What I learned about Steam Next from looking at 208 games that participated

It's Steam Next Fest time. It is time for Steam Next Fest. Here's the thing, I looked at 208 games, 208 games from the February 2025 Next Fest. They sent me their data, okay? And what I'm doing is I looked at every single game and I'm going to tell you exactly in this Next Fest, this October one, I'm going to predict how many wishlists you get based off this data. All right, let's take a look here. First off, I just want to say this Next Fest is going to be stressful, but you're going to be fine. Everything's fine. You're going to be fine. Okay, let me show you. All right, so if you have fewer than a thousand wishlists going into Next Fest, you're going to earn 462 wishlists. Your best case, if you pray super hard, you're going to get 4,000. You're going to end Next Fest with an extra 4,000, okay? If you go into Next Fest with 10,000, 10,000 wishlists, you're going to end up earning about 1,500. And your best case, if you su- pray super hard, 10,000. That's it.

If you have 100,000, just under 100,000, all the way down to 10,000. I didn't put the both things. I just I just said less than 100,000. I know somebody in the comments going to be like, "Oh, Chris, but what about my games? All these It's It's a range, okay? I just didn't want to write cuz it takes up too much space. All right, uh you're going to earn 6,360 wishlists. Best case, if you pray super hard, 45,000. And if you've got, you know, the big boys, you got over 100,000 wishlists, look what you're going to earn. You're going to earn probably 23,000 wishlists. And if you pray super hard, best case, 42,000. Notice sometimes sometimes when it gets it gets a little weird when you get this many wishlists. Sometimes you can earn more if you have fewer. But don't over analyze that. I think it's just the sample size is small enough at the top size, okay? Um I'm doing this because uh I've got a big sale right now just for while Next Fest is going on. I'm putting all my courses on sale. Just check them out. howtomarketagame.com/courses. That's it. All right, so here's here's

here's what the graph is. This is the number of impressions driven by the store page. You have to filter when you look at your traffic, just search just for your store page, you get this data. Here's how Steam Next Fest works. If you have a bunch of wishlists going in, they give you more visibility. And the big boys at the top that already have a lot, the store page gives them all of visibility. Everybody else is battling it for this bottom thing. It depends on how good your game is. It really it does just make a good game, like I say. Now, you can figure out how your Next Fest is doing by about Thursday, okay? So, what happens is Monday and Tuesday Steam Next Fest gives a baseline of visibility. They give everybody a guaranteed minimum. That doesn't mean everybody gets the same. This is what people always mix up in Reddit. They always say this wrong. Steam Next Fest guarantees a baseline the first two days. And here's that baseline, see it? This is their guaranteed baseline.

The big boys earn more. That Not everybody gets the same, they just get the same baseline, okay? So, watch. These games Monday and Tuesday, you're going to see about the same. They're just trying you out. The machine learning algorithm's trying you out. Wednesday, you kind of find out. Thursday, you seriously know what Steam thinks of you. And by Steam, I don't mean just the algorithm, I mean Steam players. Okay, Steam shows your game plenty, but if they don't like what they see, Steam cuts your visibility, okay? And see how this line, this is the brown tier, the bronze tier. Let's call it bronze tier. Cuts your visibility. So, what's happening is on Friday, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to make you feel better. I'm going to do a live Q&A on Friday. You should have all your data from Thursday, everybody. So, uh live Q&A. So, down below, click down below. That's how you sign up for the the live webinar. It'll be on YouTube, just on the YouTube. I'll make it nice and easy for you. People love YouTube. I don't know why they love it. So, I'm going to do it on YouTube, but on Friday, this coming Friday, we're all going to look at our data together to find out how your Thursday went. If it stayed steady,

you're okay. If it dropped, not so good. If you're diamond, it's fine. If you got all these impressions, that's like 130,000 impressions only from the store page. Remember, here's the thing, it's impressions from the store page. You find it in the Steam works. Okay? That's what you're going to feel. So, we're going to talk about Friday, how you feel, okay? Now, people wonder, "How do I know, you know, what what's going to happen?" It's very predictable, actually. Steam Next Fest is not a surprise. This is why I say you're going to be fine. There's not that many surprising things. Remember, I studied 208 games? The surprising thing is that it's not surprising. If you go in with low wishlists, so watch. The wishlists that you enter Next Fest with are right here. I asked 208 developers to share their data with me, and they did. Here it is. The further you go on this side of the scale, remember, this is logarithmic logarithmic, uh you you earn more. You see? It's just like perfect cone. And

so, a lot of people I even see this stuff like on YouTube comments and stuff. People are like, "Oh, you know, it's it'll be fine. You should just kickstart your visibility. Just go in." No, no, no, no, no. Look, if you go in with low wishlists, you are nothing. Don't do that. Wait as long as you can. You're just not going to earn anything. Um this is not a super statistical thing. I just kind of eyeballed this thing cuz I don't want to do all those regressions and stuff. But if you could just see, once you get about over on the 2,000 wishlist side, stuff starts popping. It starts popping like popcorn over here. On the under 2,000 entering Next Fest, maybe maybe this one game, look at that one game, it got about 4,500 wishlists. Everybody else is just jammed down on the bottom. Stuff doesn't really start moving and happening until you get on this side. Now, look, there's plenty of games that had pretty high wishlists. Like this little bugger. See that little dude right there? Poor guy. He went in pretty good with a lot of wishlists, still didn't earn many. But your chances are higher, okay? Remember,

