Hold your horses. It's just us, your friendly neighborhood data suite. You probably found us by monitoring your connection or through a forum or review. Great, this gives us a chance to explain exactly what we do and don't do.
For many small- and mid-sized developers it's hard to stand out on Steam, no matter how great their game is. To get their game in the spotlight, some decide to advertise it. To do this, it's vital to know what websites, social media or ads work to reach the right players, but Valve/Steam makes this really hard.
This is where we come in! We help developers understand how many new players come from specific sources. Nothing more.
As you may know, there's a lot of new games coming out on Steam recently. In quieter times it was easier for a developer to stand out, because they had to share the spotlight with less competitors. But that has completely changed. Of course developers work hard to create an awesome game, but sometimes even that isn't enough to stand out.
So they turn to (paid) advertising, hoping to get the game the attention it deserves, and to make some money. Makes sense, right? Unfortunately Steam and Steam's developer backend isn't designed for this... at all. They can surely advertise, but because the store page, game sale and download go through Steam it's impossible to know what campaign, tweet or website actually succeeds in finding interested players. This is where we come in.
Steam Data Suite does 'campaign attribution' in the least intrusive way possible. Let me explain how it works in short.
Neither the click or first-run data is shared with anyone. We don't collect anything regarding to your steam account, your computer or your person. Nothing personal is stored, nor is the raw data directly accessible to the developer. We also pinky promise to keep it safe.
Privacy is very important, and we probably hate it just as much as you when companies are being dodgy or unethical about it. We believe that the way we created Steam Data Suite is the most minimalist and privacy honoring way to provide this type of feature to developers. The impact is way less than clicking on a mobile ad, using Google or connecting to a public wi-fi, for example.
If you have any questions about this functionality feel free to get in touch through gamer@steamdatasuite.com.
Cheers,
Oscar
Steam Data Suite.
We're a tiny game company, making a living helping small- and midsize game companies to make better games. Based on data. From our (equally tiny) office near Amsterdam, the Netherlands, we serviced all kinds of game companies over the last few years.
The campaign attribution tool we've talked about on this page is a part of our Steam Data Suite product. Beside this feature, this set of tools also helps developers to make data-driven improvements to their store-page, understand the market, and keep an eye out for competitors.
If your interested in what we do, or you're a game developer, you're welcome to read more about it or get in touch!