Samantha Roberts
Most indie games don’t fail because they’re bad games. They fail because they launched badly. I’ve watched genuinely good games sell fewer than 200 copies at launch because the developer treated “upload to Steam and post on Twitter” as a release strategy. The game sat there, invisible, while the developer refreshed their sales dashboard in quiet despair. What surprised me most when I started digging into post-mortems and talking to other developers was how consistent the pattern is: the game was fine, sometimes great, but the launch infrastructure was completely missing. A checklist won’t save a bad game, but the absence of one has killed plenty of good ones.
Use these specific thresholds and deadlines to avoid the most common indie launch failures.
| Days Out | Task | Completion Threshold | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 | Steam page live with all assets | Capsule art, 5+ screenshots, trailer, tags filled | Wishlists can't accumulate on an unlisted page |
| 90-75 | Press kit assembled | Presskit.html or equivalent with logos, screenshots (PNG+JPG), fact sheet, dev bio | Journalists skip games that make coverage difficult |
| 75-60 | First press/creator outreach wave | 50+ personalized emails sent; aim for 10-15% response rate | Long-lead coverage needs 6-8 weeks minimum |
| 60 | Community hub active | Discord or forum with at least 3 discussion threads seeded | Empty spaces deter newcomers from joining |
| 60-45 | Demo or festival build ready | 15-30 minute vertical slice, polished start-to-finish | Steam Next Fest demos convert to wishlists at roughly 10-20% |
| 45 | Wishlist checkpoint | Minimum 2,000 wishlists for niche games; 7,000+ for broader appeal | Below 2,000 typically means sub-500 first-week sales |
| 30 | Review key distribution | Send 30-50 keys to confirmed-interested creators/press | Embargo lifts need to align with launch for algorithm boost |
| 14 | Launch trailer final | 60-90 seconds, hook in first 5 seconds, gameplay-focused | This is your highest-traffic asset on launch day |
| 7 | Announce release date publicly | Steam "coming soon" notification sent to all wishlists | Wishlist notification converts 5-15% to day-one purchases |
| 1 | Launch-day content queued | Social posts, Discord announcement, dev stream scheduled | Algorithm rewards concentrated activity in first 48 hours |
General information for comparison, confirm specifics for your situation.
The Pre-Launch Window Most Developers Waste
If you’re reading this the week of your launch, you’re already late on several critical items. The real preparation starts 90 to 120 days out. That’s not something I made up, it’s what successful developers and the stores themselves report. Steam’s algorithm rewards wishlists accumulated before launch day. Itch.io’s community features work better when you’ve built a following first.
What I see constantly: developers spend 90% of their time on the game and 10% on everything else, then try to flip that ratio in the final two weeks. That math doesn’t work.
During the 90-day window, focus on this:
- Get your store page live with capsule art, screenshots, a trailer, and a description that leads with what the player actually does, not a feature checklist
- Build your wishlist aggressively. Every 1,000 wishlists on Steam roughly correlates with 100-200 day-one sales (the research here is messy and depends heavily on genre, but it’s a real signal)
- Contact press and creators with a real press kit and a review key offer, not a desperate “please cover my game” message
- Set up community spaces – a Discord server, a subreddit, or somewhere consistent where people can ask questions
For managing this runway, I’d recommend Trello or Notion with a launch calendar board. Notion’s game development templates work particularly well because you can link your asset tracker, press contacts, and milestones in one place. If you want something purpose-built, HackerNoon’s GameTrack spreadsheet templates are solid and free.
The Store Page Checklist That Actually Converts
Your store page is a sales page working 24/7. Most developers treat it like an afterthought, which is why most developer store pages underperform.
Here’s what actually matters on Steam (though this applies everywhere):
Must have before going live:
- Capsule art (616x353px hero capsule, plus the 231x87px small version) – bad art here tanks your click-through rate
- At least 5 screenshots showing actual gameplay, not splash screens or logos
- A launch trailer (60-90 seconds is ideal; anything longer gets skipped)
- A short description under 160 characters that answers “what do I do in this game”
- Tags that are accurate and match what players actually search for
Strongly recommended:
- A longer description with a feature list, ideally with GIFs
- System requirements (omitting these signals amateurism and hurts conversions)
- Content warnings if applicable, missing these can tank your review score
- A developer email you actually check
Here’s what conversion data shows: your short description and first screenshot do most of the work. Players decide in about 3 seconds. Your capsule art gets them to click. Your short description and first screenshot determine if they scroll at all. Put disproportionate effort into those two things.
