2024 was the year Valve made major changes on how games and their demos gain visibility. In this 2025 Independent Games Summit talk, game marketing researcher Chris Zukowski lists the changes and show how successful developers have adapted to them. 

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GDC Festival of Gaming

A GDC 2025 talk covering Steam's major 2024 marketing changes and how indie developers can leverage them. The three key pillars are demo dominance, post-launch boosts, and NextFest visibility. Demos are the single most impactful marketing tool: they unlock Steam's 'new and trending free' chart, attract streamers and festivals, and drive wishlists far more than social media. The talk outlines a step-by-step demo launch strategy including playtests, separate demo pages for reviews, coordinating with streamers and festivals, and timing the demo launch well before NextFest (not during). 'Real Steam' (~$150K gross revenue in first 6-9 months) is the threshold that unlocks post-launch promotional tools like daily deals and Steam sale featuring. The Discovery Queue algorithm determines whether a game has 'the magic' within the first few days of launch. NextFest should be the grand finale of a demo campaign, not its debut.

Marketing Your Game Under the New Steam Rules