Sep 18, 2020

Introducing a New Tier of Community Awards

Steam News - Casscolors

Announcing a higher tier of Community Awards, new Points Shop features, and items available now on Steam.

New Community Awards help you show your appreciation with an even bigger tip to the recipient.

Use the Steam Points you earn by shopping on Steam to give the latest Awards:

Treasure (recipient gets 200 points)
Mad Scientist (for user-generated content) (recipient gets 100 points)
Mind Blown (recipient gets 400 points)
Golden Unicorn (recipient gets 800 points)

The recipient can in turn spend those points in the Steam Points Shop, or award a post to brighten someone else's day.

New Features

The Points Shop is enhanced with new features, including:

A new, tabbed selection window for sending chat emoticons, animated stickers, and chat effects
Points Shop item previews on participating games' store pages
A weekly email roll-up to Community Award recipients
A Steam profile avatar cropping tool, right in the avatar uploader

BTW: The Points Shop also represents a new way to get Trading Card items such as emoticons and profile backgrounds – you can now exchange points for them.

New Game-Themed Items

Also debuting in the Points Shop:

What's Hot in the Points Shop

The Debut Collection Golden Profile is the most popular item in the shop as of this writing. Grab it before September 22nd at 10am Pacific, when it will vanish from the shop to make way for a new golden profile headed to Steam.

Animated avatar frames and the Black Hole animated profile background are also favorites among the Community, while our most popular sticker is this little clucker from CS:GO!

Since the Steam Points Shop opened almost three months ago, more than 10 million people have exchanged Steam Points for game-themed items to animate their Steam presence and chat sessions.

Check out the thousands of Points Shop items available now, such as animated stickers and chat effects, profile backgrounds, mini-profile backgrounds, avatars, avatar frames, and Community Awards.

Aug 25, 2020

Top Releases of July 2020

Steam News - AndrewL

July was a busy month for games launching on Steam, so we're presenting another exciting list of Top Releases. With this post, we'll be looking back at the top 20 products released in July, measured by revenue generated during the first two weeks following their release. As always, we will also be looking at the top 5 free-to-play releases, measured by their total unique player counts.

Controller or keyboard & mouse?

July's list features an impressive amount of games with added controller support. Of the Top Releases in July, an overwhelming 19 of them give players an alternative option to the traditional keyboard & mouse experience. Whether you're strapped in with an advanced force-feedback racing wheel for F1® 2020, or just plugging in your favorite console controller to relax on the couch with Destroy All Humans!, gone are the days of downloading added software or spending time configuring and calibrating your device. For players, it's pretty much as easy as making sure your favorite controller is charged up. For developers, it's become more and more important to consider Steam Input support as an avenue to reach a more diverse set of players. If you're the type of player who wants to delve into more games that support controllers, check out our Controller Friendly homepage for ideas.

Worldwide catalog

We've become accustomed to seeing a diverse representation of games and developers on each month's list, so it was no surprise to see that yet again in July, with games coming from nine different countries (check the list below for full country & developer details). No matter where players are plugged in, they are able to choose from games made all over the world. Developers have paid attention to that too, as most games now support a wide variety of localization options. July's Top Releases offered a huge amount of support in that regard, with games this month supporting an average of seven languages each. DEATH STRANDING takes the cake, with a whopping 20 supported languages, and 12 with full audio support.

New developer highlights

Finally, we'd like to highlight the 11 development teams who made this month's list with their first ever Steam release. Some of these developers have been making games for years on other teams or platforms, while some are making their first-ever game. Congrats and welcome to the following developers - we hope to see more amazing work from you in the future: Catfood Studio, Cradle Games, Easy Day Studios Pty Ltd, Final Strike Games, KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS, Phobia Game Studio, Robot Squid, Spilt Milk Studios,
Thunkspace LLC, Veewo Games and 甘肃嘉元数字科技有限公司.

