The answer to “when should I start marketing my game?” is almost always “earlier than you think.”
The most damaging misconception in game development is that marketing is something you do after the game is finished. By the time your game is complete and you’re ready to “start marketing,” you’ve already missed the most valuable months of potential community building, wishlist accumulation, and algorithmic momentum on Steam or Epic Games.
Here’s the thing: marketing isn’t a phase. It’s a parallel workstream that runs alongside development from early on. The studios that launch successfully almost always started building their audience months, sometimes years, before they shipped. The ones that scramble to “do marketing” in the final weeks almost always underperform. Here’s the timeline we recommend based on what we see working across hundreds of studios on GAMES.GG:
12+ Months Before Launch: Foundation Phase
This is when marketing begins, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Nothing you do here will generate wishlists directly, but everything you do here makes your later marketing exponentially more effective.
Define your market positioning. Research comparable titles on Steam. How many reviews do they have? What tags are they using? What’s the visual style of games that succeed in your genre? Identify your hook, the single most interesting thing about your game that makes someone stop scrolling. Write it down in one sentence. If you can’t articulate it clearly at this stage, your marketing will be unfocused no matter how much you spend later.
Set up your online presence. Register your domain, create a simple landing page with an email signup form, set up social accounts on X/Twitter, TikTok, and wherever your target players hang out, and create a Discord server. You don’t need polished assets yet. You just need a digital footprint that you’ll build on over the coming months. Even a basic “coming soon” page with an email capture starts compounding value from day one.
Start sharing development content. Post WIP screenshots, concept art, prototypes, devlog entries. The content doesn’t need to be polished. Audiences genuinely love watching a game come together from nothing. Some of the most successful indie launches in recent years built their early following purely through development content, months before they had anything playable. Among Us, Hades, and Hollow Knight all had long “building in public” phases before they became household names.
Begin participating in developer communities. Join relevant subreddits like r/gamedev, r/indiegaming, and genre-specific communities. Join Discord servers where devs share knowledge. Give feedback to other developers, comment on their work, and build genuine relationships. These connections pay dividends during launch when you need amplification, feedback, and cross-promotion partners. Don’t just lurk, engage.
8–10 Months Before Launch: Pages Go Live
This is the single most important marketing milestone before launch. Everything before this was preparation. This is where the real accumulation begins.
Launch your Steam Coming Soon page (or Epic Games Store, or whichever storefront you’re targeting). The moment you have a playable prototype with representative visuals, get your page live. Every single day your page isn’t live is a day you’re not accumulating wishlists from Steam’s organic discovery features, including the Discovery Queue, tag-based recommendations, and “More Like This” sections on similar games. These wishlists are free, and they compound over time. Studios that put their page up 10 months before launch consistently outperform those that wait until 3 months out.
Invest in your visual assets. Commission a professional capsule image if you haven’t already, this is the single most-seen visual asset of your entire game and it needs to pop at every size from 460x215 down to 184x69. Record your first gameplay trailer, lead with actual gameplay within the first 2 seconds, no logos, no cinematics. Take high-quality screenshots that showcase variety, different environments, mechanics, moods, and moments.
Announce your game. Coordinate a proper announcement across all your channels simultaneously. Send your press kit to relevant media outlets. Post on Reddit communities like r/gaming, r/pcgaming, and genre-specific subs. Share on X/Twitter, TikTok, and your Discord. This is your “reveal moment”, and it should feel like an event, not an afterthought. Time it for a Tuesday through Thursday for maximum press pickup. List on discovery platforms. Get your game on GAMES.GG and other relevant platforms like IndieDB and itch.io immediately. The sooner your game is visible across multiple platforms, the more organic discovery you accumulate. Each listing is a permanent, free source of traffic that compounds indefinitely.
6–8 Months Before Launch: Momentum Phase
Your Steam and/or Epic Games page is live and you’re accumulating wishlists. Now you need to build consistent momentum so the algorithm and your audience both know you’re serious.
Establish a content cadence. Post at least twice a week across your primary social channels. Mix gameplay clips (15–30 second GIFs perform best on X and TikTok), development updates showing progress, behind-the-scenes content, and community interaction. The goal isn’t virality, it’s consistency. You’re training the algorithm and your audience to expect content from you on a regular schedule. Studios that post consistently see 3–5x more organic reach than those who post sporadically.
Start influencer outreach. Build a list of 100+ content creators who regularly cover games in your genre, specifically targeting YouTube and Twitch creators with 1K–50K subscribers. Don’t pitch them yet. Introduce yourself, express genuine interest in their content, and let them know about your game. The goal right now is relationship-building so when you need them during launch, you’re not a cold stranger in their inbox. A warm intro now converts at 3–5x the rate of a cold pitch later.
Grow your Discord. Actively invite people from your social channels, host weekly events or Q&A sessions, share exclusive behind-the-scenes content that isn’t available anywhere else, run polls about game features to make members feel like insiders, and generally create a space people want to hang out in, not just an announcement channel. A Discord server with 500 genuinely engaged members is more valuable than one with 5,000 silent ones.
Apply for showcases and festivals. Steam Next Fest is the big one, but there are dozens of smaller online showcases, publisher spotlights, and curated festival features that accept applications months in advance. Apply to all of them. A single showcase feature can generate thousands of wishlists in a week for zero cost. Check submission deadlines early, most close 2–4 months before the event.
3–6 Months Before Launch: Acceleration Phase
This is where you shift from “building” to “pushing.” Your audience base is established, your assets are strong, and now you need to accelerate toward launch.
