Coming Soon

Twelve links and a Tuesday#

Tuesday is college and the gym at lunch, so the game got James for under an hour that day, late in the morning, and none of it was spent in Unreal. There was a second reason the editor stayed shut. A busy week of agents working in parallel had taken his Claude Code allowance to 99 per cent, and it did not reset until Wednesday morning. An afternoon of Blueprint work runs through tokens at a rate a conversation does not, so the last one per cent went on the other half of making a game, the half that decides whether anybody ever hears about it.

He had a list. Somebody had put together twelve services that promise to get the word out about a game still in development - press release wires, creator outreach, press kit builders, indie showcases - and he pasted the lot to the agent, Claude Code Opus 5.5, and asked which were worth the bother.

The context is the one he keeps coming back to in his own notes. GTA 6 is a few weeks out and the whole of games is looking at it. The day before, he had been reading about Rockstar's big interview for it. Rockstar have a marketing department and a release date. He had a Tuesday morning and a list somebody else had made.

The agent checked every link against the service's own pages. It used plain web fetches rather than driving his browser, because none of the pages needed a login, and it said where a price was hidden behind a sales call and could not be seen. Two of the twelve were wrong before it got to any verdict. One link went to a games studio that makes VR shooters, not a marketing service at all; it had got into the list by mistake and came straight out. Another service had been renamed since the list was written, and the old link still worked.

What was worth the bother#

The verdicts came back as a table and most of it was no.

The two general press release wires were out. They are business wires, not games ones, and what their free tiers buy is a page that search engines index and journalists do not read. One of the two press kit builders was out too: free, but self-hosted over FTP, still marked beta and dated. Of the two indie hubs, one had not posted anything since August 2025.

What survived was short. A UK games news feed that working games journalists actually read, free with registration. A hosted press kit builder, free for up to three kits, that fills itself in from a Steam page. A creator and key service with tens of thousands of streamers on it and tools aimed at games still in development. itch.io, for devlogs and later a demo, because it has an audience that follows games before they are finished. And a business-side community, with a Discord and a list of publishers, that the agent said plainly would not bring a single player.

Then the line that reorganised the whole list. Both creator services work by handing out keys, and the press kit builder imports from a store page. Until there is a Steam page or a playable build, there is nothing to hand out and nothing to import. Every useful thing on the list sat behind one thing that was not on it.

So the recommended order started with Steam.

A hundred dollars and a fortnight#

He asked whether the agent could drive the Steam setup itself. The answer was partly. A store page is a website, so it could fill one in through Chrome, but the first three steps were his and only his: signing in to Steamworks and accepting the distribution agreement, entering his bank, tax and identity details, and paying the hundred-dollar fee for the app. The agent does not type payment or identity details into anything, and it said so before he had to ask.

Thirty-odd minutes later he was back. Signed in, agreement accepted, bank and tax and ID entered, fee paid. Over to you.

The agent looked at the onboarding page and reported that there was nothing to fill in. Steam had sent his details to a third-party service for checking, and the page said that takes 10 to 15 business days and that Valve's support cannot hurry it. A Steam store page hangs off an app ID, and the app ID only appears after the check passes and he clicks the button to finish creating the account. Until then there is no page. There is not even an empty one.

The hundred dollars bought a place in a queue. Two to three weeks, counted in working days.

Writing the page with nowhere to put it#

The agent offered to write everything the page would need, so that the day the check clears it is one sitting rather than three. He said yes, and it went into a draft in the project folder.

The short description came to 284 characters, under Steam's 300, and it opens with the line the game is built around: you are out on licence, in an empty house, in a Midlands town, and you choose between a proper job on the bins and going back to what you know. The long description runs the straight path first, the cellar grow second and the town after - the terraces, the ring road, the river, the weather, the phone. Twenty tags, strongest first. A list of every capsule and screenshot size Steam asks for, with a shot already in the archive suggested for each. A checklist for the day the email comes.

It came back with three things for James to check, and the first one matters to anyone doing this. His own website has a ruling from September that lets it describe the finished game, including parts that are not built yet. Steam does not work like that. Valve's review compares the store page with the build it is shown, and a page that promises what the build does not have gets sent back. So the planned crime paths are in the future tense on the Steam draft, even though the website talks about them as if they were there. The second was a list of features he needs to confirm will be playable in the build Valve sees. The third was the minimum system requirements, which were a guess: the only PC the game has been measured on is his.

Sixteen, probably#

Then he raised something the agent had not. It was possible, he said, that nothing in the game yet would actually get an 18.

That cuts against one of the things this devlog says the game is for. The stated target has been an 18+ rating for adult subject matter and tone rather than for blood - mature without being gory. The draft had answered yes to Steam's mature content question and tied it to the 18+ demo sign-up on the website.

The agent's answer separated two things that are easy to run together. Steam's content survey is a list of yes or no questions. A yes to general mature content puts a short note on the store page and maybe a click-through age check. It is not a rating. The age rating is a different form, the IARC questionnaire, which works out the PEGI rating for Europe and the ESRB rating for North America from the developer's answers. Nobody picks the number.

