Steam은 귀사의 고객들에게 게임의 가장 최근 빌드를 제공하여 항상 최신의 환경을 유지하도록 하는 핵심 기능을 중심으로 제작되었습니다. 작은 오류 수정이든 대규모 콘텐츠 추가 작업이든, Steam에는 업데이트를 공지하고 플레이어에게 업데이트를 전달하는 데 사용할 수 있는 강력한 도구들이 구비되어 있습니다.

다음은 업데이트 시 고려해야 할 일반적인 사례와 Valve가 자사 제품에서 실시한 대규모 업데이트 및 Steam에서 제공되는 다른 많은 제품에서 배운 모범 사례를 다룬 내용입니다.

제품이 무료 플레이로 제공되든 싱글 플레이의 이야기 형식으로 제공되든, 업데이트는 사용자층을 확대하고 사용자와 게임 간의 관계를 더욱 강화할 수 있습니다. 고객과의 소통과 관련된 일반적인 정보는 커뮤니티 관리 모범 사례 문서에서 확인하거나 Steam Dev Days에서 진행된 Robin Walker의 프레젠테이션을 시청해 주세요.

언제든지 업데이트 가능

Updates are an important part of your product's life cycle and a critical form of communication with customers. You'll need to make updates to fix bugs and address issues, but major updates are also a huge opportunity to add new content, new modes of play, or new features to help keep customers engaged and attract new audiences.

Steam makes it easy to patch your game or add content at any time that you need to in order to best serve your audience on your schedule. Feel free to update as often as you need to, but remember that players who have your game installed will need to download each update before they can launch the game again, so be considerate if your updates are large in size.

계획 및 목표

To get the most out of your update, you'll want to start by thinking about the goals you want to achieve. You probably want to be patching all the time to fix issues that players have brought up or that you’ve found while testing the game. But you also want to be thinking about longer-term content updates that keep your players engaged and coming back to play.

Whether your update is big or small, each one is a form of communication with players, demonstrating that you are listening to player feedback and you care about improving the player experience.

버그 수정 및 패치

Updating and patching your game is one of the best ways to communicate with customers. If you hear about customers experiencing issues with your game, there is no better response than to fix the issue as quickly as possible (if reasonable). Steam makes it easy to deploy updated builds anytime you wish, so make use of it to iterate on your product and help customers with issues.

When deploying an update, it's helpful to post an announcement in your Steam Community Hub so that customers can tell what has changed. This also demonstrates to customers that you are listening and working to address the issues that are being identified.

대규모 콘텐츠 업데이트

Iterating and updating your product is essential, but your communication around the update can make a big difference. We have found that for our own games it works best to release major updates every 1-2 months at most. This let us put together a big enough update to be exciting and compelling, and allowed for time to tease or pre-announce those updates before they ship to build anticipation.

Your own approach may vary as you learn what your players are responding positively to. Here is a sample process that has worked well for us, which we honed by trying different approaches and listening to player feedback:

1. 업데이트 티저 - 업데이트 출시 3~4일 전에 티저를 공개하여(가능한한 이야기 형식으로) 힌트를 던져주거나, 추측을 유도하고, 고객의 흥미를 이끌어내세요. 그리고 제품의 언론 보도를 위한 자료도 함께 제공해 주세요.
   
2. 포럼 및 피드백 모니터링 - 업데이트를 실제로 출시하기 전에 포럼 및 피드백을 점검하고, 그에 따라 콘텐츠를 향상시키거나 조절하고, 고객이 가장 흥미를 느낄만한 요소를 찾아내세요.
   
3. 기능 및 게임 플레이 변동 사항 강조 - 업데이트 전에 미리 소통하면서 기능 및 게임 플레이의 변동 사항을 강조하여 가시성과 기대감을 높이고 추측을 유도하세요. 이런 방식으로 세부 정보를 부분적으로 조금씩 공개하는 것은 플레이어가 게임을 실제로 플레이하기 전에 먼저 콘텐츠를 익히고 소화할 수 있는 시간을 제공합니다.
   
4. 메타게임 또는 콘테스트 제작 - 메타게임이나 콘테스트를 만들고, 고객이 친구들이나 다른 플레이어들에게 제품을 효과적으로 홍보해 게임 세계에 기여할 기회를 제공하세요.

예시: As an example of the kinds of update announcement pages that we at Valve have put together for some of our own games, you can see the latest updates for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive listed down the right-side of the CS:GO website, or some updates for Dota 2 here and here.

