Thread by @RaveofRavendale

Little thread about a topic I've seen affecting numerous devs, and I'm now feeling the effects of myself:

The Popular Upcoming list on Steam is a great spot on the Steam front page for upcoming games to be noticed.

Unfortunately, it's a (sometimes accidentally) manipulated mess

Here's how the Popular Upcoming list on Steam works:

Steam looks at the Release Date for each title set in the Steam backend, then lists all the titles with decent wishlist numbers, in order of when they are supposedly coming out.

"Supposedly" is the key word here.

Here's the thing: You can set *any* date for your game's release in the Steam backend, and it means nothing. You can set a date, and let it go by. Then you can set another date, and let it go by again. Setting this date has no meaning -- except for appearing in the Upcoming list.

So what you end up with is two issues:

1. Devs manipulating the system, so their game appears over and over again in this list.

Here's Steel Division II. The devs have set tomorrow as the release date in the backend, but then written the real release date on the Store page

2. Devs accidentally setting a date, then forgetting they've done so, missing their release date, but their game showing up in the Upcoming list anyway.

All of this leads to titles which are *actually coming soon* to be bumped from the list on the front page.

This is a genuine issue, because as we all know having your title on the front page of Steam, even in an Upcoming list, can be a big deal for wishlists/sales. So if this list does not actually show upcoming games, it:

1. Makes consumers stop looking at it
2. Hurts upcoming games

This is a selfish thread -- I'm only bringing this up now since Hypnospace is suffering from this issue right now (coming in 7 days, bottom of the 2nd page of Upcoming).

But just look at all the games here without dates listed! It's hardly fair, is it?

For those people asking, you can find our game Hypnospace Outlaw here: store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hyp…