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How to Build a Steam Wishlist Before Your Game

Data-driven strategies for building Steam wishlists before launch, with real benchmarks, conversion rates, and case studies from games that broke through.

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How to Build a Steam Wishlist Before Your Game Launches

TL;DR: Most wishlists come from Steam's own internal traffic (Discovery Queue, Browse, Search), not external marketing. External marketing's job is to trigger Steam's amplification. Target 7,000 wishlists to hit Popular Upcoming, 30,000-50,000 for Gold tier revenue. Enter Next Fest with at least 2,000 wishlists since it amplifies existing momentum rather than creating it.

Key Takeaways

  • Wishlist conversion rates: 15% (under 5K wishlists), 20% (5-40K), 23% (40-100K), 25% (100K+)
  • The Discovery Queue accounts for nearly half of page visits in the first two weeks post-launch, and the algorithm picks favorites by Day 3
  • Steam Next Fest amplifies existing momentum: games entering with fewer than 1,000 wishlists earned a median of 462 during the fest
  • Content creators often drive more wishlists than traditional press, with quality of fit mattering more than subscriber count
  • The best wishlist strategy is making something people can't stop talking about; everything else is amplification

Your wishlists determine whether your launch day is a victory fanfare or a game over screen. Every wishlist is a person who told Steam "email me when this comes out," and on launch day, Steam does exactly that. The size of that email blast is one of the few things you can actually control. (For the difference between wishlists and Steam followers, and when each matters more, see Steam Followers vs. Wishlists Explained.)

Here's what this guide covers: the real numbers behind wishlist benchmarks, which channels actually drive wishlists (ranked by data, not vibes), how to maximize Steam Next Fest, and when to stop worrying about wishlists and ship.

Table of Contents

Why Wishlists Matter More Than You Think

20,282 games released on Steam in 2025. Only 608 hit 1,000 reviews. That's a 2.99% success rate, according to Chris Zukowski's annual analysis at howtomarketagame.com. Your wishlist count is the clearest early signal of whether you'll be in that 3% or the other 97%.

Wishlists do three things for you.

First, the launch email blast. When you hit the release button, Steam sends an email and a mobile push notification to every person who wishlisted your game. This is free, automatic, and reaches people who've already expressed interest. It's the single most valuable marketing event in your game's life. You can't buy this kind of targeting.

Second, pre-launch visibility. Your game can appear on Steam's "Popular Upcoming" list and in the Discovery Queue before it even launches. The threshold for Popular Upcoming is roughly 7,000 wishlists accumulated within a short window. Getting on that list triggers a visibility snowball where more eyeballs lead to more wishlists, which lead to more eyeballs.

Third, a sanity check. Wishlists are the market telling you whether they care. If you've been marketing for six months and you're sitting at 300 wishlists, that's information. Painful, but useful. Maybe the game isn't clicking with Steam's audience. Maybe your Steam page needs a complete overhaul. Either way, you need to know before launch day, not after.

Valve's own documentation says there's "no minimum number of wishlists your game must have before Steam starts showing it to users." That's technically true. But Chris Zukowski's data tells a different story about what happens in practice, which we'll get to.

The Benchmarks: How Many Wishlists You Actually Need

There's no universal magic number. But there are benchmarks that separate tiers of outcomes, and Chris Zukowski has spent years collecting the data to define them.

RPG-style tier progression for wishlist targets

His benchmark tiers, based on gross lifetime revenue:

  • Bronze ($0 to $10K): Games that underperformed by most measures. Typically fewer than 10 reviews. The Steam algorithm won't recommend them.
  • Silver ($10K to $249K): Possibly profitable if you're solo or part-time. Often stall out around 100 to 200 reviews. The algorithm mostly ignores them.
  • Gold ($250K to $999K): "Real Steam." This is where Valve starts promoting your game actively. Daily Deals become available. The algorithm works for you instead of against you.
  • Diamond ($1M+): Life-changing money. Valve sends you chocolate at Christmas. Not a joke.

The critical threshold: games that earn at least 1,000 reviews typically correlate with $150K or more in gross revenue. That's the Gold tier minimum.

So how many wishlists do you need to get there? Based on Simon Carless's data at Game Discover Co, wishlist-to-first-week-sale conversion rates break down like this:

Wishlists at Launch Median Conversion Rate
Under 5,000 15%
5,000 to 39,999 20%
40,000 to 99,999 23%
100,000+ 25%

If you have 10,000 wishlists at launch with a 20% conversion rate, that's 2,000 first-week sales. At $15 per copy, you're looking at $30,000 in week one before Steam's cut. That's silver tier territory.

