New to Steam or looking for a refresher on important topics?
Our most useful and popular documentation pages are listed below, sorted by function. This is
not an exhaustive list of articles on Steam, but is meant to give you a place to start.
One of the first things to understand is that Steam refers to the customer-facing platform where customers buy games, write reviews, discuss game strategies, post screenshots, and more. Steamworks is the backend platform that holds the tools that allow developers and publishers to make changes to their public-facing Steam pages, upload builds, manage their banking information, and more.
Table of Contents
Required Reading
General Knowledge | Topics in this section are important for you to understand, regardless of your role, as foundational information on How Steam Works. |
Sorted by Topic
Steamworks - Account Management | Organizing your Partner account on Steam, including details on banking, tax, and permissions. |
Game Development | A non-exhaustive list of the many game development options and tools that are available on Steam. |
Release Management | Requirements, tools, and best practices on managing your game's lifecycle on Steam. |
Monetization | Pricing, discounting, game monetization models, and more. |
Marketing | All things marketing on Steam, and some details on managing marketing from off Steam too. |
Advanced Tools | Once you've got the basics down, there's even more you can do with your game on Steam. |
General Knowledge
There are some things that you should know about, regardless of your role, if you're going to be using Steam. Here's a short list of what you probably want to know.
How Steam Is Organized
How Your Game is Presented to Customers
How Customers Find Your Game
Steamworks - Account Management
Are you responsible for finances, keeping up on paperwork or managing permissions? Here are the pages you want to be aware of.
Game Development
This catch-all section has information on all things technical, common Steam features, and more.
Steam Features
Technical Features
Here are some more technical Steam features that you should consider integrating into your game.
Technical References
SDK + APIs
Looking for how to get your game on Steam? That, and APIs, here.
Release Management
We try and make releasing your game on Steam relatively simple; even still, you can be extra prepared by taking a look at the topics below
before you have to do it.
Monetization
There are many ways you might try and monetize your game - here are your options on Steam, as well as additional information regarding discounting and pricing your title.
Marketing
Articles in this section are focused around marketing - both things that can be done on Steam, as well as tips and tricks for Steam as a platform.
Advanced Tools
Okay, you've read all the other stuff. Here are some topics you might want to read about next.
If you're looking for more information, you'll have to go digging in the documentation. If you have any questions that aren't answered by reviewing documentation, please feel free to
message us via the Support Portal.