Why do people add a game to their wishlist but not launch the demo?

Question

After releasing the game demo (and sending notifications about this news to wishlisters), I was surprised by two things:

  1. Steam organically added me to wishlists (which is nice)

  2. In two weeks, less than 10% of wishlisters launched the demo, only a few left a comment. And this is not clear to me, because for me a wishlist is like "I'm interested in your game and maybe if it comes out I'll buy it someday". In addition, the dynamics of adding a game to a wishlist has fallen. For me, it would be clear if the demo was not liked (and this would also be feedback), and it turns out that even those who added the game to their wishlist do not launch the demo.

I only have a few hundred organic Steam wishlisters, no website or group in Discord, it is a marketing failure. So if the demo is ignored even by wishlisters, is it worth closing the page?

Posted Feb 15, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

073
Loading comments…