Free to play games are best for monetization on mobile, but what about Steam? Do FTP games succeed on Steam? Anyone have resources I can read up on more about this?

They exist, and there seem to be several out there. Robocraft has been out for a decent amount of time, and seems to be successful. That said, many fail, I worked on one of those =) Steam takes a cut of everything, so it's important to be aware of that.

There are some incredible successful PC games that are free-to-play and are available on Steam. These games you probably already know: DOTA II and Team Fortress 2. Free-to-play games can succeed on Steam, although you really need to think about the business model you're going to apply. PC gamers tend to like cosmetic items better compared to items that have an effect on the balance of the game (and the economy of the game) compared to a mobile gaming audience - whom accept those type of monetization methods.

Some recent successes on Steam with a free-to-play model are: Paladins and Brawlhalla. You can find all the Steam games that are free to play on this link: http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Free%20to%20Play/ - you can take a look at those games listed there and run them through SteamSpy to see how they're performing and what they've done!

Hope that helps you out a bit!

It depends on the space you're in as well. There was a great game called "sins of a dark age" on steam that failed because it was a Moba. It even had steam market/trading/store integration with crafting/set drops similar to dota2, but it just couldn't complete to be another moba on steam (Even though imho it played much nicer than dota2).

We recently ported one of our mobile games to Steam to test the waters. It isn't a license to print money but it is certainly paying for the effort it took to port to PC/Mac. Our niche isn't overpopulated with paid versions so there isn't a bunch of competition for us. raccoonv mentioned Brawlhalla, which does seem to be doing pretty well for itself as PC doesn't have a lot of multiplayer beat-em-ups. I would definitely say away from the currently hot paid genres like shooters and MOBAs (probably not survival MMO either) just so you don't get swallowed up.

There are still 'few' f2p games on Steam, and they only generate about 20% of the total revenue, though bear in mind a very small amount of these games generate the bulk of that revenue (think Dota/TF/etc.)

After crunching the numbers for a client (some of it not public), I advised against going f2p on Steam. Premium / retail is still less risky (you *could* make more money in F2P, but for someone like you and I, that's highly unlikely and the likelihood of breaking even with premium is simply more appealing).

There are still 'few' f2p games on Steam, and they only generate about 20% of the total revenue, though bear in mind a very small amount of these games generate the bulk of that revenue (think Dota/TF/etc.)

After crunching the numbers for a client (some of it not public), I advised against going f2p on Steam. Premium / retail is still less risky (you *could* make more money in F2P, but for someone like you and I, that's highly unlikely and the likelihood of breaking even with premium is simply more appealing).

It's also worth noting that MANY f2p games on steam have no population, and die off simply because they can't afford marketing to bring people to the game.

Going F2P requires huge investment if you want to succeed.