We did it! After only 19 days on Greenlight, 39 Days to Mars was accepted into the latest batch of titles to be published on Steam.Thank you for voting, and for all the wonderful comments and support!

So can I buy it now?
Not yet, sorry. 39 Days to Mars is still being developed, and I'm aiming for a release date in 2015. When it is finished, however, you'll be able to buy it on Steam.

In this update I have a look at some of the statistics, talk about the changing ecosystem around Indie Games and Steam, and cover the next steps in the development of 39 Days to Mars.

Steam Greenlight Statistics

Valve provides a number of graphs and statistics to developers who have listed their game on Greenlight. I thought it would be fun to see what this said about 39 Days to Mars.

The game was greenlit exceptionally fast - only 19 days from when it was first listed. The average number of views and total votes in the top 50 are around 24,800 and 17,900 respectively. For 39 Days to Mars, these numbers are 27,123 and 12,208. This means that a higher percentage of people voted, and those who did often voted "yes".

In fact, during the first few days the percentage of "yes" votes was exceptionally high. The average for the top 100 games was 45%, yet the average for 39 Days to Mars was 75%. This means that three-quarters of the people who watched the trailer indicated that they'd buy the game if it came out on Steam.


Does this mean 39 Days to Mars is a great game? I hope so. But people who voted had no way to play the game, and so this feedback was almost entirely based on the 57 seconds of teaser trailer. I believe that this speaks volumes for the atmosphere of the game, including the wonderful music and voice acting. All I have to do now is ensure that the gameplay lives up to expectations!

As an aside, by the time 39 Days to Mars was greenlit, the percentage of "yes" votes had dropped to 54%. I suspect this reflects the fact that the initial surge of "yes" votes came from people who already knew and liked 39 Days to Mars. Voters who discovered the game later had a more unbiased response.

What does Steam mean to Indie Developers?

There is a lot of talk about greenlight being phased out or shut down. Valve has certainly indicated that the service is changing, and with 300 games released in the last two months, this has led to people worrying that too many games will flood the platform. It's a concern, but will it have a negative impact on 39 Days to Mars?

I don't think it will.

Getting onto a highly curated platform - such as Steam in 2012 - exposed a game to millions of gamers with less competition from other products. The few indie games on the platform sold in huge numbers. However, 39 Days to Mars is a niche game with a relatively small following, and if it had been on Steam Greenlight in the first year it wouldn't have made the release list.

Steam is the platform of choice for a huge number of gamers, and as a developer it's a convenient way to distribute my game. Regardless of the loss of publicity that may or may not arise from a changing Steam ecosystem, any new opportunity for people to discover and play my game is one that I'm excited about.

Watch this Space

With so much of my focus being on the Greenlight campaign, I haven't been doing as much work on the programming side of things. For the next update, I'll be back to technical details and development updates.

Remember you can subscribe to the development blog or follow the day-to-day development on Twitter. And as always, if you've got questions or comments just leave them below.