Steam Next Fest Content Creator Outreach: A Step-by-Step Guide
TL;DR: Send outreach emails one week before Next Fest begins. Target mid-tier creators (10K-100K subscribers) who've covered previous Next Fests. Build a list of 200-400 contacts, expect most won't respond. Provide streamer-ready assets: one-paragraph description, key art in multiple formats, gameplay clips they can use as B-roll.
Key Takeaways
- Several YouTube channels build their content calendar around Next Fest coverage; a single "Best Next Fest Demos" mention can generate hundreds to thousands of wishlists
- Mid-tier creators (10K-100K subscribers) are your sweet spot: large enough to drive traffic, small enough to actually read your email
- Send outreach one week before the fest starts, not earlier (they forget) or later (they've planned their lineup)
- Make it embarrassingly easy: one-paragraph description they can copy, key art in horizontal and vertical formats, gameplay clips for B-roll
- The "Double Jump" strategy: coordinate multiple creators publishing simultaneously the morning of Day 1 to create velocity the algorithm picks up
Content creators are the single most important audience you can reach before and during Steam Next Fest. Not press. Not Twitter followers. Not Discord members. Creators.
This sounds like an exaggeration until you look at the data. Chris Zukowski's survey of the February 2025 Next Fest found that the top-performing games all had one thing in common: significant pre-fest outreach to YouTubers and streamers. When he asked developers about their promotional activities, Diamond-tier earners (10,000+ wishlists gained) wrote paragraphs about their campaigns. Bronze-tier earners wrote "no promotion" or "posted on social media." Our complete Steam Next Fest preparation guide covers the full timeline, but this article focuses on the creator outreach piece, because it's where most developers either break through or fall flat.
Why Creators Matter More During Next Fest
During a typical week, content creators drive wishlists and awareness in a steady trickle. During Next Fest, that trickle becomes a firehose.
Here's why. Next Fest creates a compressed window where players are actively browsing for new demos. When a creator posts a video titled "10 Best Demos from Steam Next Fest June 2026," that video rides the search wave of millions of players looking for exactly that content. The creator gets views. You get wishlists. Everyone wins.
Several YouTube channels have built their entire content calendar around Next Fest coverage. They play dozens of demos in a single week and publish roundup videos, first impressions, and "hidden gems" lists. These creators have audiences primed to wishlist. A single mention in a "Best Next Fest Demos" video can generate hundreds or thousands of wishlists in 24 hours.
The Cairn team reached out to approximately 400 creators before their Next Fest participation. That number isn't arbitrary. It accounts for the reality that most creators won't respond, many who respond won't cover your game, and some who cover it will have small audiences. You need volume to find the handful of creators who'll move your numbers.
Finding Creators Who Cover Next Fest Specifically
Not all gaming creators care about Next Fest. You want the ones who do.
Start with YouTube search. Type "Steam Next Fest" and filter by upload date to the most recent festivals. You'll find creators who specialize in demo coverage, roundups, and "best of" compilations. Some of these channels have 5,000 subscribers. Some have 500,000. Both matter, but for different reasons.
Mid-tier creators (10,000 to 100,000 subscribers) are your sweet spot. They're large enough to drive meaningful traffic, small enough to actually read your email and reply. Developers who've run multiple outreach campaigns report that mid-tier creators often form genuine relationships with games they cover, returning for updates and launch coverage without being asked. The mega-channels get hundreds of pitches. The micro-channels might cover your game with genuine enthusiasm, and their audiences tend to have higher engagement rates.
Build a spreadsheet. For each creator, track:
- Channel name and subscriber count
- Contact email (usually in their YouTube "About" section)
- Which Next Fest editions they've covered before
- What genres they tend to play
- Whether they do roundups, first impressions, or full playthroughs
This research takes time. Budget two full days for it, minimum. If you want a head start on building your press and creator list from scratch, we have a separate guide for that.
Don't forget Twitch. Streamers covering Next Fest demos generate real-time wishlists because viewers can click through to Steam while watching. Some streamers run "Next Fest marathon" streams where they try 10 to 20 demos in a single session. Getting onto that playlist is like finding a warp pipe to the next level.