If you want Gold tier results, you're generally looking at 30,000 to 50,000 wishlists at launch as a realistic target. Games that break into Diamond territory often launch with 100,000 or more.

The 7,000 wishlist benchmark keeps coming up in Zukowski's research. It's roughly the threshold where your game appears on the Popular Upcoming list. It's also the Gold tier cutoff for wishlists earned during a single Steam Next Fest. If you can hit 7,000 before launch, you're in the conversation.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: 7,000 is the floor, not the ceiling. Many games launch with 7,000 wishlists and still land in Silver tier. The conversion rate matters, the genre matters, and most of all, the game itself matters. Zukowski calls it "the magic," that ineffable quality that makes Steam's algorithm fall in love with your game.

Wishlist Conversion Rates: What the Data Shows

A common rookie mistake is assuming most of your wishlists will convert. They won't.

Even a great game converts only about 20 to 25% of wishlists into first-week sales. A typical game converts around 15%. And that's just the launch window.

Why so low? People wishlist aspirationally. Simon Carless has written extensively about how most people's Steam libraries are full of games they've never played. Games are an aspirational hobby. People buy games because they want to identify as someone who plays those types of games, but they might not have the time or the actual will to follow through.

Wishlists work the same way, just one step earlier in the funnel. Someone sees your game, thinks "that looks cool," clicks the wishlist button, and moves on. They may or may not open the launch email. They may or may not buy during the first week.

This isn't cause for despair. It's cause for realistic planning.

If you need 5,000 first-week sales to break even, and your expected conversion rate is 20%, you need 25,000 wishlists at launch. Work backward from your financial needs, not forward from some arbitrary target.

Genre affects conversion rates too. Zukowski's data consistently shows that "crafty-buildy-strategy-simulation" games, horror, and idle/incremental games convert well because Steam's audience is hungry for them. A narrative visual novel or a 2D platformer might convert at the lower end, even with identical wishlist counts.

The Discovery Queue: Your Silent Partner

Most developers don't think about the Discovery Queue enough. Zukowski's 2025 survey data revealed something striking: the DQ accounts for nearly half of a game's total page visits during the first two weeks after launch.

Here's how it works. On launch day, Steam puts every new release into the Discovery Queue, a little widget that shows users 12 games matched to their play history. On Day 1, most games get a baseline of roughly 25,000 to 35,000 impressions. Equal footing.

By Day 3, the algorithm starts picking favorites. Games that players actually click on, wishlist, and buy get their DQ impressions doubled or tripled. Games that players skip get throttled. Hard.

The median impressions by revenue tier, across the first 10 days post-launch:

  • Diamond tier: 665,000 DQ impressions (32% of total traffic)
  • Gold tier: 250,000 DQ impressions (45% of total traffic)
  • Silver tier: 126,000 DQ impressions (45% of total traffic)
  • Bronze tier: 22,000 DQ impressions (54% of total traffic)

Bronze tier games don't even get the full Day 1 baseline. Zukowski found that games launching with fewer than 5,000 wishlists, unprofessional capsule art, and slow review accumulation get suppressed from the start. The DQ gives visibility to games that have already proven some external validation through content creators, festivals, or social media.

This is why wishlists matter even if Valve says they're "not a direct factor in algorithmic visibility." Your pre-launch wishlist count is a proxy for market validation. It tells the algorithm that people out there care about this game, and the algorithm responds accordingly.

Wishlist Sources Ranked by Effectiveness

Where do wishlists actually come from? This is where a lot of indie dev advice goes sideways. People spend months grinding on Twitter when the data shows something different.

Here's the ranking, based on Zukowski's research and case studies from dozens of successful launches:

  1. Steam itself (Discovery Queue, Browse, Search, More Like This)
  2. Steam Next Fest
  3. Content creators (YouTube, Twitch)
  4. Viral social media moments (TikTok, Reddit)
  5. Showcase events and festivals
  6. Press coverage
  7. Your own website and press kit
  8. Paid advertising

The counterintuitive finding: most wishlists for most games come from Steam's own internal traffic. Browse, search, "More Like This" recommendations, and the Discovery Queue. What developers who track their traffic sources consistently discover is that external marketing's job is to trigger Steam's internal systems—once the algorithm starts working for you, it does the heavy lifting. External marketing (social media, press, ads) drives a minority of wishlists for most indie games.

