Where and How do Games get Featured?

For some of us, the reasons behind Steam recommending certain games to players is shrouded in mystery and we’re all asking the same questions. How important are wishlists? Will good games sell themselves? Is it all just random? What about reviews?

And it’s no wonder this mysticism exists when there are over 100,000 games on Steam¹ and over 1,000 being released every month². All hope of your game being seen seems lost.

The first thing I want to tell you is that there is hope. There are tangible things that you can do to get your game in front of players on Steam, but it’s not just algorithms that you need to figure out, there are real humans behind some of the lists and placements on Steam³

Essentially there are two types of lists which you need to get your head around before you start plotting how to get on them.

Algorithmic Lists

As the name suggests, these are controlled by algorithms. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but just in case, algorithms are programmed by developers at Steam to automatically look for games that meet specific criteria. Different algorithms power different lists that appear in different places on Steam.

The algorithmic lists on Steam include:

• Featured and Recommended
• Discovery Queue
• Curator Recommendations
• From Publishers and Developers
• New and Trending
• Top Sellers
• Popular Upcoming
• Specials

The goal of these lists is to make personalised recommendations to players so that their Steam Store is relevant to them and their interests. This means each player will have different games that feature on each list. From a game developer point of view, Steam is trying to show your game to the people who are most likely to buy and play it.

Curated Lists

These lists are created by humans looking for games that will appeal to as many different players as possible. This is because curated lists show to every player on Steam regardless of their interests.

The curated lists and placements on Steam are:

• Front Page Takeover
• Special offers (Daily, Midweek & Weekend Deals)

Getting Picked Up by Steam’s Algorithms

There are three main things that matter directly to the algorithms for their lists, revenue, tags and localisation. Let’s start with the most important metric of all - revenue.

Revenue

The amount of money that your game makes after launch is the biggest factor for Steam. Not because they’re money hungry, but it means that people are so interested in a game that they want to part with their money to play it.

Over half of the lists powered by algorithms rely on revenue data to pick the games that appear. Whether it’s total revenue over the last 24 hours, reaching a revenue threshold or being discounted, a big burst of revenue is a guaranteed way to end up on one or multiple Steam lists.

Don’t worry if you’ve already launched a game though, high volumes of sales can happen any time, such as when you release updates, celebrate anniversaries and release a sequel.

Tags

Steam often recommends games to players based on what they have played before and this is determined by the tags that developers decide to associate with their game. In sections like Featured and Recommended, Steam will even tell players the specific tags that led to a game being recommended to them, such as 2D, horror or single-player. When you’re publishing your Steam Store page, Steamworks offers a selection of over 400 tags for you to pick from, but recommends only using 20 to describe your game⁴. This means it’s down to developers to choose tags themselves. As a result, technically and visually similar games often have very different tags associated with them.

If you can make your tags as accurate as possible, it means that your games could get recommended to people who actually want to play them. If you add an unrelated tag to your game because a certain type of game is trending, you’re misleading players and wasting valuable visibility on the wrong audience.

Localisation

Localisation is the process you go through to translate your game and store assets into different languages. It also includes regional pricing where the amount you charge for your game in other countries is adjusted based on the average earnings of those countries. Five out of the eight algorithmic lists use localisation as a factor for choosing games to feature because cultural differences between countries will impact the types of games that are popular there. Additionally, many players around the world might prefer to play games in their own language as opposed to English.

53% of games on Steam only support English². This could be because the majority of games on Steam are devleoped and published by indie game developers who may not have the funding to translate their games and Store pages if they don’t speak other languages themselves.

If you can translate your game into a language in addition to English, there is a chance for your game to be recommended to players in other countries and therefore get more reach.

Expanding the languages you offer will undoubtedly expand the reach of your game and increase the possibilities of your game being recommended to more than just English speakers.

What about wishlists?

Wherever you go in the indie game developer communities, so much emphasis is put on wishlists. They are important for a number of things like forecasting revenue after launch, finding out how much interest you’ve generated for your game before launch and notifying interested players when you launch.

In terms of visibility on Steam, they’re only taken into account on one out of the eight algorithmic lists - Popular Upcoming. To get on this list, you have to achieve a certain number of wishlists in a 2 week period and then games are ordered by release date. So although lots of wishlists could help you get that burst of revenue at launch and appear on revenue- related lists, your total number of wishlists overall does not increase your visibility very much.

