Faced with limited marketing budgets, small game publishers must maximize return on advertising investment (ROIA)—and this is doubly true for indie developers who may have no marketing budget at all.
As always, the game's release period remains the most important time to spread the word, especially for games released on Steam. As Future Friends Games founder Thomas Reisenegger said earlier this year in game price function: “If you don't know that people will immediately like your game, the Steam algorithm will quickly bury you under a mountain of other content.”
The importance of this was recently made clear by the news that a Steam bug prevented people who wishlisted Planet Centauri from being notified of the release of version 1.0 via email. Steam later confirmed to developer Permadeath that this is one of the less than 100 games has been subject to this error since 2015.
As a result of the error, only 581 players bought Planet Centauri in the first five days of its sale, although more than 130,000 people wishlisted it. For an indie game, this lack of attention at launch is devastating.
So what marketing channels—from paid social advertising to sponsored broadcasts—can small publishers use to get their games noticed in those all-important first few days?
Paid social
Marla FitzSimmons is the head of marketing for Fellow Traveler, publisher of the recently released Wander Stars as well as classic indie games like Paradise Killer and Citizen Sleeper.
She believes that developing a community around games is vital to maximizing ROI, which is why the team focuses on community-focused social platforms when spending money on paid advertising. She explains: “In terms of platforms, we focused mainly on TikTok and Reddit. Both give us the opportunity to communicate directly with players and spark conversations around the game – in different ways, of course.
“This is a space where players are already talking about games they really like, so we found it was easy to target the right players and a good way to get attention for a new game.”
However, expenses paid are not a guarantee of success. IN long post on reddit developer of the indie game Flocking Hell broke how everything from historically low conversion rates to cuts taken by platforms can eat into ROAS, making paid spend seem like a bad bet for smaller publishers.
To solve this problem, FitzSimmons suggests dividing the marketing budget between “awareness channels” (to create awareness of the game's existence) and more authoritative and reliable sources to improve conversion.
“We've found that a multi-channel approach works best,” she says. “Players may first see a game on media channels like TikTok, then see the game mentioned by a journalist or creator they follow, and are much more likely to search our community and hear from other players.”
Hunter Bond, director of horror game publisher DreadXP, agrees. But he also notes that social platforms are constantly changing algorithms (and owners), which can stymie paid advertising strategies. “I think we're in a quandary today as independent publishers because there isn't one good answer to where you're going to see the best return on your time spent.”
Mike Rose, founder of No More Robots, says Little Rocket Lab's Oct. 7 release marked the first time the publisher put a significant amount of paid costs into the launch—in part to ensure it would get attention during that all-important launch window. “We spent about $50,000 in total, with a spike at Next Fest and then an even bigger spike in the weeks leading up to launch. On launch day, we used advertising to get everyone to see the game.”
He did this not in the hope that it would directly increase sales, but in the hope that it would increase awareness. “I don’t think people see our ad and immediately click buy.” However, there is an old golden rule: someone sees something more than three times and each time becomes more and more inclined to interact with it. I believe we made Little Rocket Lab available via advertising in enough places in the weeks leading up to launch that by the time people saw the game on Steam they said, “Oh, this is the game I've seen so many times.” And this is a 25% discount, And it's much appreciated.” Little Rocket Lab's launch was a success, he says.
Live Events and Community
Bond says DreadXP, which publishes titles such as Heartworm and The Mortuary Assistant, has in the past committed to paid advertising where it seemed like it would complement an organic marketing campaign rather than replace it.
He explains that DreadXP spends a portion of its marketing budget on meeting gamers and doing personal press at events like PAX, believing that word of mouth “has always been and remains the most effective way to market. This is the only form of advertising where not only can you not buy it, but you must deliver what you promise in order to have any hope of having someone personally recommend others to try your games. Focusing only on marketing through paid channels or press leaves something missing, and that to me is trying to directly connect with the people who buy your games.”
In contrast, Rose believes that live events often lack the necessary infrastructure to effectively promote the game. Instead, after the successful launch of Little Rocket Lab, he advocates participation in digital events organized by the community.
“We first showed the game at the end of 2024 as part of Wholesome Snack,” he says. “We ended up with around 8,000 wishlists and it was an amazing start. In general, if you can get into a storefront, it's always a good idea – the Wholesome storefront was perfect for us.”
Success in streaming
Over the past decade, video content creators have been steadily replacing other forms of media, and there is a desire among publishers to partner with trusted creators or streamers.
This has the dual benefit of allowing them to connect with streamers whose audience, and therefore cost, is commensurate with their limited budget, while also hitting that sweet spot between awareness-driven marketing and community-driven marketing mentioned by Fitzsimmons.
According to a recent report from gaming agency Yrs Truly, Game Content Creator Report65.9% of creators have mixed scores for indie projects, especially when there is a strong audience focus. This enables smaller publishers to maximize their ROI on sponsored streams and creative. More importantly, it also gives publishers the opportunity to appear on these awareness-raising platforms.
“The best results come when the streamer genuinely enjoys the game and their community is a natural fit,” says Fitzsimmons. “We see sponsorship not as a way to provide 'positive' coverage, but as a way to help new players learn about the game through voices they already trust. When it’s the right streamer with the right audience, it can be a very effective tool.”
Such coverage is unlikely to be free. Rose, who previously objected to The transactional nature of paying game creators to show games has been reluctantly accepted as an inevitability that “all YouTubers want to pay,” he says. “So we had to play catch because otherwise you'll never see one of our games on YouTube again.” He now includes influencer expenses in the budget of every game he signs.
Like display advertising, this is a cost that cannot be accurately justified. Bond notes that: “Influencers and sponsored streams are always tricky because they are definitely one of the more nebulous ways to spend money on marketing from a data perspective. Because of the inability to predict outcomes and the difficulty of directly attributing outcomes to these, it is difficult to know in advance whether the investment will be worth it.”
So, while spending on paid advertising on various platforms is possible even for small publishers, it is not a guarantee of success. This is not a panacea: paywalls are best used in conjunction with a natural focus on community, creating and enhancing interest in the game through a more personal approach. Paid advertising then helps increase this metric as the release date approaches. “In general, I think advertising is good for getting your game into the brain,” Rose says. “And then when the launch starts, if you have all the other ducks in a row, it can pay off.”
