most painful thing is reading an unfair press review and seeing your Metacritic score go down, or reading an unfair Steam review and seeing your user score go down.
Whether we like it or not, Metacritic and OpenCritic matter. A simple example: you need an investment for a future project. When you explain to the potential investor that your game sold well, even though the Metacritic score was merely so-so, they will start to have doubts about your ability to deliver high quality and might even consider your great sales to be a lightning-in-a-bottle thing you might have trouble replicating. But if you say you had great sales and a fantastic Metacritic score, they will now be looking at something much tastier and worthy.
The Steam user score is even more important. Imagine someone decided to check out your game because Steam recommended it. The first thing to look at: user score. It sits at 79%. "Ain't nobody got time for that" — and the person leaves the page.
Also, the user score matters for the algorithm. It's obvious: Steam is more likely to recommend good games to you rather than bad games. That is how Valve earns money, by keeping people happy with great games and a great ecosystem.
Now, sure, we have seen commercially successful games with low MC and Steam user scores review-bombed to the 50s, but they are merely exceptions to the rule—not something you want to risk.
So when you read a bad review, it's not just a bad review. With how things are structured, its reach goes beyond just being a note on the game's fun factor and quality. Publishers are acutely aware of the impact user scores can have on a game's success.
But while these are the reasons why getting a bad review hurts, getting an unfair bad review hurts even more. I am sure you read your share of troll or questionable reviews so you know what I am talking about here.
What can you do about it?
Nothing.
What should you do about it?
Nothing.
To be clear, I mean the reviews you might consider unfair. Legit critique, no matter how harsh, is simply the feedback you must consider.
This is actually what Valve recommends in their Steam developer guides. They warn you that no all reviews will be constructive, and they say that rather than lamenting about it, you should focus on your game and the actual feedback.
I thought about it for a while, and I got it. In Valve's mind, it's better to focus on making a better game, so you get more positive reviews that would effectively neuter the bad ones, regardless of their fairness level.
And so we've learned to let go. Unless something is clear disinformation, we just see if there is something we should learn from the review or not, then move on to work on it if there was. That's it.
What about the second thing, then? About what happens when you respect the players?
Well, we are gamers, too. Every person in the studio is a hardcore gamer. So we know what we want from a Steam game. This is why we invested a lot of time and effort into our Steam page, into posting regularly—like the thing you are reading right now—and into talking to the players directly. We spend extraordinary time on playtests, and the game's stability is our number one priority. We basically flipped the script on Early Access, with the game being relatively stable and with enough content for some people to claim, "this feels like a full game already."
And what happens then?
I don't really have enough time to reply to every thread on our Steam forum, but one day I've decided to spend the night doing just that. There were a couple of clearly angry posts, some weird claims, some questions... I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to reply and explain and discuss... except people did that for me already.
Well, not for me literally, of course, but people responded to every thread I wanted to respond to in a way I would respond myself: defending the game, explaining it, helping to solve a technical issue.
It was hard to believe for me, but I simply ended the evening writing nothing. There was no need.
Valve knows this.
Another thing they write in their guide for developers is not to engage in discussions unless you really need to and to focus on making the best game you can instead. Because if you make a great game, then your players will help you out.
It's one thing to read about it, and it was another to experience it. Who knew that if you make a decent game you clearly care about and communicate with the players often and honestly, they will have your back?
So these are my thoughts after the first month on Steam. Witchfire is doing great, and we're working on cool new stuff. The promised Fast Response patch is most likely going out tomorrow, and then we focus on a fat update for December.
I want to leave you with a review that got us all teary-eyed. We got so many lovely reviews and emails that it was hard for me to choose just one. We read them all and post select ones to our team chat. I could easily quote fifty. So I just chose the latest one we got.
Hello, Astronauts. I'm a college senior from Egypt, and I've been following your game pretty much since the day it stepped foot on EGS's front page. [...] I did not have the means to buy it. I pirated the game for a few months, a little after the first GGU is when I stopped pirating/playing and waited for a steam release. Coincidentally I also got a credit card, which is the only way to make international purchases in Egypt, so I was able to finally buy the game at what I thought was an okay price (Thank you for good regional pricing!) and got it on steam. I've been playing the game daily for hours on end, for even more than I was when I had pirated the game. I think you guys got something special here, and I'm here to implore you to create a "Early Adopters" of sort DLC/Edition for the game that can only be bought before the game's official release. Exclusive cosmetics, story tidbits, a semi-exclusive class that can be unlocked later or a weapon, even, would be fine. I am mainly asking this because I want to financially support the game's development further but I don't see a donation or Patreon button. I hope you guys have wonderful success with the game leading up to and after official launch. Have a good one. Sincerely, A random middle eastern fan.
I doubt we will ever do any form of a FOMO exclusive, but that's not the point here. What got us emotional was the idea that we brightened someone's day enough for them to send us ideas on how to make more money for the studio. Also, we appreciate the honesty. Although it's hard to beat a guy on our Discord who pirated the game and then bought three legit copies to atone for his sins. No, this really happened, just hop on our Discord and search for "I bought three".
But I digress.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you all again.
Till next time,
Adrian