This doesn't mean external marketing is useless. It means its primary function is to trigger Steam's internal amplification. A viral TikTok doesn't convert millions of TikTok viewers into wishlisters directly. What it does is create a spike in wishlist velocity that pushes your game onto Popular Upcoming and into the Discovery Queue, where Steam's own machinery takes over.

Think of external marketing as the spark. Steam is the gasoline. Your job is to light the match and then get out of the blast radius.

Steam Next Fest: The Big One

Steam Next Fest happens three times a year (February, June, October). It's the single largest wishlist-generating event available to indie developers. Every game with a demo can participate.

Digital festival marketplace with demo booths

But the results are wildly uneven.

Zukowski surveyed 208 developers after the February 2025 Next Fest (about 9.2% of the 2,244 participating games). Here's what he found:

Tier Wishlists Earned During SNF
Diamond 10,000+
Gold 7,000 to 9,999
Silver 1,000 to 6,999
Bronze 0 to 999

The single most important finding: it takes wishlists to earn wishlists.

Games entering Next Fest with fewer than 1,000 wishlists earned a median of 462 new ones. Not a single game in that bracket broke into Diamond tier. Games entering with 10,000 to 99,999 wishlists earned a median of 6,360 new ones. Games entering with 100,000+ earned a median of 23,731.

The data is clear: you need at least 2,000 wishlists before entering Steam Next Fest to see meaningful results. Below that, the lift is minimal.

How to Maximize Steam Next Fest

Do your last Next Fest before launch. This is Zukowski's core recommendation and the data backs it up. The games with the most wishlists entering SNF earn the most during it.

Launch your demo well before Next Fest. Cairn launched their demo a full year before their SNF appearance. They used that time to enter 18 other festivals, collect feedback, and accumulate 32,000 followers. When Next Fest arrived, they were already on the Popular Upcoming chart on Day 1.

Don't use Next Fest to "kick off momentum." This is the most common mistake. Devs think Next Fest will be their jumpstart. The data shows the opposite. SNF amplifies existing momentum. It doesn't create it from nothing.

Push hard on the first two days. Valve gives all games roughly equal visibility during Days 1 and 2. By Day 3, the algorithm starts sorting winners from losers. If your game hasn't gained traction by then, your SNF impressions drop off a cliff.

Most people won't play your demo. That's fine. Zukowski's data shows that 68 to 88% of wishlists during Next Fest come from people who never downloaded the demo. They wishlist based on your capsule art, screenshots, and trailer. The demo unlocks your visibility in the festival. It's the entry ticket, not the main show.

Use a separate Steam page for your demo. Exactly half of SNF participants did this in February 2025. The separate page lets you collect reviews on the demo, which gives you real player feedback before launch. Don't be afraid of negative demo reviews. Listen to your players.

The Three Tiers of Next Fest Outcomes

Zukowski describes three outcome tiers from years of studying Next Fest:

Tier 1 (Sub-1,000 wishlists): First game, wrong genre for Steam, no marketing, bad timing. Preventable with basic market research and preparation.

Tier 2 (1,000 to 5,000 wishlists): You followed the playbook. Good genre, proper staging. But the game didn't "spark." Content creators played it but didn't go crazy. It got into some festivals but not 18 of them. These games typically cross the 7,000 total wishlist threshold, which is good, but Next Fest wasn't transformational.

Tier 3 (20,000 to 300,000 wishlists): The magic tier. Something viral happened just before or during Next Fest. A TikTok exploded. Content creators went wild. A major showcase featured the game days before SNF started. These games "win" Next Fest.

The uncomfortable truth about Tier 3: you can't manufacture it. You can set up the conditions (good genre, great trailer, content creator outreach), but whether the spark catches fire depends on the game itself. Zukowski's advice: "Focus on the game. Make it a good game that people go crazy for. That is what you need to spend your brain power on."

Content Creators and Press Coverage

The right content creator playing your game can add thousands of wishlists in a single day. The wrong hundred creators playing it might add dozens.

Content creator livestream setup

Quality over quantity, but with a twist: you need to reach a lot of people to find the ones who'll actually care. The pattern we see most often is that mid-tier creators (10K-100K subscribers) who actually play your genre convert better than mega-creators who cover everything.

