How to market an indie game, from the first store page to launch

Steam requires a Coming Soon page to be public for at least two weeks before a new product releases. Valve recommends much earlier, posting it as soon as you are ready to talk about the game publicly. Its documentation says there is no strong downside to a long Coming Soon period and that wishlists collected far ahead of launch, even two years, can convert as well as later ones.

Every wishlister gets an email or mobile notification when the game releases, and again when a discount of at least 20% runs for more than 8 hours. That is why the page is the center of the plan. Every post, clip, stream and article should send people to it.

The one reason to wait is a game that may still change a lot. Valve warns that if the art direction or core features shift significantly, early wishlisters can be confused by what they get.

Steam Next Fest is a week-long event of free demos for upcoming games. Each game can take part only once, the demo has to be publicly playable by the start, and the game cannot release before that edition ends. Submit the demo for review at least three weeks ahead, or five weeks to be considered for the press preview. Livestreams during the Fest are optional.

Because you get one entry, pick the edition when the demo is at its best, not the next one on the calendar. Chris Zukowski's February 2026 benchmarks rate a Next Fest result of 1,000 to 6,999 wishlists as silver and 10,000 or more as diamond, which gives you a way to judge your own result.

A good demo is short and ends on a high point. Show the core verb in the first minute, give players 15 to 30 minutes of your best content, and end with a clear wishlist prompt.

Capsule art is the first thing a shopper sees, usually at thumbnail size beside games with full art teams. Steam needs a header, small, main and vertical capsule, listed in the table above, plus screenshots and a library set. Design for the small capsule first. If the title reads at 462 x 174, it reads everywhere. Every library size, the text rules and templates are on the Steam capsule art page.

Summer's capsule art page has the full rules and a workflow for making every size from your own characters with Studio's image models, using a screenshot of your hero as the reference so the art matches the game. Steam's content survey asks you to disclose AI-generated content that ships in the game, and Valve checks that the game matches its marketing materials, so keep the store art true to what players will see.

Valve's trailer guidance is direct. Most Steam users are looking for gameplay, so the first trailer on the page should be primarily gameplay. Shoppers may spend less than ten seconds deciding whether to keep watching, often without sound, so ask whether someone can understand the game from the first few seconds with the audio off. The first two trailers play before any screenshots.

Open on the core verb, not a logo or a slow pan. Keep text short and large enough to read on a phone. Upload at 1920 x 1080, 30 or 60 fps, at 5,000 Kbps or higher, in an MP4, MOV or WMV container with H.264 video and AAC audio.

Generated video is useful for establishing shots, title cards and mood between gameplay beats, not as a stand-in for play. Summer does not record gameplay to video yet, so capture your play footage with a screen recorder and cut generated shots around it.

Creators bring players, but only when your game fits what their audience already watches. Search YouTube and Twitch for people who played games like yours in the last few months, favor smaller channels that cover your genre consistently, and write each one a short personal email with a key, a 30-second clip and one line on why the game suits them.

Steam's Curator Connect lets you send copies to up to 100 curators at a time, with up to five copies each for multiplayer games, and filter by the tags they cover. Curators are under no obligation to play or review the game, so treat it as one channel among several.

A devlog today is usually a short vertical clip, not a long blog post. Show one moment per clip, such as a new enemy, a satisfying hit or a before and after of a level, and make the first second interesting on its own. Post on a schedule you can keep, and link the store page every time.

Keep a simple log of which clips brought store visits and wishlists. After a month, the pattern tells you what players find interesting about the game, which is also what the trailer and capsule should lead with.

Writers and creators decide quickly, so give them everything on one page. A press kit needs a fact sheet with the developer, release date, platforms and price, a short and a long description, screenshots, the trailer, logos, capsule art, and a contact address.

presskit(), made by Rami Ismail of Vlambeer, is a free tool for building exactly that kind of page, and a simple page on your own site works too. Link it from every outreach email and from the store page.

These run in Summer now. Studio's image models, including GPT Image 2 and Seedream 5.0 Pro, make capsule key art from a reference image of your character, with background removal for a transparent logo. Studio video generates short shots with Seedance 2.0, Veo 3.1 or Kling 3.0 in vertical, square and wide formats for posts and trailer inserts. NPC voices generate character lines from a script with ElevenLabs voices, useful for a trailer voice or a teaser.

If the game is built in Summer, the agent can also set up a scene and capture store screenshots from the running game. The assets work for games made in any engine, since they are standard image, video and audio files.

• Capsule key art and transparent logos from your own characters
• Short generated video shots for teasers and trailer inserts
• Character voice lines for trailers
• Screenshots captured from the running game, for games built in Summer