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July's Top Releases

Here's the list of July's top releases ordered by release date (we've organized this list on a sale page too):

F1® 2020
Codemasters (UK)

SWORD ART ONLINE Alicization Lycoris
AQURIA Co., Ltd. (Japan)

The Wind Road 紫塞秋风
甘肃嘉元数字科技有限公司 (China)

Rocket Arena
Final Strike Games (USA)

DEATH STRANDING
KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Japan)

雀魂麻將(MahjongSoul)
Catfood Studio (China)

Neon Abyss
Veewo Games (China)

STORY OF SEASONS: Friends of Mineral Town
Marvelous Inc. (Japan)

FAIRY TAIL
KOEI TECMO GAMES CO., LTD. (Japan)

SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE
SUPERHOT Team (Poland)

STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™
BioWare (Canada)

5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
Conor Petersen & Thunkspace, LLC (USA)

CARRION
Phobia Game Studio (Poland)

Othercide
Lightbulb Crew (France)

Grounded
Obsidian Entertainment (USA)

Destroy All Humans!
Black Forest Games (Germany) & Pandemic Studios (USA)

Skater XL - The Ultimate Skateboarding Game
Easy Day Studios Pty Ltd (USA)

Blightbound
Ronimo Games (Netherlands)

Hellpoint
Cradle Games (Canada)

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July's Top Free Releases

Here are the Top 5 free-to-play titles from July, ranked by total unique player count:

STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™
BioWare (Canada)

Soda Dungeon 2
AN Productions & Poxpower (USA)

雀魂麻將(MahjongSoul)
Catfood Studio (China)

King of Crabs
Robot Squid & Spilt Milk Studios (UK)

Devolverland Expo
Flying Wild Hog (Poland)

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If you're curious about previous months, here are more Top Release lists:

Jul 23, 2020

Top Releases of June 2020

Steam News - AndrewL

With the action-packed Steam Summer Sale drawing to a close, it’s a good time to take a look back at some of the awesome games released in June. The month was filled with exciting releases, but these are the Top 20 games that found the most success with players in June. As a reminder, we measure monthly Top Releases by looking at revenue generated during the first two weeks after launch. We're also showcasing the Top 5 free-to-play games released in June, measured by total unique players.

When the Top Release lists come together each month, we’re always curious to see what themes end up being shared among the top games. One theme that seems to appear nearly every month is the consistently high volume of Top Releases that utilize Steam’s Early Access (EA) model of development. June featured an EA trend of its own, but in quite a different way than in previous months.

Electronic Arts (EA) stormed the charts this month, racking up eight of the Top 20 New Releases for June (Battlefield™ V, Command & Conquer™ Remastered Collection, Crysis® 3, Dragon Age™ Inquisition, Need for Speed™ Heat, The Sims™ 4, STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II, and Titanfall® 2). EA’s developer list for these titles reads like of a who’s who of game studios, with DICE, Maxis, BioWare, Crytek and Respawn all making appearances on June’s Top 20. No one can be sure what games will end up on future lists, but with EA already announcing several upcoming titles, we wouldn’t be surprised to see them here again.

Along with EA’s huge showing in June, developer Quantic Dream also claimed two spots this month with their story-driven hits, Detroit: Become Human and Beyond: Two Souls. June also saw the Steam debuts of two incredibly popular franchises as fans all over the world rejoiced in the arrival of both SpongeBob SquarePants & Megami Tensei. Traditionally, you’d see a batch of big name releases like this during a holiday season. But the old notion of seasonality is becoming more and more out of date. No matter the weather outside or the day of the week - it’s always a good time to find your favorite Top Release on Steam.

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June's Top Releases

Here's the list of June's top releases ordered by release date (we've organized this list on a sale page too):

Sea of Thieves
Microsoft Game Studios (USA)

Crysis® 3
Crytek (Germany)

Dragon Age™ Inquisition
BioWare (Canada)

Need for Speed™ Heat
Ghost Games (Sweden)

Command & Conquer™ Remastered Collection
Petroglyph & Lemon Sky Studios (USA & Malaysia)

Satisfactory
Coffee Stain Studios (Sweden)

Battlefield™ V
DICE (Sweden)

Journey
thatgamecompany (USA)

STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II
DICE (Sweden)

Persona 4 Golden
ATLUS (Japan)

Torchlight III
Echtra Inc. (USA)

Griftlands
Klei Entertainment (Canada)

Desperados III
Mimimi Games (Germany)

Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Blackbird Interactive (Canada)

Beyond: Two Souls
Quantic Dream (France)

Detroit: Become Human
Quantic Dream (France)

Outer Wilds
Mobius Digital (USA)

The Sims™ 4
Maxis (USA)

Titanfall® 2
Respawn Entertainment (USA)

SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated
Purple Lamp Studios (Austria)

