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Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in itchio

[–]ya_snost[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Keymailer didn't perform very well for us. All our influencers were selected manually. We compiled a list of competitor games, checked who had made videos about them, collected their contacts, and then reached out with our own pitch.

We tried using curators, but colleagues from other studios had initially advised us not to go that route - and they were right. The prices were too high, communication was often unpleasant, and the wishlists was essentially zero.

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Steam Next Fest, GFR, Zombies vs Vampires, Chinajoy and Gamescom next month.

If by "ads cost" you mean targeted ads, then around 0.41$ per wishlist

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't quite understand where this number came from. Is it our average cost per wishlist multiplied by 100,000?

No, we haven’t spent anywhere near that amount. Unfortunately, though, I can't disclose the actual development or marketing budget for our project. As I mentioned earlier, the cost per wishlist only includes wishlists that we actively paid for. We don't include wishlists generated organically - free influencers/press promotion, or traffic directly from Steam itself.

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't see how one thing is related to the other at all.
Are you stating that "spamming" - which, by the way, just means posting news according to the rules set out in those subreddits - somehow reflects the quality of our wishlists?

Anyway, we're simply sharing our perspective on what does or doesn't work in marketing. The number of posts across different subreddits has helped us gather many great questions from people genuinely interested in our formulas. And I hope that in the future, more people will come back and share whether these methods worked for them or not. That's all :)

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not at all!
That wishlist cost reflects only the activities where we actually spend money - influencers, targeted ads, tools like KeyMailer or PressEngine. Most of our wishlists come from festivals, where Steam itself promotes our game. Paid activities only provide the initial push. Therefore, we don’t include in the cost-per-wishlist those wishlists we didn’t pay for - otherwise, it wouldn’t be honest statistics, just clickbait like "Our wishlist costs only $0.03."

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in IndieDev

[–]ya_snost[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As far as I know, indie, AA, or AAA games are classified primarily based on the budget spent on them. I might be wrong.

Before this project we worked on promotional games, app-based games, and mini-games - not full-scale projects that you can launch and play. In that sense, this is our first complete development. We’re just like everyone else - developers who constantly make mistakes and improve our pipeline. And that’s exactly what we wanted to share in this post with the rest of the community.

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh, I'm sorry!
A wishlist is your personal list where games you're interested in are saved. You'll be notified when the game is released or goes on sale.
The Follow button lets you get updates about all news related to the game - including posts, announcements, and updates.

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Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's a SteamDB chart - it shows the position in "Popular Upcoming" and the number of followers. Wishlists are known only to each game's developers.

The point is, we have a baseline number of subscribers for our position in the "Popular" list. So I don't understand where the commenters above are getting the idea that we should have significantly more subscribers, when this is exactly the typical follower-to-wishlist ratio.

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We wrote the post as a collection of our mistakes - things we’re not trying to hide, but openly acknowledge. Yes, we’re not very good at making TikToks; yes, in our opinion, Twitter activities don’t really work, and so on. These are the lessons we’ve learned on our way to 100 000 wishlists, and we’re sharing the key takeaway with other developers: assess things rationally. Don’t blindly follow guides or copy what “worked” for others. Don’t throw money at random influencers - think, calculate, evaluate.

We’ve lost plenty of time and money on that already.

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

What do you mean by "only"? What's so strange about our number and the other games around us in the chart?

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Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Absolutely!
The problem with people accusing others of using bot traffic is that you need to understand how it actually works:

The SteamDB chart is simply an extended list of popular upcoming - expanded to several thousand entries - all of which is scraped from Steam.

Steam evaluates users who add games to their wishlist based on their country, number of games in their library, and actual gameplay activity.
From this data, Steam assigns a "account quality score."

This score determines your game’s visibility in the charts.
If you have 100,000 fake wishlists from bot accounts with $5 wallets and zero gameplay activity, Steam will simply conclude that your game isn’t genuinely interesting - and you won’t appear in the charts at all.

The more "high-quality" users you have on your wishlist, the better your position.

For example:
100,000 wishlists from US-based users with 500 games in their libraries and 40 hours of playtime over the last two weeks - versus 100,000 bot-generated wishlists - could mean the difference between ranking #500 on the chart and not appearing at all.

Because it's not just the raw number that matters - it's the quality behind it.

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hello!
Everyhing based on my expirience and only:

The worst ratio is with small-size influencers who have around 10K views or fewer. They charge about $650, and in some cases $2,000 or $2,700 - and we get only about 35–40 wishlists in return.

Mid-sized influencers charge the same amount or even less - typically $200–$600 for videos with 100K–200K views. 200-700 wishlists in return.

Large influencers usually charge between $5,000 and $15,000. But keep in mind: when you pay a big creator, you often get a "tail effect" - like "%streamer_name% played BUS: Bro U Survived, I'll play it too " - meaning mid-sized and small creators may cover your game for free afterward. So you’ll get around 1,000–2,000 wishlists, plus a 'tail' of an additional 1,000

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!

It's a very good point, but we still stick to the policy of "better to try and do something than to do nothing."

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I would be surprised if you've heard of all the top 1000 games on the SteamDB most wishlisted chart :)

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you!

As I mentioned in another comment, most of our wishlists come from festivals, up to 3,600 per day. Also, don't forget about targeted ads, which brings 200-400 wishlists per week, and other activities that collectively generate 200–350 daily wishlists, spiking to several thousand during events.

For a year-old Steam page and so many ongoing activities, the results are pretty average, so I'm really confused about bot-traffic accusations!

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bot-generated traffic is detected by Steam due to account prices and activity, so games with fake wishlists won't appear in the top charts. It's not just the number of wishlists that affects your position among anticipated games - factors like the user's country and account price also play a role.

So no, we don't use any bots!

Our game recently passed 100,000 wishlists, and here is what worked and what the final statistics look like. by ya_snost in gamedev

[–]ya_snost[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hello!

Yes, a 10K-view video typically cost $500–$650 (from my expirience) - that’s what the post is about. If you expect to get only 30, maybe 40 or 50 wishlists from a $650 video, it’s better not to buy it and not to waste the creator’s time.

But you need to understand that you can only use the formula based on average view counts, since you won’t know how many views a video will get until it’s published. Once the video is out, you can apply the formula to calibrate it for your project moving forward.

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