Free Tool: Creator Pitch Generator — Generate a personalized content creator pitch in seconds. Runs in your browser, no signup required.
The Outreach Email
Your email needs to be short, specific, and easy to act on. Creators get pitched constantly. They can smell a mass email from three sentences in.
Here's a template that works:
Subject line: Demo key for [Game Name] (Steam Next Fest, [Month Year])
Hi [Creator Name],
I'm [Your Name], developer of [Game Name], a [one-line genre/hook description]. We're participating in the [Month] Steam Next Fest and I'd love to get you a demo key ahead of the event.
[One sentence about why you're reaching them specifically. Reference a video they made, a genre they cover, something real.]
The demo runs about [length] and focuses on [core hook]. Here's our trailer: [link]
Press kit with screenshots, key art, and a fact sheet: [link]
Happy to send a key whenever you're ready. Just reply and I'll get one over.
Thanks, [Your Name]
That's it. No life story. No "our team of passionate developers has been working for three years on our dream project." No attachment dump. One paragraph of context, one of specifics, one call to action.
If you want to go deeper on pitch formatting and subject lines, our guide to writing press emails covers the mechanics in detail.
Timing: The One-Week Window
Send your outreach emails approximately one week before Next Fest begins.
This timing is deliberate. Too early (three or four weeks before) and creators forget about you by the time the fest starts. Too late (the day before) and they've already planned their coverage lineup.
One week before is when creators are actively deciding which demos to feature. Your email arrives at exactly the moment they're making choices. In practice, developers who send too early (3-4 weeks out) find their emails buried under newer pitches by the time creators actually sit down to plan their coverage. The Cairn marketing team described this window as "not too late as to be in the bulk of emails, and not too early to be forgotten."
For this timing to work, your demo needs to be publicly available already. You can't send keys for a demo that doesn't exist yet. This is another reason our Next Fest preparation guide recommends releasing your demo well before the festival starts, not on Day 1.
Here's the practical schedule:
- 4 to 6 weeks before: Build your outreach list (200 to 400 contacts)
- 3 weeks before: Draft and refine your email template
- 2 weeks before: Generate demo keys through Steamworks
- 1 week before: Send all outreach emails
- Days 1 to 3 of Next Fest: Follow up with anyone who expressed interest but hasn't covered you yet
Don't send everything in a single blast. Stagger your sends across two or three days within that one-week window. This prevents your email from looking like it came from an automated system and gives you time to personalize each message.
Providing Streamer-Ready Assets
This is where most developers drop the ball. They send a pitch email, the creator says "sure, send me a key," and then the creator has to hunt for screenshots, logos, and game info on their own.
Make it embarrassingly easy for creators to cover your game.
Your press kit should include a dedicated section for content creators with:
- A one-paragraph game description they can copy directly into their video description
- Key art and logo in both horizontal and vertical formats (thumbnails need vertical, end screens need horizontal)
- 5 to 8 screenshots that actually show gameplay, not title screens or menus
- A short gameplay trailer or a 30-second clip they can use as B-roll
- Your game's Steam page URL so they can link it directly
- A fact sheet with demo length, genre, platform, and release window
Some developers go a step further and provide a "streamer kit" with overlay-friendly assets: transparent PNGs of their logo, a short looping background animation, or even a pre-made thumbnail template. This is optional, but creators notice when you've made their job easier. They remember that next time, too.
Clip-Based Promotion
Short-form video is where discovery happens now. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and platforms like Medal.tv have changed how players find games.
During Next Fest, encourage clip sharing. If your game has moments that look wild, funny, or impressive in a 15-second clip, you're sitting on free marketing. A few ways to make this happen:
Build clip-worthy moments into your demo. A spectacular death animation. A physics interaction that goes hilariously wrong. A boss entrance that makes people stop scrolling. Think about what would make someone hit the "clip that" button.
Make clipping easy. Medal.tv integration or simple screen recording support means players and creators can capture moments without external software. If you can add a built-in screenshot or clip feature, do it.
Share and amplify. When creators post clips of your game, share those clips on your own channels. Tag the creator. This creates a feedback loop: creators see that you amplify their content, which incentivizes them to create more of it.
