SteamDeckHQ Update: The Six Month Anniversary

I am sitting here almost at a complete loss for words as I never imagined a day like this. 6 months ago, this journey started and I don't believe I could have ever imagined ending up here. To call my mind blown is an understatement to how I feel as far as everything has happened. So, I wanted to take this time to show you all what has happened on every front of SteamDeckHQ (SDHQ), as well as take time to address a couple things I would like to.

About Me (BBQKITTY/Noah Kupetsky)

Before I begin, let me introduce myself! My name is Noah Kupetsky, though I go by BBQKITTY as my gaming handle. I am the mind behind SDHQ and run the show. All reviews, news, and some of our guides come from me. I also am the one behind Twitter and our full-length YouTube videos. I have been gaming ever since I can remember and started PC gaming exclusively around the PS3 era. I also fell in love with portable gaming, so when I saw the Steam Deck was going to get released, I knew I had to have one. And when I did...well I enjoyed it so much, I decided to make a website to help others run their games as best as possible!

I decided to prioritize a few things that I felt other outlets weren't doing as much, but the biggest one was interactivity. I love interacting and talking to everyone, learning about their favorite games and talking shop are just so much fun. With SDHQ, I decided Twitter would be my main focus and interacting would be what brings it all together. I can happily say we have over 13.1k tweets so far because of it and I definitely won't stop there!

The Original SDHQ

You may be surprised, but this version of the website you see isn't the first one. 6 months ago, when we first went live, I actually designed the website in Squarespace. This was a rudimentary version, a shell of what it is now, but it got my point across of what I wanted to do. I wanted to review games on how they perform on the Deck and post different groups of settings for different priorities people have.

I made a Reddit post about this and got a good chunk of attention (around 400 upvotes) and this is where I met BitterJay. He reached out to me and offered his services as a web developer using WordPress. The design and aesthetic of the current website can be 95% attributed to him. I had my own list of must-haves, like the image comparison sliders, but the overall new design was his creation based on my "prototype". And here we are now!

SDHQ's Growth

When SDHQ first started, I focused primarily on Twitter and the website with the hopes of finding 3 new followers a day. I interacted with so many tweets that had the words "Steam Deck" in them that I actually got shadowbanned for 3 days for it (and us being a new account). But then...I can't exactly pinpoint when it happened, but we grew faster than I anticipated:

Twitter: 8,073 followers (1,345 a month)
YouTube: 1,289 subscribers
Instagram: 154 followers
Twitch (Not Active Yet): 120 followers
Discord Server: 771 members
Steam Curator: 1,269 followers
Patreon: 15 Patrons

On top of that, we have our website. In our first full month (July), we had around 34,374 views to the website. For a one month mark, that is incredible and we were so excited to keep going. But 5 months later, we grew to over 700,000 views to the website in a month span (and on track to hit over 1 million).

To say this is incredible is an understatement. In just under 6 months, we had grown our viewership more than 20x what we had before! Seeing those numbers still completely baffles me, but seeing them just puts me at a loss for words, and yes, these view numbers and activity has been steadily increasing, even now!

FUN FACTS:

Our most viewed reviews since our creation are:

1. God of War (2018) - 36,933
2. Elden Ring - 20,773
3. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered - 13,805
4. Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition - 12,764
5. Red Dead Redemption 2 - 11,077
6. High on Life - 11,025

A lot of our reviews break above the 7,000 viewership mark, but these ones went above and beyond. And while the others have been on our website for quite some time, High on Life released recently and has only been on the website for 6 days! I would say that is pretty amazing.

In the same fashion, our most viewed guides are:

1. World of Warcraft on Deck - 107,359 (yeah it is a big one)
2. Setting up EmuDeck - 69,106
3. The Proton GE Setup Guide - 54,616
4. Vibrancy Plugin with Crankshaft - 51,424
5. Save Storage Space with Deck Cleaner - 46,381
6. Playing 3DS Games Dual Screen - 23,277

Our guides tend to get more attention in general, seeing as how much they help, but those game reviews will always be our bread and butter!