Improve Your Chances of Being Chosen by Curators

Although there are only two places on Steam curated by humans, it’s worth considering some of the things you can do to increase the chances of your game being chosen to feature. Remember, curated placements are shown to every single user on Steam (around 132 million people per month¹) so they need to appeal and be available to as many people as possible. If you think your game would be enjoyed by lots of different types of people, then make sure that you’ve ticked the following four things off your list.

Localisation and Regional Pricing

As well as helping you in the algorithmic lists, translating your game and store page into different languages will help you get picked up by curators too; it’s easy proof that your game is suitable for players around the world. The more languages you’re able to translate your game into, the less competition you will have if you’re eligable to be featured as only 24% of games support five languages or more².

If you’re in need of some inspiration on which language to start with, we’ve used Game Oracle to find you the top six supported languages other than English²:

1. German
2. Simplified Chinese
3. Spanish
4. Russian
5. French
6. Japanese.

You could also look at similar games to your own and see which languages they support.

An extension of localisation is a great feature that Steam offers; regional pricing. This goes beyond simple exchange rates and uses multiple different factors to determine what is the equivalent price for your game in a different country⁵. Pricing your game appropriately for different countries means that it will be accessible to people around the world and is a great indication that your game is suitable for curation.

Controller Support

Whether you like it or not, people play PC games with a controller. In 2024 Steam reported that 15% of gaming sessions use a controller of some sort which has led to improvements to the way controller support works on the platform. Additionally, the Steam Input feature allows you to make your game playable on over 300 different controllers⁶.

Steam Store Assets

Making sure all the images you upload to your game’s store page are high quality is always a must, but if you’re struggling to imagine them appearing on the front page of Steam, perhaps it’s time to re-think them.

Chances are, you’re a very creative person, but to take some of the pressure off, you could think about collaborating with an artist who speacialises in game imagery and assets. There are plenty of artists on the many indie game developer subReddits and you could always ask for recommendations if you can’t find one.

If you are featured, you’ll start getting traffic to your store page, so you might want to make sure that your About section is ready to convince people to purchase your game.

Try to really immerse the player in what your game feels like to play and accurately describe what is unique about your game without comparing it to others. Remember why you made the game in the first place and try to channel some of that passion into explaining your game to potential players.

Don’t Forget About Marketing

We’re going to finish on a touchy subject - marketing. Although this seems to be the bane of every indie developers’ existence, without creating a buzz around your game, your chances of ending up on any of the lists mentioned above are pretty slim. Even a small buzz could help you get noticed and potentially snowball your game’s popularity if you get it right.

One thing to make sure you are clear about is what you want people to do after they’ve seen your marketing content. This is called a call to action (CTA).

If you’re in pre-launch, don’t be shy and tell people to wishlist your game at the end of trailers, on tweets, paid ads or whatever marketing channels you’re using. “Wishlist on Steam” is about as clear as you can get with a call to action.

After launch you have lots of options for your call to action and they could really help you get on a list like the Featured and Recommended section on the front page of Steam. Amongst other things, this list pays attention to the games that your friends are playing, wishlisting and recommending to you. This means that the call to action in your post-launch marketing materials could be one or a mixture of the following:

• Download
• Play
• Review
• Recommend to a friend

Why not try them out on their own or in combinations of what matters most to you and see what works best for what you want to achieve.

TLDR

You can get your game featured in nine different places on Steam. Most of these are lists controlled by algorithms, but a tiny proportion are down to real humans who curate games that have a wide appeal.

The most important things for Steam to be able to push your game to players is spikes in revenue, tags that you choose when you upload and localisation. Wishlists only matter for appearing on one list and really, what it all boils down to is your marketing efforts that drive demand for your game.

References

1. Backlinko | Steam Usage and Catalog Stats
2. Data sourced internally from Game Oracle
3. Youtube | Steam Visibility: How Games Get Surfaced to Players
4. Steamworks Documentation | Steam Tags
5. Steamworks Documentation | Regional Pricing Recommendations
6. Steam | An update on Steam Input and controller support