When should you make your Steam store page?

That is Valve's own finding, from its Coming Soon documentation, and it settles most of the debate. The fear that early wishlists go stale is not borne out: a player who wishlists two years before launch is about as likely to buy as one who wishlists two weeks before. So the cost of posting early is low, and the cost of posting late is every wishlist you did not collect.

Those wishlists decide the launch. Steam emails every wishlister at release, and the launch lists depend on them: in January 2026, Popular Upcoming took around 5,000 to 7,000 wishlists to enter, by Chris Zukowski's scrape. A page that goes up two weeks before launch has two weeks to get there; one that goes up a year before has a year.

• Minimum: the page must be up as Coming Soon for at least two weeks before release.
• Review: submit it at least seven business days before you want it live; review usually takes 3 to 5 business days.
• When: once you are ready to talk publicly about the game, with its art direction and core features fairly settled, because early wishlisters may be confused if the game changes a lot.
• Lead time: Valve says a long lead time is not a strong downside, unless the game changes significantly.
• Next Fest: a game needs a public store page to register, which for the February 2027 edition means by 10 January 2027, about six weeks before the fest.
• The fee: the page lives on an app created with the $100 Steam Direct fee, so paying it is the first step.

The page is ready to go up when all of these are true:

• The art direction is settled: the screenshots look like the game players will get.
• The core loop is playable and fun enough to show in five screenshots and, ideally, a short trailer.
• You can state the hook in one sentence for the short description.
• You know the genre well enough to choose specific tags.
• You can show a release window, even if only a year.
• You can keep it alive: an update or announcement every few weeks.

If the first two are not true yet, keep building; a weak page posted early sets a first impression you will spend months undoing.

Post a page whose screenshots show placeholder art, and the first thousand visitors judge the game by it. Change the genre after posting, and the wishlisters you collected wanted a different game. The fix is not to wait for launch; it is to wait until the look and the loop are what players will get, then post.

The data adds a second caution. GameDiscoverCo found that games which underperformed at launch had spent an average of 411 days on Steam before release, against 214 days for games that did well. That does not mean an early page hurts: troubled projects slip, and slipping projects sit on Steam longer. It does mean a page left untouched for a year is a warning sign to players as much as to analysts. Post early, then feed the page.

Counted back from launch, for a game developed over a year or two:

A capsule that reads at small sizes, five gameplay screenshots at 1920x1080, a short description with the hook, specific tags, and ideally a trailer. A release window (a quarter or a year) is enough; the exact date can come later. Our Steam page checklist lists every field, and how to make a Steam page walks through them in order.

"Post as early as possible" assumes the page can earn interest. Some games cannot show their appeal in screenshots until late: a narrative game whose hook is a twist, a systems game whose depth only shows in play. For those, a page posted with a strong trailer later may outperform one posted early with five static images. And a game that is a surprise by design, a shadow-drop, trades wishlists for a launch-day moment; that is a strategy for teams with an audience already, not for a first game.

Flockbay drafts the Steam page from the game as soon as it is playable: capsules cut from a real frame, screenshots from the running game, copy from your brief and comparable games, exported as a .zip you upload yourself. Its Steam numbers then read your followers and an estimated wishlist range for free, so you can watch the page work. Drafting is free in beta until 1 December 2026; the page by hand and its .zip stay free.