Official Group for Steamworks Development Support

Steam's GDC offsite sessions: A recap

We had a blast in San Francisco meeting with so many Steam developers during GDC week! We know not everyone is able to attend GDC with an official badge, so we host these Steam-specific meetups off-site as a way to reach as many folks as possible who are in town for the main event.

Hosting a Steam-focused event off-site gives us a chance to host two days of talks, coffee hours, and roundtables. It provides us with a great opportunity to share what we're working on with Steam, hear direct feedback from developers, and answer questions while making meaningful in-person connections. We also love that it facilitates a ton of interactions between developers as well!

No problem; we know traveling to events isn't feasible for every developer so we've put together this brief overview of topics we covered, along with links to relevant documentation. We're also currently working on putting some of these talks in video form, which we'll be sharing in the coming weeks and months!

Also, GDC is just one of the events we plan to attend this year, and we rely on feedback from developers to determine which ones to attend and in what way. If you haven't already, please hit the button below to let us know where you're headed this year.

2025 Conference Survey[partner.steamgames.com]



Two of our talks were catered specifically to developers working toward their first or second release on Steam. In Preparing for Release and Beyond, we focused on the most important things for devs to consider in preparing for that first or second release, and gave a brief overview of the features available for you to make use of along the way.

In our Steam Next Fest talk, we started with a bit of context on how we arrived at doing Steam Next Fest; what our goals are, and the opportunity we think it can provide for developers. We finished with a running list of Next Fest questions we receive most often, and offered a chance for folks in the room to ask their own questions as well.


We hosted a pair of sessions intended for developers already super familiar with Steam; maybe you've released a few games and are interested in deeper levels of opportunities to integrate with the platform. These included a Steam Business Update, which took a deep dive into the state of Steam in 2025, looking at recent additions of features and updates while looking at trends and what's coming next. In fact, we recently released our Steam Year In Review for 2024, which contains further details.

The second session in the advanced series focused on Unlocking the Potential of Steamworks Features, which focused on things like Build Automation, Rich Presence, Steam Cloud, Steam Input, and more.


Playtesting Features and Tools: This session centered around the different benefits (and limitations) around many of the built-in tools Steam has to help you manage the testing of your game. We covered everything from demos and the Playtest feature to the best use of keys, and more.

Early Access in 2025: We shared some insights from developers who had recent success with Early Access, and used that feedback to build out a talk on what works well for Early Access users. This included how to approach developing your game while still receiving feedback; and also managing that feedback while setting proper expectations among those players (and future players as well).

Marketing: This talk shared takeaways from Steam developers who had successful launches on Steam in the past year, sharing their words on what worked and what didn't for marketing their games on and off the platform. It covered some of the many features and tools available on Steam for marketing and communicating about your game.

Localization: As a global platform that officially supports 29 languages, understanding how localizing your game, store page, and communication can impact your ability to grow an audience and connect with players is super important.


What topics did we miss? What topics should we cover in a different way? We're still mapping out the rest of our year and would love to hear from you. If you haven’t already, take a moment to fill out our developer interest survey (posted above and again below!). It helps us understand what topics matter most to you and shapes where we go next.
2025 Conference Survey[partner.steamgames.com]

Thanks again to everyone who connected with us this year—we’re looking forward to even more conversations ahead!