Steam wishlists: my honest numbers after 9 months of a 'coming soon' page
3,140 wishlists, where they came from, what did nothing, and why my capsule art was my biggest mistake
Contents
Since my Steam page went live in November I get the same DM every week: "how many wishlists, is it good ?" So voilà, everything, the good and the plate.
The total
- Wishlists added: 3,412
- Wishlists deleted: 272
- Net: 3,140 after 9 months
Where they came from
My best estimate, from UTM links in Steamworks and the traffic breakdown:
- Reddit GIF posts: ~31%. One GIF did about 600 alone: the fish stares at the camera while the boat slowly sinks behind it. The fish keeps looking. People love the fish.
- Steam's own discovery (search, tags, "more like this"): ~28%. This one grows when the others grow. It follows outside traffic.
- A small Québécois streamer who played the prototype: ~12%. 2,000 viewers, one evening. Best evening of my year.
- Bluesky, X and Mastodon together: ~9%. Many likes, few wishlists.
- Newsletter and my website: ~7%.
- Unknown and other: the rest.
What did nothing
- Paid ads. I tried $300. Around 40 wishlists. $7.50 per wishlist, tabarnak. Never again at this stage.
- Text devlogs on my own blog with no images. Nobody reads text. They watch GIFs.
- A press release to 80 sites. 2 replies. One was asking if I want to buy a sponsored article.
The biggest mistake: the capsule
My first capsule (the small image in all the Steam lists) was my logo on a dark lake. Pretty in big, unreadable in small. Steamworks shows you impressions and click-through, and I was around 2% from impression to page visit. A friend illustrator redid it: fish face huge, title in big letters. Now around 4%. Same game, double the visits. If you do one thing this month, look at your capsule at the smallest size and ask if a stranger understands what the game is.
Is 3,140 good ?
Honestly, for a weird fishing game 6 months before launch, it is ok, not great. The rule of thumb people repeat on forums is that you sell around 10% of your wishlists in the first week, some say less now. So if nothing changes, my first week is maybe 300 copies. That is not a salary. That is why the demo for the next Next Fest is now my priority number one.
Questions in comments, I answer everything except my bank balance (c'est plate).
Written by
Olivier Gagnon
Ex-AAA (8 ans dans un gros studio à Montréal), maintenant indie avec Godot. Je fais un jeu de pêche bizarre. Wishlist s'il vous plaît 🎣 FR/EN
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