He guessed the cannabis grow might make it a 16. The agent agreed that it probably would. Its reasoning, which is a prediction and not a result: PEGI 16 is the usual outcome for a game where you handle illegal drugs and there is no combat, ESRB would most likely say M. It could go to 18 if the drugs were glamorised - shown as cool and rewarding with no downside - and the grow here comes with a weekly electricity bill, mould, and the police station ninety-odd metres up the road. It could drop to a 12 if the grow were not in the build at all, at which point the pub and some mild swearing would be roughly all there was to rate.

The survey answers have to match the game as it is, so the draft now carries both versions: yes to mature content if the grow is in the build Valve reviews, no if it is not, updated the day it goes in. The website's 18+ sign-up is a separate decision and stays where it is.

An 18 was always going to be earned by tone, not gore. It may turn out the tone earns a 16. The questionnaire is free once the app exists, and that will settle it.

The fault

Cannot create a Steam Coming Soon page after paying the Steam Direct fee: no app ID#

Signed in to Steamworks, distribution agreement accepted, bank, tax and identity details entered, $100 app fee paid. No store page could be started.

Cause: the tax and identity details go to a third-party verification service, which the onboarding page says takes 10-15 business days. Contacting Valve support does not speed it up. The app ID, which the store page, builds and wishlists all hang off, is only issued after verification passes and you click Complete Account Creation. Until then there is no page, empty or otherwise.

The fix

Do the onboarding first and write the whole store page offline while it runs#

• Start Steamworks onboarding before anything that depends on a store page - press kit imports, key services, wishlist campaigns.
• While verification runs, draft every field in a text file: short description (300 characters maximum), long description, tags, genres, languages, system requirements, content survey answers, and a list of every capsule and screenshot size with a candidate image for each.
• The guard: Steam's review compares the page with the build it is shown. Anything not playable in that build goes in the future tense, even if your own website describes it as done. Minimum system requirements need a run on hardware weaker than the development PC.

The fault

"General mature content" on Steam does not mean the game is rated 18+#

Answering yes to Steam's mature content survey was being treated as the same decision as the game's age rating.

Cause: they are two different forms. The content survey adds a note to the store page and possibly a click-through age check. The age rating comes from the IARC questionnaire, which assigns PEGI, ESRB and others from your answers.

The fix

Answer the survey to match the current build, and let IARC set the rating#

• Answer the content survey for the game as it stands in the build Valve will see, and update it when that changes.
• Expect a rating from the content, not the intention: handling illegal drugs with no combat typically lands around PEGI 16 / ESRB M; glamorising them can push it to 18. That expectation is a prediction until the questionnaire is filled in.

The kit#

Service type	Verdict for a solo game in development, as checked on the services' own pages
UK games news feed, free with registration	Worth it: journalists read it
General business press release wires	Skip: indexed pages, not readers
Creator and key distribution services	Worth it once there is a store page or a build to hand out
Hosted press kit builder, imports from Steam	Worth it, after the Steam page
Self-hosted press kit template	Skip: FTP hosting, beta, dated
itch.io	Worth it for devlogs and an early demo
Indie business community	Useful for publishers and advice, not for players
Claude Code, plain web fetches	Checked all twelve links without needing a login

Plain English#

Term	What it means
Steamworks	Valve's site for developers who want to sell on Steam; it is where the paperwork, the fee and the store page all live.
app ID	The number Steam gives a game once the developer's account is fully set up; the store page, the builds and the wishlists all hang off it, so nothing can be filled in before it exists.
Coming Soon page	A Steam store page for a game that is not out yet; players can find it and wishlist the game, and it has to be live for a while before the game can be released.
wishlist	A player's list of Steam games they want; adding a game tells Steam people are interested and gets them a message when it comes out.
content survey	Steam's set of yes or no questions about what is in a game; the answers put a short note on the store page and can add an age check, but they are not an age rating.
IARC	A free online questionnaire that works out a game's age ratings for several countries at once from the developer's answers, instead of each rating board looking at it by hand.
PEGI	The age rating used across most of Europe, including the UK; the number is the youngest age the game is judged suitable for.
ESRB	The age rating used in North America; M means Mature, suitable from 17.
press kit	A web page of facts, screenshots, logos and a trailer that a journalist or streamer can take from without having to ask the developer for anything.
press release wire	A service that sends a developer's announcement out to a list of journalists and news sites; a general business one is mostly read by search engines rather than games writers.
key distribution	A service that hands out free copies of a game to streamers and journalists who ask for them; it needs a game on a store to hand out.

Things we still need to fix tomorrow:#

• The token allowance resets on Wednesday morning, and the build work picks up again from there.
• When the verification email arrives: create the app, then fill in the store page from the draft in one sitting.
• Confirm which features will be playable in the build Valve sees, and set the tenses on the page to match.
• A minimum-spec run on a PC weaker than the development machine.
• The capsule art at every size Steam asks for.
• After the store page: the press kit, then a development announcement on the games news feed, then devlogs on itch.io.
• The IARC questionnaire, once the app exists, to settle whether it is a 16 or an 18.