Steam Price Wins šø, Demo to 50k Sales š, Unity Shader Primer ā”
Market Watch šøš®
Price Wins on Steam: 55% of Top Games Cost $20 or Less
Ampere Analysis finds PC players favor value: 55% of Steamās top 150 by MAU average $20 or less, while only 3% exceed $50. Hits like R.E.P.O., Peak, and Lethal Company marry huge MAUs with low prices, as AA titles also hold strong. Per-player spend dropped 12% YoY, but a growing audience and more buyers offset the slide. For devs, smart pricing and strong retention beat premium sticker prices.
How Parcel Simulator Turned a Demo Into 50k Sales in Two Weeks
Parcel Simulatorās one-dev success shows how a polished demo, smart festival timing, and relentless creator outreach can supercharge a launch. Post-demo wishlists jumped from ~11/day to ~362/day, hitting ~42k by release and 50k sales in two weeks. Real Civil Engineer and Letās Game It Out coverage amplified momentum, while launching during the Summer Sale kept the game pinned on front-page widgets. The playbook: make a great demo, market for months, and skip EA to maximize New & Trending.
Dev Tech: UE5 + Unity š ļøāØ
Seamless UE5 Teleportation: Damp Squidās Real-Time Crossfade Trick
Developer Damp Squid shows a slick UE5 teleport effect that crossfades environments in real time. A camera-aligned SceneCapture, offset to the destination, renders to a widget that fades based on distance and disappears post-teleport. Also highlighted: a Fluorescent Light blueprint from Damp Squid, a fluid dissolve VFX by HeyYo, and Epicās August free tutorials and content.
Stop Fearing Shaders: A Clear, Visual Guide for Unity Devs
If shaders feel like magic, this tutorial breaks the spell. Sasquatch B Studios explains shaders as simple math over pixels and vertices, starting with UVs, then moving into color-as-numbers, masks, and clamping. Youāll see how tiny equations create gradients, cutouts, and effectsāthen take a first step into vertex manipulation. Short, visual, and beginner-friendly, itās the shader primer many Unity devs have been missing.
Community & Live Ops š£ļøāļø
How Spellbreak Built a Discord to Rival Fortniteāand Survived
Proletariat founder Seth Sivak reveals how Spellbreakās community strategy built one of gamingās largest Discordsārivaling Fortniteāwhile the studio survived years with under two months of runway. He shares scrappy growth tactics, key partnerships with Amazon/Twitch and Epic, and why ājust gameplayā trailers worked. Sivak candidly breaks down missteps with free-to-play, cross-platform pain during COVID, missed fundraising windows, and the decision to sell to Blizzard. Actionable advice: invest in the team, experiment relentlessly, and work extraordinarily hard to cut through the noise.
Inside VALORANTās UE5 Upgrade: More FPS, Faster Patches
Riot Games has migrated VALORANT from UE4 to UE5 in patch 11.02, and Marcus Reid explains the teamās reasoning and rollout. The upgrade modernizes internal tools while targeting higher and more consistent frame rates across a wide range of hardware. Players should also see faster, lighter patch downloads that reduce downtime. The move sets VALORANT up for future features and long-term performance gains.