What is the best place to release my games?

Hello, I have recently been getting more into game development, and I’ve been thinking about where I should release my games when I actually finish one.

On one hand, Steam is a good platform because it’s well known and has great features for publishing your game.

On the other, you need to show them your ID and pay a hundred dollars to publish a game there, and I can’t really afford that now.

itch.io is also a good option, but it’s harder if you want to released paid games there because the market is full of free games which can make your game seem like a worse choice (after all, why buy that game when there are so many free ones?)

If you haven’t done or prepared any marketing you should go for the free option with itch.io; many use itch.io as a demo/pre-release version of their game to promote their full-price steam page.

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I think you may need to check your expectations, if your goal is to make money / “release paid games” :slight_smile:
Your game will have to stand out in the sea of games, be worth its price, and compare favorably to everything else that’s available at that price point - difficult, even for professionally made titles.

I’d suggest just focusing on the quality of the game, and making it available for free in as many places as you can - it may at least gain some attention, and you might get some useful feedback.

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@screen-pixl-4096, I seriously wish i knew the answer you are asking for :sweat_smile:,
hehhh. . .

Hi. I just thought you could pay some attention to Epic Games Store, which has much better financials than Steam. The thing is it along has a smaller audience. On top of that, your game must past the quality filter in order to post on ECS (but that also eliminates many free games). However, given your constraints I think it’s better than Steam and itch.io.

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I think it would probably be a mix of both, I would have smaller free games and my larger games would have a free demo with a paid full version

I can only suggest you make a game first. Get it to a point where it’s complete and fun to play, then put it up for sale. According to yourself, you’re only just getting into game development - you have no reason at all to be worrying about publishing :slight_smile:

5 Likes

Wait a second. There’s also web portals, such as Crazygames or Poki to post your game on. Usually, this platform especially suits games where basically loading time isn’t a problem or at least not a big. This is the first target platform that comes to my mind when I develop a game.