Steam Followers vs. Wishlists: What's the Difference and Which Matters More?
Steam has two buttons on every Coming Soon page: "Add to Wishlist" and "Follow." They look similar. They sit near each other. Most players click one or the other without thinking about the difference. Two buttons, two completely different spells. But for developers, these two systems work in fundamentally different ways, trigger different notifications, and carry different weight at different stages of your game's lifecycle.
TL;DR: Wishlists trigger email notifications on launch and discounts. Followers see your updates in the activity feed but get no emails. Both contribute to Popular Upcoming placement. Focus on wishlists as launch approaches; use followers for ongoing communication during long development.
Key Takeaways
- Wishlisters get email notifications on launch and 20%+ discounts. Followers don't.
- Followers see your community announcements in their activity feed. Useful during development.
- Both signals contribute to Popular Upcoming chart placement.
- Wishlists = launch commitment. Followers = ongoing interest. Different tools for different phases.
- Studio-level followers carry across games. Wishlists are tied to individual AppIDs.
This is a companion piece to our main wishlist-building guide. Understanding the distinction between followers and wishlists helps you make smarter decisions about what to ask for, when to ask for it, and how to interpret your Steamworks data.
How Followers Work
When a Steam user follows your game (or your developer/publisher page), they subscribe to your activity feed updates. Specifically:
Community updates and announcements. Every time you post an announcement through Steamworks (patch notes, content updates, dev blogs), followers see it in their Steam activity feed. This feed appears on the Steam client homepage, similar to a social media timeline.
Store page updates. If you update your Coming Soon page with new screenshots, a new trailer, or a changed release date, followers may see a notification about the update.
No email notifications. This is the critical distinction. Following a game does not trigger email notifications on launch or discount. Followers get activity feed updates only. They need to be actively using the Steam client and looking at their feed to see your announcements.
Following is a lower-commitment action than wishlisting. The user is saying "I'm mildly interested in keeping up with this." It's closer to subscribing to an RSS feed than to signing up for email alerts.
How Wishlists Work
When a user wishlists your game, they get the full notification package:
Email notifications on launch. When you press the release button (or transition from Early Access to Full Release), every wishlister with a verified email and enabled preferences gets an email and a mobile push notification.
Email notifications on discounts of 20% or more. Every qualifying sale triggers another round of emails.
Demo release notification. One manually-triggered notification when your demo goes live.
For the full technical breakdown of wishlist notification mechanics, cooldowns, and deliverability, see our deep dive on how Steam wishlists work.
Wishlisting is a higher-commitment action. The user is saying "Notify me when I can buy this." It's closer to entering your email on a waitlist than to following a blog.
The Behavioral Difference
The practical difference comes down to intent signals.
Wishlisters have purchase intent. They've specifically asked to be notified when they can give you money. That's a strong behavioral signal. Chris Zukowski's data and Simon Carless's surveys consistently show that 15 to 25% of wishlisters convert to first-week buyers, depending on total wishlist count and genre. Developers who track their conversion rates over multiple launches report that wishlist quality varies—wishlists from targeted marketing convert better than wishlists from broad viral exposure.
Followers have interest but not necessarily purchase intent. They want to see what you're up to. They might be other developers watching your progress. They might be players who think the game looks cool but aren't ready to commit to a "notify me at launch" level of interest. They might convert to buyers eventually, but the signal is weaker.
This isn't to say followers are worthless. They serve a different function at a different stage.
Both Affect Popular Upcoming
Here's where it gets interesting. Steam's Popular Upcoming section, one of the most valuable pre-launch visibility slots on the platform, factors in both wishlists and followers when determining which games to feature.
The exact weighting is unknown (Valve doesn't publish the algorithm), but developer observations suggest that a combination of wishlist velocity and follower velocity determines placement. The commonly cited threshold of roughly 7,000 wishlists for Popular Upcoming is an approximation based on Zukowski's tracking, and it's possible that a game with fewer wishlists but a very high follower count could also qualify.
Cairn's example is instructive. The game had 32,000 followers before entering Steam Next Fest in October 2025. That massive follower count, accumulated over more than a year of demo availability and 18 festival appearances, helped place Cairn on the Popular Upcoming chart on Day 1 of the festival. On Day 2, it appeared on both the Trending Upcoming and Top Demos charts.
The follower count signaled to Steam's algorithm that a large, engaged audience was paying attention to this game. Combined with wishlist velocity from content creator pushes and festival buzz, the dual signal was extremely strong.
When Followers Matter More
Early pre-launch (12+ months before release). When your Coming Soon page first goes live, followers are actually more useful than you might think. At this stage, you're not driving toward a launch email blast. You're building an audience that will see your updates over time. Every announcement you post, whether that's a new screenshot set, a dev blog, or a festival appearance, reaches your followers through the activity feed.
During this early phase, followers function as your ongoing communication channel. Wishlists are banked for launch day. Followers are active right now, seeing your updates and keeping your game in their mental rotation. In practice, developers who build engaged follower bases early find they have a built-in audience for feedback during development—these followers often become the most passionate advocates at launch.
When building a studio brand. Followers on your developer/publisher page carry across games. If someone follows "The Game Bakers" (Cairn's studio), they see announcements for all future games. Wishlists are tied to individual AppIDs. If you're thinking about your career across multiple titles, studio-level followers are a long-term asset. Our branding guide covers this in more depth.
During active development with regular updates. If you're posting monthly or biweekly announcements about development progress, followers are the audience that sees those posts. Wishlists just sit there until launch day. An engaged follower base that responds to your updates (with comments, shares, and discussion) creates activity signals that the algorithm notices.