this is probability. There's no No, this is not a pure line. It's not a pure line, it's just kind of random chance, but you can see in the random chance, your best bet on your 2,000 wishlists is this dude. That's your best I'm going to pray every night to be this dude. That's your best choice. It doesn't happen. It's not like, "Oh, man, you get discovered." And that's the thing people don't understand about Steam Next Fest. It's not about like, "We're going to kickstart visibility and hopefully it'll land a publisher cuz we got no wishlists, so we're going to kickstart our visibility with Steam Next Fest." Here's what kickstarting your visibility looks like. It doesn't kickstart. There is no kickstarting. Instead, Steam Next Fest is a multiplier. It boosts what you already have, okay? And I'm sorry if it's too late. It's too late, you're in Next Fest, there's nothing you can do. There's just nothing. I'm mainly I'm mainly telling this to everybody who's planning to do the Next Fest. You're hearing about all this Next Fest chatter. It's mainly for those going forward in the future. But if you are in Next Fest, and let's say

you're on here, you're like, "Um what do I do now?" Just pray. Pray that you're this bubble right there. You just want to be that guy. So, just pray every night that you're going to get 4,000 wishlists. That's what it is, okay? 4,000 wishlists right there. It's too late. It's too late, okay? Um so, basically all you got to do And I'm sorry if you're Next Fest right now and you went in with under 2,000 wishlists and you thought you could kickstart your visibility. I'm trying to tell y'all I try and tell everybody about this way in advance, but nobody nobody Not I can't reach everybody, okay? So, this is for the people who are coming soon to Next Fest. But really, the best way to do Next Fest is to already do well. And people are like, "What? How is that possible?" Let me tell you. How do you do well in Next Fest? How do I get those 2,000? And it's not a hard line. I just eyeballed it. Don't quote me on 2,000. It was just I just looked I just looked at the line, okay? I didn't It It's not like in the algorithm it says 2,000. Don't ask Steam about 2,000. I just randomly picked

2,000 because it looked nice, okay? Don't over quote this. Don't quote me on Reddit. Okay. Here's the secret. This is the This is the secret, everybody. Launch your demo way before Next Fest. Not even like And I'm not saying like, "Oh, we're going to do two weeks before Next Fest." No, no, no, no. You launch it months and months and months and months and months, maybe even years. Don't make a game for years. But way before Next Fest, okay? So, here's how you do it. You launch that demo way in advance, and then you go to howtomarketagame.com/festivals. You enter into other festivals. Here's the secret, folks. This is the secret. This is what it comes down to. Steam Next Fest isn't even the best festival. There's other ones that are listed on this howtomarketagame.com/festivals. They do much better than Next Fest most of the time, okay? I People just freak out about Next Fest. I don't know why they do, okay? So, here's how they actually do it. Now, if you don't believe me and you actually want to launch, this is what it takes to launch right before Next Fest and still

do well. Let me show you. This is Zoltan Nelson Jr., a very unappealing shot of the guy. He's a He's a much better looking guy than this. I mean, he is like doing a funny joke. Um he was launching I Am a Beast. He has an existing audience. Guys really like half a dozen games already. Dozens of games, I should say. Double dozens. Double dozens of games. He has an existing audience. He was about to launch it. He launched it in June during right as part His demo launched as part of the PC Gaming Show. So, here's him on the PC Gaming Show. You see that little icon? PC Gaming Show, he said, "My game's live now. Play the demo." And then like a day later, 24 hours later, he did Steam Next Fest. This is like 2024 or 2023, I can't remember. He did the summer one, anyway. That's how you do well going in low. You have to be on PC Gaming Show. They have to accept you. This Otherwise, this game to get a game into with a PC Gaming Show costs about $30,000. So, if you got $30,000 in June, get yourself into PC Gaming Show, time

your demo right then Steam Next Fest, then you can launch right before Steam Next Fest with no previous wish list. But, this is what it takes, folks, and even this is really hard, okay? So, that's what it takes to launch a demo right before Steam Next Fest. Do you have that? If you don't have that, it's not going to happen. I am sorry. I am so sorry. This is a very risky strategy to try and release your demo right before Next Fest. Don't do it. Again, I'm sorry if you did that this time. I tried to tell you. It's on I I I blogged about this stuff years ago, okay? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But, I'm telling the folks who are looking at the next Next Fest, which is in February. They're thinking, "I'm going to do the February one." Remember, you've got to launch a demo way before, enter in festivals way before. That's what it takes. That's what it takes, okay? Don't launch immediately after Steam Next Fest. This I can catch you on. If you're in Next Fest now, you have low wish lists, and you're thinking, "You know what? We're going to get some wish lists just before launch. And you know what? We got momentum after Next Fest. We only earned

