Steam Wishlist Value Falls as Conversion Rate Nearly Halves, Marketing Analyst Says
If a wishlist is worth less than it was, the marketing playbook that treats registration counts as a sales proxy is pricing in a currency that has been devalued.
Reporting from 1 source: Automaton.
Chris Zukowski of How To Market A Game examined conversion rates for 160 titles, splitting them into 2020 to 2022 and 2023 to 2025. Median conversion at one month and six months after launch fell to roughly half in the later period. Zukowski points to wishlist inflation: developers chasing registrations through online events and Steam events features, while Steam UI changes make registering easier for players.
The comparison rests on 34 titles released from 2020 to 2022 against 126 from 2023 to 2025. Zukowski treats the ratio of launch-period sales to wishlist count at launch as the conversion rate, then charts the median at one month, six months, and one year. The decline holds at all three checkpoints, with a margin of error he acknowledges.
His explanation is supply side and demand side at once. Developers now understand wishlist acquisition as a discipline, marketing guidance circulates freely, and online events can deliver thousands of registrations in a week. On the player side, more events mean more games seen, and Steam's interface changes make the wishlist button easier to reach.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.