How to Actually Market Your Indie Game on Steam
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Most indie games don't fail because they're bad. They fail because the developer assumed Steam would do the marketing for them. It won't. Here's what works instead, drawn from real games that got it right.
The Algorithm Doesn't Find Players for You
Steam's discovery algorithm is widely misunderstood. It doesn't surface promising games to new audiences. It amplifies games that are already attracting traffic from outside the platform.
Think of it this way: Steam watches your wishlists, click-through rates, and traffic sources. When those numbers spike, it shows your game to more people. But the spike has to come from you first. No external momentum means no algorithmic lift, no matter how good your game is.
The question is how you build that momentum before launch. We analysed 60 successful indie games to see what their marketing had in common so that we could bring you some answers!
Your Demo Is Your Best Marketing Tool
A free, playable demo is the single most effective thing you can do before launch. Not a cinematic trailer. Not a GIF in your long description. A demo.
Here's why: a trailer is something people scroll past. A demo is something people play, screenshot, clip, and send to their friends. It creates a completely different type of engagement.
Schedule I, made by a solo developer in Sydney with zero marketing budget, built its entire pre-launch strategy around a free demo. The key was that the demo was designed full of moments that were impossible not to share: funny situations, emergent chaos, gameplay that made you want to clip it immediately. The result was 23,000 followers before Early Access even opened, and streamers like xQc picked it up organically because the gameplay loop was so naturally shareable.
Steam Next Fest makes this strategy even more accessible. It's a free Valve-run event where demos get promoted on the Steam homepage, and creators flood YouTube and TikTok with "Steam Next Fest picks" content. The team behind Dispatch built their entire pre-launch calendar around it: teaser, then demo reveal, then Next Fest coverage, then release date announcement, then launch trailer. Each step fed naturally into the next.
If you can build a demo with moments that players genuinely want to share, you've done more marketing work than most developers ever manage.
Stop Trying to Be on Every Platform
A lot of developers create accounts on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Bluesky, Discord, and Reddit on the same day, then post nothing on any of them. Or they post the same trailer everywhere and wonder why nobody engages.
The better approach is to put social platforms into two distinct categories.
Discovery platforms reach people who have never heard of your game. Retention platforms keep people who already care about it engaged and invested. Most developers mix these up, and it costs them sales at launch.
You don't need to be everywhere. You need to be deliberate about where you show up and why.
TikTok: Where Strangers Find You
TikTok is currently the strongest discovery channel for indie games, particularly if your game has funny physics, chaotic emergent moments, or a weird premise.
You don't even need an official account for it to work. Schedule I had no official TikTok presence. Players generated all the clips themselves, and those videos drove significant traffic to Steam. Tyler (the developer) designed the game to produce those moments; TikTok did the rest.
Wobbly Life ran a direct test: their agency ran the same ads on TikTok and YouTube simultaneously. TikTok won on cost per view, engagement, and return on spend. They shifted their budget accordingly and leaned into short, chaotic, user-generated content as their main creative approach.
The lesson is that raw, authentic clips outperform polished trailers on TikTok. If your game has genuinely funny or surprising moments, film them and post them unpolished.
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YouTube: Where Viewers Become Buyers
TikTok creates a ten-second spike of interest. YouTube builds the kind of trust that converts a curious viewer into someone who actually buys the game.
Your YouTube channel needs two things at minimum: a trailer good enough to sit on your Steam page, and regular development updates that show progress over time. The updates don't need to be cinematic. They just need to be consistent and honest. The more honest the better.
Necesse, a survival-crafting game that spent six years in Early Access, took this further than most. Every Wednesday at 8PM, the developers ran a live community stream. They just played the game, on a public server, alongside their fans. Anyone could join and they archived every stream as a playlist.
This approach creates something money can't easily replicate: players who feel like genuine insiders. Every archived stream also becomes a permanent piece of content that keeps attracting new viewers long after it airs.
Reddit: Participate, Don't Broadcast
Reddit rewards transparency and punishes promotion. If you post "check out my game" in a subreddit like you're putting up a flyer, the community will bury it.
What actually works is becoming a genuine member of the communities where your players already spend time. Post dev logs, answer questions and share what went wrong during development. When Schedule I launched, Tyler was personally active on r/ScheduleI every day, responding to players and publishing a public roadmap so the community could see exactly what was coming next.
