I'm about to release a game on Steam, should I use giveaways to promote it ?

make 100000000 gibs

better give a few keys to youtubers and gamejournals. so people can see the game.
but well im always open for free stuff so make some giveaway

I have some experience in this. Recently i've done giveaway for one developer. And after first one ended he contacted me again and seemed pleased with results. He mentioned high traffic from giveaway page to steam store page, he was not sure about increase in sales, though. Anyway he asked me to make another giveaway, which is currently running.

I wouldn't do a mass giveaway for your game, that's just giving people the opportunity to install and never play. Small giveaways are the best way to go.

Don't put your game in bundles unless it is not selling. That's a mistake so many people make. They think that it'll get their name out there, but it just becomes a commodity for traders. There could be 1000s of copies of your game floating around on grey market sites. After that, you'd never be able to sell it at a fair price.

I have wishlisted games that I saw being given away on SG because they looked interesting and I never heard of them before. I do wishlist a small number of games so I have a list to choose from when I need something new to play.

random giveaways are only good for increasing the player base (e.g. for multiplayer games), and even that barely works.

Targeted giveaways, on the other hand, is by far the most useful thin.g you can do without an advertising budget. Give free copies to youtubers, streamers, twitchers, magazine reviewers, etc - just about anyone with followers/visitors/readers/subscribers/etc.

If they like it, they'll tell their audience about it. That will lead (a) to sales, and (b) to more influencers trying it, which will lead to more sales.
For a great example, read this article on Dawn of Man, which was a top selling game on Steam last week.

When I was entering giveaways, I did learn about some games from the giveaway list. I think that Khalaq's advice is good. Doing a 50 copy giveaway could advertise your game a little and get some people to own it and possibly try it.

With the deluge of games currently available, it's hard to get people to even install your game, but even if just a few people play it as a result of getting it for free, and the game is enjoyable enough, you might get some decent reviews.

Some comments about the Steam page:

Don't tell people you're a new dev and it's your first game. It feels like you're trying to make excuses up front for the game perhaps not being great. If you think that the game may not be ready, get some people to test it and provide feedback before release. If you already got enough feedback that you feel it's enjoyable, but could be more, it's fine to offer people venues to provide their feedback, just don't apologise up front.

"You don't know why or how" - this is just you saying "I don't know why or how". It's not a huge deal, but it's another one of those 'not too promising' phrases. Easiest would be to edit it out: "You are on your way to manage..." Better yet, think of something. You don't even have to put it in. It's just that the more you know about what's going on, the less generic your game becomes, and the more the player will feel that you have something to say.

To me, "You are alone and nobody will help you." is also not attractive, but it's not as much of a red flag as the others.

Personally, reading the page, I have no idea if the player is supposed to really do anything. I'm not much of a clicker player, but to me a clicker is when all you pretty much do is click a lot of times, as quickly as possible. The video doesn't really tell me if that's the case (I see no visual feedback to clicks), and it's not clear to me if any of my tasks as director are things I actually need to do or decide, or if it's all automatic and I just need to click a lot. It seems to me like there are indeed some tactical decisions to be made, but it's not clear. Perhaps include some more detailed gameplay videos.

Also, go over the game and fix typos. Here are a few I found in the video and images: 'potatoe' (I assume you mean 'potato'), 'ressources', 'mning robots'.

I'd say that your goal is to get as much feedback and possible and polish your game as much as possible before you release it, or send it to reviewers. Once people see the game, the opinions will be out there, and even if you then improve the game considerably, people will still see these early opinions. Try to make the best first impression you can.

you should get professional marketing advice. forum answers may not be the best answers.

i Don't think a mass giveaway would help you Promote the game but you already got my interest just by posting this lol . can we please have the game's name once it's released . you can try look for some content creators with fairely big Numbers of followers that have interest in indie games and they can agree to do a YouTube honest review and share their experience with the game in a short video or two and the game should be offered to them for free to review ofc and maybe an extra 2 or 3 keys for them to giveaway at the end of the video and that could benifit you both and is much better than mass giveaways on giveaway websites . that would help in my opinion as i usually come across some hidden gems on steam just by checking random YouTube videos

Nah, message influencers on youtube/twitch who have an interest in your type of game with a key, screenshot, and bullet point description. If you still want to do a giveaway just do 50 to get eyes on it as a headliner.

Going for a mass giveaway will not help you over here as it doesn't promote the game in anyway, rather price your game low and provide an opening discount I am sure people will start buying your game if they like it. Provide some youtubers, reviewers and normal people with some copies to review the game. There are some reviewers who are more interested in over inflating the actual game so avoid those as those are understood easily. Please include a bigger video 26 seconds is too less to judge a game.

A single 50 copy giveaway to get on the featured giveaways for a few days is a good way to get people to wishlist the game who wouldn't have heard about it otherwise. Maybe repeat every 6 months or so, to remind people it exists. A few hundred copies total over a few years shouldn't devalue the game much if at all.

I'll say the same of most answers here adding something new;
No, in general, it won't help you. On the other hand, there are certain groups where people are "forced" to play the game they win so that would be your best option if you want to give the game free here.

Now going a little bit more serious, in order to promote your game as a developer in steam, using curators connect will help you, I suggest starting from top1 and going down. (But take care if you do that) because there are a lot of curators whose reviews are "useless" (they see reviews as a joke and they write something that has nothing to do with the game).

I actually purchased some of the games I saw here