On Steam, every developer and publisher can create a page for players to follow their account. This has somewhat similar benefits to wishlisting or following a game, but the player will be shown the followed publisher or developer’s future games as well. As such, it can be a great tool for studio building long-term. Games associated with that developer or publisher can then be linked to that page, so that players can easily navigate to them.

The end result of doing this is what you can find on, say, the Falling Frontier Steam page. Click our Hooded Horse publisher name, you’ll end up at our publisher page. Click the developer Stutter Fox Studios’ name, and you’ll end up at their developer page.

Except, unfortunately, that’s not what happens with most indie games–instead, clicking the name will result simply in a search results screen, most likely because they have not set up a developer page (though it could also be the result of forgetting to specifically link the page after setting it up). Sometimes, if the indie game has a publisher, clicking the developer’s name will result in arriving at the publisher’s page–that would be the result of the publisher setting things up so that the developer’s name redirects to their own page. I’d imagine most publishers would be willing to remove that redirect and properly link up the developer’s page if asked.

There’s always a long list of important things demanding of attention in indie game dev, but this is one of those steps that when done early very well might pay off in the long-term.

Here’s directions from Steam on setting things up. Note: when you first set up the links on your store page, it can take an hour or so for them to start properly redirecting to your page.