about 2,000 wish lists, but we got momentum, by golly. Uh we're going to release our game right after Steam Next Fest because we have momentum. Let's take a look. Does that work? No, it's not a good idea. So, what I did, this is June uh June 2024, I did this chart. This is number of releases per day with over 50 hype. This data comes from Simon Carless's excellent service where he can look at the hype, and it's this algorithm that he used to figure out how much momentum an individual game has. What I did was I looked at all the games that had over 50 hype points. It's this is proprietary number he made up. Don't obsess about what 50 hype points are. It just It correlates to how well the game is going to do later, how much momentum they have. And I plotted them all together. Added them up. Remember, it's the total number. Here it is, look. Games released that have over 50. Look. Here's Steam Next Fest. This is the week of Steam Next Fest, just like this. Oh, it's June 2024. There it is. June 2024.

And then what happens? All these indies that are like, "We're going to release right after Steam Next Fest. I think I figured out a secret." You know who figured out? Every god damn indie. Look at this. These are the number of games releasing in the days right after Next Fest. It's the highest of the month is the days after. You didn't come up with a good idea. Every indie I ask has this idea. Don't release in the days after Next Fest. Look at how many games are launching during the summer sale, which is just about a week and a half later. Not many. Not many. See? Do the data. Do the homework. It'll be It'll make you smarter. But, we got momentum. That's what they always say. They always have momentum. I'm like, "What is momentum to you?" And they're like, "We got I don't know, but we got it after Next Fest. We got the momentum. We got that momentum." Uh here it is. Uh you can look at See, uh part of the Simon Carless, he does his hype score, which predicts how well the game is going to do. And then he goes back, and his data will also look at how well it actually did. So, we call

it This is Simon Carless's data, hype score to first week conversion versus release date, okay? That's a lot to take, but it's a ratio of how much hype it had to how much it actually converted is what it is. And this ratio is So, the higher the ratio, the more momentum was actually real momentum, right? Look at the games during the gap, which is the time after Steam Next Fest, but before summer sale. I'll call it the gap, but this is those indies that are like, "But, we've got momentum." No, you don't. No games had momentum. It's like a flat line. Everybody just Nobody converted extra well. There was no extra boost in momentum coming that made your conversions better. No. No. Look, the the time when you got momentum was June 2nd. I don't There's nothing magic about that. It's probably just some really good game released. June 10th, first day of Steam Next Fest, and then all these other games? No. No. No,

there's no such thing as momentum. It's just something people on Reddit talk to themselves about. There is none. Look at this data. Right there. Simon Carless's hype conversion data. Okay? Let's look at this. Um and uh just reminding you that there's a live Q&A. I just want to remind you again, in case you're not there. It's right below. I link below it in the comment section to say, "Hey, I'm going to do live Q&A. We're going to talk whether you got momentum." But, the the reason I'm doing it Friday is so that we can look at Thursday and see what you did. Did you stay flat? Did you have that? Or did you go higher? Now, again, remember, this is impressions from the store page, not from external activity. This is purely driven by the store page, Steam Next Fest. No outside thing like, "Oh, I bet these people bought ads." No, no, no, no, no. This is purely driven by the store page, which is pure algorithm. There's no purchase spots. Some games are just magic. They just have the magic, okay? And then you can see the games that seems like ooh. Ooh, this is a sloppy. Let's put the

slop down here. You can see the slop curve. That's the slop curve. Um and some games are just kind of flat. They're just like, "Ah, you're fine. I'm just I'm just going to keep you there." Notice Saturday? This one's interesting. Saturday, a lot of people coming in on Saturday, and they're like, "Hey, let's check out this Next Fest that I heard about." They waited till Saturday to check, so you always see a little secondary bump. It's actually the number one day for diamond tier games. And then maybe gold tier, and then uh silver tier. They They They get a little bit of a bump, but not not the old slime tier. Slime tier, they're just like, "Yikes, sloppy." That's what they do. All right. Uh if you really want to remember to get that Next Fest reminder for the Q&A that I'm going to do live on YouTube, here it is. howtomarketagame.com/free. Don't screw Like and subscribe. Don't like it. YouTube sucks. Ooh, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Don't do that. I don't care. I don't want you to subscribe. It sucks. YouTube sucks. What I want you to subscribe to is the newsletter, which is howtomarketagame.com/free, and you get this free book, which is 60 marketing mistakes that you're going to make. When you subscribe to somebody's

YouTube, do you get that? No. I'm trying to get you all to realize YouTube sucks. When you subscribe to YouTube, you get nothing. You just get more annoying distractions. This, you get a lovely book, handcrafted by me, not AI, handcrafted by human, right here. Okay. More tips coming up right here, okay? All you got to do is uh subscribe here, and then you're going to find out about the Q&A next Friday, right here on YouTube, even though it sucks. But, all right, I got to go where the kids are. All right, thank you so much. I'll talk to you all later.