Indie Game Marketing Timeline

The Indie Game Marketing Timeline: From Announcement to Post-Launch

TL;DR: Marketing runs in parallel with development, not after it. Phase 0 (12-18 months): research and infrastructure. Phase 1 (6-12 months): Coming Soon page and announcement. Phase 2 (3-6 months): the grind of devlogs, Next Fest, and creator outreach. Phase 3 (4-8 weeks): press sprint. Phase 4: launch week. Phase 5-6: post-launch and long tail.

Key Takeaways

• "I'll market it when it's done" has destroyed more indie games than any bug or scope creep
• Your Steam Coming Soon page should go up 6-12+ months before launch; Zukowski's data shows old wishlists don't go stale
• Steam Next Fest is the single biggest wishlist accelerator available; if you do nothing else, do Next Fest
• The Discovery Queue accounts for nearly half of post-launch page visits, and the algorithm picks favorites by Day 3
• The long tail (months 3-12) is where sustainable revenue lives; games that ship and vanish earn dramatically less than those with consistent updates

Your game's marketing starts the day you decide to make something people will pay for. Not the day you "feel ready." Not two weeks before launch when panic sets in. The day you commit. There are no extra lives on this one.

In 2024, 18,234 games shipped on Steam. Only 445 cracked 1,000 reviews, roughly the top 2.44% according to Chris Zukowski's annual analysis at howtomarketagame.com. The games that broke through didn't do it by accident. They ran sustained, boring, methodical marketing campaigns that started months (sometimes years) before launch day.

This is the timeline. Phase by phase, with specific actions, real numbers, and the mistakes that sink most first-time launches.

Table of Contents

1. The Myth That Kills Indie Games
2. Phase 0: Pre-Announcement (12-18 Months Out)
3. Phase 1: The Announcement (6-12 Months Out)
4. Phase 2: The Long Middle (3-6 Months Out)
5. Phase 3: Pre-Launch Sprint (4-8 Weeks Out)
6. Phase 4: Launch Week
7. Phase 5: Post-Launch (Month 1)
8. Phase 6: The Long Tail (Months 3-12)
9. Putting It All Together

The Myth That Kills Indie Games

"I'll market it when it's done."

This sentence has destroyed more promising indie games than any technical bug or scope creep ever could. It sounds reasonable. Finish the game first, then tell people about it. Focus on quality.

But marketing isn't a switch you flip. It's a fire you build. Small kindling first, then bigger logs, then you hope it catches.

Peglin's creators published their Coming Soon page two full years before launching into Early Access. What developers who've analyzed long runway strategies consistently report is that the early months feel slow, but the compound effect becomes visible around the 6-12 month mark. Those first six months? They earned 485 wishlists. Total. Then they entered a Steam Festival, kept their demo up, and let small streamers find it organically. By launch week they had 76,000 wishlists and sold $1,049,413 worth of copies in seven days.

That didn't happen because of a last-minute marketing blitz. It happened because Red Nexus Games spent two years adding kindling to the fire.

The development timeline and the marketing timeline run in parallel. They have to. If you're reading this and your game ships in three months with zero marketing, you can still salvage things. But the developers consistently reaching that top 2-3% on Steam are the ones who started early.

Phase 0: Pre-Announcement (12-18 Months Out)

You're deep in development. The game isn't ready to show. That's fine. This phase isn't about showing the game. It's about preparing to show it well.

Know Your Market Before You Build

Chris Zukowski publishes genre hit rates every year. In 2024, Open World Survival Craft games had a 24.47% chance of reaching 1,000 reviews. Farming games: 20.83%. 2D Platformers: 0.25%.

Read those numbers again.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't make a platformer. It means you should know exactly what you're walking into. The market data isn't a creative mandate. It's a reality check. Horror has been the #1 genre in Steam's top sellers for three consecutive years. Simulation, management, and roguelikes are consistently strong. Puzzle games and point-and-click adventures sit near the bottom every single year.

Research your specific niche. Look at comparable games (what Chris Zukowski calls "comps") on Steam. How many reviews do they have? What's their price point? How long were their Coming Soon pages active before launch?

