Wishlist Benchmarks

IQ

Steam is by far the largest distribution platform for paid indie games today, with sales and traffic often 10x that of other platforms like itch.io. Driving traffic to your steam page and gaining wishlists is the primary marketing funnel for indie devs building their game pre-release.

Customers find your page through two channels, internally through Steam or externally from organic or paid promotions. They then make a choice in seconds, sometimes based on instinct, on whether or not to purchase your game. Largely this decision happens after viewing the art and promotional videos of the game, which is commonly referred to as a "capsule". Indie Game Marketing 101 discusses tips on building a great Steam capsule.

Steam wishlists are a leading indicator of sales on launch day. Other than play tests, feedback and demos, they are the main metric game developers of any size are paying close attention to. When you compare channels or judge paid tests, a cost per wishlist analysis shows which traffic actually converts.

It is typical for a game to be considered "successful" when it achieves 10,000 wishlists before launch. However, success might look different for a single developer in a low cost-of-living country than a cohort of developers and artists in a high cost-of-living country.

Analyze your View-To-Wishlist Ratio

Low Views

If your views are low, the only thing to do is promote your game. This may require doing things that do not scale, like posting your game for visibility on social media, or creating short videos to post on video sharing websites like TikTok. Try creating one post or piece of promotional material per platform each day, and remember to stay within the terms of service of the platform you are posting on.

High Views, Low Wishlists

If your views are high but your wishlists are low, there are a few things to analyze. Your capsule art may need a refresh. Hiring a capsule artist to create images and video might be a worthwhile investment. It may also be that your game has a niche audience. If that is your conclusion, you may need to find where the niche audience is sharing games with eachother, and share your game with them. It may also be that your game is in need of some iteration. Consider updating the assets in your game, addressing the core game play loops, or creating a demo and publishing it to get even more feedback.

Start Early

Often, indie devs feel their game is not ready to release. That is totally normal when working on a project with passion. We want to continue to polish our game before showing anyone. However, that is working against you. There is no "too soon" for creating a "Coming Soon" page on Steam to showcase some of your ideas and work.

Paid Marketing

Only once your wishlists are rising organically, should you consider paid marketing. Any marketing budget spent before they are is lighting your money on fire. Paid marketing is a force multiplier, though, and can be a way to go from sub-10k wishlists to well over.

Low Risk Campaigning

Create a few low-cost marketing campaigns to minimize the risk on platforms such as Reddit that offer no minimum spend ad campaigns. Generate a tagged store URL with the Steam UTM Generator for each campaign (see the Steam UTM documentation for consistent naming). Then use that link to track wishlist conversions in Steam.

Use the Steam wishlist cost calculator in WishlistIQ Insights to discover which campaigns are the best value for conversions. Then run the best campaigns again to gain the most wishlists for your money. Combine ad spend, tracked visits, and wishlist adds from your reports to calculate Steam wishlist cost for each channel.

Steam itself will reinforce the traffic within its own platform once you break a certain threshold of wishlists, appearing in the Upcoming Popular list of games, where legends are made.