NOTE: I can't give exact sale figures because Steam is mean that way, so all numbers/images in this post are approximate or skewed
So this past Steam sale was the first one I've participated in as a dev (of Nepenthe, if you're interested), and I want to share my experience with y'all.
Before the sale, I had made around $300, which really isn't terrible for this sort of thing. After the sale, I had made $1000. This was way more than I expected, which was a welcome surprise. On the second day alone, I had more sales than on opening day, so yeah, I was kinda over the roof. After the initial opening, the boom died down somewhat, but not by much. What was interesting was player behavior during the sale. The average playtime decreased, the number of reviews increased, and game-related links (like my Discord (which is linked on the Steam page)) didn't increase traffic by much at all. My current theory for this behavior is that the sale customers are more likely to be impulse buyers, which means they may never play it, or play it for two minutes and release it wasn't what they thought it was (I hope not, but it's worth considering). After the sale, my views/purchase numbers went back down to what they were before (if not a little less). I am hoping that some word-of-mouth will happen due to increased players, but who knows...
So yeah, that's my retrospective. For other small-time devs out there, how was your Steam summer sale? Notice anything interesting?
Thanks for reading,
Yitz