Indie Game Marketing on a Zero Budget
TL;DR: Zero budget doesn't mean zero marketing. Your Steam page is your best free tool. Reddit and TikTok can reach millions at no cost. Steam Next Fest is the biggest free marketing opportunity available. The tradeoff is time: expect 5-20 hours/week depending on phase. If you can only do five things: Steam page, Reddit, press kit, direct email outreach, and Next Fest.
Key Takeaways
- Your Steam page converts better than anything else you'll build; optimize it before spending hours on social media
- Reddit's highest-ceiling free channel: Song of Iron's r/gaming post earned 135,000 upvotes and 13,702 wishlists in a week
- TikTok views don't always convert to wishlists (often under 1%), but when you're getting hundreds of thousands of views for free, it adds up
- Free tools exist for everything: GIMP, DaVinci Resolve, OBS, ScreenToGif, Google Analytics
- The one exception: capsule art. If you can scrape together $250-500 for a professional artist, do it
You don't need money to market your indie game. You need time, consistency, and a willingness to show up where players already hang out. The best power-ups in any game are the free ones you find by exploring. Most of the games that broke through on Steam in the past few years did it without ad budgets, without PR agencies, and without paid influencer campaigns.
Caroline Miller, a veteran PR professional at Indigo Pearl, told developers: "Just concentrate on making your Steam page the best it can be." That advice costs nothing to follow, and it's more effective than most things you could buy. The indie game marketing timeline works the same whether you have $50,000 for marketing or $0. The channels just change.
Your Steam Page Is Your Best Free Marketing Tool
Before you spend a single hour on social media, Reddit, or devlogs, make sure your Steam page is converting visitors into wishlisters. Everything else you do drives traffic to this page. If the page doesn't convert, nothing else matters.
Here's what costs zero dollars and directly affects your wishlist conversion rate:
- A strong short description with your hook in the first sentence. This appears in search results and the Discovery Queue.
- Accurate tags. Steam's recommendation algorithm runs on tags. Wrong tags mean wrong audience. Look at what your comp games use and match them.
- Screenshots that show gameplay. Not concept art. Not title screens. What the player actually does. Six minimum, ten is better.
- A description with formatting. Headers, bullet lists, bold text, GIFs. A wall of unformatted text loses people.
Capsule art is the one area where spending money is almost always worth it, even on a zero budget. If you can scrape together $250 to $500 for a professional capsule artist, do it. Your Small Capsule (462x174 pixels) is the single most-viewed image in your entire marketing campaign. It appears in search results, the Discovery Queue, recommendation carousels, and wishlist emails. A bad capsule means people never click through to see anything else you've built.
If you genuinely can't afford an artist, study the capsule art of successful games in your genre. Note what works: clear logo, readable at small sizes, art that communicates genre instantly. Then do your best. Check the Steam page optimization guide for the full breakdown.
Free Channels That Actually Drive Wishlists
Reddit is the highest-ceiling free marketing channel for indie games. A single post can generate thousands of wishlists overnight. It can also generate zero. The variance is enormous, but the cost is nothing but your time.
Which subreddits to target depends on your game. For broad exposure: r/gaming (34M+ members), r/pcgaming, r/indiegaming. For targeted reach: find the subreddit for your genre (r/roguelikes, r/metroidvania, r/tycoon, r/survivalgames, etc.).
What developers who've achieved viral Reddit posts consistently report is that timing and authenticity matter more than production value. What works on Reddit:
- GIFs and short video clips. Reddit's algorithm favors visual content. A 10-second gameplay GIF outperforms a text post every time.
- Interesting mechanics, not marketing speak. "I've been working on a physics system that lets you..." outperforms "Wishlist my upcoming game!"
- Genuine participation. Post in communities before you need them. Comment on other people's work. Redditors can smell drive-by promotion instantly.
- Timing. Weekday mornings (US time zones) tend to get more traction on large subreddits.
