Indie game developers struggle to gain traction despite YouTube views

“I started one Month ago, and currently the only things I did were just post in Reddits about my game. In the future, I want to write to multiple YouTubes if they want to play my game, but for that to happen, I want to further polish it :) Thanks to all of you supporting me! Also, if you have other marketing tips for me, let’s hear them. This is my first game, and everything is new to me. submitted by /u/eiko_yomo [link] [comments]”

“My trailer was recently uploaded to Indie Games Hub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dq8_yEtTF4 It outperformed most videos on the channel (average is 9k views), and is currently sitting at 96,000 views after nearly 2 days. During that time, I've gained around 1,355 wishlists in 2 days. I suspect 100 - 200 ~ of those were not from this video. So in total around 1200~ wishlists. submitted by /u/tabbin1 [link] [comments]”

“Hey everyone, I’ve been stuck at 11 wishlists since the steam page launch. I have over 60,000 social media views on short form content, I’ve emailed hundreds of channels and creators, with one recently making a video of the game with 3,000 subscribers. I have many other creators I’ve emailed who have asked to get keys and I’ve sent them but no luck on any other posts or videos. I’m just very puzzled how I’ve managed to get over a thousand page visits but only managed 11 wishlists. Any help would”

“This is our first Steam release, so every new event leaves us curious. We launched on 17th September. Some big streamers played our game, cumulative 1mn views perhaps. But the traffic (and sales) have generally trended downward. Creator coverage got us spikes. Then on 27th we got our 10th review after which I saw a traffic from a new source: Discovery Queue Waited a few days to see if it was just a temporary spike before getting too excited, not sure if it would hold. It went down but seems to h”

“I’m making my dream game right now and my game has been featured by Indie Game Joe, played by Alpha Beta Gamer, trailer released by both Game Trailers and Indie Games Hub and wishlists are rising every day. Lots of people do like the game and enjoy playing it. But I’m super broke. I need money to afford living and I’m wondering if I start looking for publishers/investors. What’s the process like when you’re looking for publishers? Should I have a certain amount of wishlists before I can start lo”

“After viral twitter posts, tens of thousands of organic social media views, being covered by Moistcritikal and a few other youtubers, my game finally hit 10K wishlist addition and is currently sitting at 41 minutes median playtime on the demo. I'm struggling to guess if i'm in an average performance or a good one, what do you guys think ? Are these stats enough for hit potential ? free demo here : https://store.steampowered.com/app/5064170/Go_Next/ submitted by /u/maxlopezos”

“I just added an announcement trailer to my Steam page, and visibility increased like 2x but people are not excited enough to wishlist the game. The CTR is really good though (like 20-30%) but I guess that doesn't matter much if the people is not hyped with the experience. If you like old school graphics survival horror games: What's the one thing that’d make you leave without wishlisting? Screenshot, copy, trailer, tags, whatever’s worst. Or, what do you think is missing that you would e”

“Greetings! ​I've recently noticed a trend on Steam where small-scope games—taking around 3–5 hours to complete with relatively simple narratives—manage to catch streamers' attention, go viral, and generate substantial revenue. The commercial success achieved by tiny indie teams leveraging these niche ideas is truly commendable. ​I am an avid gamer, and my brother, being a mechanical engineer, is exceptionally skilled at design and 3D modeling. We both currently have full-time jobs, but w”

“A Reel for my co-op game, Fire Up Together, reached 57k views, but I haven’t seen any wishlist growth from it. Has anyone experienced something similar? How do you figure out whether you’re reaching the wrong audience, missing a clear call to action, or losing people between Instagram and Steam? Here’s the Reel for context: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdWbb61Au47/ Would appreciate honest feedback on what you’d change! Steam Page - Fire Up Together submitted by /u/emirhan_giray [li”

“My puzzle game's had a store page for almost 2 years, it got 340 wishlists during next fest in march 2025 and took until a few months ago to hit 400 I released it 2 days ago with 460 wishlists not having the money to wait for any more, since i was barely getting 4 wishlists a week at this point. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3487590/Medusa_Crisis/ i definitely did a lot wrong, i didn't update my trailer after completing more of the game, i didn't start the trailer with gameplay”

“Most of indie game trailers end up with view counts in the range of 10 to 10,000 on YouTube. That's not that much in the grand scheme of things. But the same trailer gets played on the Steam store page as well. And I bet that's where most of the viewing takes place. It also gets automatically edited into a "microtrailer" that plays whenever someone hovers with a mouse over your game listing on the Steam store. Scratch that, forget the previous paragraph. It's the microtrail”

“A few days ago, my friend and I released a DEMO for our new game, and our numbers suddenly began to spike. We noticed a major surge of traffic coming from Asian social platforms, where a couple of gameplay clips went semi-viral (around 7k shares, 2k likes, and 1k comments). This caught us completely off guard. We often see developers grinding for 6–8 months of active marketing just to hit 2,000 wishlists before seeing commercial traction, whereas we are currently gaining around 100–200 wishlists”

