So everyone knows the CanYouPetTheDog twitter account. However, from multiple developers, I have heard that getting tweeted by them doesn’t really move wishlist numbers (well not enough to justify the hours it takes to add the code and art assets necessary for a pet-able dog).

However, recently, multiple developers have shared with me a twitter account that did earn them wishlists: FreeSteamGamesPC. It’s an account that does just what it says, it regularly tweets out lists of new free games on Steam. 

How these accounts work

The developers of The Karters 2: Turbo Charged had done a pretty good job marketing their game and getting wishlists. They did Steam Next Fest which earned them 2000 wishlists and pushed their total count high enough to get them ranked on the top wishlisted games list (as explained in this blog post, this means your game is eligible to appear in Popular Upcoming).

However, after the Next Fest their wishlist numbers were falling back down so they decided to do the Prologue Trick (more on how the prologue trick works here). 

They launched their free prologue and did some Streamer outreach but it didn’t go very far. So the team reached out to FreeSteamGamesPC and asked them for a paid promotional post advertising their free Prologue. The cost was quite low (like less than the retail price of a AAA game) and the account tweeted about their game TWICE! Here are the tweets

And

Results

The team said that the tweets got a lot of traction with players but also with the press (who are ALWAYS on twitter). Here are a bunch of clippings of those gaming sites that pretty much just steal the content from the FreeSteamGamesPC account.

The results are quite impressive. You can see how the initial launch of the Prologue definitely helped their daily wishlist rate but the spike started to diminish soon after. The tweet from FreeSteamGamesPC and the subsequent press attention reversed that.

How to take action

If you are launching a free version of your game, try reaching out to these game aggregator accounts on Twitter and see if they will tweet about your game. Try for free at first and see how it goes.

Be aware that the size and reach of the account doesn’t always correlate to better wishlist traction. The developer also paid for a post from No Context Humans (4.5M Followers) but there was no corresponding lift in wishlists. My theory is that most of the people following No Context Humans are there for the funny videos, not for amazing games. That is also why Can You Pet The Dog doesn’t result in much traction, people are just following the account for cute pixelated animations of animals.

The Twitter accounts that service the actual game playing audience (like FreeSteamGamesPC) are a much better fit despite having far fewer followers (74,000).

To bracket expectations, please note that these accounts don’t give you enough visibility to instantly make a game a hit. Instead, you should try to get coverage from these twitter accounts to help boost your existing marketing efforts (like launching a prologue), or participating in a Steam festival.

Good luck and be sure to let me know if any of these accounts work out for you.