All of these elements are feasible for any product, regardless of the genre or the team size. We highly recommend that the same team designing and building the content is also directly exposed to the communication and feedback from customers. This DOES NOT mean that your level designer should spend all day replying to questions on the Steam forum. It does mean, however, that reading feedback and being responsible for the community should be part of the dev team’s role, rather than delegated out to community managers or a separate PR team. Watch the full Dev Days talk for specific examples and additional insights.

DLC인가요 아니면 기본 게임의 일부인가요?

When you release new content for your game, you have a few options for how you can provide that content to players. You can sell it as Downloadable content (DLC) or as in-game purchases. Or you can simply include it in the base game as a free content update.

Below are some suggestions for best practices that we've seen work well for most cases:

• 무료 콘텐츠 => 게임의 일부 - 콘텐츠를 무료로 제공하려는 경우에는, 새로운 콘텐츠를 기본 게임 콘텐츠의 일부로 포함하는 것이 가장 좋습니다. 업데이트를 무료 DLC로 출시할 경우와는 달리, 플레이어가 별도의 다운로드 버튼을 클릭할 필요 없이 해당 최신 콘텐츠를 바로 이용할 수 있기 때문입니다.
  
• 소액 결제 콘텐츠 => 게임 내 구매 - 모자나 개별 무기, 소모품과 같은 작은 유료 콘텐츠를 추가하는 경우에는, 게임 내 개별 구매 아이템으로 제공하는 것이 좋습니다. Steamworks에는 사용하기 쉬운 Steam 보관함 서비스가 있으며, Steam 소액 결제를 이용하면 모든 결제 과정 및 통화 변환을 처리할 수 있습니다.
  
• 고액 결제 콘텐츠 => DLC - 맵이나 새로운 게임 모드, 확장판과 같은 대규모의 콘텐츠를 판매하는 경우에는, DLC를 활용하는 것이 좋습니다. DLC는 콘텐츠 설치를 따로 할 수 있으므로 추가 콘텐츠를 구매하지 않는 플레이어에게는 파일 크기를 줄이는 효과가 있으며, 개발자 및 배급사에게는 게임 상점 페이지에서 상품화할 만한 규모의 콘텐츠로써 판매할 수 있는 장점이 있습니다.

테스트

Before deploying your update, you'll probably want to make sure you test it yourself from a Steam build. There are a number different ways you can do this, so be sure to check out the Testing on Steam documentation.

업데이트 업로드

To update your game or software build, simply follow the same instructions for creating your initial builds in SteamPipe. Check out the SteamPipe Documentation for details.

Note that after your app releases to customers, your customers will be receiving the build marked as the Default build. In order to test your update, you should upload the new build using Steampipe, then set that build on a test branch with a password to test before moving it to the default branch. See Managing Uploaded Builds above for a refresher on managing your build branches.

빌드 공개

Once you've uploaded and tested your build, you're ready to make it live for players. To do so, you'll need to switch your desired build to be the new 'default' build. If you created new depots in the process of adding this new content, make sure you add that new depot to all store and key packages. See Packages documentation for more details.

Steam에 업데이트 공지

Once you're ready to release your update on Steam, you'll want to tell customers and provide a place for focused feedback. Steam provides a number of ways for you to announce your update and get word out:

• 아트워크 재정의 사용하기 - 임시 캡슐 이미지 세트를 사용하여 고객들에게 게임 업데이트를 알릴 수 있습니다. In your 'edit store' section of Steamworks, under the graphical assets tab, there is a section to define temporary asset override. More about Artwork Overrides
  
• Post an Announcement - When you post an event or announcement, it will appear to any customer that is following your game (which they can do from your community hub or store page), on your store page, within the Steam library, and will be accessible from the Steam client 'downloads' panel. More about Events and Announcements
  
• Run a discount - To get the most out of a major content update, you may want to think about timing it with a discount on your game. That can help build the most amount of buzz at the same time and give players another reason to get your game now, when a bunch of excitement is built up around the game. Plus, players with your game on their wishlist will get an e-mail notifying them that your game is on sale. This works really well combined with temporary artwork overrides as described above. More about discounting
  
• Use Update Visibility Round - If this is one of your major content updates, you may use a Steam Update Visibility Round to make your update appear on the Steam Store home page. This is useful for getting word out to new and existing customers about your update. This also lists your title on a page of recently updated products.
  To use the Update Visibility Round, you will first need to post a Steam Community Announcement with details about your update. Check out the Steam Update Visibility Round documentation for more details.