Why did Charlie Oscar launch a strategic bundle on Steam?
Charlie Oscar studio launched an annual bundle on Steam together with five other teams and explained App2Top.ru why I took this step.
Sergey Klimov, the founder of Charlie Oscar, answered the questions.
Hello. You recently posted a post on Facebook that you are launching a large bundle with other teams in the Valve digital store. Could you tell us what the initiative is?
Sergey Klimov
Charlie Oscar together with 5 other independent studios (Snapshot Games, MuHa Games, Overhype Studios, Robotality and Eggcode) launched a common bundle on Steam called Turn-Based Gems.
The bundle will live for 1 year, adding to all sales participants depending on the season.
We believe that [if it gives an increase in sales] +5% – it will be good, and +10% will be – so in general it is excellent.
Gremlins, Inc. (Charlie Oscar)How will this give an increase?
All studios participating in the bundle have projects with excellent player reviews. We have no problems with the conversion of a potential buyer who came to the page of one of our games. The task of the bundle is just to increase the number of such visitors.
Where does visibility come from? From campaigns on the pages of colleagues. For example, at the weekend one of the bundle games (the gorgeous Battle Brothers) was at a 20% discount in addition to the bundle discount, and today Julian Gollop launched -66% on his Chaos Reborn. Such events give all participants of the bundle an additional audience.
Chaos Reborn (Snapshot Games)Have such initiatives had a successful experience before?
Yes, we successfully participated in a bundle of turn-based strategies of independent developers during the Steam Summer sale (Gremlins, Inc. + Invisible, Inc. + The Banner Saga + Thea: The Awakening + Hard West). This gave us +20% of sales for the period.
Halfway (Robotality)And from a more applied point of view: publishers are different.
Were there any difficulties in creating a bundle (it will probably be more difficult to divide the income there)?
Such bundles (complete my set – you buy more games that you don’t have in your collection yet) are automated, and the income is distributed on the Valve side automatically. So it requires minimal administration.
As for coordination, all the participants in our bundle have experience working in distributed teams, and therefore communication was super prompt and as effective as possible. In the process of creating the bundle, we wrote to other teams, and immediately weeded out those who were not able to respond quickly and to the point, so this is a kind of natural selection.
Battle Brothers (Overhype Studios)Thanks for the interview!
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