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June's Top Free Releases

Here are the Top 5 free-to-play titles from June, organized by total unique player count:

Unfortunate Spaceman
Geoff 'Zag' Keene (New Zealand)

Cyber Hunter
NetEase Games (China)

Crafting Idle Clicker
Bling Bling Games GmbH (Germany)

Bomb Bots Arena
Tiny Roar (Netherlands)

ドラゴンクエストライバルズ
Square Enix (Japan)

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If you're curious about previous months, here are more Top Release lists:

Jul 13, 2020

Steam Labs Celebrates One Year of Experimentation

Steam News - christen

This July marks the one year anniversary of Steam Labs, which launched with three experiments and big ambitions to improve Steam through public experimentation and iteration. Today we’re celebrating with the official release of Community Recommendations, introduced to Steam via Labs.

Steam Labs is a space to explore the potential for new and improved versions of Steam through inquiry, exploration, and conversation with you. The most pivotal part of our design process is the moment where you come in, and with Labs we’re able to include you much earlier. To assess what works and what doesn’t, we’ve been listening to your feedback, gathering evidence to learn how people use our experiments, and conducting A/B tests to measure relative success among potential designs.

Below is some background on what we have learned in the Labs during the past year, and how it led us to ship four experiments, shelve two, and continue to design and refine others on the way. Each has reinforced the value we derive from a participatory design process. So thanks, and cheers, to another great year of experimentation together!

Shipped Experiments

With your help, the following experiments graduated from the Labs to Steam, where they’re helping people discover and find a wider range of games.

Community Recommendations

Today’s launch out of Steam Labs, Community Recommendations showcases your reviews by featuring them right on our home page for everyone to see. The result brings community energy to the store, enabling users to keep abreast of the titles players are currently enjoying, and why. This new feature also allows us to get out of the way as platform holders, connecting and empowering players so they can recommend games to one another directly.

Interactive Recommendations

The Interactive Recommender began as an experiment to determine whether machine learning could be used to generate compelling personalized recommendations for players. The result is a system that trains itself to recognize gameplay patterns among the millions of players on Steam.

During experimentation, we learned that players wanted to be able to exclude games that they considered outliers or mistakes in their play history, so we added this. Additional feedback led us to include the ability to eliminate a played game from influencing recommendation results, and to ignore recommendations that you already own on another platform. We also added the ability to save your preferences and view your recommendations directly on the home page of the Steam Store.

Play Next Suggestions

After gaining confidence in machine learning through Labs experimentation, we decided to build Play Next, which leverages the same tech as the Interactive Recommender to suggest games you already own but have yet to play. After testing this version of the recommender with players in Labs, the feature moved to its current home directly in the Steam Library. There, users can add a Play Next shelf to their collection and use it to view Steam’s suggestions from their own library. These suggestions are based upon their gameplay history as it compares to millions of other players.

Powerful Search Tools

Steam Labs became the perfect place to try out some often-suggested (and much-needed) upgrades to Steam search, without altering the store during this exploratory process. A number of new tools requested by players were added, such as ways to filter results by price, view only items that are on sale, and exclude items already owned, wished-for, or ignored.

During experimentation, we tried replacing the typical paging mechanism with a format that continuously loads results as you scroll, but we learned that many players preferred the old way, and so that was turned into an option. We also learned players wanted a way to exclude results associated with tags, so variations were built and tested to make that happen. Using Search, it’s now possible to bookmark powerful, specific searches like this one, which offers direct access to the community’s top-rated non-violent side-scrolling platformers with support Remote Play Together with up to four friends.

Shelved Experiments

Steam Labs is a great place to quickly try new ideas, providing us with insight about player preferences and usage. Inevitably, not every experiment we choose to pursue will resonate with you, and so today we've shelved a couple of them to make way for new experimentation.

The Automated Show

The Automated Show was an ambitious project, with the goal of creating an entertaining production about games, built in a fully automated fashion. Formats ranged from 2 to 30 minutes and experimented with features such as typographic and motion design effects, announcer voice-overs, theme-driven automated curation, and simultaneous streams to deliver maximum information in minimal time.

User reaction quickly revealed that the longer format just wasn’t working, as viewers typically bailed within the first few minutes of those shows. We also found that each time we wanted to feature a specific selection of games, such as in the Steam Awards, we ultimately chose to hand craft it, rather than automate its creation, to achieve our communication goals.

