Steam Insights

FirstLook offers a deep integration with Steamworks (Steam Publisher Accounts), allowing you to track playtime for all your games, including hidden Playtests or games not displayed in the Steam Store. In addition, we’ll track the Wishlist and Owned status of your playtesters.

Integrate your Steamworks with FirstLook

To enable this integration, you’ll need to create and share a Steam Publisher WebAPI Key with FirstLook. This key is used to access the Steam Web API and retrieve the necessary information. It is stored securely and only used for the purpose of retrieving playtime data. We interact with the following endpoints and data:

• Player Ownership and Playtime – Verify if a player owns your game and how much they have played it.
• List of App IDs and Builds – Get a list of App IDs and builds in your Steam Publisher Account so you can select the correct one for tracking.

Learn more about Publisher Web API Keys in the Official Steamworks Documentation.

How to create a WebAPI Key

1. Sign in to the Steamworks Partner Portal
2. Navigate to ‘Users & Permissions > Manage Groups’
3. Click ‘Create New Group’ and enter a recognizable group name (i.e. ‘FirstLook WebAPI’)
4. On the new group page, use ‘Add Application’ to add your game.
5. Enter the primary game title into the autocomplete field and make sure the ‘Include child apps (DLC, demos, tools) when adding the parent app’ checkbox is selected.
6. Click ‘Create WebAPI Key’ in the sidebar.
7. Copy the key that appears in the box underneath.

You can now paste the key in your Steam Integration Settings in FirstLook and click ‘Save’.

Featuring your Store Page and tracking Wishlists

After you’ve integrated your Steamworks with FirstLook, you can select an App ID from the dropdown as your Store Page. Whenever you promote your Store Page or ask for wishlists, this App ID will be used.

Manually entering your Store App ID

If haven’t added the WebAPI Key (yet), you can manually enter your Store App ID. This adds limited Wishlist and Public Playtime tracking for games that have a visible Steam Store page. Playtime tracking only works for public steam profiles and App IDs that have a public store page. Typically, your Playtest will not be visible on players’ profiles and can’t be tracked properly. For more accurate tracking, we recommend using the WebAPI Key.

Playtime Tracking

Using the the WebAPI Key, FirstLook will periodically fetch the ownership and playtime data for all your playtesters that have connected their Steam Account. This works for all your games, including hidden Playtests or games not displayed in the Steam Store.

Additionally, the Analytics Page now shows Steam Playtime data, unique players and avarage playtime for you to analyze.

Wishlist Tracking

Players can choose to make their profiles public, which includes their Wishlist status. FirstLook will fetch this data from Steam for all your playtesters, and if the status is available, it will be displayed in the Player Overview.

Player Privacy

FirstLook only tracks the public information of your playtesters and respects the Steam Profile Privacy settings. Players can control what information is visible on their profile, and FirstLook adheres to these settings.