SDHQ's Reach and Current Integrations

Because of this growth, we have had a LOT of opportunities that not a lot of people would have, especially this early on in a project. We are so thankful for it and want to take a moment to thank some people that have helped me out a lot in this journey:

Mekel Kasanova - Mekel is a journalist and content creator that reviews games as a whole and covers them on his YouTube channel, Twitch, and website. He has been doing this work for over 10 years and knows the craft through and through. While I was also a guest on his podcast, he has given me so much advice and helped me learn more about the industry than I could have expected to learn. This is my first time doing anything like this, so his help and advice has been invaluable. Words can't describe how much I appreciate all he has taught me so far. Thank you for everything you have done, and most of all, being a great friend who ruined Zack's voice in Crisis Core Reunion for me.

Olly Smith and Remy D. - Olly Smith and Remy D. are both wonderful people I had met on Twitter through our growth and have offered more help than I could have ever asked for. Olly is a editorial coordinator for multiple different outlets and has helped me learn even more about the craft and PR, while Remy has talked SDHQ up to some people he knows to help connect us. I can't thank you guys enough for all of your help.

Deckverse - One of the first people I met when I made my post on Reddit. With journalist experience, you have also been imperative to my current knowledge about conducting myself as a journalist in this field. He is a YouTuber who aspires to be the Digital Foundry equivalent for the Steam Deck and his videos are VERY high quality. Thank you so much for your help, advice, and being one of our supporters since our early beginnings.

While there are so many others I can thank, these guys went over and above to help teach me what I needed to learn to allow myself and SDHQ to grow. Thanks to that growth, we have been able to contact and get on the press list and work with multiple HUGE companies so far, including:

SEGA
Bandai Namco
Deck13
Team17
Square Enix
2K Games
And some bigger PR companies that work with games like Atomic Heart (which we did request) and multiple others.

We have reached out and consistently doing what we can to expand our integrations, but we have also been given the ability to speak to awesome indie developers like Sabotage Studios (Sea of Stars and The Messenger), Altered Orbit Studios (Selaco), Dennis (Lunistice), Kitfox Games (Dwarf Fortress), and many more!

We also launched our highest rating for games, the Best on Deck rating. This came with a badge that we give to games and allow developers to use in their advertisements. The Impaler developers were the first to add the badge to their Steam store page, which still astounds me.

The Future of SDHQ

Now the biggest question of them all, where do we go from here? Well, let me tell you:

• Continue to Grow - I know this kind of goes without saying, but we will do what we can to continue growing on all our fronts. This includes keeping our commitment to interactivity, posting multiple game reviews weekly, covering news, and creating guides. We want to reach as many people as possible, so Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube, Instagram, and our Steam Curator page will be as active as I can muster.
• Podcast - Yes this is still coming! We are going to be starting our own podcast or two (yes I came up with another idea for one).
• Decky Loader Plugin - We are currently in progress of making a Decky Loader plugin! It will be like our Crankshaft one, but adding in some extra little features like easily looking at settings in your quick access menu while in-game!
• Cultivating Relationships - We want to work with as many indie and bigger developers/publishers as we can! We are going to continue reaching out and working hard to bring information about how their games run on the Steam Deck, as well as optimizing them, as fast as we can!
• Streaming - Along with these relationships, we want to be able to showcase these games in a multitude of ways. This includes YouTube, but I want to stream them too. I find it exciting to be able to see first-hand how games run and actively see gameplay, so as we have the pleasure of covering more games earlier, we will be showcasing them more.

There is a lot more I can talk about, I have so many plans for what I want to do with SDHQ, but I want the rest to be a surprise. I also want to take a moment to show my gratitude to every single one of you. Currently, all the content, social media outreach, and PR is being done by me, so your patience as I handle all of these means a lot.

If you do want to support us as well, mentioning us on social media and spreading word of mouth helps a LOT. You can also become a Patreon member and get access to the behind-the-scenes channels where I discuss more about what is going on with SDHQ and upcoming posts/settings. Thank you guys again!