The new tools let content creators host Playtest signups right on their Steam store page, and grant access directly through Steamworks.
For the Steam team at Valve, our work revolves around making it easier for developers to connect with players, and pre-release testing has always been a big piece of that puzzle. Existing tools like demos and release-override beta Steam keys are already commonly used, and they aren’t going anywhere. Now, we're expanding that set of tools with Steam Playtest.
Steam Playtest is a new feature built right into Steam, allowing you to invite players to test your game without having to manage keys or external mailing lists. You control how many players get access, when to add more players, when to open testing, and when to end. Here’s how it works.
The new tools let you host Playtest signups right on your Steam store page, and grant access directly through Steamworks (no keys needed).
Players click the button to sign up, and they go into a queue. On the backend, you can see all those signups and let in as many users as you wish, with a simple interface:
When you're ready to end your playtest, you can easily deactivate it- which will remove the Sign Up option from your game’s store page, and remove the Playtest from players’ libraries.
Behind the scenes, the actual download-and-play experience is happening on a secondary, supplemental appID, similar to how we handle Demos on Steam—so a player’s ownership and playtime in the Playtest is separate from the real game. This means Steam Playtest won’t cancel out or compete with Wishlists on your real game, and Steam Playtest owners cannot write user reviews.
There’s plenty more details and information available in the full documentation here, but in closing we wanted to provide two more important notes:
- These tools are in beta, subject to change, and not fully released yet. If you’d like to take advantage of Steam Playtest while it’s still in development, use our contact form here to provide us with some background about when you want to start your playtest, and what kind of data you’re hoping to gather from players. In the months ahead, we’ll keep improving the tools and work towards a point where they are fully self-serve!
- Steam Playtest is free to use, for developers and customers. It doesn’t support commerce or monetization, and is not a replacement for Steam Early Access. You could even use Steam Playtest prior to, or alongside, Early Access.
We try to design these tools to be as useful as possible, and then put them in front of increasingly more developers so we can make incremental improvements. If there are things you’d like to see from Steam Playtest, please let us know in the developer forums or contact us any time!
Cheers!
-The Steam Team