Build Your Presence (Not Your Audience)

You don't need followers yet. You need infrastructure.

Set up a studio website. Claim social media handles. Start a devlog somewhere, even if three people read it. Create an account on whatever platforms you'll eventually use for marketing (Twitter/X, TikTok, Reddit, Discord). For guidance on creating a consistent presence, see our social media branding guide.

The goal isn't audience building. Not yet. The goal is having somewhere to point people when you do announce. Nothing kills announcement momentum faster than "follow us on our Twitter that we created yesterday."

Craft Your Hook

Every successful indie game can be described in one compelling sentence. "Pegboard pachinko meets roguelike deckbuilder" (Peglin). "Poker meets roguelike" (Balatro). "Farming sim but you're dead and it's beautiful" (Spiritfarer).

If you can't describe your game's hook in one sentence, your marketing will struggle at every phase that follows. Work on this now. Test it on people who aren't your friends. Friends lie to you about hooks.

Time commitment: 2-4 hours per week. Mostly research and setup.

Common mistake: Spending months perfecting a website nobody will see. Keep it simple. You'll redo it later anyway.

Phase 1: The Announcement (6-12 Months Out)

This is the moment your game becomes real to the public. It's not just a tweet. It's a coordinated series of actions designed to convert a stranger's momentary curiosity into a wishlist.

Your Steam Coming Soon Page Is Not Optional

Valve's own documentation says to "put up a Coming Soon page as soon as you are ready to start talking publicly about your game." They also note there's "no strong downside to having a store page up for a long time ahead of release."

Chris Zukowski's research on Song of Iron backs this up with hard data. That game had its Steam page active for 18 months before launch, collecting 89,082 wishlists. When he analyzed the cohort conversion data, wishlists from the earliest months converted at roughly the same rate as fresh ones. The average conversion rate was 8.02% with a standard deviation of only 2%. Old wishlists don't go stale.

Some publishers claim you should only announce six months out. They're wrong, at least for most indies. Publishers can generate 50,000 wishlists in six months because they have mailing lists, press contacts, and marketing budgets. Solo devs and small studios can't compress that timeline. You need every month you can get.

Your Coming Soon page needs, at minimum:

• A gameplay trailer (even 30 seconds of real gameplay)
• 5-6 screenshots showing core mechanics
• A short description with your hook
• Accurate genre tags (these feed Steam's recommendation algorithm)
• Capsule art that reads clearly at thumbnail size

No trailer? Chris Zukowski's research found no algorithmic penalty for launching without one. But the human penalty is real. A Coming Soon page without a trailer looks unfinished. It signals amateur hour to potential wishlisters and especially to press and content creators.

Coordinate the Announcement

Don't just hit "Post as Coming Soon" and hope for the best. The announcement itself is a marketing beat. Plan it.

Song of Iron's developer Joe Winter posted a Reddit announcement with an amazing trailer on r/gaming. It earned 135,000 upvotes and 13,702 wishlists in a week. That wasn't luck. The game had stunning visuals, and he matched them with the right subreddit at the right time.

Your announcement checklist:

• Announce trailer published to YouTube
• Steam Coming Soon page live and approved (submit 7+ business days early)
• Press kit ready with screenshots, trailer, key art, and game description
• Social media posts queued
• Reddit post planned (r/gaming for broad appeal, genre-specific subs for targeted reach)
• Reach out to press/influencers and offer exclusive coverage of the announcement

That last point matters more than most devs realize. As Chris Zukowski notes, festival organizers are more likely to accept your game if you're announcing during their festival. Journalists love to break news. Offering an outlet an exclusive first look can turn a quiet Coming Soon page into an article on a real publication.

Create Your Press Kit on Day One

Journalists and content creators will Google your game within minutes of hearing about it. If they find a bare Steam page and nothing else, most will move on.

A professional press kit hosted on your own domain gives them everything they need: high-res screenshots without watermarks, a downloadable trailer, your game's description, studio info, and contact details. This is the difference between a content creator spending 30 seconds on your game and spending 30 minutes writing about it.

presskit.gg lets you set this up in minutes on your own WordPress site. However you do it, have a press kit live before announcement day. Journalists who covered Rockfish Games specifically praised their press kit for including "high-quality MP4 trailers for media and content creators" alongside a well-organized screenshot folder.

