Dev Diary - Major Milestones from the Past 6 Months

Game Store Upgrades

The Playsum Games Store has evolved significantly since we launched it in January. We’ve incorporated several long-awaited features and dozens of quality of life improvements to enhance the browsing and buying experience:

Backorder System: High-demand titles? No problem! With our new backorder system, you can still secure great deals, even if the game is currently out of stock. Once the publisher replenishes the keys, you’ll automatically receive your key and an email notifying you. Similarly, we now have a pre-order system as well so you can purchase upcoming games ahead of their release!

Multiple Payment Options: We now support various payment methods to provide flexibility and make purchases more accessible for gamers worldwide. We’ve got 15 different ways to pay, from Google Pay, Discover, American Express, Klarna, Bancontact for our Belgian users, iDeal for those in the Netherlands, and more!

‍Wishlist Feature: Our wishlist feature lets you keep track of all your must-have games, so you'll never lose sight of your next favorite title. We plan to expand on this by adding a way for you to share your wishlist with others (perfect for creators!) and even sync with your Steam wishlist to make it all more seamless and convenient. 

Countdown Timers: You’ll always know when a sale is ending with our new real-time countdown timers. It’s very visible on the product page to help ensure you don’t miss out on a game you wanted to buy on sale.

Price Slider and DLC Toggle: Find games within your budget using our new price slider, and customize your experience with a DLC toggle to view only the content you’re interested in.

Standard and Deluxe Edition Toggle: We added a toggle between the Standard and Deluxe editions of a game - so if you’re on the product page for the Standard and decide you want the Deluxe version, or vice versa, you can switch right there, no extra searching.

DLC Displayed on Product Page: You can view all available DLC on the product page! Just click through with the arrow to see everything at a glance ➡️It’s a quick way to find the content you’re looking for without having to individually search for DLC, or leave the game’s page at all.

Steam Rating and Reviews: Every game on our store has Steam ratings and reviews so you can easily see what other people think of the games you're browsing - no need to switch tabs and navigate to Steam anymore!

Web App Launch

We were thrilled to launch the Playsum web app back in June 🙌 Before, the community platform was only available as an Android and iOS app, making it less accessible for gamers and streamers who are more often on their PC. The web app is also a more improved version of the mobile app with much better UI/UX and ultimately a better user experience. 

As a small team, we can iterate on web at a faster pace and bring new features to the community on a regular basis, so expect to see a big transformation of the community platform in the near future! 

We paused new community features as we worked on improving the game store this summer, but there’s a custom Waypoints feature in the works that is close to completion. Currently, users don’t have the ability to create Waypoints, which are similar to Discord servers. That’ll be changing soon with the new feature - you’ll be able to create your own community right on Playsum around anything you want: your favorite game, a community for fellow cozy gamers, a place for your friends to hang out, etc! It’ll also include the ability to make your Waypoint private for those who want to create an invite-only community. 

We aim to give users more personalized control over their communities so there’s a lot to come in this area! To make this happen, we’ll be rolling out a range of safety features designed to help admins and moderators keep their communities safe and well-moderated with ease. Two of our founders are Trust & Safety professionals, so this is a matter close to our hearts and we’re excited to build tools dedicated to it! 

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Partner Dashboard

We developed a partner dashboard to give Playsum Partners a seamless way to track their sales metrics, request payouts, and generate partner links for any page on the Playsum Games Store. This dashboard makes the process much smoother and more efficient for everyone, which will be especially important as we scale our Partner Program.

Creative Projects

We’re building a connected experience in the Playsum-verse! Our sci-fantasy farm sim Plasma Plaines, and our upcoming web novel, Plots of Panoros, both take place in the same shared world, bringing depth and new layers of storytelling to our universe. By exploring both, players and readers will get to uncover a richer, interconnected story, with each platform adding something unique. We’re excited to offer fans of the Playsum-verse a chance to dive deeper and follow along as the world unfolds in multiple formats! 🌱

Currently we’re deep in the creative process with our indie farm sim and the web novel is at 60,000 words. Once the first volume is complete, we plan to release chapters on a weekly basis via Royal Road and other popular webfiction sites.

Looking forward to when people get to meet Tala and crew, learn their stories, and venture throughout the world with them!

Growing Partnerships

Our reach continues to expand through partnerships with major deal aggregators and the #1 creator wishlist, allowing more gamers to discover our games 🎮 Over the past months, we’ve teamed up with Throne, gg.deals, IsThereAnyDeal, and most recently, Nexarda. These partnerships are boosting Playsum’s visibility, helping gamers discover the best deals across our catalog!

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Expanding Publisher & Developer Network

The number of publishers and developers we work with continues to grow - we're now at 45 publishers! We’re proud to bring more incredible games to the Playsum Games Store from both indie and AAA developers, ensuring a diverse selection for gamers of every genre. The most recent publishers to join us are Marvelous Entertainment, Indie io, Atari, and Maximum Games! Welcome everyone 👋

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What’s Next?

As we look ahead, we’re excited to continue building out features, establishing more partnerships, and expanding our game catalog to create the best experience possible for our community. Thank you for joining us on this journey - stay tuned for more updates, and feel free to reach out in you’re interested in seeing how we can work together! 😄

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