Valve just radically changed the behavior of demos. You can read all about it here.
The TL;DR of the changes are as follows:
- Your demo can have it’s own Steam page which you can launch much like a “coming soon page” (or your demo can just be part of your main game page)
- When your demo launches, you can push a button to notify everyone who wishlisted your game, follows your studio, follows your publisher (if you have one) that your demo has launched.
- This “notify” button can only be sent once for a demo. The next notification to interested players comes when you launch the full game or discount it 20%+.
- You can specify the exact moment the “demo notification” is sent as long as it is within 2 weeks of the first time the demo launched.
- Your demo can get reviews (but you can turn this functionality on or off)
- If your demo reaches some magical threshold your demo can appear on the “New & Trending” list alongside new, fully-launched Steam games.
- The demo date “first available as playable” is VERY important. Consider it as important as picking which Steam Next Fest you want to enter. Once your demo is playable, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
- Your demo is not subject to Discovery Queue featuring
This is the button that launches the emails:
So how does this change your marketing strategy? Should you launch your demo when you launch your Steam page? Are prologues dead?
We are still in the early days of this feature and still figuring out how it works so I can provide some early thoughts. But I will evolve this post as we learn more.
In short, what does the new demo rule do?
A while ago I was talking to a Valve representative about why they don’t implement feature x or feature y, and they joked
Every feature developers request is basically for a button that they can push that says “more visibility.”
It is a joke that is very true.
Here is what is so exciting about this: Steam’s new demo feature is essentially a button you can push that says “more visibility.”
Early effects
The new demo algorithm launched over the weekend and the first demos started appearing on New & Trending (N&T).
I spoke to the developer behind CleanFall who had their Demo featured (Check them out on Twitter). On Friday, July 26th they launched their demo and by Saturday they were on N&T.
CCU chart after the demo was published.
- On Saturday the game earned 1400 wishlists and 20,000 page visits.
- On Sunday they got 800 wishlists (for a brief period the game disappeared from the widget)
- On Monday they got 1800 wishlists had 45,000 page visits.
Since they launched their demo, CleanFall has received 6 MILLION+ impressions and gone from 1800 wishlists to 6000 (and that number is still rising since they are still on the list).
As you can see, getting featured in New & Trending is a big deal. This is the “visibility” button.
What does it take to get onto New & Trending with a Demo? I am still not sure but here are CleanFall’s numbers just before they published their demo.
- 173 Followers
- 1800 total wishlists
- 3 or so Concurrent Users (CCU) before taking off with a peak of 300 within the first 24 hours. Note that the 166K sub Youtuber Olexa played the demo as soon as the demo launched. So it is hard to tell if the Youtuber or the 1800 wishlist emails were responsible for triggering the visibility on N&T.
The importance of demos
Most indies think marketing = social media. But for 95% of games on Steam, social media doesn’t work. Or it barely works. For most games, marketing doesn’t start until they publish a demo. Yes, demos work. No they don’t hurt your visibility like has been theorized years and years ago.
In short, demos work because they unlock marketing channels.
Demos unlock Youtubers and Twitch streamers because they give them something to play on their channel way before your launch.
Demos unlock festivals that get front-page featuring on Steam because most festivals require demos.
Demos unlock word of mouth marketing where a newly smitten player tells her 4 friends about your awesome game.
Your demo should be the #1 marketing tool. This is honest marketing. Most promotional tools: clever copywriting, flashy trailers, and silly memes can act as smoke and mirrors to hide a game that isn’t great. But a demo is honest. With a demo it is just your game in your players’ hands that does the marketing. You just present your game to them but you don’t sweat them, you just lay back in the cut, like “That’s whats up, take it or leave it.” And then the player would wonder, “what is it about him? he’s not sweating me.”
And this isn’t theory. For years I have been tracking games that get almost no visibility from reddit, social media, or trailers. But then, when they launch their demos, everyone realizes that the game is super fun and it takes off.