Time commitment: 10-20 hours for the announcement itself. 3-5 hours per week after that for follow-up and community responses.

Common mistake: Announcing too quietly. Your Coming Soon page launch is a one-time event. You can't "re-announce" your game later. Make the first impression count.

Phase 2: The Long Middle (3-6 Months Out)

This is where most indie marketing campaigns die. The announcement got some attention. Maybe a few hundred wishlists. Now what?

Now you grind.

The Wishlist Treadmill

Wishlists are the currency of pre-launch marketing on Steam. Valve confirmed that wishlists aren't a direct factor in algorithmic visibility (with the exception of the Popular Upcoming tab). But they're critical for one thing: launch-day email notifications. When you hit the release button, every wishlister with verified email preferences gets notified. That initial surge of purchases determines whether Steam's algorithm picks up your game and shows it to more people.

How many wishlists do you need? There's no magic number, and anyone giving you one is guessing. But here are benchmarks from real launches:

• Peglin: 76,000 wishlists at launch, sold 80,204 copies in week one (38% conversion rate, which is unusually high)
• Song of Iron: 89,082 wishlists at launch, softer sales, roughly 8% conversion
• Games reaching 1,000 reviews typically correlate with $150K+ lifetime revenue (Chris Zukowski's benchmark)

The conversion rate from wishlist to sale varies wildly. 10-20% at launch is typical. So if you're targeting 10,000 first-week sales, you probably want 50,000-100,000 wishlists. For a more modest (and still successful) launch of 2,000-5,000 first-week sales, you're looking at 15,000-50,000.

Simon Carless at GameDiscoverCo found that Steam followers correlate to wishlists at roughly a 1:9.6 ratio. So if SteamDB shows a game with 5,000 followers, they likely have about 48,000 wishlists. You can use this to benchmark against comparable games. For a deeper dive into Steam's wishlist mechanics, see how Steam wishlists actually work.

Where Wishlists Actually Come From

In rough order of effectiveness for most indie games:

Steam Next Fest. This is the single biggest wishlist accelerator available to you. It runs three times a year (February, June, October). Peglin doubled their entire wishlist count during a single Steam Festival. You get to put up a free demo and Steam promotes it to millions of users. If you do nothing else on this list, do Next Fest. See our guide on content creator outreach for Next Fest and analyzing your Next Fest results.

Content creators. A single YouTube video from the right creator can add thousands of wishlists overnight. This is why your demo needs to exist and be good, and why your press kit needs to be ready. Content creators judge your game by its capsule art. If it doesn't look like a good YouTube thumbnail, many won't bother.

Social media. Reddit posts can go viral if your game has strong visuals or a clever hook. TikTok devlogs have launched games from zero to hundreds of thousands of views. Twitter/X is good for building a dev community but rarely drives major wishlist spikes alone.

Showcase events. Day of the Devs, Wholesome Direct, Guerrilla Collective, The MIX. These events give you visibility in front of curated audiences. Apply early (most want 6+ months lead time).

Your website and press kit. Every page of your web presence should funnel visitors to your Steam page. Your press kit, your studio site, your social bios. One click to wishlist.

Keep Showing Up

The long middle requires consistency, not brilliance. In practice, developers who show up weekly with even small updates build more wishlist momentum than those who disappear for months and return with big reveals. Post devlogs. Share GIFs of interesting mechanics. Respond to comments. Update your Steam page screenshots as the game improves.

Peglin's developers kept their demo up continuously for over a year. Small streamers found it organically. Each one brought a few more wishlists. None of it was dramatic. All of it compounded.

Time commitment: 5-10 hours per week. This is the grind. Schedule it like you schedule development time or it won't happen.

Common mistake: Going silent. Developers get absorbed in crunch and stop posting. Two months of silence kills your social media algorithm reach and your community's momentum. Even one post a week keeps things alive. For more pitfalls to avoid, see 5 Marketing Mistakes Indie Devs Keep Making.

Phase 3: Pre-Launch Sprint (4-8 Weeks Out)

You have a release date. Things get real.