Prepare and release a demo. If you’re planning to participate in Steam Next Fest, your demo needs to be polished and ready. Target 15–25 minutes of gameplay that showcases your core hook. End the demo on a high note, a cliffhanger, a tease of what’s coming, something that makes the player immediately want to wishlist the full game. Consider releasing the demo 1–2 weeks before the festival starts to gather early feedback and fix issues before the big traffic spike.
Activate influencer campaigns. Send Steam keys to your full outreach list. For creators you built relationships with during the momentum phase, follow up with personalized messages and early access to your demo or a preview build. Even a 10% response rate on 100 outreach emails means 10 potential pieces of organic coverage for zero dollars.
Ramp up paid media testing. If you have budget for paid ads, now is the time to test creative formats, audiences, and platforms. Run small tests ($50–$200 per test) on Meta, TikTok, and Reddit. The goal isn’t to drive massive volume yet, it’s to figure out which creative, which audience, and which platform converts best so you can scale spending confidently during launch week.
Finalize your press kit. Update it with your latest trailer, high-resolution screenshots, key art, studio bio, and a fact sheet with all relevant details. Make it available as a single downloadable ZIP file from your website. Journalists who can’t find usable assets quickly will move on to the next game (you'd also make our lives easier if we plan to feature your game on GAMES.GG).
Set your launch date. Choose strategically. Avoid launching in the same week as major AAA releases. Tuesday through Thursday consistently outperforms weekends because press, creators, and Steam’s editorial team are most active on weekdays. In 2026 specifically, the April-to-June window offers the best visibility before the GTA 6 effect takes hold in Q4, when mainstream attention will be dominated by Rockstar from October through January.
1 Month Before Launch: Pre-Launch Sprint
Everything accelerates now. This is your highest-intensity marketing period, and ideally, you should have nothing left to create, only things to execute.
Send your game to press. Provide review copies to journalists and media outlets at least 2–3 weeks before launch. They need time to play, write, and schedule their coverage. Target the journalists you identified earlier who cover your genre specifically. Personalize every email, reference their recent work, and make it easy for them to say yes by including your press kit, a Steam key, and a one-sentence hook.
Activate paid influencer sponsorships. If you have budget for paid creator deals, schedule them to go live during launch week. The compounding effect of multiple creators covering your game in the same 3–5 day window is significantly more powerful than spreading coverage over weeks. This creates a perception of momentum that both players and Steam’s algorithm reward.
Email your list. Send a “launch is coming” email to everyone who signed up. Include the exact date, a direct wishlist link, your launch trailer, and a reminder of what makes the game special. If your list is over 1,000 subscribers, this single email can drive hundreds of wishlists in a day.
Prepare all launch day assets in advance. Write every social media post, newsletter email, Discord announcement, and Steam news post before launch day. Record a launch trailer if you haven’t already. On launch day, you should be responding to players and monitoring reviews, not scrambling to create content.
Polish your Steam page one final time. Update screenshots with final visuals. Tighten your description. Confirm your tags are accurate. Your page will receive the most traffic it will ever get during launch week, it needs to be flawless.
Launch Week: Execute and Respond
Day one: publish your Steam news and social posts announcing the game is live. Post across all social channels. Send your launch email. Activate any remaining influencer campaigns. Then shift entirely into response mode, monitor your Steam reviews closely, engage with early player feedback, and address critical bugs immediately.
Days two through seven: continue posting content daily. Share player reactions, positive reviews, gameplay clips from the community, and any press coverage you receive. Engage actively in your Discord and Steam Community Hub. If multiple reviews mention the same issue, push a patch. A fast day-one or day-two patch that addresses player concerns can turn negative reviews positive and signals to potential buyers that the game is actively supported.
Worth noting: Steam’s algorithm heavily weights the first 3–5 days of sales data to determine long-term visibility. A strong opening leads to better algorithmic placement, which leads to more organic traffic, which leads to sustained sales. This flywheel effect is why everything before this moment matters so much.
Post-Launch: The Work Continues
The days when you could ship a game and move on are long gone. Players expect updates, patches, and ongoing communication. Games that sustain post-launch engagement see significantly better long-term revenue through Steam’s recommendation algorithm, which actively favors games with recent activity.
Week two: Publish a follow-up patch addressing the most common player feedback. Share a “road ahead” post outlining your post-launch content plans, new features, balance changes, community-requested additions. This tells both players and the algorithm that your game is actively supported and worth recommending.
Month one: Evaluate your launch performance data. Which marketing channels drove the most wishlists and sales? Which influencers delivered the best ROI? What was your wishlist conversion rate? Use this data to refine your ongoing strategy and inform your approach for future projects.
Months two and three: Prepare for your first Steam seasonal sale or similar themed moments/events. This is your second-biggest visibility event after launch. Update your store page assets if needed, plan a content update or feature addition to coincide with the sale for maximum impact, and set a discount that feels meaningful (10–20% for the first sale is standard).
Ongoing: Continue regular Steam and dev log news posts (at least biweekly), community engagement, and social media content. Games that maintain consistent activity for 6–12 months post-launch see significantly better long-term sales than games that go dark after the first month.
The Biggest Timing Mistake
The single most common, and most damaging, timing mistake is announcing your game before you have a Steam page ready. Every reveal, trailer, or social media push that doesn’t link directly to a place where people can wishlist your game is wasted potential.
Attention is momentary. If someone sees your game, gets excited, but has nowhere to express that interest, they’ll forget about you within hours. There’s no “I’ll come back later” in gaming, people see thousands of games per year and the ones that don’t capture intent immediately get lost in the noise.
The fix is simple: never announce publicly until your Steam page is live and the wishlist button is active. Coordinate your reveal so that every single piece of content, every tweet, every Reddit post, every trailer, links directly to your store page. Make wishlisting frictionless. That’s the entire game.
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