this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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In 2018 a group of Valve staff tried to figure out just how efficient they were being—and found they were making more money per head than Apple, Facebook, and nearly every tech giant out there (www.pcgamer.com)
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[–] lud@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Relevant sections from the official documentation: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

Steam Keys are single-use, unique, alphanumeric codes that customers can activate on Steam to add a product license to their account. Steam Keys are a free service we provide to developers as a convenient tool to help you sell your game on other stores and at retail, or provide for free for beta testers or press/influencers. Steam keys are a free service, so we ask you to use good judgment and follow basic guidelines and rules around requesting and selling them.

Games and applications launching on Steam may receive up to 5,000 Default Release Steam Keys to support retail activities and distribution on other stores. After that, all Steam Key requests are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. There is no guarantee that you will be provided additional keys.

When reviewing Steam Key requests, some of the things we typically look at include the level of customer interest on Steam, the total number of keys that have been issued and activated for the game and the additional number that are being requested. A request will usually be rejected if there's an imbalance that suggests the developer is not making an offer to Steam customers that is comparable to what Steam Key purchasers are offered. For instance, a game with a few hundred units of lifetime sales requesting tens of thousands of keys, or more.

Q: Why was my key request denied?
A: When reviewing Steam Key requests, we typically look at the level of customer interest on Steam, the total number of keys that have been issued and activated for the game and the additional number that are being requested. A request will usually get rejected if there's an imbalance that suggests the developer is not making an offer to Steam customers that is comparable to what Steam Key purchasers are offered.

It may also have been denied because the request was for Release State Override keys, which make the content immediately playable upon activation. In general, Release State Override (beta) keys are limited to 2,500 total.

There is no fee but you can be denied keys if you have already requested over 5000. I don't know how often that happens but IIRC the 5000 limit was added to stop abuse by mainly shovelware developers.