Research
Which social networks do Steam Next Fest games link? A study of 7,592 store pages
DreamEp, Founder of NextWishlist · Data from October 17–18, 2026 · Published
On this page
Key finding43% of the 7,592 games on Valve's Next Fest October 2026 preview list link no social network on their Steam page. The 100 most followed games link a median of 5, Discord (81%) and X (78%) first. The median Discord linked on these pages has 42 members, 9 of them online, and 1 invite in 11 is dead.
Every Steam page can link a game's social accounts. We read those links on every game of Valve's preview list for Steam Next Fest October 2026, then checked how big the Discord servers and Bluesky accounts behind them really are. Here is what the games link, what the most followed ones do differently, and how many of those links still work.
Sample: 7,592 games from Valve's Steam Next Fest October 2026 preview list.
01Which networks the games link
Share of games linking each network on their Steam page. The top 100 are the 100 games with the most Steam followers in the list.
| Network | 100 most followed | Games with 1,000+ followers | All 7,592 games |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discord | 81% | 72% | 35% |
| X | 78% | 61% | 29% |
| YouTube | 66% | 53% | 31% |
| TikTok | 53% | 37% | 15% |
| 52% | 40% | 20% | |
| 31% | 20% | 6% | |
| Bluesky | 30% | 25% | 10% |
| 20% | 11% | 3% | |
| Twitch | 12% | 6% | 2% |
- 43% of the games link no network at all; their median is 8 Steam followers. Among the 100 most followed, only 12% link none.
- Games that link a single network mostly pick Discord (693 games), then X (325) and YouTube (237).
- The most common combinations after that: Discord + X (194 games), then Discord + X + YouTube (187).
02More networks, more followers (a correlation)
The games that link more networks have more followers, but bigger teams also do more of everything: more networks, more trailers, more festivals. This is a correlation, not a recipe. Five abandoned accounts don't bring followers; one account you post on does.
03How big their Discord servers really are
We tested 400 Discord invites picked at random among these pages (362 were valid), and read the public size of the servers behind them.
- The median server has 42 members: a quarter have fewer than 14, and only 10% more than 1,000.
- The median server has 9 people online; half have 10 or fewer, 38% have 5 or fewer.
- In the two weeks before the fest, the median server gained 1 member (+3%), and 35% stayed flat or shrank.
- Among the 100 most followed games, the median server has 2,684 members (40 servers read).
- For games with 100+ Steam followers, the median server has about 0.38 members per Steam follower, but a quarter have more Discord members than Steam followers: too spread to be a rule.
So a quiet Discord of 40 people is normal for a Next Fest game. More on when a server is worth opening in how to run a Discord server for your indie game.
Bluesky
The median Bluesky account linked on these pages has 63 followers and 59 posts, and gained 2 followers in the two weeks before the fest (488 accounts read). 35% of these accounts were created in 2026.
041 Discord invite in 11 is dead
Of 399 Discord invites tested on October 18, 2026, 37 answered "unknown invite": 9%, plus or minus 3 points, about 1 in 11. A dead invite on a Steam page sends every curious player to an error.
The fix is free: open your own Steam page, logged out, and click every social link. Use a Discord invite set to never expire.
05By genre
Genres are the games' Steam tags, for tags with at least 150 games:
- Horror is the most YouTube genre (46% link YouTube, against 31% overall) and the most Instagram and TikTok one (30% and 23%).
- Visual novels are the only genre where X comes before Discord (36% against 22%).
- Survival and cozy games link Discord the most (44% and 43%).
- Tower defense and card games have the most pages with no network at all (53% and 50%).
06What it means for your game
- Link at least one network on your Steam page: 43% of the fest's games link none, and a visitor who likes your game has nowhere to follow it outside Steam.
- Pick the network your genre's players use, then keep it alive. For a solo developer, one or two active accounts beat five empty ones (social media for indie games).
- Click your own links today, logged out. 1 Discord invite in 11 on these pages leads nowhere.
- Judge your Discord against your niche, not against the top 100: a median server of 42 members is the real picture.
How we measured
- Population: the games of Valve's developer preview list for Steam Next Fest October 2026 (8,165 games), AAA games excluded, keeping those whose Steam page and follower count we could read: 7,592 games.
- Social links: the links shown on each Steam store page, for 10 networks (Discord, X, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, Reddit, Twitch, Threads, Facebook; websites excluded). Read October 17–18, 2026.
- Account sizes: Discord servers (400 invites picked at random and tested on October 18, 2026) and Bluesky accounts, from their public endpoints. X, TikTok and Instagram sizes aren't readable for free, and YouTube channel sizes weren't counted: for those, only the link is measured.
- Top 100: the 100 games of the list with the most Steam followers.
Public data only: Steam store pages and public endpoints, read by NextWishlist. No game is named, and no private Steamworks data is used.
Limits
- Links and followers move together partly because bigger teams do more of everything: a correlation, not a cause.
- The preview list is not the final list of games in the fest.
- Steam followers are public; wishlists aren't. Followers are a proxy for wishlists, not a measure of them.
- The dead-invite share comes from a random sample of 399 invites: its margin is about 3 points.
Quick answers
Which social networks do indie games use the most?
On the Steam pages of 7,592 Next Fest October 2026 games, Discord (35%), YouTube (31%) and X (29%) were the most linked. Among the 100 most followed games, Discord (81%) and X (78%) lead.
How many members does an indie game Discord have?
The median Discord server linked on these Next Fest pages had 42 members, 9 of them online, in October 2026. Only 10% had more than 1,000 members.
Do I need social media links on my Steam page?
43% of Next Fest October 2026 games had none. Linking at least one active account gives interested players a way to follow you outside Steam; check that each link works.
How many networks do the most followed Next Fest games link?
A median of 5, with Discord and X first. Only 12% of the 100 most followed games linked no network.
Cite this study
DreamEp, NextWishlist (2026). Which social networks do Steam Next Fest games link? A study of 7,592 store pages. https://nextwishlist.com/research/next-fest-games-social-media
The figures on this page are free to quote with a link to it (CC BY 4.0).
Sources
- Valve, Steam Next Fest rules (Steamworks) (read Oct 1, 2026)
- Steam store pages (public data) (read Oct 17–23, 2026)
- Discord, invites (public invite endpoint) (read Oct 18, 2026)
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