Feature Upvote

The time when we thought Feature Upvote was under a DDOS attack, but it was a video game having an incredible launch! -------------- In January, 2024, we thought that Feature Upvote was under a sustained hacking attempt. Our monitoring tools were reporting a massive spike in traffic, and our database servers were groaning under the weight of it all. When we investigated, it turned out that there was no hacking attempt. It was Enshrouded, a customer of ours, having a dream launch of their survival game! Enshrouded launched in January 2024 and their first weeks were phenomenal. They had 1.5 million players in the first days of Early Access. And they were using Feature Upvote to gather and manage player feedback. The sheer amount of traffic, the surge of player feedback, and the enormous amount of voting was higher than we had ever seen on our platform. A popular idea on Feature Upvote might typically get 50 or 100 upvotes. But Enshrouded's top ideas were getting 10,000+ votes. We did an emergency upgrade of our database server, and tuned some database queries. And even rewrote a small but critical piece of code that handled voting requests. Thankfully, this allowed our database to relax. And us too! And also thankfully, we could do this without any downtime for Enshrouded or our other customers.

Do you have experience as a community manager in the video games industry? And you are interested in a short-term, part-time freelance role? Then this is for you!

Listening to player feedback will your game better. But what if you aren’t getting any player feedback? Here are 3 tips to get the player feedback loop started.

We made a podcast for community managers in the video games industry. Episode 3: “If a community doesn’t exist and I want it to exist, I will make it” with Gabriel Sanchewski Hear how Gabriel came to create and run The Break Room, a private Discord server for community managers. (And learn how you can apply to join!) https://lnkd.in/dQhQiuix

We made a podcast for community managers in the video games industry. Episode 2: “I’m doing this because I love doing it” with Jeremy Fielding. Hear how community management took Jeremy from Florida to Skövde, a small city in Sweden with a massive impact in the Swedish gaming industry. https://lnkd.in/dg-5ikxD

How do you become a community manager? We asked experienced community manager James Croucher this question. Hear James's story on The Community Lounge podcast. https://lnkd.in/dd89ZPap

Coming soon: The Community Lounge. A podcast where community managers from video games studios and publishers tell their story of how they got into the role, talk about the challenges they face, and share tips to help other community managers. https://lnkd.in/dQk3kvax

We've been tweaking our search engine for better search results. Crucially, we now include a suggestion's vote count as a ranking factor. So the more popular a suggestion, the more likely it is to show at the top of search results.

Polish indie game development studio Thing Trunk uses Feature Upvote to engage their community on player feedback, moderate discussions up to 50% faster and prioritise what players want—and ultimately make Hellcard a better game. Co-founder Konstanty Kalicki says: ”At its core, Feature Upvote does just one thing—manage feature requests. “Feature Upvote doesn’t do more than we need. Most out-of-the-box solutions are bloated with features that make them expensive, cumbersome and unfocused for both us and users. ”I would definitely recommend Feature Upvote for companies that want to stay in touch with their community, be more agile and develop their products with current and prioritised feedback from their players.”

“Konstanty’s only regret is discovering Feature Upvote so late—only after Hellcard’s official launch—because he finds it perfect for testing games during early access.” That’s from our new customer story with indie Polish game studio Thing Trunk, makers of Hellcard. https://lnkd.in/d88hvSfM