While we remain optimistic that an automated show could one day make for a compelling way to learn about games, today is not that day. And so with film editing job security intact for the near term, we say TTFN to the Automated Show.

Deep Dive

This experiment offered a way to browse the Steam store using a favorite game as an entry point for discovering similar titles. While it was fun to discover how many degrees of separation could be found between Battle Brothers and Strikey Sisters, or to discover little known but well-loved Gems somewhat similar to a favorite popular game, we found similarity-based browsing to be a tough sell as a destination.

Perhaps the most valuable takeaway from our Deep Dive experimentation has been the idea behind its Similar Tags matching algorithm. This allows us to organize the hundreds of Steam tags into a handful of meaningful categories that can be leveraged to help gauge similarity along interesting axes like genre and mechanics.

This tag categorization work led us to identify relationships between tags, features, and other kinds of metadata associated with Steam games, resulting in our Query Expansion experiment and the Tag Wizard, a tool we built to help devs associate their games with a broad range of tags for improved discovery. It also inspired the creation of internal tools we use to identify and organize games associated with big events, and has led us to consider new navigational systems we’re excited to experiment with in Labs.

Experiments in Progress

Meanwhile, here’s a look at some promising experiments currently underway in Steam Labs. Each of these are progressing and expected to graduate to full release on Steam in the coming months.

News & Events Hub

The Steam News Hub experiment allows players to explore a personalized feed of news, events, live-streams, and updates from games they play, follow, or wishlist. This feed can be customized to include or exclude certain types of events or sources of news. Most importantly, the experiment includes a look at what’s ahead with a reminder system that helps players keep tabs on in-game events, live-streams, and other scheduled activities.

Query Expansion

We’ve begun some important yet fairly behind-the-scenes work in this Steam Search experiment, where we’re leveraging a custom thesaurus to define relationships between tags and related metadata for more accurate, consistent results. We’re using Steam Labs to help us gauge whether our thesaurus is working as you’d expect. You can opt into the experiment now via Labs, which then updates Search with the new logic used to derive tag-based search results.

Before calling this experiment complete, our goal is to bring this logic to more views throughout Steam, such that a search for both Real-Time and Strategy, for example, will always produce the same results as when searching for RTS. Many of our store’s browse views stand to benefit from this work.

Micro Trailers

Micro Trailers offer video snapshots of games, in just a few quick seconds. People only take a short amount of time to make judgements about what’s interesting while scrolling content, so micro trailers aim to help viewers learn enough about a game in as little time as possible. In Steam Labs, we’ve experimented with different formats, lengths, and strategies for deriving automatically-generated micro trailers from the standard game trailers our partners provide. We’ve also explored various ways of auto-assembling and aggregating these short videos, some of which admittedly made our eyes spin. 🍭🍭

Today, Micro Trailers can be found on the Steam store, where they are featured when hovering on items on the home page, in our sales events, and in the Interactive Recommender. We’re still tinkering with their optimal format, duration, and presentation, and look forward to bringing them to more places throughout Steam.

The Future

We continue to find that our work only improves with iteration based on your feedback. Steam Labs has opened the possibility of sharing more nascent ideas, receiving earlier feedback, and improving Steam with help from millions of people, like you.

News Hub Update

In a coming update, we’ll soon be adding the ability to include news from Steam Curators you follow, enabling posts from some of your favorite press outlets to appear right in your personalized view of Steam News.

New Ways to Browse

To date, we’ve invested quite a bit of energy into recommendations and search. Browsing is of course another key way people discover content on Steam, and we’re excited to explore this space. New points of entry, more compelling ways to browse, and more tools to filter while browsing are all among our list of future pursuits for Steam Labs.

Your Ideas

We of course also have our eyes on the Steam Labs Discussions, and hope you’ll continue to share your ideas for potential experiments you’d like to see from us.

Jun 23, 2020

Top Releases of May 2020

Steam News - AndrewL

We're continuing our Top Release series with a look at games released in the month of May. While the month brought dozens of exciting new games to Steam, these are the Top 20 titles that stood above the rest. As always, we gather the Top 20 by looking at revenue generated by each product during the first two weeks after its release. We're also showcasing the Top 5 free-to-play games released in May, measured by total unique players.