Press and Content Creator Outreach

Start emailing 6-8 weeks before launch. Not 6-8 days.

Build a list of 200-400 contacts: journalists who cover your genre, YouTube channels that play similar games, TikTok creators, Twitch streamers. This sounds like a lot. It is. Most won't respond. That's normal. Content creators get flooded with pitches and they rarely say no explicitly. They just move on to the next email.

Your outreach email needs:

• A subject line with your genre and hook ("New roguelike deckbuilder with fishing mechanics, demo available")
• One paragraph about the game, maximum
• A link to your trailer
• A link to your press kit
• An offer to provide a Steam key or demo access
• A clear release date

Send keys to content creators about 1-2 weeks before launch. This gives them time to record, edit, and publish coverage that goes live around your release. Coordinate with larger outlets on embargo timing if you can.

Don't send mass emails through Mailchimp or similar services. Journalists didn't opt into your mailing list, and bulk emails to non-opted-in addresses violate CAN-SPAM and GDPR. Use your regular email. Send individual messages. Personalize them. Reference the journalist's recent work if you can.

Steam Next Fest (If Timing Allows)

If your release date is 1-3 months after a Next Fest window, participate. This is your demo's biggest stage.

Some developers worry about giving away too much in a demo. The data says otherwise. Peglin kept their demo up for over a year and still sold a million dollars in their first week. A good demo builds confidence. A missing demo raises questions.

During Next Fest itself, engage with players who try your demo. Respond to Steam Community discussions. Watch streamers play your demo and take notes. This feedback is pure gold, and the engagement signals boost your Next Fest visibility.

Polish Your Steam Page

Your store page is your highest-converting marketing asset. More people will buy your game based on its Steam page than any article, video, or tweet combined.

Before launch, make sure you have:

• 6-10 screenshots showing gameplay variety (not title screens, not concept art)
• An updated trailer that represents the final game
• A short description that hooks in two sentences
• A long description with visual formatting (headers, feature lists, GIFs)
• Accurate tags (Steam's tagging system drives its recommendation engine)
• Capsule art that reads at 462x174 pixels (the Steam Small Capsule, which is where most people first see your game)

Valve's documentation confirms that purchases and playtime are the strongest signals for algorithmic visibility. Tags matter. Language support matters. Your game's review score matters only if it drops below 40% positive. Wishlists, store page traffic, and conversion rate are not direct algorithmic factors.

That said, a well-optimized page converts more visitors into buyers, which generates the purchases that do feed the algorithm. It's indirect, but it's real.

Time commitment: 15-25 hours per week. This is the most intense pre-launch period. Press outreach alone can eat 10+ hours.

Common mistake: Sending all your outreach emails on the same day, two days before launch. Journalists and creators need lead time. Start early.

Phase 4: Launch Week

Deep breath. You've done the work. Now it's about execution and responsiveness.

Day One

When you hit the release button in Steamworks, several things happen automatically:

• Your game appears in the New Releases queue (this is your baseline visibility, explained below)
• Wishlist notification emails go out to everyone who wishlisted your game
• Your Coming Soon page converts to a live store page

Steam's New Releases queue works like this: your game enters a pool of newly released titles. Each time a logged-in user views the New Releases Queue, Steam generates a personalized queue, prioritizing titles with the fewest views. Users' tag preferences filter what they see. This baseline visibility gives every game a fair shot at initial impressions.

If those initial impressions convert to purchases, Steam's algorithm kicks in. Your game may appear on New and Trending, in tag-based recommendations, and eventually on Top Sellers lists. Good launch-day sales compound into more visibility, which compounds into more sales.

This is why pre-launch wishlists matter so much. They create the initial purchase spike that triggers algorithmic promotion.