Song of Iron's announce trailer on r/gaming earned 135,000 upvotes and drove 13,702 wishlists in a week. That's an extreme outlier, but it was a zero-budget post. The developer's only cost was making a good trailer.
TikTok
TikTok is the closest thing to free advertising that exists for indie games right now. The algorithm surfaces content based on engagement, not follower count. A first-time poster can reach millions of views if the content resonates.
What works on TikTok:
- Devlog content. "Day 47 of making my game" with a short clip of something interesting you built. These perform well because they're authentic and specific.
- Before/after comparisons. Early prototype vs. current build. Players love seeing progress.
- Satisfying mechanics. Anything that looks good in a 15-second loop. Physics, VFX, animations, UI polish.
- Consistency. Post regularly. The algorithm rewards accounts that post frequently.
YAPYAP earned 1.5 million TikTok views from a single announcement video. The Momento team's TikTok influencer campaign (which started with organic, unpaid posts) drove 1.6 million views that triggered Steam's algorithm to feature them in the Discovery Queue for two straight weeks. That Discovery Queue featuring pushed them to 75,000 wishlists.
The catch with TikTok: views don't always convert to wishlists. The conversion rate from TikTok view to Steam wishlist is low (often under 1%). But when you're getting hundreds of thousands of views for free, even a tiny conversion rate adds up.
Twitter/X
Twitter is better for building dev community relationships than for driving player wishlists directly. But those dev relationships matter. Other developers will retweet your content, amplify your announcements, and connect you with journalists and content creators.
Post GIFs, screenshots, and short devlog threads. Use the #indiedev and #gamedev hashtags. Engage with other developers' work. The direct wishlist impact per post is typically small, but the indirect benefits compound over time.
Steam Community
Your Steam Community Hub is an underused free marketing channel. Post devlog updates there. Steam surfaces them in the Activity Feed of people who own or have wishlisted your game. These are people who already expressed interest, and you're reaching them for free inside the platform where they buy games.
Regular Steam Community posts also signal to players that your game is actively maintained. For Early Access titles especially, a steady stream of patch notes and devlogs builds the trust that converts wishlisters into buyers.
Devlogs
Written devlogs (on Steam, itch.io, or your own website) are slow-burn marketing that compounds over time. Individual devlogs rarely go viral. But a developer with 50 devlogs has 50 pages that can show up in search results, 50 posts that surface when someone Googles your game name, and 50 proof points that you're committed to the project.
Devlogs also give you content to share on every other channel. A single devlog can become a Reddit post, a TikTok clip, a Twitter thread, and a Steam Community update. Write it once, distribute it everywhere.
Community-Driven Growth
The cheapest marketing is other people talking about your game.
Discord servers give your earliest fans a place to gather, provide feedback, and recruit their friends. You don't need thousands of members. A server with 50 active players who genuinely love your game is more valuable than 5,000 silent members. Those 50 people will post about your game in other Discords, on Reddit, and on social media.
Word of mouth is the primary driver for most indie game sales. Steam's own recommendation algorithm is essentially automated word of mouth. But organic word of mouth (a friend telling a friend) has the highest conversion rate of any channel. You can't force it, but you can create conditions for it by making a game people want to talk about and being responsive when they do.
Desktop Defender entered Steam Next Fest with only 200 followers. Through a combination of a solid demo and organic community engagement during the fest, the game gained visibility and started building an audience from nearly nothing. For tips on measuring your fest performance, see analyzing your Next Fest results. No ad budget. No PR firm. Just a good demo and an engaged developer.
Free Tools vs. Paid Tools
You can build an entire marketing operation with free tools:
- Press kit: Host on your own website using WordPress and a free theme. presskit.gg runs on your existing WordPress site.
- Email: Gmail works fine for press outreach to 200 to 400 contacts.
- Social media management: Post manually. Scheduling tools are nice but not necessary.