LORT's team used jestr.gg for content creator outreach before their October 2025 Next Fest. They got over 2 million views and 57 videos from the campaign, helping them go from 45,000 to 85,000 wishlists across demo launch and Next Fest combined.

Cairn's team reached out to about 400 content creators before Next Fest. They specifically targeted creators who had covered previous Steam Next Fest demos. Smart targeting: find people who already make "SNF roundup" content and give them something worth featuring.

Timing matters too. Cairn's marketing manager said they reached out to creators one week before Next Fest: "Not too late as to be in the bulk of emails, and not too early to be forgotten."

For this to work, you need assets ready to go. A professional press kit with screenshots, trailer, key art, and a compelling description. Every content creator who might cover your game should be able to find everything they need in under 60 seconds. Tools like presskit.gg exist specifically to solve this problem: one URL with everything a creator or journalist needs, hosted on your own domain.

Traditional press coverage (PC Gamer, IGN, Rock Paper Shotgun) still matters, but the impact has shifted. A mid-tier YouTuber who plays your game for 30 minutes often drives more wishlists than a written preview on a major outlet. Content creators give people a vicarious experience of the game. Articles describe it. The difference matters.

Social Media: TikTok, Reddit, Twitter

Social media is the highest-variance wishlist channel. Most posts do nothing. A few go supernova.

TikTok

YAPYAP's first announcement TikTok earned 1.5 million views. The team said most of their impressions came from "showcase content creators" making content from their trailer. TikTok works best for games with strong visual hooks: something goofy, creepy, satisfying, or weird enough to stop someone mid-scroll.

The formula that works: short devlog clips, before-and-after footage, satisfying mechanics on loop, bugs played for comedy. Repost the same clips to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

But TikTok is a slot machine. You can post 50 clips and have one randomly hit. The YAPYAP team had years of experience and a game in the white-hot "friend slop" genre. If your game is a quiet narrative experience, TikTok probably isn't your channel.

Reddit

Subreddits like r/gamedev, r/indiegaming, r/indiedev, and genre-specific communities can drive genuine interest. But Reddit's immune system rejects anything that smells like marketing. Authentic devlog posts work. "Hey check out my game!" posts get downvoted into oblivion.

Screenshot Saturday threads in r/gamedev are a good recurring opportunity. Post consistently, respond to comments, be a real person. The wishlists trickle in slowly, but they're high-quality because the people there are actively looking for new games.

Twitter/X

Useful for connecting with other devs and content creators, less useful for driving wishlists directly. Most indie game tweets reach hundreds of people, not thousands. The exception is when a dev tweet goes viral through quote-tweets and shares, which you can't reliably engineer.

Twitter's real value is relationship-building with the people who'll cover your game later.

Festivals and Showcases Beyond Next Fest

Steam Next Fest isn't the only festival that matters. In some ways, it's not even the best one for your specific game.

Zukowski tracks smaller festivals at howtomarketagame.com/festivals. Many of these events have fewer games competing for attention and are more closely aligned to specific genres. A horror game might get more traction at a horror-themed indie showcase than at the general-audience Next Fest.

Cairn appeared in 18 festivals before their Steam Next Fest. Each one provided a small burst of wishlists and, critically, demo feedback that helped them polish the experience.

The "double jump" strategy, documented by Zukowski after studying Strange Scaffold's I Am Your Beast, involves pairing a major showcase appearance with Next Fest. The team got featured on the PC Gamer Show, launched their Steam page during the broadcast, and entered Next Fest 24 hours later. In 48 hours, they earned 31,000 wishlists. Their previous hit, El Paso Elsewhere, took over two years to accumulate the same number.

The big showcases that feed into Steam visibility, as tracked by Simon Carless at Game Discover Co: the PC Gaming Show, Day of the Devs, Wholesome Direct, Guerilla Collective, and The MIX. Getting a free slot requires having a genuinely interesting game. Paid slots can cost $25,000 to $50,000, which puts them out of reach for most solo devs.

Smaller showcases are more accessible. LudoNarraCon is excellent for narrative games. Genre-specific events pop up regularly. Apply to everything that fits. Each appearance is a chance to compound visibility.

Paid ads for wishlists are generally a bad investment for most indie games.

Two diverging paths: success vs burning money

LORT's team "spent a bunch on ads when they announced the game but were disappointed by the return, so skipped it for Steam Next Fest." This is the most common outcome I see developers report.

