How To Sell A Video Game

This Week: This week’s newsletter breaks down what’s actually driving traction for indie games, pulling from recent IndieDev Reddit success stories, a real-world wishlist spike, and key upcoming events.

TLDR: The common thread: developers who see results get visible earlier than feels comfortable, market consistently (not loudly), coordinate around real moments like demos and showcases, respect their communities, and know when to pause instead of panic when things go quiet. The issue also highlights a short, focused list of indie-friendly events and niche showcases, and reinforces a simple takeaway: momentum isn’t about hacks or virality, it’s about timing, clarity, and thoughtful, sustained effort.

Welcome! In the last issue, I talked about why this newsletter exists. This week, I want to get practical and ground things in real-world signals from developers who are actually seeing traction. The kind of stuff that you bookmark, copy to notes, and/or save to read later but never get around to doing so. Here it is all in one place.

Steam’s Storefront Just Got Wider. What Developers Need to Know.

If your Steam store page feels like it suddenly has more breathing room, that’s not your imagination. Steam has rolled out a significant update to its storefront layout, expanding many pages from 940 pixels to 1200 pixels wide. This shift brings higher visual fidelity to store pages and better support for modern displays, including high-resolution monitors and devices like the Steam Deck OLED.

For developers, this isn’t just a cosmetic change it directly affects how your game is presented, how your artwork is displayed, and how competitive your store page looks alongside newer releases. AND IT AFFECTS WISHLIST GROWTH.

Why Steam Made the Change

The wider layout reflects how and where players now browse games. Higher-resolution displays are the norm, and Steam’s storefront needed to scale accordingly. By increasing page width and asset resolution requirements, Steam is enabling:

In short, games that take advantage of the new layout look more modern, more premium, and more intentional.

New Required Capsule Dimensions

With the layout update came new, larger asset specifications. To display correctly—and competitively—developers should now use the following dimensions:

These sizes allow Steam to present your game crisply across the updated store and future-proof your page as display standards continue to evolve.

Timeline: What Changed and When

If your store page still relies on older assets, it may technically function but it won’t be optimized for the current storefront.

What Developers Should Do Now

If you haven’t already, this is the time to refresh your store presentation:

This isn’t about chasing perfection it’s about not looking dated next to games that are taking advantage of the new format.

Where to Find the Official Specs

Steam’s full documentation and updated templates are available via the Steamworks Development site. If you’re updating assets or planning a launch, treat those specs as required reading.

Final Thought

Storefront changes like this are easy to overlook, but they quietly shape player perception. A well-composed, high-resolution store page doesn’t guarantee success but a dated one can absolutely work against you.

Across multiple recent Reddit threads and a public wishlist milestone post, a few patterns show up again and again. None of them are flashy. All of them are repeatable.

The strongest stories all involved developers putting up a Steam page and demo much earlier than they initially wanted to. Not because the game was “done,” but because visibility compounds. Wishlists don’t magically appear at launch—they accumulate slowly when you give people something concrete to react to.

Takeaway: A “good enough” page early beats a perfect page late.

The devs seeing progress weren’t spamming every subreddit or blasting press lists. They were showing up regularly in relevant places, respecting community rules, and framing posts around learnings or progress—not self-promotion.

Takeaway: Consistency + context > volume.

One standout wishlist jump (25k in a week) came from aligning strong assets with a clear moment: a trailer, a showcase beat, and social/community amplification happening together. Not random posting—intentional timing.

Takeaway: Momentum comes from coordination, not luck.

Several devs pointed out that once something resonates, players and creators start sharing for you. That only happens if the core idea is clear and the developer treats the audience like collaborators, not targets.

Takeaway: Respect travels further than tactics.

Silence wasn’t treated as failure. The successful devs adjusted timing, reframed messaging, or waited for a better beat instead of panic-posting or over-pitching.

Takeaway: Knowing when to pause is a skill.

Here are the links referenced and used for this week’s newsletter analysis:

Festivals, showcases, influencer and media showcases and their submission windows. This will be an unwieldy list and I won’t be able to find everything, so please let me know if you see something worth posting about.

FYI: Still building this list, We just participated in the PC Gamer Most Wanted and got 1000 wishlists overnight with a very hard to find placement in their Steam Curator page.

I’ll probably kick this one off in a couple of week. Reach out to me if you want to be featured. While it’ll lack audience at first, its an easy way to create content for your game, team or whatever you do (Plug-ins, asset makers, Localization services) throw into Opus Clips - clip and add your game play and boom! you’ve got 20-30 pieces of content to regularly schedule. This helped us go from 2500 monthly views on Instagram to 25,000 views in a month.

All the best links that usually disappear into the Reddit ether only to be reposted by the most diligent Redditors and game development and marketing gurus. Link to the website archive of these great resources (GDMR)

10 YouTube gems for Solo Game Devs. (I dont know who originally made this list, if you do let me know so I can give them credit.)

1. The Real Core Loop https://lnkd.in/eH8VvKWf

2. Basic Principles of Game Design https://lnkd.in/eZbgAhsg

3. Game Difficulty vs Punishment https://lnkd.in/ejjhtxRv

4. Why Most Games Fail at Storytelling https://lnkd.in/eaRsFgBC

5. How to Get a Job as a Game Designer. https://lnkd.in/em7sSemF

6. How to make a Video Game on Godot https://lnkd.in/esWkBQJq

7. How to Balance a Game. https://lnkd.in/ersZYfS7

8. How To Make A Game Alone. https://lnkd.in/eSXf-r2z

9. How to keep players engaged. https://lnkd.in/emZ-MYBe

10. How to create Tutorials for Games https://lnkd.in/epawWhpG

[BONUS]

11. Depth vs Complexity https://lnkd.in/eRdiMPxJ

And the Hall of Fame of Resource that always get’s relinked in Reddit:

Have a win, a learning, a question, or an opportunity worth sharing? Send it in. If it helps the community, we’ll surface it with credit.