Valve Apologizes After Steam Error Kills Indie Game Launch

An indie game developer said that the launch of their game, Planet Centauri, became a disaster when a rare Steam bug struck the launch of their game.

The 2D sandbox game, Planet Centauri, spent more than ten years in early access before it reached its 1.0 release in December 2024. The game achieved 1.0 status in December 2024 after selling more than 100,000 copies while reaching 138,000 wishlists.

The developers predicted high launch sales but the game only managed to sell 581 copies during its first five days of release.

“This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work,” developer Laurent Lechat wrote on Reddit, as reported by Games Radar. He explained, “the game didn’t even appear on page 2 [of Steam trends]; we were invisible; the release was a total flop. And we never understood why until today.”

Nine months later, Valve admitted the failure was caused by a bug. Games Radar reports that in an email to the developers, Valve confirmed that Planet Centauri’s launch was affected by “a bug that impacted a very small number of game releases (less than 100 since 2015) where wishlist email notifications for the launch of a game were not sent.”

The game failed to reach the “new and trending” charts because none of the 138,000 wishlist subscribers received release day notifications, which are essential for chart success, as noted by PC Gamer.

The game received a Daily Deal promotion from Valve as part of their apology, but Lechat remained skeptical. “It’s incredible to win the lottery like this,” he said, adding that the offer couldn’t make up for the lost launch window, as reported by Games Radar.

Too drained to fight further, the small studio has moved on. “We’ve started a second project because it’s financially impossible to continue patching our game, and we’re moving forward, because it’s the only thing to do.” Lechat said, as reported by Games Radar.