How to get more Steam wishlists

Updated · Valve's rules and public benchmarks, each with its source.

Before release, wishlists are the number Steam reads to decide who sees your game. Here is what Valve says about them, where indie games actually get them, and the public benchmarks to judge your pace. Every claim below links to its source.

Why Steam wishlists matter so much

Steam has no minimum to show your game, but wishlists are one of the strongest signals it uses before release. When you launch, in Early Access or 1.0, every wishlister gets an email or a notification from Steam. A discount of 20% or more lasting over 8 hours also emails them.

Wishlists don't expire: ones collected years before launch still convert, at about the same rate as recent ones. So the earlier your page is up, the more time it has to collect them.

Before launch, judge your marketing on wishlists, not on visits or page conversion rates: those are too noisy to predict anything.

Open your Steam page early, and make it convert

Publish the page as soon as your genre and core mechanics are set, your art style is final, you can show at least three environments, and you have a gameplay trailer and a professional capsule. Holding it back to "save momentum" for later costs you wishlists.

  • Capsule: pay a professional, even if it's your only expense. It's what players see in every list, sale and recommendation row.
  • Trailer: show gameplay in the first 2 to 3 seconds. Since June 2026, Steam plays the start of your trailer when someone hovers your capsule on the home page, so a logo or a cinematic intro now wastes that moment.
  • Tags: they tell Steam who to show your game to (up to 20). Take the tags that popular, similar games use and that truly apply, then check the "More like this" row on your page: if those games don't look like yours, fix your tags.
  • Release date: Steam's personal calendar recommends upcoming games about 8 weeks ahead, and a game enters it once its release date is set. Announce your date roughly 8 weeks before launch.

Need a hand on each step? The Steam game marketing guide walks through the page, trailer and demo in order.

Where Steam wishlists actually come from

Practitioners who track hundreds of launches rank the sources roughly in this order:

  1. Festivals: Steam Next Fest, Steam's themed fests, and more than 200 third-party online festivals. Apply to every one you're eligible for. See the Next Fest guide.
  2. YouTubers and streamers who play your genre. Mid-sized channels answer more and convert well, and a YouTube video keeps sending players for months.
  3. Social media: the weakest source for most games, except visually striking ones that go viral. Post where your genre's players are, and measure what each post brings.
  4. Press and paid ads as a supplement. Well-targeted ads cost about $1 to $2 per wishlist, more when they're broad.

What rarely moves wishlists: screenshots aimed at other developers, devlogs written for developers, press releases sent to big outlets for an unknown game, "retweet to win" giveaways, and a Discord server opened before you have players to put in it.

Use your demo and your discounts

  • Demo: Steam notifies your wishlisters once per demo, within two weeks of its release. A demo released months before Next Fest earns about 2.5 times more wishlists at the fest than one released during it.
  • Discounts: a discount of 20% or more, lasting more than 8 hours, emails your wishlisters. A 15% discount doesn't trigger that email.
  • Themed fests: open to Coming Soon games and demos, you can join several, and no discount is required. They're a way to gain wishlists without using your one Next Fest.

Steam wishlist benchmarks: is your pace good?

These are public surveys of developers, not Valve rules: use them as ranges, never as a magic number.

  • First two weeks of a new page: above 150 wishlists is a good sign (Bronze tier about 100, Silver 500, Gold 1,200).
  • Weekly pace after that: Bronze 0 to 40 a week, Silver 15 to 120, Gold 100 to 700.
  • Followers to wishlists: about 10 wishlists per Steam follower, 7 to 20 depending on genre.
  • At launch (June 2026 tiers, still very recent): around 5,000 wishlists for the Bronze tier of Steam's personal calendar, 8,000 for Silver.
  • First-week sales: a median of about 15% of your wishlists, closer to 10% for games above $10.

Check where your genre's leaders stand in the top upcoming Steam games by genre, refreshed every day.

Measure what brings wishlists

Steam gives every developer UTM tracking for store links: put a different link in each post, video description or newsletter, and Steamworks shows the wishlists each one brought (logged-in visitors, within 72 hours). Without it, you only see that your total went up, not why.

NextWishlist does this follow-up for you: it reads your wishlists, your posts and games like yours every night, and tells you each morning what worked and what to do next. Join the private beta.

How to get more Steam wishlists: quick answers

How many Steam wishlists do I need to launch?

There's no official minimum. Public benchmarks from June 2026 put the Bronze tier of Steam's personal calendar at around 5,000 wishlists at launch and Silver at around 8,000. First-week sales are a median of about 15% of wishlists, closer to 10% above $10.

How many wishlists per Steam follower?

About 10 wishlists per follower of your Steam community hub, between 7 and 20 depending on the genre, according to public data from How To Market A Game and GameDiscoverCo.

Do old Steam wishlists still count at launch?

Yes. Wishlists collected years before launch convert at about the same rate as recent ones, so opening your Steam page early pays off.

Does a Steam discount notify wishlisters?

Yes, when the discount is 20% or more and lasts more than 8 hours. Your launch, in Early Access or 1.0, also notifies every wishlister.

What brings the most Steam wishlists?

Festivals first (Steam Next Fest, themed fests, third-party festivals), then YouTubers and streamers who play your genre, then social media. Press and paid ads come as a supplement.

Sources

Valve's rules can change: the official Steamworks page always wins. Practitioner benchmarks are surveys of developers, given as ranges.

NextWishlist

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Your wishlists, your Steam page, your channels and games like yours, read every night, turned into what to do next.

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