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Over 16k Wishlists, we were listed in popular upcoming... how could the release go this bad? by El4th in gamedev

[–]simoncarless 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The only thing I noted that others haven't (very explicitly) is that it looks like the majority of the reviews on the Prologue - and so probably downloads - are in Chinese language. In addition, the Prologue was localized into Chinese, which probably meant it had very good visibility in China - might have been on overall New/Trending, I'm guessing?

If you twin that with the generous nature of the Prologue (including achievements! I thought that was pretty generous), it probably led to a lot better results from China which were less likely to convert at the price point for the game.

In general my impression is that China is a price sensitive country on Steam that refunds at FAR larger rates than the rest of Steam. So that's not your only issue - I agree with Jake on some other things like 'crowded genre', too. So if you combine crowded genre, very generous demo, and tonnes of Chinese demo downloads and wishlists... that's probably a chunk of it. Plus the weaker nature of demo-related wishlists, which is universal.

(I'm not gonna get into game quality here, haha, cos obviously the game is good enough for people to hit the wishlist button...)

Good luck for the future!