What moves the needle on Steam? People buying and playing your game, and the store gets more personalised every year. The job is less about reaching everyone and more about finding the players who are likely to love your game, then making that match obvious to them at a glance.
How the Signal Stack works
Most marketing advice for indie games comes as a list. Post more, do Next Fest, pitch streamers, fix your capsule. Any of it can be right, and you still only have a few hours a week. The Signal Stack is how I figure out which of those hours matter first for YOUR game in your CURRENT state.
What Steam actually rewards
The Framework: Six layers, bottom to top
Legibility
Can a stranger tell what your game is from one image or one sentence? When this breaks, people visit your page and leave without wishlisting.
Audience
Is there a specific group of players with specific games they already love, instead of "people who like exciting games"? When this breaks, creator outreach goes unanswered and wishlists come from people who never buy.
Assets
Is the material ready for when a chance shows up? When a streamer bites, or a festival slot opens, you need to be prepared and have something good to send them.
Channels
Are you in the two or three places where your players actually discover games, at a pace you can keep for months? The usual failure is posting everywhere with nothing compounding.
Concentration
Is your launch set up as a window instead of a single day? That means a release date set well in advance, plus attention landing in a tight burst when you ship. When this breaks, you get a launch that kinda dribbles out.
Momentum
Does the game keep giving people reasons to talk about it and come back after launch week? The classic failure is a good first week, then a cliff.
Why the order matters
Every layer leans on the one below it. A great trailer can't save a capsule nobody understands, and a perfectly timed launch can't save an audience that was never named. A strong layer sitting on a weak one only gets as far as the weak one lets it.
That's also why you get ONE binding constraint from me instead of a to-do list. Fix that one thing, and a few of the problems above it tend to shrink on their own.
A quick example
Picture a dev posting a clip every day, pitching streamers, watching wishlists barely move. It feels like a channel problem, so the instinct is to post even more. Then you look at the capsule, and nobody outside the team could guess the genre. The hours were real, they were just spent against a wall. :/
Where the scores come from
Two sources. You fill in a questionnaire about your game, your players, what you've tried and how much time you realistically have. I also go through your store page, trailer and tags myself. Where your answers and your page tell different stories, that gap is usually where the most useful finding sits.
Before the six layers
Some things decide whether Steam can surface your game at all, like tags, languages and release date timing. I check those first with the gate check, because scoring anything above them is pointless while one of them is broken.
What this is, and what it isn't
It's a diagnosis and a game plan. I don't run your socials or do the work for you, and I can't promise sales, because nobody honestly can in this market. What I can do is help you steer clear of the clear mistakes and point your hours where they actually count.
What you get
- A one-page verdict with your scores and the one binding constraint
- Slides that walk through the reasoning behind it
- Three concrete moves for the next 30 days
- A list of things to STOP doing (usually the part people find most helpful :D)
The price is 300€: half upfront, half after delivery.