GameDiscoverCo: The State of Steam Wishlist Conversions (2024–2025)
Median wishlist conversion benchmarks for you to consider.
The report analyzes wishlist-to-sale conversion rates during the first week after launch over the past two years. The data includes all purchases, both from players who had wishlisted the game and those who hadn’t.
❗️GameDiscoverCo notes that fluctuations in the data are significant, with conversion rates varying by an order of magnitude between projects.
The median conversion rate for games with over 25,000 wishlists at launch in the past year is 0.15× (meaning roughly 15,000 first-week sales per 100,000 wishlists).
For titles priced above $10 at launch, the median conversion drops to 0.10×.
NSFW games convert better than the market average. Excluding them lowers the median from 0.15× to around 0.14×.
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GameDiscoverCo doesn’t observe a long-term decline in conversion rates - rather, it’s simply becoming harder to gather wishlists due to rising competition.
The most successful games between September 2024 and September 2025 achieved far higher conversion rates than the median. The dataset includes both AAA titles (which players may preorder instead of wishlisting) and viral indie hits (often purchased immediately without being added to wishlists).
Top-performing games by conversion include Peak (29.29× conversion), Mage Arena (8.67×), and R.E.P.O. (7.51×).
It’s also revealing to look at games that underperformed relative to expectations. These titles had a median user score of 67% (Mixed) in their first seven days, versus 91% (Very Positive) for higher-performing games.
The average pre-release period on Steam was 411 days for underperforming titles, compared to 214 days for those exceeding expectations.