When your demo is live. If you've released a demo and are collecting feedback, followers are more likely to see your update posts about demo changes and improvements. This keeps the conversation going between demo release and full launch.
Free Tool: Wishlist Calculator — Calculate how many wishlists you need to hit your launch goals. Runs in your browser, no signup required.
When Wishlists Matter More
In the final months before launch. As you approach release, wishlists become the most important metric. Each wishlist represents a potential email notification on launch day. The email blast is the single most valuable marketing event in your game's lifecycle, and its size is directly proportional to your wishlist count.
During and after Steam Next Fest. Next Fest is primarily a wishlist-accumulation event. Zukowski's data shows that the top-performing games during Next Fest earn 10,000 to 45,000+ wishlists. These wishlists translate directly into launch-day email reach. Festival performance is measured in wishlists earned, not followers gained.
For discount notifications. Every time you run a 20%+ discount post-launch, wishlisters get an email. Followers don't. The "discount staircase" strategy (progressively deeper discounts over time) only works on wishlists. Each step re-engages a new batch of buyers through the notification system.
When talking to publishers or investors. Wishlists are the industry-standard metric for pre-launch traction. When a publisher asks "how many wishlists do you have?", they're evaluating your launch potential. Follower count is supplementary. Wishlists are the number that matters in business conversations.
How to Encourage Both
Most Steam store pages make the wishlist button more prominent than the follow button. That's fine. Wishlists are more directly valuable for most developers at most stages. But there are situations where actively encouraging follows alongside wishlists makes sense.
On your Steam announcements. When posting updates, remind people to follow for future updates and wishlist for launch notification. A simple line at the bottom: "Follow us for dev updates. Wishlist to get notified on launch day." It takes two seconds and costs nothing.
In your press kit. When press and content creators link to your Steam page, some of their audience will wishlist and some will follow. You can't control which button they click, but having a polished Steam page (strong capsule art, good screenshots, compelling description) increases the likelihood they click something rather than bouncing. Our guide on using press kits to drive wishlists covers this in detail.
On social media. When linking to your Steam page from TikTok, Reddit, or Twitter, you can phrase your CTA to encourage both actions: "Wishlist and follow on Steam for updates." Many players don't know there are two separate buttons doing different things. Telling them gives them a reason to click both.
Developer/publisher page follows. If you've shipped a previous game, encourage fans to follow your studio page. Cairn's studio, The Game Bakers, benefited from followers who knew them from previous hits like Haven and Furi. When Cairn appeared on their activity feed, existing fans wishlisted based on studio reputation.
Reading Your Data
Steamworks gives you separate data for wishlists and followers. Here's how to use both:
Wishlist additions per day tells you how well your marketing is converting interest into launch-day potential. Spikes correlate with marketing events (trailer drops, festival appearances, content creator coverage). If you're spending time on marketing and wishlists aren't moving, something is wrong with your conversion funnel (usually your Steam page).
Follower count tells you how engaged your existing audience is. If you have 10,000 followers but your announcement posts get minimal engagement, those followers may be inactive accounts or people who followed and forgot. If your follower-to-engagement ratio is healthy, you have a real audience.
The ratio between wishlists and followers varies by game. Games with long pre-launch periods tend to accumulate proportionally more followers. Games with short, intense marketing pushes (like YAPYAP's 3-month Coming Soon period) tend to be more wishlist-heavy.
A healthy ratio isn't fixed. What matters is that both numbers are growing, with wishlists accelerating as you approach launch.
The Practical Summary
Think of followers and wishlists as two different stages of the same funnel.
Followers = ongoing relationship. They see your updates. They stay connected during development. They might convert to wishlisters over time.
Wishlists = launch commitment. They get the email. They're your Day 1 potential buyers. They're the number that determines whether your launch email blast reaches 5,000 people or 50,000.
Early in your game's life, focus on both. Build an audience that follows your development journey. As launch approaches, shift your energy toward wishlist conversion. Every marketing push in the final months should drive people to that wishlist button. What tends to happen in practice is that developers who nurture followers early convert many of them to wishlisters naturally as launch approaches—the relationship work pays compound dividends.
And for what it's worth, both signals contribute to Popular Upcoming placement, which creates the visibility snowball that can transform your pre-launch trajectory. Don't ignore either one, even if wishlists get all the attention in conference talks and blog posts. Both stats matter. Different stats for different builds.
For the full strategy on accumulating wishlists across all channels, head back to our complete wishlist-building guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which should I ask for in my marketing: wishlist or follow?
Wishlist is almost always the better ask. Wishlists directly translate to launch-day email reach. The exception: very early in development when you're still 12+ months from launch and want to build an audience for ongoing updates.
Do followers convert to buyers at launch?
Some do, but at lower rates than wishlisters. Followers didn't explicitly ask to be notified at launch. They chose the lower-commitment action. Expect weaker conversion signals from followers.
Can someone both wishlist and follow my game?
Yes. Some engaged players do both. Encourage it in your announcements: "Follow us for dev updates. Wishlist to get notified on launch day." It takes two seconds and costs nothing.
Do developer/publisher page followers help my new games?
Yes. If someone follows your studio page, they see announcements for all your games. This creates automatic cross-promotion for future releases. Developers who built studio-level followings see meaningful wishlist jumps when announcing new titles.
Related Guides
This article is part of our series on steam wishlists. Start with the complete guide:
Also in this series:
- How Steam wishlists actually work
- How many wishlists you need to launch
- Using your press kit to drive wishlists
Last updated: February 2026. Sources: Steamworks Documentation (partner.steamgames.com), howtomarketagame.com (Chris Zukowski), Game Discover Co (Simon Carless), and developer case studies.