Publishing on Steam

This page lists what has to be true before Ishtaria can be sold or given away on Steam, what it costs, how long it takes, and where the project stands today. It is a planning document, not a decision: whether to release on Steam at all is a decision of the project owner (Roadmap, milestone M10).

Note

Checked on 2026-10-07 against the public pages of the Steamworks documentation (sources at the end). Valve changes its rules; re-read the pages before every step. Some pages (the Steam Distribution Agreement, details of the revenue share, rules shown only to partners) are visible only after signing in as a partner and are not covered here. Nothing on this page is legal or tax advice.

The decisions that come first

Four questions decide how the work looks, so settle them before spending money:

Who is the publisher? Steam wants a legal person or business that owns or has the right to publish the game, with bank and tax papers in the same name. A person acting as a sole proprietor and a company are handled differently by tax and by liability.
Which platforms? Steam serves Windows, macOS and Linux/SteamOS. The project supports Debian and Ubuntu on x86-64 only (0003 – Debian packages, Linux only). A Linux-only listing is allowed, but the product must work on every system the store page names, and it reaches only Linux and Steam Deck players. Adding Windows means changing that decision (Godot export presets for Windows and macOS exist in ishtaria-client/export_presets.cfg, but those platforms are not supported, built by the CI or tested).
How will real money work? Valve requires that in-game purchases of a Steam product go through the Steam Wallet. That conflicts with the real-money land leases of 0006 – Monetization with real money: land leases, imported models, custom avatars (see Money below). The simplest answer is a Steam build without real-money features.
Who runs the worlds? Steam does not host game servers. Ishtaria needs at least one official world that is online at launch, with the capacity and support that implies (Hardening a public world).

What Valve requires

Step	Requirement
Steamworks account and agreements	Join the Steamworks partner programme and sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement and the Steam Distribution Agreement.
App fee	US$100 (or equivalent) per app, not refundable but recoupable once the app earns at least US$1,000 of adjusted gross revenue on Steam. Every new app (also a free one, also a separate soundtrack or tool) needs its own fee.
Identity, bank and tax	The legal name of the company must match the bank account holder and the tax papers. Bank details and tax information (a W-9 equivalent for US persons, a W-8BEN equivalent for people in treaty countries) are verified by a third party, which “may take 10 to 15 business days”.
Waiting period	A 21-day wait after the fee is paid before release is possible.
Coming Soon page	The store page must be public as Coming Soon for at least two weeks before release.
Store page review	3–5 business days. Submit at least 7 days before the date you want, in case Valve asks for changes.
Build review	3–5 business days. The build on the default branch must be substantially complete, must launch on every OS the store page lists, and every advertised feature must work. Later updates need no review.
Release	Nothing is released automatically: the developer presses Release App after the checklists Store Presence and Game Build are marked ready and approved.
Content survey	Three parts: general content (it produces the regional age ratings), mature content, and generative AI content. Inaccurate answers can affect approval.

Timeline: if the paperwork, the store page and the build are ready, the earliest release is about three to five weeks after the fee is paid (the 21-day wait and the two weeks of Coming Soon overlap with the reviews). Plan for more, because the tax verification alone takes up to three weeks.

Technical requirements for a Linux build

Steamworks SDK and SteamPipe. Games are uploaded with steamcmd from the ContentBuilder of the Steamworks SDK, using a build script (a VDF file) that maps folders to depots. The default branch is the one players get; it can only be set live in the web interface; other branches (for example beta) are for testing. Keep pack files below roughly 1–2 GB so that updates stay small. A Debian package is not what Steam distributes: the depot holds the exported game.
Linux and the runtime. Valve recommends Ubuntu LTS for development and testing. Ship 64-bit binaries. After a launch option for Linux exists, choose the Steam Linux Runtime 3 (sniper) container under Installation → Linux Runtime. Vulkan is the preferred graphics API, OpenGL is supported.
Declare the platforms in two places (Steamworks settings and the store page) and give system requirements for each; do not tick a platform before it is tested on a beta branch.
The Steamworks API in the game is optional. Achievements, overlay, cloud saves and Steam login need it (Godot has a community integration, GodotSteam, whose licence must be checked); uploading needs only the SDK tools.
Steam Deck has its own review, which is not mandatory but decides the badge players see. Criteria include full controller support by default without changing settings, correct button prompts, text of at least 9 pixels at 1280×800, no launcher that needs a mouse, and 30 frames per second at default settings.