Developer highlights

About half of the games on this month's list are coming from developers releasing a game on Steam for the very first time. It takes an incredible amount of effort and dedication to create a top monthly release, and to do it with a Steam debut is quite impressive. To the following teams, congrats and welcome to Steam: Blacklight Interactive, Duoyi (Hong Kong) Interactive Entertainment Limited, GhostShipGames, Kabam Games, Inc., No Code, Noobz from Poland, PersonaeGame Studio, Relentless Studios and vanripper.

We're always interested in looking at the huge variety of countries where these games are being developed. It's awesome to see players being able to enjoy products from all over the world. With developers hailing from 11 different countries this month, chances are one of these games is being worked on in a neighborhood near you. Check the lists below for the full details.

Month of the free-to-plays

Three games this month appear in both the list of Top 20 revenue generating games, as well as the list of Top 5 free-to-play games: Crucible, GWENT: The Witcher Card Game and Shop Titans. We've seen that happen in past top release lists, but never with multiple games in the same month. Not only did these products build up a big following of excited players, they also added extra content that their communities found to be a worthwhile enhancement to the base experience. We're looking forward to watching these communities grow even further with future updates.

May's DLC releases

Speaking of extra content, May included several big DLC releases that really resonated with players. We don't normally include DLC in our monthly Top Release lists, but with the amount of new content they add, players can often get just as much out of DLC as they would a new game. So for this month, we thought it would be fun to look at the top 5 DLC releases of May, based on the revenue they generated during launch. Check the list below for the Top 5.

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May's Top Releases

Here's the list of May's top releases ordered by release date (we've organized this list on a sale page too):

Shop Titans
Kabam Games, Inc. (Canada)

Hydroneer
Foulball Hangover (UK)

Deep Rock Galactic
GhostShipGames (Denmark)

Super Mega Baseball 3
Metalhead Software Inc. (Canada)

Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor
Stray Fawn Studio (Switzerland)

Library Of Ruina
Project Moon (Republic of Korea)

Golf With Your Friends
Blacklight Interactive (Australia)

GWENT: The Witcher Card Game
CD PROJEKT RED (Poland)

Mafia III: Definitive Edition
Hangar 13 & Aspyr (US)

Blackthorn Arena
PersonaeGame Studio (China)

Crucible
Relentless Studios (US)

Total Tank Simulator
Noobz from Poland (Poland)

Monster Train
Shiny Shoe (US)

Observation
No Code (Scotland)

Space Haven
Bugbyte Ltd. (Finland)

Gunfire Reborn
Duoyi (Hong Kong) Interactive Entertainment Limited (China)

ShellShock Live
kChamp Games (US)

Dungeon Defenders: Awakened
Chromatic Games (US)

Poly Bridge 2
Dry Cactus (New Zealand)

Shantae and the Seven Sirens
WayForward (US)

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May's Top Free Releases

These are the Top 5 free-to-play titles from May, organized by total unique player count:

Crucible
Relentless Studios (US)

GWENT: The Witcher Card Game
CD PROJEKT RED (Poland)

Shadow Arena
Pearl Abyss (Republic of Korea)

Helltaker
vanripper (Poland)

Shop Titans
Kabam Games, Inc. (Canada)

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May's Top DLC Releases

Here are the Top 5 DLC releases from May, organized by release date:

House Flipper - HGTV DLC
Empyrean (Poland)

Brawlhalla - Battle Pass Season 1
Blue Mammoth Games (US)

Sid Meier's Civilization VI - New Frontier Pass
Firaxis Games & Aspyr (US)

Total War: WARHAMMER II - The Warden & The Paunch
CREATIVE ASSEMBLY & Feral Interactive (UK)

Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath
NetherRealm Studios, QLOC & Shiver (US)

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If you're curious about previous months, here are more Top Release lists:

May 22, 2020

Top Releases of April 2020

Steam News - AndrewL

Returning to our monthly series of Top Releases on Steam, April brought a whole new batch of products and developers from around the world. As always, this month's charts look at the Top 20 products released in April (measured by revenue generated during the first two weeks after launch) and the Top 5 free to play products released in April (measured by unique accounts that played the game).