Day One Checklist

• Confirm the release went live and the store page is correct
• Post on all social media channels
• Email your press list: "The game is live"
• Update your press kit with the launch trailer and any new screenshots
• Monitor Steam Community discussions and respond to bug reports immediately
• Check Steam reviews as they come in

Days 2-7

The first week sets the trajectory. Keep doing what you did on day one, but now add:

• Engage with every content creator who covers your game (retweet, comment, thank them)
• Respond to negative reviews if they contain actionable feedback (be gracious, never argumentative)
• Push a hotfix for any critical bugs within 24-48 hours (players forgive bugs; they don't forgive silence)
• Track your traffic sources in Steamworks (Marketing & Visibility, then Traffic Breakdown)
• Post a "thank you" devlog on Steam's Community Hub with player numbers or milestones

Watch your review ratio closely. Steam doesn't factor review score into algorithmic visibility as long as you're above 40% positive (Mixed or above). But players absolutely check review scores before buying. A "Very Positive" or "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating is a conversion multiplier.

Time commitment: Full time. Seriously. Clear your schedule for launch week. This isn't the week to start a new feature.

Common mistake: Disappearing after hitting the release button. Launch week requires more engagement than any other period. Players are watching to see if you're an active, responsive developer or an abandoner.

Phase 5: Post-Launch (Month 1)

The launch spike subsides. Sales drop. This is normal and expected. Don't panic.

The Post-Launch Dip

Almost every game experiences a sharp decline after the first week. Your daily sales will drop to a fraction of launch day. This is the natural curve. The question is whether you can sustain enough momentum to stay visible.

If your launch went well enough to generate reviews, you're building toward "Real Steam," Chris Zukowski's term for the tier where Valve starts actively promoting your game through curated features like Daily Deals. His research found the median Daily Deal game had 2,135 reviews, and 74% of games featured had over 1,000 reviews. Getting there takes time, but it starts with a strong first month.

Your Five Update Visibility Rounds

Steamworks gives every game five Update Visibility Rounds. These are powerful. When you trigger one, your game appears in a dedicated section on Steam's front page for up to 30 days (or 1 million impressions, whichever comes first). They show your game to people who own it or have it wishlisted.

Five rounds. That's it to start (Valve may grant more if you're selling well). Don't waste them. Save them for genuinely significant updates: major content patches, new features, transitions from Early Access to full release.

Don't burn a round on a minor bug fix. Don't burn one during a Steam seasonal sale (your round won't display during major sales anyway, but the 30-day timer still counts down). Plan these strategically across your first year.

Community Is Marketing

Your Steam Community Hub, Discord server, and social media are now customer support channels. Respond to bug reports. Acknowledge feature requests. Post patch notes.

Players who feel heard leave positive reviews. Positive reviews drive purchases. Purchases drive algorithmic visibility. The loop is straightforward, but it requires consistent attention.

Stardew Valley's ConcernedApe became legendary for solo-developing massive free content updates for years after launch. You don't need to match that output, but the principle holds: post-launch engagement builds the kind of loyalty that turns buyers into evangelists.

Time commitment: 10-15 hours per week on community management and marketing, alongside development work.

Common mistake: Using an Update Visibility Round in the first two weeks, when you're still riding launch visibility. Wait until the launch traffic has settled (usually 3-4 weeks) before triggering your first round.

Phase 6: The Long Tail (Months 3-12)

Most articles about game marketing stop at launch. That's a mistake, because for many successful indie games, the majority of lifetime revenue comes after the first month.

Steam Sales Are Your Second, Third, and Fourth Launch

Steam runs major seasonal sales roughly four times a year (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), plus themed sales throughout the year. Each one is a chance to bring your game back into the spotlight.

Key rules for sale discounting on Steam:

• Discounts of 20% or more trigger wishlist notification emails
• There's a 1-2 week cooldown between wishlist emails for the same game
• Valve limits how frequently you can discount (check Steamworks docs for current cooldown periods)
• Register for seasonal sales by their deadlines (usually posted 4-6 weeks in advance)

The "discount staircase" is a well-known strategy: start with 10-20% at your first sale, increase slightly at each subsequent sale. Players who wishlisted but didn't buy at launch often convert at the right price point.

Chasing the Daily Deal

Daily Deals are curated front-page featuring, and they're one of the most valuable promotional tools on Steam. Chris Zukowski's three-month study found the median game featured had 2,135 reviews. The average was 86.5% positive.

