I find it very interesting how afraid one can be about getting into a new platform, and trust me I am one of those developers.

I started working on iOS many years ago and when I first started to deal with iTunesConnect (for Apple) and Google Play (For Android). All I remember wanting to do was one thing and that thing was to quit, to quit just because I was so afraid of the unknown, and funny enough I find it so easy now days.

Recently if you have seen my tweets at @dilmerv or not, I've been talking a lot about bringing two of my games into Steam, not only I want to bring the games but I also want to leverage some of Steam's platform features such as Leaderboards and Achievements. Well today, I know I am super scare about it because I have no idea what it would take to get it done, so my process so far has been as follows:

Setting Up a Dev Steam Account

First setup an account at https://partner.steamgames.com and fill out preliminary information such as who you are and additional information about your game studio.

Steam Dev Fees

Paying of fees, at the time of this article the cost was $100.00 per title. I wanted to start small so I just purchase one license but once I get a better idea of what it would take to bring my second time then I will buy another license. Also, according to Steam once you reach $1000.00 is sales the $100.00 are refunded back to the developer so hopefully I will get my money back if sales do well.

Provide Tax Information

Providing tax information either EIN or Social Security Number. Steam is partnered with tax agency company who handles verification of sensitive information and it takes about 2-3 days to get verified, during the verification period you won't be able to proceed until this step is fully completed.

Verification of Tax Information Completion

This is the exciting part in which Steam will let you know that you've been verified and can proceed to add your new title to Steam yeah!

Steam Dev Store Presence

Steam provides amazing tools and documentation to help you through the entire process of adding your game to their platform. One of the many awesome features is that Steam dev portal provides many check lists, each check list is broken down into few sections such as "store presence", "build", and others. For instance, as I work on adding the game description, keywords, languages, and other things I may forget to add a requirement, however by looking at the check lists you can easily tell whether or not you have everything needed to continue.

Also at this stage you will be required to provide screenshots, header images, background images, etc. This step is the foundation for selling your game and you must do the best you can to portrait your game in the best possible way. One feature I really liked that none of the platforms I used previous had was "Reviews", here I can easily add statements from media sites in regards to my games, they also allow you to add a score if any and the URL of the game review.

Build Process

I haven't completed this just yet but so far Steam had me download the Steam SDK. This is a zip file that contains all the tools / scripts needed to package your build in the format Steam expects it. For instance, since Cubiques will be shipped for MAC, Windows x86 and Windows x86_64 I am required to provide a build for each so that process is a bit cumber-stone since I am having to do a lot of manual modification of files and scripts. (I promise to add a Part 2 of this article as I advance through the process).

Well so far I've been having a great experience, yes the build process is not as easy as I thought but Steam also gives you very detailed documentation which includes YouTube videos of each step so even if you find this complicated, I still think the documentation will help you through the whole process.

Thank you for your time and don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter, also be sure to find me in twitter at @dilmerv and stop by and say hi as I love to chat with everyone.