Full STEAM Ahead (Patreon)

How many times do you suppose someone has made that pun about launching their game on Steam? Dozens? Hundreds? Anyway...It has been quite the busy week or two at IT Roy HQ. Valve approved To Be A King for listing on Steam. To give it time to get the word out and get it added to Steam wishlists, the release date for Volume 1 on Steam is September 30. 

My immense thanks to Stoya at Stone Fox Studios and Perverteer for helping me to not lose my mind during this process, and for some excellent advice and insight. When I was debating a few months ago about whether to spend the time to try and get To Be A King on Steam, Stoya was very helpful and open with his experience. If you're one of the few who hasn't played their mega-hit, Chasing Sunsets, go check it out (on Steam or Patreon).

Since you're reading this, you're a patron (unless this got leaked somewhere else). You already have access to To Be A King. What's the deal with Steam then? Well, it's, by far, the largest online marketplace for games. And one of the few that allows adult games too (assuming your country hasn't banned either Steam or adult content through Steam). Diversification is key for me, especially since you never know when a platform is going to decide to go Puritanical on your ass and ban your type of content. To Be A King is pretty vanilla for adult content, but anything can happen with these platforms, often with short notice. Additionally, I know there are some that really just want to pay one time and get the game, and this allows them to do that - for Volume 1, at least.

There is nothing significantly different in the Steam build. Here are the few changes:

• New game icon
• Steam achievements added
• Removed links and references to Patreon, as per Steam requirements
• Image Gallery comes unlocked without needing a password
• A few small fixes/touch ups that are also in the updated Volume 1 build here on Patreon (these fixes also were included with Chapter 8)
• MacOS notarization so the game can be launched on Macs without any security warnings (also now available in Volume 1 and Chapter 8 releases of TBaK on Patreon)

I Need Your Help

What can you do to help me out and make this Steam launch a success? Tweet, post on Discord servers (where it is allowed only! No spamming or Valentina will haunt you) about the Steam release. Just do what you can to let folks know. They can wishlist it now, and then they'll be notified when it goes on sale. The more folks that add it to their wishlist the better for me. Steam looks at that pre-launch to determine what, if any, promotion to give new projects. It's a high bar to get any promotion from them, but it costs nothing for me to try (and nothing for me if they do decide to promote it a bit in the adult areas of Steam).

It was definitely work to prepare for a Steam release, but nowhere near the torture fest I thought it would be. Volume 2 will arrive on Steam, once it is finished, as DLC. In the meantime, Chapters 8 and beyond will only be available here on Patreon. Thank you again for your support here on Patreon! Let me close with a few images from the custom artwork I had to do for Steam. You've already seen the trailer.

Too much sexiness for Valve (or maybe it was their impressionable customers) in this image, so I had to redo it with the one below).

Above you'll see the new game icon for the Steam release. Needed an easy way to differentiate them, besides the new build in Renpy. 

Compatibility

As far as I can tell, the builds will be compatible, though the Steam achievements won't be in any of the Volume 2 chapters until it releases in full on Steam. The save paths are the same, and I used the exact same codebase. If anyone grabs the game on Steam, they should have no trouble copying the update files from Patreon for future chapters into their To Be A King Steam game directory and playing the latest version. Steam should even track their hours played.