The math usually doesn't work. Facebook and Instagram ads for game wishlists typically cost $1 to $3 per wishlist. If you need 20,000 wishlists, that's $20,000 to $60,000 in ad spend. For a game that might gross $50,000 total, that's burning runway you don't have.

Paid ads can make sense in narrow circumstances:

  • Retargeting people who've already visited your Steam page. These are warm leads. Conversion is higher.
  • Supporting a specific event. Cairn ran a small ad budget during Steam Next Fest to amplify organic momentum. The key word is "small."
  • Games with very high price points or strong genre fit. A $30 simulation game with proven high conversion might justify ad spend.

For most indie devs, the money is better spent on a professional trailer editor, quality key art, or attending a physical event like PAX or GDC where you can demo the game in person.

Your Website and Press Kit as Wishlist Drivers

Every Google search for your game's name should lead to a page you control, and that page should funnel people to your Steam wishlist button.

Your press kit is part of this pipeline. When a journalist or content creator searches for your game, they should find a professional press kit with everything they need: screenshots, trailer, key art, a one-paragraph hook, and a prominent link to your Steam page. Every press kit page visit is a potential wishlist conversion, either directly (the visitor wishlists) or indirectly (the visitor creates content that drives others to wishlist).

This is why hosting your press kit on your own domain matters. A press kit at yourgame.com/press builds your domain authority and captures search traffic. A press kit on someone else's platform gives that traffic to them. Tools like presskit.gg let you self-host a professional press kit without building it from scratch.

The journalist-to-wishlist pipeline: press kit visit, then article or video, then Steam page, then wishlist. Each step loses people. Make the first step as frictionless as possible.

The Wishlist Plateau and How to Break Through It

Every game hits a plateau. You launch your Steam page, get an initial burst of wishlists, and then growth flattens to a slow trickle. This is normal.

Growth line breaking through a wall

The typical pattern: a spike when the Coming Soon page goes live, a gradual decline to a baseline rate, and then periodic spikes around marketing beats (trailer drops, festival appearances, content creator coverage).

Games that stall out at the Silver tier often get stuck in what Zukowski calls the "middle domino" problem. The game is good enough to attract some wishlists but doesn't have "the magic" that triggers algorithmic amplification. Reviews settle around 100 to 200 and stop growing.

How to break through:

Stack marketing beats close together. Don't spread events across months. Zukowski's "double jump" concept applies broadly. A trailer launch on Monday, a demo release on Wednesday, and a festival appearance on Friday creates compounding velocity that a single event can't match.

Update your demo. If your demo's been live for months, add new content and re-announce. Cairn updated their demo with new features before Next Fest and used it as a reason to re-engage content creators who'd already played the first version.

Reconsider your Steam page. If wishlists have flatlined, your capsule art, screenshots, or trailer might not be resonating. Run them past other devs (the HTMAG Discord is good for this). Sometimes the fix is a new first screenshot, not more marketing spend.

Try a new channel. If you've been grinding on Twitter with diminishing returns, try TikTok or Reddit devlogs. If you've been doing social media exclusively, try direct content creator outreach.

Wishlist Age and Timing

Older wishlists convert at lower rates than recent ones. Someone who wishlisted your game two years ago is less likely to buy on launch day than someone who wishlisted last week. They may have forgotten about your game, lost interest, or bought something else.

This is why Valve recommends putting up your Coming Soon page early but staying engaged over time. The Steamworks docs say there's "no strong downside to having a store page up for a long time," and that's true for accumulation. But a wishlist full of two-year-old entries will convert worse than one full of recent additions.

The practical implication: front-load your biggest marketing pushes close to launch. Steam Next Fest should be your last festival before release. Your biggest content creator push should happen in the final weeks. The wishlists you gain in the month before launch are your most valuable.

Cairn is an instructive case. Their Coming Soon page was live for over a year, and they accumulated wishlists steadily through festivals and demo play. But their biggest spikes came in the final months, including 32,000 followers before their Next Fest appearance. The early period built foundation. The late period built conversion-ready momentum.

Converting Wishlists to Sales

Accumulating wishlists is only half the job. You also need to trigger the notifications that convert them.

Steam sends wishlist emails on four occasions:

  1. Game launch (release or Early Access). Automatic.
  2. Early Access to Full Release transition. Automatic. This is essentially a second launch email.
  3. Discounts of 20% or more. Any discount type: weeklong, seasonal sale, Daily Deal, custom.
  4. Demo release. You control the timing of this notification manually, up to two weeks after the demo goes live.