Look at these examples of games getting no visibility until they launched their demo (and all these examples are from before the new demo rules)
A new action you can’t take back
The reason I am able to make a full time living writing about marketing video games is that the Steam store is a complicated minefield of algorithms and if you get one wrong you can permanently miss out on visibility. This new Demo algorithm is one more mine for the field that you must successfully navigate.
By the way here is a list of visibility mines you must navigate in chronological order:
- Do not forget to change your “Specified launch date” because this date specifies when you appear in Popular Upcoming and if you accidentally appear in it when you weren’t ready, you cannot ask Valve for a second appearance.
- You can only appear in Steam Next Fest once (and the algorithm responds best if you do the last one before launch)
- Do not launch your game until you have 5,500-ish wishlists or you won’t show up in Popular Upcoming.
- Do not release into Early Access “as a test.” You should do the full 6+ month marketing because it is very very hard to improve upon poor sales in your first month of Early Access.
- (New) Do not launch your demo without putting some marketing behind it (more on that in a second).
The new demo strategy
The new Demo rules are not even a week old so this will probably change. I also don’t know what the minimum requirements to get onto New & Trending are or if Valve will change them as more and more people release demos using the new system. I will update this strategy as we learn more, but here is my first guess at a strategy that will maximize how much exposure you get when you launch your demo.
Step 0) Create your main game “Coming Soon Page” but DON’T launch your demo right away.
A game announce is a marketing beat that stands on its own. A demo launch is another marketing beat. In most cases, doing both simultaneously could cannibalize each other. I wouldn’t risk it.
Step 1) Create a Demo “coming soon” Steam Page.
Clearly state what is unique to your demo vs your main game. I think you should launch the demo page early so there is more time for exposure and it builds anticipation. Plus, two pages have to be better than one right?
Step 2) Do a “playtest” of your demo content before the demo launch
Why? As I showed above, most games do not get much visibility and wishlists until they release a playable version of their game to Streamers. Reddit posts and social media just don’t bring in big numbers for most games.
I used to advise people to launch their demo ASAP. But now that a demo release triggers a one-time-only wishlist notification, you don’t want to do that when you don’t have many wishlists. Playtests and Betas are NOT counted as a “Demo Release” so you won’t trigger the wishlist email. BUT you still get the benefit of having something playable for Streamers so you can get visibility.
Playtests also allow you to finetune your demo and fix bugs. I know of many developers who launched demos that turned players away for a number of reasons. After gathering feedback and improving the usability of the demo, they saw their median playtime up.
You could also launch a demo on itch.io for that early exposure / feedback.
Basically, you do not want to do a big demo launch that triggers a wishlist email, and puts you on New & Trending without first making sure the demo is as bulletproof as possible. Seriously folks, don’t launch your demo until you have had strangers play it. You don’t want to be sitting on the front page of Steam with a demo that crashes in the first 5 minutes of the tutorial.
Step 3) Use the demo launch as a carrot to get into a festival.
Apply for festivals and in your application, promise organizers that if selected, you will be launching your demo for the first time on the first day of the festival. (You can find festivals to apply for on the official HTMAG festival list at howtomarketagame.com/festivals)
Smart festival organizers are more likely to accept your game knowing that you will be giving them an exciting announcement of a new demo.
A demo launch is now an important commodity. Try to trade it with festival organizers for visibility.
Step 4) Reach out to Streamers weeks before demo launch.
Whether or not you got accepted into a festival, start contacting as many streamers who like your game’s genre and tell them you are launching on <X> date and would like to give them early access if they will stream the game. Again, advanced access to a demo is a commodity you can trade for visibility.
Try to get them to schedule their video on the day you launch the demo.
Step 5) Time the festival / streamer / wishlist email to occur on the same day and hour
I don’t know what the thresholds are to appear on New & Trending but I bet with everyone launching demos it is going to get competitive. Therefore you are trying to get as many people as possible to play your demo at the same time so you can appear on New & Trending and get even more visibility.
Don’t just launch your demo on a whim! You must plan and strategize to launch it with a bang.
