Why Pursue the Steam Awards and how it starts with Community

Conceived in 2016, the Steam Awards have remained a noteworthy event on any PC gamer’s year-end calendar. Often seen as just a way to grow your Steam trading card collection or earn more badges, it’s actually a big opportunity for indie developers. Winning or even becoming a finalist can boost recognition and amplify any marketing efforts you have in place.

One of our long-term clients, Ready or Not, recently became a finalist for the “Better with Friends” award. In this article, we’ll share how they achieved it and the value behind the Steam Awards.

Isn’t it just a popularity contest?

Like other marketing efforts, the Steam Awards won’t magically flood your game with wishlist additions. However, it can create a powerful compounding effect. The Steam Awards put your studio in front of a bigger audience, alongside prominent developers and publishers.

Winning or being a finalist expands your Steam presence. It also links directly to your store page for curious visitors. This exposure introduces your game to other engaged community members, and that’s where the real value lies. If your social, marketing, and community efforts are already strong, the Steam Awards can enhance your digital footprint even more.

At the very least, it positions your game with further credibility. Being featured on the Steam Awards page alongside industry names is a strong touchpoint for potential players.

The Importance of Community

Now that you’ve decided to pursue the Steam Awards, it’s time to focus on community. This is where you should direct some of your resources. Whether you’re aiming to be nominated or even win, community is key.

For Ready or Not, we helped build and drive their community engagement across multiple platforms like Discord, Twitter, Facebook, and Steam. Their community is incredibly active and engaged. One major success story is how their Discord almost doubled in size from March 2022. By working closely with the developers, we helped reach roughly 160k unique Steam newsletter readers.

An engaged community is crucial to pushing your game in the Steam Awards. We’ll explore how we helped build this in a future blog, but for now, we’ll focus on how you can leverage your community to reach your goals.

How you can also Mobilize your Community

Some games win through popularity alone. For others, mobilizing the community is the way to go. You need to rally your community around the awards you have the best shot at winning. Announce this on your social platforms and Discord server.

In the case of Ready or Not, we worked alongside the game’s developers to stay in tune with the community’s sentiment. We helped communicate key updates like requested features, bug fixes, and other feedback that kept the player base engaged. This helped prime the community, building momentum around the “Better with Friends” award as well as their phenomenal “Adam Update.” Together, these efforts added a noticeable boost to community excitement.

It’s essential to remain active in community discussions. On platforms like Discord, our community manager and volunteers were always engaged. Whenever the Steam Awards came up, we made sure to keep the conversation going with a gentle nudge.

Most engaged fans want to see their favorite games succeed. They’ll happily join in to help with community efforts. Just make sure to understand your audience and know when to ask for help. Winning or becoming a finalist gives you a powerful marketing tool. This can be a focal point for future marketing efforts. However, it’s your community that will help you achieve it.

Clem van der Merwe Content Manager | Infernozilla