I’m releasing my first game on Steam soon, and I just launched the store page. Thanks to my friends hyping it up, I hit 150 wishlists in the first week, But I’m starting to freak out a bit about the money side of things. I love making games and really want to keep doing this, but I’m scared of failing financially. I’ve heard a lot of people say you should pay influencers to promote your game, but I’m not sure if that’s the way to go. Do I need to do that to get more wishlists/sales, or can I get by just growing it slowly?

1 hour ago

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I have no idea, but have a bump so maybe a fellow dev sees it and can advise.

1 hour ago
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Depends on the size of the YouTuber (if Let's Play videos is what you're referring to), but they'll probably do a video on your game in return for a free key for it.

50 minutes ago
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Well what kind of game is it a little arcade style one or a bigger one that is more of a longer game? What price are you thinking of? You and by you I mean anyone should be looking at any game they put out as a fail from the start - that way if it fails it's not too bad

I mean with the amount of games coming out every day from big to small and everything else people need money for - most games will get a little sales but not enough to make it a full time business

As for paying people to make videos on it or Stream it unless you can pay people with a free key I wouldn't bother - I (and of course I don't know you) would doubt you have contacts already and no offence but I can't see you having the money or be important enough to get someone of decent size to play your game - if they do they would maybe do it for a lot more people again you would get lost in the shuffle.

You have to think how much money you want to/can afford to spend on promotion - I mean you said you have 150 wish-lists (which is really good) but until they are sales that means very little sadly as anyone can wish-list 1000's of games at any time without every really doing more than that.

One thing I would advise against is using one of these sites where you do a few tasks for points to spend on free keys - two reasons paying them to add a task to wish-list your game is:
1 - They wish-list it just for the points and don't even look at what the game is about
2 - They wish-list it grab the points then un wish-list when they are claimed

Maybe do a 50+ key giveaway on here is more the way to go while I can't say if the game will be played still you have more of a chance to get it in the hands of gamers who might give fair and honest feedback and reviews as again paying a streamer (even with free keys) means they are more likely (not everyone of course is like this) to say overly positive things in the hopes of other dev/pub or maybe if you get another game out getting keys for free from them.

I hope some of this helps you

27 minutes ago
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If you are an indie dev, you shouldn't go all in on your game. The truth is most indie games don't even make back the 100 usd the steam store page cost. Also the way Steam works, you shouldn't release a game below 7k wishlists, because the algorithm won't place it on the front page on your release date, if it's below that. Wishlist conversions are generally very low, around 5%, so 150 is not nearly enough.

You should look for similar games and find where their players go to and promote your game there. If your game is about aliens, maybe posting on alien related subreddits or facebook groups etc would be ideal. I doubt influencers are worth it, unless you specifically seek out people in your genre. If your game is a strategy game, and you pay a big influencer who primarily plays fps games, that won't translate to more wishlists, because his/her audience don't care for strategy games.

18 minutes ago
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