There's a two-week cooldown between emails for the same game. During high-traffic periods like seasonal sales, this cooldown can extend further.

Not all wishlisters will receive the email. They must have a verified email address and have their notification preferences enabled. Some percentage of your wishlist is effectively unreachable.

The discount notification is your long-tail conversion tool. Every time your game goes on sale at 20% off or more, another batch of wishlisters gets reminded. This is why the "discount staircase" strategy (progressively deeper discounts over time) exists. Each step re-engages a new slice of your wishlist.

Normal wishlist deletion rates run around 9 to 12%. Don't panic when you see deletes. Some people buy the game (which removes it from their wishlist). Others lose interest. It's expected.

The Honest Summary

Here's what actually works, distilled from the data:

Make a game Steam's audience wants. The top genres by hit rate in 2025 were Open World Survival Craft (20.8% of releases hit 1,000 reviews), Farming (8.3%), and Roguelike Deckbuilder (5.1%). Narrative, Simulation, Horror, RPG, and Idle/Incremental games had the most total hits. Genre selection isn't everything, but swimming with the current is easier than swimming against it.

Get your Coming Soon page up early. There's no downside, and every day it's live is a day wishlists can accumulate.

Launch your demo months before Steam Next Fest. Use smaller festivals to test and polish. Enter Next Fest with at least 2,000 wishlists, ideally much more.

Make your Steam page excellent. Your capsule art, first screenshot, and trailer's opening five seconds determine whether a Discovery Queue user clicks or skips. Most of your launch traffic will come from the DQ. Make those first impressions count.

Have your press kit ready before you need it. Opportunities to get covered come without warning. A content creator discovers your game, a journalist sees it trending, a festival organizer needs a last-minute addition. If your assets aren't organized and accessible, you miss the moment.

Stack marketing beats close to launch. Trailer drop, demo update, content creator push, festival appearance. Compound them. Velocity matters more than total volume.

Don't expect miracles from paid ads or any single channel. The data consistently shows that Steam's own internal traffic drives most wishlists for most games. External marketing creates the spark. The game itself, and how Steam's algorithm responds to real player interest, determines everything else.

And if your wishlists are low despite doing everything right? Zukowski's advice, delivered after years of studying hundreds of games: "Focus on the game. Make it a good game that people go crazy for." Sometimes the marketing isn't the problem. Sometimes you need to ship this one, learn from it, and make the next game better.

Desktop Defender entered Steam Next Fest with 200 followers and earned 20,000 wishlists during the festival. The solo dev built it in about two weeks. It worked because the game had something players wanted: a fun idle auto-battler that sits in the corner of your screen while you do other things. No amount of marketing genius could have manufactured that response for a game people didn't want to play.

The best wishlist strategy is making something people can't stop talking about. Everything else is amplification.

Free Tool: Wishlist Calculator — Calculate how many wishlists you need for a successful launch based on your target revenue. Runs in your browser, no signup required.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many wishlists do I need before Steam Next Fest?

You need at least 2,000 wishlists to see meaningful results. Games entering with fewer than 1,000 earned a median of 462 during the fest, and not a single one broke into Diamond tier. The games that "win" Next Fest are the ones with existing momentum.

Do paid ads work for wishlist building?

Generally, they're a bad investment. Facebook/Instagram ads typically cost $1-3 per wishlist. For 20,000 wishlists, that's $20,000-60,000 in ad spend, which often exceeds the gross revenue of the game. The money is usually better spent on a professional trailer or quality key art.

Why did my wishlist growth plateau?

Every game hits a plateau after the initial announcement burst. To break through: stack marketing beats close together (trailer + demo + festival appearance within days), update your demo with new content, reconsider your Steam page (capsule art, screenshots, trailer opening), or try a new channel.

Should I put up my Coming Soon page early or wait?

Put it up early. Zukowski's data shows there's no strong downside to having a store page up for a long time. Wishlists accumulate over time, and you need all the time you can get. Just stay engaged with updates so wishlists don't go stale.

Dive deeper into each aspect of steam wishlists:

Last updated: February 2026. Data sources: howtomarketagame.com (Chris Zukowski), Game Discover Co (Simon Carless), Steamworks Documentation, and case studies from developers who shared their numbers publicly.

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