Overview

Once your game has a publicly visible store page listed within Steam, players may begin adding your game to their wishlist. Prior to the release of your game, this gives you a place to point your fans and interested players where they can take action to express their interest and keep track of your game. Along the way, this gives you a sense of the level of interest by potential customers and a way of notifying interested customers when your game releases or goes on discount.

https://youtu.be/AVo9fVPcls0

Wishlist Notifications

Email notifications may be sent to customers based on a variety of trigger actions related to your game, software, or video on Steam. These triggers may change in the future, but this is a description of current set of features.

Discount e-mails typically send within a few hours of your product's release or discount. In high volume e-mail periods, time to notification will be longer.

Customers who have been notified about your game within the last week (including "now available" e-mails from product launches) will be on e-mail cooldown, and will not receive additional communication until the week-long period has passed.

Note that customers must have verified their e-mail account to receive messages, and that some customers may have opted to configure their e-mail preferences to not receive some or all of these kinds of e-mails.

Product Launches (Release or Early Access)

When your game releases, either in Early Access or as Full Release, any user that has the game on their wishlist at that time will receive an e-mail and/or mobile push notification about the game being available.

If your game has released in Early Access and then transitions to Full Release, another e-mail will be sent to users with the game on their wishlist at that time.

For more information on preparing for release, please see the Release Process documentation.

Promotional Discounts

When you run a discount on your game, a notification e-mail or mobile push notification will be issued to users with your game on their wishlist, as long as you meet the following criteria:

• Any type of discount at or above 20%, whether a curated feature spot, a weeklong deal, or a custom configured discount
  
• Discounts must, at a minimum, affect the lowest priced package for a game. For example, if you have a $20 Regular and $30 Deluxe package for your game, just discounting the the Deluxe package would not trigger wishlist notification e-mails, you would also need to discount the Regular package.
  
• Discounts must be global. There may be different packages across regions, but all regions must be discounted.
  
• Discounts must be over 8 hours in duration
  
• Note: if an email is held up for over a week for whatever reason, we will stop trying to send that email.

For more information on discounts, please see the Discounting documentation.

Your Wishlist Data

Within each app's details page on the Sales & Activation Reports Portal, you'll find a section for "Wishlists". This section tracks additions, purchases, and deletions by users that have your game on their wishlist. Additionally, you can see a breakdown of wishlist numbers by region or country in the "Regional sales report" section for each app. Wishlist data is updated daily for the previous date (ie. as of March 2nd, you can see all of the data up to March 1st).

You can also find some past analysis of wishlist behavior written up in the Steamworks Developer Group here, including averages on conversion rate from wishlist e-mails and conversions of wishlists over time.

Best Practices

Here’s our three biggest suggestions:

1. Put up a Coming Soon page as soon as you’re ready and able, so interested customers can add your product to their wishlist and get notified at launch.
   
2. Stay engaged over time—don’t just launch your game and move on to the next one. Many users will wait for a reason to buy your title, such as a transition out of Early Access, a content update, discount, or a friend to play the game with.
   
3. Look back at Wishlist data after a sale or promotional event to guide your future decisions. Trends over time can help you determine what communication is generating the most interest, both in terms of purchases and wishlists.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long after trigger are e-mail notifications sent?

A: E-mail notifications may be sent out over multiple hours depending on how many users the system needs to send to. Additionally, notification emails may include several titles, depending on how many a customer has on their wishlist.

Q: Is there a cooldown on how often an email is sent for a particular product?

A: If notification events for a specific product occur closer than a week or two together, the second e-mail may not be sent to the same user.

Q: Where can a user configure their e-mail preferences?

A: From the upper-right corner in Steam, select your user name to activate the drop-down and select "Account Details." From there, you can select "Manage Email Preferences" to pick which types of communication you wish to receive.

Q: Will all customers receive wishlist notifications?

A: Only customers who have verified their email address with Steam will receive notifications.

Q: How do I track activity from email notifications?

A: If an email notification is sent for your title, visits to your store page will be visible by going to “Marketing & Visibility” -> ”Traffic Breakdown” on your App Landing Page.

Additionally, you can monitor e-mail campaigns and conversion rates by going to the financial reporting site, clicking “View detailed wishlist breakdown” and scrolling to the bottom of the page. It will show you e-mail notifications sent during the selected time period.

Q: How do Wishlists affect my game’s visibility on Steam?

A: Wishlists can be an important factor in determining where your game appears on Steam. After a user has wishlisted your game, your game may appear in different featured sections, with a visual reminder that the game is on their wishlist. Prior to launch, your game may appear on lists featuring upcoming games according to various filters, such as release date, popularity, tag, or other categories. Additionally, when your game launches and goes on sale, Steam may send reminder emails or other notifications to users that have wishlisted it. In general, Steam is designed to offer a personalized view to each player. Whether a game appears in sections like the Recommended by Tag or Curator, Interactive Recommender, Top Sellers, or Just Updated sections depends on what games the user likes, plays, where they're located in the world, what language they prefer, what their friends are playing, if they follow any Steam Curators, and so forth. The Steam store is context-based and personalized for each user based on many different factors.

Q: Is there a minimum number of wishlists my game must have before Steam starts showing my game to users?

A: No.

Q: Users have wishlisted my game. Now what?

A: Wishlists indicate interest from users as a result of the marketing/awareness-building you did both prior to and after releasing your game. Did you just stream your game and reveal your launch trailer on social media? You'll likely see an increase in wishlists. Is your game released, and you’re running a sale to go with your big update? Not only are you likely to see purchases from existing wishlisters, but also additions from players that are seeing your game for the first time. Maybe those players are waiting until they have time to play, or for a holiday or birthday, or maybe they’re waiting for a discount at a price that works better for their buying habits or budget.

Because everyone wishlists for different reasons, there’s no formula to accurately predict sales from wishlists. Nevertheless, wishlists are valuable, and are the result of other work you are doing to grow the potential audience for your game at release and beyond.

Q: How can I see Wishlists grouped by region or country?

A: On the app details page on the Sales & Activation Reports Portal, you'll find a section for "Wishlists". This section tracks additions, purchases, and deletions by users that have your game on their wishlist. Additionally, you can see a breakdown of wishlist numbers by region or country in the "Regional sales report" section for each app.