"Don’t tell Valve I told you this": Industry expert warns devs that Steam "is an engine that turns magic into money," and you can't break into "Real Steam" until you have the magic

"I have no idea what art is. I have no concept of art. There's no stat," game marketing strategist Chris Zukowski said at GDC 2025. But, while Zukowski may not know his Monet from his thermostat, Zukowski can nonetheless discern that some games feel special, and he thinks that might help them get into what he calls "Real Steam."

Real Steam is like the heavy iron gates of heaven, or, as Zukowski said at GDC, "like finding true love."

Speaking more literally, Zukowski explains that Real Steam "basically is" the e-shop's promotional Daily Deals, which he suggests can bring a notable boost to a game's sales numbers.

"Real Steam is the goal," Zukowski said at GDC like it's a mantra. "Don't tell Valve I told you this."

But, if a developer wants their game to beat the lunch rush to paradise and successfully claw their way into Real Steam, they need to make sure their game has… an ineffable quality Zukowski can't neatly summarize.

"Some games have the magic, and I don't know what it is," he said. "But we can see [...] the results of the magic," like how a game might rack up wishlists, purchases, or undesirable ignores, depending on Steam users' reactions to something like its presence on the site's discover queue.

Developers who do make it onto Steam's discovery queue, Zukowski continues, should pay attention to their traffic, which "tells you whether you've had the magic." This is important, Zukowski thinks, because "[Steam] is an engine that turns magic into money." And from money comes happiness, and from happiness comes love, and from love comes the saintly halls of none other than Real Steam.

Steam expert says devs need 250 reviews "in the first month" after launch or else it's probably "not gonna happen," but admits one ingenious factory game defied the odds: "They somehow pulled it off."