It was quite a diverse month for Top Releases, as games in April were developed in 14 different countries (check the full list below for details). April also saw nine development teams finding success with their first-ever Steam launches. Welcome and congratulations go out to the following studios: 1939 Games, Bad Pixel, Byterunners Games Studio, Gentlymad Studios, Live Motion Games, Meerkat Games Corporation, Steel Sky Productions, Topgolf Media and Unfrozen

Developer Spotlights - Early Access

As we build these charts every month, it's easy to notice the consistent representation from titles utilizing Early Access. April was no exception, with 10 tiles either entering or exiting Early Access.

So, for this month's post, we thought it would be exciting to celebrate a few products coming out of Early Access, while hearing a bit about the journey from their developers. We asked 1939 Games (Kards - The WWII Card Game) & Unfrozen (Iratus: Lord of the Dead) about their experiences and takeaways from Early Access, what their players enjoyed most, and what they'd recommend to other teams who may be considering this model of development.

1939 Games

After forming in Reykjavik, Iceland five years ago, 1939 Games began working exclusively on their World War II themed card game - KARDS. Looking back on the game's run through Steam Early Access last year, Ingó Aevarsson from 1939 reflected on the experience, "Early Access was an invaluable part of our journey, especially due to the PvP focus of the game. We treated Early Access like our dress rehearsal. You don't get the same exposure as a fully released game, but there are just enough players to gather a lot of valuable data and feedback."

Ingó also emphasized how the team was careful not to rush into Early Access, sharing some advice for developers thinking of jumping in right away, "It was critically important to enter Early Access with a polished product, to create a positive atmosphere from the start. You should not regard it as a public QA for buggy, alpha code."

As 1939 moved through Early Access, Ingó says data gathering became central to the game's evolution and resulting success. As he put it, "The Early Access community is very passionate and willing to help you out, so you can use that to the game's advantage. The feedback loop with the community helped us shape many strategic development decisions."

Anyone following KARDS updates over the past year has seen how seriously 1939 treated this feedback loop. Nearly every week, the team released game updates, devlogs and bug fixes, all of which, Ingó says, were shaped by player behaviors, PvP stats and direct feedback from the Early Access community.

In addition, one of the big highlights for 1939's Early Access experience was the KARDS World Championship they hosted last December. Beyond the excitement of getting to watch players compete in the game they created, the team said they benefited from learning about all the ins and outs of hosting a tournament within the confines of Early Access, "It enabled us to create support structures and standard procedures ahead of the official launch," said Ingó.

April's release was good enough to put the game on this month's list of Top Releases, but it was also a validation of the relationship 1939 built with the entire KARDS community - something that the team knows they can count on, well beyond Early Access. Ingó sums it up by saying, "KARDS Early Access paid off in big ways, and the community is now a strong advocate for the game and a constant source of support and engagement."

Unfrozen

Another studio that took the path from Early Access to April's Top Release list is Unfrozen. From their HQ in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, the team at Unfrozen launched Iratus: Lord of the Dead into Steam Early Access in July of 2019. Once the team had a compelling playable version of its tactical, turn-based RPG, Unfrozen saw Steam Early Access as the right opportunity to start building a dedicated community, as they fine tuned several aspects of the game.

Denis Fedorov from the Unfrozen team explained, "It was super important that players could directly affect our decisions. We had pros and cons concerning some existing mechanics and systems, and it was feedback from the community that helped us make final decisions."

Denis also pointed out how important it is for developers to be transparent and set the right expectations with their players. From the moment the Iratus store page went live, players could find comprehensive Early Access information, outlining a development timeline, Unfrozen's motivations for using Early Access, and specifics detailing available features in the game.

"We shared our plans and vision with the community from the very beginning of this project." said Denis. "The most important thing about it – being open with the community."

He said this relationship grew even further as the game progressed through Early Access.

In describing how players fit in, Denis says, "Our players were able to be part of the Unfrozen Team!"

If that sounds like an exaggeration, look no further than Unfrozen's Discord channel, their update history, or the game's Steam Discussions over the past year. There are numerous examples of players and Unfrozen devs going back and forth discussing mechanics and identifying bugs to address.

"The most active and devoted part of our community appreciated that we trusted them so much," said Denis.

A simple look at the game's review graph over the course of Early Access illustrates growth on that trust, as the game steadily climbed from a 71% review score when it first launched to the 86% positive rating that it has today.

A big thank you to both 1939 Games and the team at Unfrozen for sharing their experiences with Early Access.

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April's Top Releases

Here's the list of April's top releases ordered by release date (we've organized this list on a handy sale page too):