The Steam Summer Sale is still on until the 5th of July, the worst thing about Steam sales, for me, is that the New Releases page goes completely missing, so if any game is released during the sale absolutely no one will know about it. As such i assume publishers and developers wait until the sales are over before releasing their games, and i've noticed in the past that the games in the New Releases window stay exactly the same before and after a sale event, so it's obviously known that you shouldn't release a game during this time.
So uh, they released Youropa during the summer sale... in 4 days it has 8 reviews which isn't enough to give it an overall review score, and there are pretty much zero topics in the games discussions page, pretty much no one knows this game exists at the moment.
When the summer sale ends one of three things will happen:

• It will still be in the New Releases window so people will see it and check it out, but will have just spent money on games in the sale and will be too busy to play or even buy it.
• It will still be in the New Releases window, but no one will notice because they're too busy playing games they wanted in the sale.
• If other games were also released, it will have been nudged off the front page of Steam and no one will know it exists.

So, is this literally the worst time to release your PC only indie game on Steam?
Should this be allowed to happen? Should Valve delay releases until sales have ended?

Valve has so many events like this throughout the year that this delaying idea isn't viable. That would make a few dozen days of the year a no-go for releases, meaning that more games are packed into the remaining days, exacerbating the problem that indie devs already have year-round.

I don't have any idea how to fix this, mind you. Steam is such a mess, where do you even begin?

@relkin: One way would be to not get rid of/hide the new releases section during a sale.
I check new releases daily so i'm aware of everything that comes out on Steam, except during a sale, i feel totally disconnected until it comes back. You can still navigate to the new releases page but it's a small text box leading to a multi step process and is kind of broken at the moment, Youropa doesn't even show on it, but no one is taking the time to navigate to that hidden page at the moment so it doesn't matter much.

A new indi that's genuinely good will slow-burn its way up into recognition eventually, regardless of what steam is doing at any given time.

Crash Bandicoot has seemed to knock all competition to the side even during the sale because Activision has significant advertising power that is independent of Steam, so delaying releases is not something that's viable. I agree though they should retain the 'new releases' tab.

Another game in the same boat is 'Concluse' which is apparently a lost PS1 horror game. I found it browsing my discovery queue, as during the sale you get a trading card for doing that. I've been having quite a bit of fun with it. So I think that's part of the solution, providing users incentive to browse their discovery queue during sale periods.

Youropa looks good and I hope it finds success.

Maybe the increase in traffic on steam + the incentive to go through the steamqueue 3x per day for the cards gives them more exposure than the 'new release' tab would have ever given them. Especially if the game is small enough to have no chance of appearing on the frontpage of Steam outside of a sale. I know i stumbled on a bunch of newly released games with <5 reviews in the steamqueue during this sale, which is not something that happens outside of the steam sale.

I don't think there is ever a good time to release on steam these days quite frankly, at least if you're relying almost solely on the exposure being on the 'new releases' page will get you.

I don't think valve should be expected to find a good release date for a game. That's 100% not their responsibility.

Kinda the developers there fault. Steam isn't pushing people to release at a set date you can always pull it back. More toxic is how this game is gonna get buried at the other BS steam releases, i always tend to check new releases but find myself buried in shit, then getting at least good recommendations.

i'm getting the sense that if you're a content creator (games, music, tv, whatever)- unless you're being commissioned to make a thing or can afford a marketing push- it's kinda seems like it's perpetually a bad day to be releasing on a digital marketplace.

now the sale doesn't help, but i'm not sure a spot on the front page would save a small-budget game from the steam firehose of new releases.

Honestly there is no good time to release on steam anymore, the best that the devs can do is put it in there, market it as best as they can and hope for the best, after that is all about getting lucky that some youtuber/streamer with 200k+ subs/viewers will play your game or something.

I have to assume developers/publishers do the research before hand and are provided with a calendar of events on Steam by Valve, so i agree with you there, but at the same time when applying for a release date (i have no idea how it works) i'd hope that Valve would at least send a message back making them aware of the sale, and potentially suggesting that it would be a bad idea... less sales of any game doesn't benefit Valve.

Got a response from the developer.

"Yes, it's a bad idea to launch during summer sale - but then it's always a bad time to launch a game on Steam (or any other platform for that matter). We basically had to push the launch to mid October if we didn't launch now, and that was not an option for us.
It's actually not too bad, and we're confident it will pick up the pace - we have some great updates coming."

Nice to see they're optimistic but it's still an unfortunate decision i feel, the game has enough reviews for a "Positive" score now, which would help a lot if it were on the front page in any capacity.

2018 is a pretty bad time to be releasing an indie game on Steam in general. There is so much stuff coming out, great games get crowded out whenever they are released. These days to have a successful Steam game you either need to get very very lucky, or have fantastic marketing outside of Steam. Simply sticking it up on the Steam store isn't guaranteed to get your game noticed anymore, whether you do that during a Steam sale or not.

In fact, launching during the sale might lead to more exposure - not a lot of indie games are being released on PC because they're trying to avoid clashing with the sale, therefore it is probably getting more coverage in the media because there isn't much else for it to clash with. For example, if there were a ton of other games coming out right now, might it have been overlooked on Giant Bomb and not been given a Quick Look? Possibly.

@mattyftm: It depends, i'm not sure how Dan learned of Youropa but by most accounts this game kind of came out of nowhere, the GB crew have mentioned before that part of planning the weeks coverage includes checking new releases on Steam, if a well made indie game comes out during the sale it wont rise into the "popular new releases" section due to no one knowing it even came out, as it stands it's currently lost in the sea of rubbish and Dan probably wouldn't have noticed it, and i imagine other game sites wouldn't have either.

I did a quick check, IGN and Gamespot have zero coverage on it, so besides a lucky interview with Gamereactor last month at a convention and Dan's random Quick Look, it has no media coverage.

Valve actually informs developers of sales well ahead of time, so developers/publishers can arrange their release to either avoid or monopolise on it.

There's really no such thing as a good time, considering how many Indie games get released on Steam, there's 'better' and there's 'worse'. It's a shot in the dark.

An Indie game's success depends on how many youtubers and Twitch-streamers start playing it, that's the driving factor. If the game get's no attention it's not going to sell well regardless of how good or fun it is.