Overview

An important part of managing your Steamworks Partner account is deciding who has access to your Applications, and what type of access you'd like to give them. The configuration you choose may differ based on your relationship of individual users and teams involved. For example, if your game is being distributed on Steam by a publisher, then it's useful for both the publisher and the development studio to be set up with access to the game, even if payments for sales of the game will only go to one of the entities. There are a few ways to grant others access to your applications.

You may also want to read more about how Applications work on Steam, or learn more about Managing Your Steamworks Account.

Method 1: Individual Steam Accounts/Groups

Using this method, an administrator would create a group in your partner account that only includes access to specific Applications, and then directly adds any individual Steam accounts to that group. To create and manage groups, please visit Add/Manage Groups.

This method has the following advantages:

• You can explicitly set permissions for each individual user account.
  
• You can control exactly which individual user accounts have access to your Application.
  
• You can control exactly which packages are autogranted to the individual user accounts in the group. Learn more about Autogrant Packages.

Method 2: Multiple Steamworks Partner Accounts

This method may be useful when a publisher is sharing access with a development studio, or when both parties already have Steamworks partner accounts set up. To enable multiple Steamworks Partner accounts on the same Application, please visit Application Management Sharing.

This method has the following advantages:

• You can prevent Developer Comp access to other Applications in your account.
  
• You can delegate management of individual user accounts to the owner of the other Steamworks Partner account.

Potential disadvantages include:

• You will not be able to manage individual permissions - all Steamworks partners will have full access to manage the Application within their own Steamworks account.

FAQ

Ultimately how you choose to manage Applications in your account is up to you. There is no single correct way of doing it, so it depends on how your teams are organized, whether you are working with a publisher, and your own preferences.

• Can I get access to real-time sales reports if my game is published by a different company?

  A. Yes. Your Steam account will either need to be added to the publisher's Steamworks account, or sales reporting visibility can be granted to your own Steamworks account. If the latter, you'll need some help from Valve to get this set up, so please contact Valve if this is the case.
  

• If my game is published by a different company, how do I create a new Steamworks account without creating a new app and paying the app fee?

  A. You can sign up as a limited Steamworks account by following this link. This sign-up process includes just the NDA and a collection of company or individual contact information. If you also need to enter bank and tax information for receiving payments, you should not use that path.

Transferring Applications

If you need to transfer a game or other application to another Steamworks partner account, it can be done entirely through a set of tools built into the Steamworks website. These tools manage the approval process and keep a history of transfers.

Please see Transferring Applications for more details, requirements, and frequently asked questions.