- Image editing: GIMP, Canva (free tier), or Photopea for screenshots and social graphics.
- Video editing: DaVinci Resolve (free) for trailers. OBS (free) for recording gameplay.
- GIF creation: ScreenToGif (free) for short gameplay clips.
- Analytics: Steamworks provides traffic data for free. Google Analytics on your website.
Where paid tools start making sense is when your time becomes more expensive than the tool. If you're spending 3 hours a week on a task that a $20/month tool could automate, the tool is worth it (once you can afford it). Until then, manual works.
The one area where spending money has an outsized impact is capsule art and trailer editing. Both are high-skill visual tasks where a professional makes a measurable difference in conversion rates. If you have any budget at all, spend it there.
Time vs. Money: The Real Tradeoff
Zero-budget marketing isn't free. You're paying with time. And time is the one resource indie developers have the least of. In practice, developers who schedule marketing time like they schedule development time—blocking specific hours each week—consistently outperform those who "do marketing when they have time." It's the classic RPG tradeoff: spend gold or spend hours grinding. Both get you there.
A realistic time budget for zero-dollar marketing:
- 5 to 10 hours per week during the long middle (3 to 6 months before launch). Social media posts, devlogs, community engagement, Reddit.
- 15 to 20 hours per week during the pre-launch sprint (4 to 8 weeks out). Press outreach, content creator emails, Steam page polish, demo preparation.
- Full time during launch week. Community management, press follow-ups, bug response, social media.
That's a significant time investment. If you're a solo developer, those hours come directly out of development time. There's no way around this tension. The developers who succeed on zero budget accept the tradeoff and schedule marketing time the same way they schedule development time.
The temptation is to skip marketing until the game is "done" and then scramble. As the marketing timeline makes painfully clear, this approach almost never works. Marketing is a parallel workstream, whether you're spending money or time.
The Minimum Viable Marketing Plan (Zero Budget)
If you can only do five things:
- Make your Steam page great. This converts better than anything else you'll build.
- Post on Reddit regularly. GIFs of interesting mechanics, honest devlog updates.
- Build a press kit on your own domain. Journalists need it. Content creators need it. It doesn't have to be expensive.
- Email press and content creators directly. A personal email to 200 contacts costs nothing but time.
- Participate in Steam Next Fest. It's the single biggest free marketing opportunity on Steam.
Everything else is amplification. Start with these five, and add more channels as your time allows.
Free Tool: Press Email Generator — Generate professional press pitch emails without hiring a PR agency. Runs in your browser, no signup required.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the single most important thing to do with zero budget?
Make your Steam page great. Your capsule art, screenshots, trailer, and description determine whether visitors convert to wishlisters. Everything else drives traffic to this page. If it doesn't convert, nothing else matters.
How much time does zero-budget marketing actually take?
5-10 hours/week during the long middle (3-6 months out). 15-20 hours/week during pre-launch sprint. Full time during launch week. This time comes directly out of development if you're solo. There's no way around this tension.
Is Reddit or TikTok better for indie games?
Reddit has higher conversion rates (engaged players looking for games). TikTok has higher potential reach (algorithm surfaces content regardless of follower count). Reddit for targeted visibility, TikTok for viral potential. In practice, I've found posting to both works better than choosing one.
Should I skip marketing if I have no money?
Absolutely not. The developers reaching the top 2-3% on Steam are the ones who started early and showed up consistently, regardless of budget. Desktop Defender had 200 followers before Next Fest. Money isn't the bottleneck. Consistency is.
Avoid the traps that sink most launches. See 5 Marketing Mistakes Indie Devs Keep Making for the most common pitfalls and how to sidestep them.
Related Guides
This article is part of our series on marketing timeline. Start with the complete guide:
Also in this series:
A professional press kit doesn't require a marketing budget. presskit.gg helps indie studios build self-hosted press kits on WordPress, so your game looks professional to journalists and content creators without spending money on hosted SaaS tools.