Store page and graphics

The text must describe only what exists at launch, be detailed and coherent, and contain no links to external websites. Screenshots must show gameplay: no concept art, cinematics, awards or marketing text. Capsules must show a readable title or logo.

Asset	Size (pixels)	Note
Header capsule, library header	920 × 430	logo and artwork only
Small capsule	462 × 174	logo and artwork only
Main capsule	1232 × 706	logo and artwork only
Vertical capsule	748 × 896	logo and artwork only
Library capsule	600 × 900	logo and artwork only
Library hero	3840 × 1240, PNG	artwork only
Library logo	1280 wide or 720 tall, PNG	drawn over the hero
Screenshots	1920 × 1080 or larger, 16:9	at least one is required; five or more are sensible; gameplay only
Page background (optional)	1438 × 810	subtle
Shortcut icon / app icon	256 × 256 (.ico or .png) / 184 × 184 (.jpg)
Event cover	800 × 450	needed for the first announcement

A trailer is optional but expected. The branding of the project (emblem, wordmark and splash in ishtaria-client/assets/branding/) is a start, but nothing in the repository has the sizes above yet, and the two screenshots of the web portal are 1200 × 675 and too small.

Content rules and disclosures

Content survey. Ishtaria has violence (hunting, creatures that bite, permanent death with graves) and no sexual content. Answer honestly; even content in the build that players cannot reach must be disclosed.
Generative AI. Valve distinguishes pre-generated content (made with AI tools during development and shipped to players: art, sound, narrative, localisation) and live-generated content (made while the game runs). Pre-generated content is judged like any other: no illegal or infringing material and consistent with the store page. For live-generated content you must describe the guardrails. In Ishtaria today:
- pictures generated with InvokeAI (the application icon and splash, the portrait of the gate guard, item icons including the spell scrolls), and spoken dialogue rendered with Piper, are pre-generated AI content and must be declared (the list is in ishtaria-client/README.md);
- dialogue drafted with a local language model and reviewed by a person counts as AI-assisted narrative;
- no content is generated while the game runs: no language model runs on the server (ADR 0008). Keep it that way, or the guardrail description becomes part of the review. Code written with an assistant is not content consumed by players, but the project should still be honest about it.
Rights. You promise that you own or may distribute everything in the build. The assets of the client are CC0 (Kenney, most of Quaternius) or require attribution (some Quaternius and Poly Pizza models are CC BY 3.0). Add an in-game credits screen before release, keep the licence files, and get a written licence for commercial distribution of every datadisk whose artwork belongs to its author (the Endland datadisk is not Kenney or bundled material). The client is MIT and the server AGPL: neither prevents a sale, but the AGPL server is not part of the Steam download.
Privacy. Accounts (a nickname and a password hash) and chat are personal data. Publish a privacy policy and the terms of the official world before launch, and give players a way to ask for deletion (0011-sharing-achievements describes what is shared and how it is revoked).
Accounts. Players of Ishtaria use an account of the world they join, not a Steam account. Steam store pages show when a game requires a third-party account; describe the requirement plainly. Whether to add Sign in with Steam (Steam authentication tickets checked by the server) is an open design decision.

Money

The build review states: “Your product must use Steam Wallet for any in-game transactions” and the product “cannot direct users to external payment systems”; the microtransaction documentation says that for any in-game purchase Steam customers can only pay from the Steam Wallet.

Ishtaria’s current monetization (0006 – Monetization with real money: land leases, imported models, custom avatars) lets a world sell land leases for real money through a payment gateway and a signed webhook (ishtaria-server/src/land.rs). The client has no purchase window, but the server does expose it. For a Steam release there are three honest options:

A Steam build without real-money features. The land leases stay off (they are off by default), and the first release earns money from the game’s price (or nothing, if it is free). This is the cheapest and the one this page recommends for a first release.
Steam Microtransactions. Implement Steam’s microtransaction API on the server (it needs the player’s Steam identity, which Ishtaria does not use today) and sell leases through the wallet. A large change that also touches the federation, because worlds of other operators would sell in a client that Steam distributes.
Do not sell on Steam. Distribute the packages only through the project’s own repository.

Whichever you choose, read the Steam Distribution Agreement before the first payment of any kind. The rule that money buys space and appearance and never power (Project rules that never change) holds in every case.