The Necesse team publicly acknowledged on Reddit when they missed a promised feature at launch. They apologised openly in the community. Most PR instincts would say to avoid that, but it paid off because the community responded with increased loyalty.
Authenticity on Reddit is worth more than any press release.
Discord: Your Community's Home Base
Discord is where your most committed players live. These are the people who write reviews on launch day, tell their friends, and post clips without being prompted.
But Discord only works if you show up. Tyler used the Schedule I Discord as a live feedback loop: player suggestions went directly onto the development roadmap. Players could watch their ideas become actual features. That's not customer service; it's co-development, and the loyalty it creates is hard to replicate through any other channel.
The team behind Monbazou, a car restoration simulator, skipped Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram entirely. Their whole strategy was Reddit and Discord. It worked because their audience (people deeply into car restoration) already lived on those platforms.
That’s another great lesson; go where your players actually are, not where marketing advice tells you to be.
Twitter/X: Professional Credibility, Not Growth
Organic reach on X is minimal. It's not going to grow your audience from scratch, but journalists, streamers, and other developers still check it, which makes it useful as a professional signal that you're serious about your game.
Keep it updated with patch notes, milestones, and community highlights. More importantly, link from your X profile to a press kit on your website. A press kit with proper screenshots, descriptions, and key art makes it straightforward for journalists to write about your game without having to chase you for assets.
This brings us onto an important side-note: a press kit is free to build and not having one costs you coverage. We recently wrote about the Top Unique Indies of 2025 and games with press kits were so much easier to include and showcase in the article.
Target Small Creators, Not Big Names
The temptation when reaching out to streamers is to go for the biggest names you can find. The reality is that large creators receive hundreds of pitches a week, and even when they cover your game, their broad audience may not convert into buyers.
Touhou Dystopian targeted Touhou-specialist and roguelike-focused creators specifically. These creators had audiences that were already primed to want exactly that type of game. The smaller reach was balanced with a much higher conversion. A niche creator who reaches exactly the right 10,000 people is often worth more than a mega streamer reaching a million general viewers.
Spilled!, a boat-cleaning game, secured a full mini-documentary on Noclip by leading with a genuinely compelling personal story: the developer lived on a boat. The documentary drove significant Steam traffic.
TLDR; your story is a marketing asset.
Price Is a Marketing Decision
Pricing is one of the most consequential marketing choices you'll make, and it's often treated as an afterthought.
Setting a price too low doesn't just undervalue your work; it signals to potential players that the game isn't worth much. It can also devalue similar games in your genre, which harms the broader indie ecosystem. Schedule I launched at a $15 price point with a launch discount to convert fence-sitters. The price was accessible enough for impulse purchases and credible enough to feel like a real game.
Make Friends with Developers in Your Niche
Tavern Talk Stories: Dream Walker and Pieced Together both incorporated the Tiny Bookshop aesthetic into their games, effectively borrowing credibility and visibility from a title with an enormous existing fanbase. You don't have to build every audience from scratch. Make friends with developers whose players would genuinely enjoy your game.
The Playbook in Short
This blog is a lot to take in and there’s a lot to think about, but here’s the TLDR:
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Build a demo with shareable moments and enter Steam Next Fest
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Pick two or three social media platforms, one for discovery, one for retention
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Show up on Reddit as a person, not a PR account
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Keep your Discord active and treat feedback as development input
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Use X as a professional business card and link it to a press kit
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Target niche creators who speak directly to your likely players
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Price deliberately, in line with comparable games, and consider a launch discount
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Find cross-promotional partners among complementary games in your genre
The developers behind Schedule I, Necesse, Wobbly Life, Dispatch and the other 54 games in our research were doing all of this during development, not after it. Marketing isn't a separate job you hand off at launch. It's the ongoing conversation you have with your future players while you're building.
Start your marketing early and make it part of your game’s development.
Still Unsure About Marketing Your Game?
If marketing your game still feels overwhelming or you don’t know where to start, get us on board to help you out. Jennie has almost 10 years of marketing and communications experience that she’d love to share with you.
Take a look at our Marketing Services and send me a request so we can chat about what you and your game need.