For press kits, presskit() at dopresskit.com is still the standard. It’s free, formats correctly, and journalists expect it. Use it.
Technical Launch Checklist: The Stuff That Breaks When It Hurts Most
This section is what developers skip most often and regret loudest. Technical issues on launch day generate negative reviews and refunds, and they’re almost always preventable.
Two weeks before launch:
- Build and test your gold master on a clean machine that isn’t your dev machine
- Verify where save files live and what happens if they corrupt
- Test your Steam Achievements or platform-specific features on actual hardware
- Verify your controller mapping works with Xbox and PlayStation controllers if you claim controller support
- Enable crash reporting. Sentry is free for small teams and will save your sanity.
One week before launch:
- Submit your build to platform certification queues (Nintendo has brutal review times)
- Test on minimum spec hardware, not just your dev machine
- Verify your price in every region where you’re selling, including currency conversion weirdness
- Sign your .exe on Windows, unsigned executables trigger Windows Defender warnings that generate “is this malware?” reviews
Launch day:
- Lock your build 24 hours before release
- Don’t push a new build on launch day unless something’s genuinely breaking
- Have a patch ready to deploy within 2 hours if something critical fails
- Monitor your Steam discussion page and Discord actively for the first 48 hours
For project tracking, Jira is robust if you’ve got a team of more than two people, but Linear is my recommendation for small teams now. It’s fast, has solid keyboard shortcuts, and doesn’t have Jira’s overhead.
Marketing Execution in the Final 30 Days
The 30 days before launch is where marketing either pays off or falls apart. If you’ve built wishlists and community, this is where it matters. If you haven’t, you’re trying to start a fire with wet wood.
A practical 30-day sprint:
Days 30-21: Send review keys to press and creators who cover your genre specifically. Use Keymailer or Woovit to distribute keys at scale. Follow up once, not five times.
Days 20-11: Post more frequently. Share development behind-the-scenes content, not just promotional stuff. Players respond to authenticity. The algorithm responds to engagement.
Days 10-3: Start your launch week announcement cycle. Post your release date reminder everywhere. If you have a demo, make sure it’s visible and working. Consider a Reddit AMA on r/indiegaming and genre-specific subreddits.
Days 2-1: Don’t disappear. Developers who vanish the day before launch because they’re panicking make press coverage impossible. Stay visible and responsive.
Launch day: Post your announcement at a consistent time across platforms. Noon EST works well for North America. Engage with every comment and post for the first 12 hours. This is not the day to hide.
For social scheduling, Buffer is the practical choice, affordable, handles multiple platforms, and doesn’t require a dedicated social media person.
Post-Launch: The 72-Hour Window That Defines Everything
Sources
- here is messy and depends heavily on genre
- shows: your short description and first screenshot do most of the work
Most developers take a breath after launch and step back. This is backwards. The first 72 hours matter more than any single day before it.
Platform algorithms (Steam especially) are watching your initial sales velocity, your review score, your wishlist conversion rate, and your refund rate. All in real-time. This determines whether the algorithm starts promoting you.
What you actually need to do:
Keep your community engaged. Answer every question on your discussion page. Fix bugs faster than ever. A player who reports a bug and gets a fix in four hours leaves a positive review. A player who hears nothing leaves a negative one.
Watch your refund rate. Steam’s baseline is around 5-8% depending on genre. If yours spikes above 15%, something’s wrong, either the game itself, mismatched expectations from your store page, or a technical issue. Fix it before anything else.
For post-launch analytics, Steam’s built-in dashboard covers the basics. For deeper traffic analysis, Google Analytics connected to your game’s website shows where players are actually coming from so you can double down on what works.
Your game took months or years to build. The launch window is measured in days and hours. That brutal asymmetry is the reality of how the market works right now. The developers who navigate it successfully aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets, they’re the ones who treated launch as a discipline with the same rigor they gave to game design. Start earlier than feels necessary. Be more systematic than feels natural. And test your save files.