Achievements

Ishtaria’s achievements are already shaped for Steam, but nothing talks to Steam yet:

The server decides. An achievement is granted only inside the action that earns it (ishtaria-server/src/achievements.rs) and announced to its owner as an achievement event. A Steam build would only mirror an announced achievement with the Steamworks API (SetAchievement and StoreStats, for example through GodotSteam); the client never decides one itself.
Stable names. Every entry of GET /achievements carries steam, its API name in Steamworks: the id in capitals with a datadisk’s : written as __ (first_harvest → FIRST_HARVEST, gilgamesh:foundation_reader → GILGAMESH__FOUNDATION_READER). Ids never contain a double underscore, so two achievements never share a name. Never rename or reuse an id once it is released.
What Steamworks needs. Each achievement is entered in the Steamworks settings of the app with its API name, a localised name and description, the hidden flag and two icons (earned and not earned). The catalog has all of them except the icons, which are inventory icons today and have to be rendered at Steam’s size; check the Stats and Achievements pages of Steamworks for the current rules.
Datadisks. A disk’s achievements (achievements.yaml) exist on Steam only if they are entered in the app’s settings, so only disks published with the game can have Steam achievements. The client ignores names Steam does not know.
Trust. Players can join worlds run by anyone, and any world server can announce any achievement. A Steam build has to mirror achievements only from worlds it trusts (the official worlds, by their world identity), or Steam achievements could be farmed on a private server.

Where Ishtaria stands

Condition	Status	What is missing
Linux build that launches	partly	`make build` exports `ishtaria-client.x86_64` with Godot; a depot, a SteamPipe script and a test on Ubuntu LTS and SteamOS are missing.
Controller support	missing	Keyboard and mouse only; no gamepad mapping or button prompts. Needed for a good Steam Deck result (milestone M9).
Graphics settings and text size	partly	Language and sound settings exist; no graphics options, UI scale or accessibility settings (M9).
Tutorial for new players	missing	Reviewers and players start cold (M9).
Official online world	missing	A server with TLS, backups, monitoring and moderation (Hardening a public world); a terms of service and privacy policy.
Content survey and AI disclosure	to do	The lists above; a person has to answer for them.
Credits and licences	partly	README credits and Debian copyright exist; an in-game credits screen and a written licence for commercial use of third-party datadisks do not.
Store page and graphics	missing	Capsules, hero, logo, five or more 1920 × 1080 gameplay screenshots, a description with no external links, and a trailer, all made from the real client (M8, press kit).
Money rules	decision	See Money.
Company, bank, tax, app fee	missing	Not a technical task: start early, because the verification takes weeks.
Achievements	partly	The server grants them and names each for Steamworks (Achievements above); the Steamworks API in the client, the trusted-world rule and icons in Steam’s size are missing.
Features advertised on the page	rule	Advertise only what works at launch: no planned federation, no share links (ADR 0011), no seasons.

Checklist

☐	Publisher chosen; legal name, bank account and tax papers ready and consistent
☐	Platform decision recorded (a new ADR if it changes 0003 – Debian packages, Linux only)
☐	Money decision recorded (a new ADR if it changes 0006 – Monetization with real money: land leases, imported models, custom avatars); Distribution Agreement read
☐	Official world running with TLS, backups and monitoring; terms of service and privacy policy published
☐	Steamworks partner account, agreements signed, US$100 app fee paid, tax interview submitted
☐	Linux export in a depot, SteamPipe script, Steam Linux Runtime selected, tested on a `beta` branch on Ubuntu LTS and SteamOS
☐	Controller support, UI scale and graphics settings, tutorial (if a Steam Deck badge matters)
☐	Credits screen; licences of every asset and datadisk checked for commercial distribution
☐	Content survey answered (violence; AI disclosure for icons, images and voices)
☐	Store page: text without external links, all graphics, five or more gameplay screenshots, trailer; set to Coming Soon (two weeks minimum)
☐	Store presence and game build submitted and approved; release date at least 7 days after the submission
☐	Release App pressed by a person, with the world ready for the first players

Sources

Steamworks documentation (public pages, 2026-10-07):

Getting started and Onboarding
Steam Direct fee
Release process and Review process
Store graphical assets
Content survey (including generative AI)
Uploading to Steam, Platforms, Developing for SteamOS and Linux
Steam Deck compatibility review
Microtransactions