Expertise
Game marketing focused on discovery, wishlists and launch.
NWLAB runs marketing for game studios: paid media with a tracked cost per wishlist, an owned landing page and Steam page optimization. It is for projects with a live page and the minimum assets ready, from the announcement through launch, starting at $1,500 per channel per month. We work remotely with studios in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil.
Games do not only compete for a purchase. They compete for attention, community and expectation. The operation has to turn curiosity into wishlists, wishlists into a launch and a launch into traction.
Talk to a SpecialistWhy Games is different
Game marketing mixes entertainment, community and platform conversion. And the funnel is brutal: 20,282 games shipped on Steam in 2025 alone, and about 3% passed 1,000 reviews. Generating clicks is not enough. You have to line up creative, store page, wishlists, demo and communication rhythm with the stage of the project: announcement, wishlist build up, Next Fest, launch and post launch. A pretty trailer with no audience framing produces empty curiosity. The right gameplay, the right community and the right page usually do more.
Read the full guide: game marketing for Steam and mobile (2026) →Who it is for
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Studios and developers with a project in pre launch, launch or early post launch
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Operations that want to treat wishlists, landing page and creative as parts of one system
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Teams that treat community as an asset, not as an optional detail
Who it is not for
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Projects without the minimum assets for a page, a creative or a presentation of the game
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Teams expecting media to make up for a badly positioned game or an unclear audience
What the market usually gets wrong
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Starting communication far too late
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Treating the trailer as a substitute for a clear pitch
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Relying only on the store platform to capture interest
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Ignoring the community during pre launch
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Mistaking a nice visual for a message that actually qualifies the audience
Common marketing mistakes in games
Putting the Steam page up too late
Games that launch well usually put the page live 6 to 12 months before release and accumulate most of their wishlists early (VG Insights). A live page is a prerequisite for everything: wishlists, Next Fest, creators and paid media. Every month with no page is wishlists you never accumulate.
Launching without a critical mass of wishlists
Around 7,000 wishlists put a game on Steam Popular Upcoming, where organic discovery starts working for you. 66% of games launch with fewer than 10,000 wishlists and fight in the dark. Wishlists are not a vanity metric: they are the fuel the algorithm runs on at launch.
Treating the trailer as the strategy
A trailer is an asset, not a plan. A creative with clear gameplay qualifies better than a polished, vague one: whoever arrives has to understand in seconds what the game is and why to wishlist it. The trailer works when the page, the capsule and the message tell the same story.
Ignoring the demo
Among the most successful games of early 2025, the ones that kept a demo live averaged a 94.7% rating, against 84.6% for those that did not (Chris Zukowski). The demo is also the way into Next Fest. If the game holds up in its first hour, a demo accelerates wishlists.
Services best suited to games
Primary
Paid Media
Wishlist, demo and purchase campaigns on Meta, Google, TikTok and Reddit, with a tracked cost per wishlist. The benchmark in the category is around $1 per wishlist, and we keep that ruler on the table.
See plan →Websites / Landing Pages
Your own landing page captures interest outside Steam, builds an email list and organizes pre launch and demo communication.
See plan →Conversion Optimization
The Steam page is the most important landing page the game has. When it or the campaign page leaks conversion, the cost of every wishlist climbs fast.
See plan →Benchmarks and references
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20,282 games shipped on Steam in 2025; about 3% (608) passed 1,000 reviews (Chris Zukowski, How To Market A Game)
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1,000 reviews on Steam usually correspond to $150k or more in gross revenue (Chris Zukowski)
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Median wishlist to sale conversion in the first week: 0.15x for games launching with 25,000 wishlists or more (GameDiscoverCo)
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Around 7,000 wishlists put a game on Steam Popular Upcoming; a good Steam Next Fest usually adds 2,000 to 7,000 wishlists
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Correlation between wishlists at launch and first month sales: 70% (VG Insights, sample of 5,744 games)
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Paid media benchmark in the category: around $1 spent per wishlist generated
Results vary by context. We use our diagnostic to frame feasibility before any projection.
Frequently asked questions
How many wishlists does my game need to launch well on Steam?
Around 7,000 wishlists put the game on Popular Upcoming, where Steam starts showing it on its own. Market benchmarks point to 30,000 to 50,000 wishlists at launch to sustain $250k or more in revenue. The median wishlist to sale conversion in the first week is 0.15x (GameDiscoverCo), so the right target depends on the price, the genre and the commercial goal of the project.
How much does indie game marketing cost?
International references: game PR agencies charge EUR 2,000 to 6,000 per month, a professional trailer starts around $500 and capsule art from $250. In paid media, the rule of thumb in the category is about $1 per wishlist. Our prices are public: setup, monthly management per channel and a fee on ad spend, with a simulator on the paid media page.
Does paid media work for games?
Yes, when the objective, the creative and the stage of the project are clear. The ruler in this category is cost per wishlist (around $1 in well run campaigns). The common mistake is buying generic traffic without framing message, audience and page first.
What is Steam Next Fest and how do I make the most of it?
It is the Steam demo festival, and each game can only take part once. A good Next Fest usually adds 2,000 to 7,000 wishlists. It requires a stable demo and an optimized page before the event; showing up unprepared burns the only slot the game gets.
Is it worth shipping a demo?
The data says yes: among the most successful games of early 2025, the ones that kept a demo live averaged a 94.7% rating against 84.6% for those without one. The demo is also the ticket into Next Fest. The condition is that the first hour of the game holds up.
Do you handle PR and outreach to press and creators?
Our focus is the performance layer: paid media, pages, conversion and data. PR and creator outreach are not our core service; when a project needs them, we point to specialized partners and integrate the operation with them.
Is social media mandatory for a game?
Not in every format, but some layer of community and recurring communication usually decides things between the announcement and the launch. Devlogs, gameplay clips and behind the scenes are the formats that sustain wishlists best over time.
A good game with no discovery strategy leans far too hard on luck.
Our diagnostic frames the stage of the project, the Steam page, current wishlists, the commercial goal and the channel mix before the next step.
Talk to a SpecialistNo commitment. Just context, judgment and clarity.