“Hi everyone, While developing my own game, I struggled with getting visibility on YouTube. Realizing how difficult it is for indie games to get noticed and I decided to launch a channel called IndieGameInn. I had/have zero experience with YouTube. For the past month, I’ve been digging through various resources, guides and analytics to learn how to make it work. Over this first month, the channel has started taking its first real steps. I’d love for you to take a look and give me your honest thou”

I’m working on Relicfall, a fairly systems-heavy bullet heaven / ARPG. I’ve spent months making clips, trailers and posts for it. While waiting for its Steam page approval, I made a stupid…

“I've been running an Alpha on itch.io for a little over a week and I'm trying to understand whether these numbers are healthy for a small indie game. Current numbers are roughly: 330 views 140 browser plays 7 ratings 5 collections ~43% page view -> play conversion Game for context: https://xx-caputokayk-xx.itch.io/bounce-back The initial traffic spike dropped pretty quickly, but later I managed to create a second, larger spike mostly through Reddit. I'm also still getting a small”

“The game has 6,000 wishlists and has already participated in Steam Next Fest with a demo. The game was ‘frozen,’ and nothing has happened with it since. Do you know of any similar games, or have you had any experience with something like this? submitted by /u/Der_Schamane [link] [comments]”

“About 24 hours ago I released "The Pale Mimic", a short indie horror game. I built the wishlists over 5 months. A Youtube trailer lucked out and got 100k views, resulting in the first 2-3k wishlists. After that, a demo, youtuber coverage, and next fest got me to about 6000 wishlists. A month before release I got put on the personal calendar, getting me to 8000 wishlists over the next couple weeks. The two weeks leading up to launch I got even more personal calendar coverage, 500-1000 w”

“We’ve developed a game with some friends that’s currently in the demo phase, but we’re struggling to increase our Steam wishlist count. Do you have any advice that could help us with this? We do have a publisher, but honestly, they haven't been much help in this regard. submitted by /u/Far-Wedding-6672 [link] [comments]”

“We’ve developed a game with some friends that’s currently in the demo phase, but we’re struggling to increase our Steam wishlist count. Do you have any advice that could help us with this? We do have a publisher, but honestly, they haven't been much help in this regard. submitted by /u/Far-Wedding-6672 [link] [comments]”

“I’m making an indie game called Monsterest, and I wanted to share a marketing experience we recently had. TL;DR: A YouTuber with 180K subscribers featured our trailer, and we gained around 12,000 wishlists in 3 days. If you ask a creator to feature your trailer and they don’t upload it, try improving the trailer and reaching out again later. I think the YouTube thumbnail is pretty important. If you’re reaching out to a creator, consider providing some design assets they can use for the thumbnail”

“I made my Steam page in February, uploaded the trailer about a month ago, and started posting Shorts on X, YouTube, and TikTok last week. Right now, I’m getting about 5-6 wishlists per day, and only around 3% of Steam page visitors are wishlisting the game. Wishlist growth is much slower than I expected. Could you take a look at the trailer and Steam page and let me know if the game looks fun or worth playing? I’d really appreciate any feedback you can share. Steam Page : Just One Bite sub”

“We were sitting at around 100 wishlists before this, and today our game unexpectedly showed up in the announcements section of Skill Up’s This Week in Videogames. I’m slightly terrified to open Steamworks. Anything I should be doing right now to capitalize on this? For context, we’re at 17:12: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZRGTTNBlec&t=1032s submitted by /u/Music-is-fun [link] [comments]”

“I've been marketing my indie horror game for about 2 months now Current result: 162 Steam wishlists And honestly, I'm starting to wonder if I'm approaching marketing completely wrong I've tried posting gameplay clips, Shorts, TikTok, Reddit, dev updates, etc. Some posts get thousands of views, occasionally something performs really well, but converting that attention into actual wishlists has been much harder than I expected. So I'm curious, especially from developers who&#39”

“I submitted the announcement trailer for my game to GameTrailers and they featured it on their YouTube channel. It is now getting close to 10000 views, which has been a really nice boost for the game and its Steam wishlists. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVdm_htcLv8 The name of the game is Satelital, a rule-discovery puzzle game where you place alien symbols on a grid and uncover their logic as you explore an atmospheric solar system. You learn how each world works by observing patter”

“We've been working on a new anomaly game and just put together a short teaser. The goal isn't to show gameplay yet. We just wanted to give a quick look at the atmosphere and environment. I'd really like to know what you think. Does it make you curious or is there anything you think could be improved? It's a classic anomaly spotting game that you play online with your friends. Each level takes place on a different map with its own unique anomalies. Your goal is to find them all an”

“It’s been 12 days since I launched my game’s Steam page. During that time, I tried to promote it as much as possible through emails and social media, reaching around 1,000 wishlists. My daily wishlist numbers had already started declining when Indie Games Hub uploaded my trailer. The trailer hasn’t received unusually high views compared to the other games on their channel. It currently has under 4,000 views but the number of wishlists that followed seems surprisingly high in comparison. I can’t”