You can request a Daily Deal through Steamworks once you've built up enough sales history. Valve evaluates your sales numbers, discount history, wishlist counts, and other factors. In 2024, Valve expanded to four Daily Deal slots per day (up from two) and limited each game to one Daily Deal per year. The expanded slots mean more games get a turn, but you need to earn your way there through consistent sales.

Content Updates Keep the Fire Burning

Every major update is a marketing opportunity. New content, new features, DLC, seasonal events. Each one justifies:

• A Steam Community announcement
• An Update Visibility Round (if significant enough)
• Social media posts
• Press kit updates (new screenshots, updated description)
• Outreach to content creators who covered your game at launch

Hades shipped into Early Access and spent nearly two years there, releasing major content updates roughly every six weeks. Each update brought players back, generated coverage, and built the audience that made their 1.0 launch a phenomenon. Among the Sleep released a free "enhanced edition" update years after launch that brought the game back to life on Steam's charts.

DLC Timing

If you're planning DLC, give your base game at least 3-6 months to find its audience first. DLC released too early can frustrate players who feel the content should have been in the base game. DLC released at the right time reactivates your existing audience, generates fresh press coverage, and gives you another marketing beat.

When you release DLC, it triggers the same wishlist notification system as a new release if the DLC has its own store page. This is a second launch day for your game.

Time commitment: 5-10 hours per week on marketing, alongside whatever development work you're doing on updates or DLC.

Common mistake: Abandoning your game after launch to start your next project. The long tail is where sustainable revenue lives. Games that get consistent updates and community engagement for 12+ months earn dramatically more than games that ship and vanish.

Free Tool: Launch Checklist — Use our interactive launch checklist to track every pre-launch task. Runs in your browser, no signup required.

Putting It All Together

Here's the condensed timeline on one page. Print it. Tape it to your wall. Argue with it. Adapt it to your situation.

The total marketing effort across a typical 12-18 month campaign adds up to hundreds of hours. That sounds daunting. It is. Mostly harmless, though, if you break it into phases.

But consider the alternative. In 2024, over 75% of games released on Steam earned fewer than 50 reviews. Many of those games were good. Some were excellent. They disappeared because nobody knew they existed.

Marketing isn't optional. It isn't something you bolt on at the end. It's a parallel workstream that runs from the moment you commit to shipping a commercial product.

Peglin's Dylan put it perfectly: "Our inclusion in PAX festival and then especially with Tiny Teams Festival, it was all just kind of adding, adding stuff to this very small fire and then eventually it all just took off."

Build the fire early. Add kindling consistently. Don't let it go out.

And when it catches, you'll be ready.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should I put up my Steam Coming Soon page?

As early as possible after you have something to show. Valve's documentation confirms no strong downside to a long Coming Soon period. Zukowski's research on Song of Iron showed wishlists from the earliest months converted at roughly the same rate as fresh ones. Start accumulating wishlists as soon as you can.

How many hours per week should I spend on marketing?

Phase 0: 2-4 hours. Announcement phase: 3-5 hours. Long middle: 5-10 hours. Pre-launch sprint: 15-25 hours. Launch week: full time. Post-launch: 10-15 hours. The long tail: 5-10 hours. Schedule it like development time or it won't happen.

What if my game isn't visually impressive yet?

Wait to announce publicly until you have something that represents the game well. A weak first impression is hard to recover from. But "good enough" is better than "perfect." Your announce trailer doesn't need to be fancy, just honest and hooky.

Should I keep marketing after launch?

Absolutely. For many successful indie games, the majority of lifetime revenue comes after the first month. Steam sales, Daily Deals, content updates, and DLC all require ongoing marketing. The developers who treat launch as the finish line leave significant money on the table.

Related Guides

Dive deeper into each aspect of marketing timeline:

• When to create your press kit
• Press Kit Launch Timing: When It Actually Matters
• The indie game launch checklist
• How to announce your indie game
• Post-launch marketing for indie games
• Indie game showcases and festivals
• Marketing your indie game on zero budget — for developers with time but no ad spend

Your press kit is one of the first marketing assets you'll need and one of the last you'll update. presskit.gg helps indie studios build professional, self-hosted press kits on WordPress, so your marketing assets live on your domain, under your control, for as long as you need them.