How to Upload a Game to Steam - Step by Step Guide

Are you wondering how to put your game on Steam? Like, in practice, how to take your game that you have in Unity or some other game engine and make it playable through Steam? You're in the right place! In this video I will go through the basics of how uploading game builds to Steam works and then also show in practice how you can upload your game to Steam.

0:00 Intro
0:44 Quick terminology
0:57 Steam Depot

Depot is essentially a collection of files that Steam will deliver to players’ devices. You are the one who decides what any depot contains. In the simplest and probably most common case, you will have just one depot and that depot contains the latest version of your game. But, you can also have multiple depots. In that case, the first depot might contain a windows version of your game, the second depot could contain a linux version of your game, the third could contain DLC files for your game and a fourth one could contain some exclusive soundtrack files for your game. You will be able to decide which of your players get access to which depots.

1:57 Steam Build

Build is just a collection of depots. When you upload your files to Steam, so in other words, when you upload your depots to Steam, a new build is created within Steam. You can have as many builds as you want. In a simple example, build 1 could contain version 1.0 of your game and a newer build 2 could contain version 1.1 of your game.

2:34 Steam Branch

Branches are used to define which build of the game your players will get. By default, all games have just one branch, the default branch that every new player is on. So all your players will get delivered the same game build that you have set for that branch. But you can also add new branches. You could have for example a beta branch that has a newer build of the game and only let a few players access that branch. You yourself can define how many branches your game has and which build is active on each of those branches.

3:13 Steam Package

Packages are how players can get access to your game. The most common situation is that the player buys the game on your steam page, in other words, buys the default store package for your game and by doing that, gains access to a package that contains your game.

The default store package is usually enough and you don’t need to do anything special to get it working. But it’s good to know that you can also create additional packages and define what applications and/or what depots those packages contain.

4:08 Uploading game builds to Steam

In the video I show in practice how you can upload your game builds to Steam. There isn't enough space to include the whole thing as text here, sorry!

9:33 Updating your game
9:56 Giving access to your game
10:19 Adding a new branch
10:48 Having multiple depots

[llareia]

This is about 100x easier to understand than the Steamworks documentation/tutorials. Thank you!

[sonymusic]

I'm a new indie game developer, this video just save me lots of time~ Thank you so much!!

[Xaeveax]

I couldn't figure out how to add additional branches (for beta testers), despite how simple it was. Glad I found this, wonderfully explained.

[chimerastudio]

You've helped a lot of devs with that tutorial. Clear and straight to the point. Thanks

[redchan]

I've avoided updating my game for the last 3 years because I just struggled to do it so much. But thanks to your video I was able to update my game for the first time in ages. It was concise, easy to understand, everything was well explained, and the step by step instructions flowed perfectly.
THANK YOU!!!

[HomelessHermit]

Like others have said this is absolutely the best tutorial out there, Steamworks documentation definitely made the process seem a lot more difficult but it was just a quick 5 minute job! Thank you Auro

[bone]

Thank you so much, I tried to upload the game with the steam tutorial and after hours of getting rid of errors (that i did not fix) i found your video and it worked for the first time and was a lot easier.

[RedTearGames]

I was flooded by documentation yesterday... Just now, I saw only 1 minute and 26 seconds of this video and already learned like 50% of what I read yesterday xD Thanks so much for sharing such useful tutorials/explanations, will tell everyone about your channel!

[DarkParadice]

My dude, I don't know how you don't have more subscriptions. This video just made steam's actual videos look very bad. After struggling with getting my project to upload using their old deprecated videos this literally took me 11:44 seconds to upload my project. Earned another subscriber and like!

[mikebuck]

Dude, THANK YOU - I was having so much trouble finding a straightforward video that walked through this process. This was exactly what I needed!

[Luvseatshawty]

Thank you so much for creating this video. You made the process much simpler than the documentation!

[AuroDev]

Hey! I would love to hear if you are interested in seeing more short tutorials like this. And if so, which subjects would be the most interesting to you?

[FeyFen]

Super helpful tutorial! I uploaded my first game 4 years ago and remembered the process as painful. This made it so much easier. Steampipe GUI is also a great update.

[krisburke]

This is the only tutorial I use every time i need to do something about adding anything to steam. Great job on the explanation and information.

[itsmidge]

I watched this video when it came out and I watched it again today to upload my first test build to steam. Thanks again for this one, Auro!

[hybridplays]

Hey man, thank you so much for this video! You make awesome tutorials that are really easy to understand, and you deserve way more subscribers!

[LittleRaucousGames]

Just got our first game uploaded. I'm still having a hard time believing that it was this easy. Thanks for your video!

[redtrippyvision]

You are such a life saver I can never remember how to do this each time I upload I watch this video again is such an annoying process thank you for posting this so much you are a awesome.

[wolvikstudios]

Thank you for the video! Clear presentation and ultra relevant. Just what I needed in order to upload my game to Steam for the first time.

[stewpidasohl]

This was so helpful thank you!! I was lost following their documentation and steams own videos are way outdated. This makes it seem so simple I am very grateful