During the February 2025 Next Fest, games that generated organic clip content on social media saw sustained engagement throughout the week. The algorithm rewards engagement, and clips are the engagement currency of short-form platforms.
The "Double Jump" Strategy
Xalavier Nelson Jr. demonstrated this during the June 2024 Next Fest with I Am Your Beast. His team timed the game's announcement to coincide with the PC Gamer Show, which aired 24 hours before Next Fest began. The announcement generated 15,000 wishlists in the first day. That velocity launched the game onto the "Trending Upcoming" chart on Day 1, which earned another 16,000 wishlists. Total for the week: over 60,000.
You probably don't have a PC Gamer Show slot. That's fine. The principle still applies at smaller scales. If you can coordinate a creator embargo where several YouTubers publish their coverage simultaneously on the day before or morning of Next Fest, you create a burst of traffic that the algorithm picks up and amplifies.
Even three or four mid-tier creators posting videos on the same morning can create enough velocity to push you onto trending lists during those critical first two days when Valve gives all games roughly equal baseline visibility.
During the Fest: Real-Time Creator Engagement
Your job doesn't end when the emails go out.
During Next Fest, actively monitor who's streaming or posting about your game. Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter search will surface this. When you find someone covering your game:
- Drop into their Twitch chat and say thanks (as the developer, not anonymously)
- Reply to their tweets or posts with something genuine
- Share their content on your channels with credit
Creators talk to each other. When one creator has a positive experience with a developer during Next Fest, they mention it to others. This word-of-mouth effect among creators is invisible to most developers, but it compounds over time. What consistently works is being genuinely helpful and responsive—creators remember developers who made their job easy and actively recommend those games to fellow creators.
Also watch for creators who are playing Next Fest demos in your genre but haven't found your game yet. A polite DM saying "Hey, saw you're playing [genre] demos this Next Fest, thought you might dig [your game]" is perfectly acceptable. Don't be pushy. One message, no follow-up unless they respond.
Tracking Results
After Next Fest, tally what happened. How many creators did you reach out to? How many responded? How many actually covered your game? Can you correlate any wishlist spikes with specific creator videos?
Steamworks provides daily wishlist data. Cross-reference wishlist spikes with the publish dates of creator videos and you'll get a rough picture of which channels drove the most conversions. This data is gold for your launch campaign. The creators who moved your numbers during Next Fest are the first people you contact when your game is ready to ship.
Keep your spreadsheet updated. Add notes about each creator's responsiveness, audience size, and the impact of their coverage. You're building a relationship, not running a one-off campaign. The creator who covers your Next Fest demo today might be the creator who covers your launch in six months.
The Bottom Line
Steam Next Fest gives you visibility. Content creators convert that visibility into wishlists. The games that win Next Fest aren't necessarily the best games. They're the games whose developers did the most outreach, provided the best assets, and made it easiest for creators to say yes.
Start early. Personalize everything. Make creators' lives easy. And when the fest is over, say thank you. It's not complicated. It's just work that most people skip.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many creators should I reach out to?
200-400 contacts. That number accounts for the reality that most won't respond, many who respond won't cover your game, and some who cover it will have small audiences. You need volume to find the handful who'll move your numbers.
What's the ideal timing for outreach emails?
One week before Next Fest begins. Too early and they forget. Too late and they've already planned their lineup. This window is when creators are actively deciding which demos to feature.
Should I provide game keys or just point to the public demo?
If your demo requires a key (non-public build), include the key in your initial email or offer to send one immediately. If your demo is publicly available on Steam, just link to it, but still offer to help however needed.
How do I find creators who specifically cover Next Fest?
YouTube search: "Steam Next Fest" filtered by recent uploads. Look for creators who make roundups, first impressions, and "best of" compilations. Track them in a spreadsheet with subscriber count, contact email, genres covered, and previous Next Fest coverage.
Related Guides
This article is part of our series on steam next fest. Start with the complete guide:
Also in this series:
Creator outreach strategies are based on data from Chris Zukowski's Next Fest surveys at howtomarketagame.com and developer case studies from 2024 and 2025 Next Fest editions. For the complete preparation timeline, see our Steam Next Fest guide.