BONUS TIP: If New & Trending works for Demos the same way it works for full game launches, it is best to launch your Demo on Friday. That is because Valve doesn’t let games launch on Saturday or Sunday. So if you hit the New & Trending list on Friday, you are guaranteed to be on the list for at least Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It worked for CleanFall.
Bonus Thoughts: Announce + Demo? NO!
Again, let me emphasize that in most cases, I don’t think it is wise to launch your demo very close to when you announce your game and reveal your “coming soon page.” Most games don’t get many wishlists at announce. In my benchmark analysis for announcements I found that the average game earns 1008 wishlists in their first two weeks. That isn’t a ton of wishlists to notify. You will hopefully earn many many more wishlists over the coming months. Don’t waste that demo launch email on a low initial wishlist count.
Launching your demo too early could mean that you miss out on New & Trending visibility. OUCH!
The one exception is if your game announcement is paired with a MAJOR festival like Wholesome Games, The PC Gaming Show, or Geoff Keighley’s Summer Fest. Those could provide enough traffic to boost you onto New & Trending. But again, I still think it is wiser to save that Demo launch email for months later when you have even more wishlists.
Here are some examples of games that launched their demo at the same time as their game announce. But note, both of these developers had released games previously and had a preexisting audience and had MAJOR featuring in a big festival / event.
Bonus Thoughts: Publishers
Established publishers are going to benefit immensely from this. That is because the demo launch email goes out to people who follow the publisher (even if players didn’t wishlist your game).
For instance Hooded Horse has nearly 40,000 followers.
Devolver Digital has 350,000.
That is a ton of emails that go out if you launch your demo while they are your publisher.
Bonus Thoughts: Festival organizers
If Festival Organizers are smart they will start asking this question in their application “Have you officially launched your demo yet and triggered the email?”
If they want extra visibility on their event page it will make sense to have as many games as possible all firing off their “Demo wishlist email.” It will direct a bunch of traffic back to their festival page because each game will have the festival banner at the top of their page.
So festival organizers, look for games that haven’t released their demo yet.
Bonus Thoughts: Good software architecture
With this update, there are now 2 major wishlist events you can utilize: Demo launch, Steam Next Fest.
If you space out these two events, it probably makes sense to release an updated demo for Steam Next Fest. Maybe a new mission, maybe a new biome, maybe a new playable character. The following wishlist chart is from Slay The Princess. Notice how in March 2023 they used a “New Demo” as a selling point to get into Pax East.
This means you need to add content to your game in a quick and modular way. Now, more than ever, you should be separating content and code. You also should be architecting your builds so that as you develop your main game, the improvements are also replicated to the demo.
All of this is easier with good clean code.
Bonus Thoughts: Itch.io
It might be more advantageous to initially launch your free demo on itch.io. With itch.io you can experiment and test and build up wishilsts before you push that big “demo launch” button on Steam.
Streamers love looking for free demos on itch.io. The conversion from itch.io plays to Steam wishlists is lower than Steam demo to Steam wishlists but I still think it is better than waiting launching on Steam prematurely.
If you have experience launching free demos on itch.io, and getting streamers to play them, reach out to me. I think it is time I write up a best practices itch.io post and I am looking for case studies.
Summary
I often get requests to write about marketing a game on console. But I don’t cover them because you don’t really have much agency. Basically you talk to the console product team and say “Here is my game” and they decide if they want to feature you or not. That is the strategy.
Steam is great because there are so many levers that you can pull to get visibility when and where you want it. You have control.
The addition of this new demo algorithm is another big lever that has been given to us. Based on early numbers from CleanFall, this looks to be a powerful lever to pull.
How to design a demo
Because Demos are becoming such a critical marketing tool, I have started doing Demo playthroughs and analysis to look at what features and tools developers are adding to their demos. (Also, now that demos can get reviews we can quantify how successful they are at getting visibility and player response.)
The let’s plays are behind the paywall of my Game Marketing Ideas. I have done 9 so far. If you want a preview I did make this one public.
👉 Free Preview: Haunted House Renovator demo analysis
If you want to watch the other Let’s Plays, grab Game Marketing Ideas: