Newly announced cemetery life sim Graveyard Keeper 2 is already among the top 100 most-wishlisted games on Steam, and the head of publisher tinyBuild partly attributes its sudden rise to a carefully planned Steam marketing strategy that highlights the difference between making a game free and giving it away.
On the heels of Graveyard Keeper 2's announcement, the original game was made free on Steam for a limited time, drawing players in and ultimately shifting over $250,000 worth of DLC in the process. A lot of those new players also ended up wishlisting the sequel, pushing it up the charts.
As tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik explains in a Twitter/X post, Graveyard Keeper very specifically did not throw a "free to try" weekend. Instead, the game was given a 100% discount within the Steam store system. It's still 80% off at the time of writing to keep the ball rolling.
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This discount is "why the original game spiked so fast and so hard," Nichiporchick says. And his reasoning cuts to the heart of Steam: tapping into PC gamers. "It’s not about a giveaway per se- it’s about the 100% discount on Steam," he adds. "This sends a notification to every single wishlist. A 'free to try' weekend doesn’t send these." As a result, a lot more people end up hearing about this free game.
Additionally, Nichiporchik highlights the "marketing funnel" for introducing Graveyard Keeper players to the sequel and nudging them toward wishlisting it. Wishlists are a hugely valuable metric for unreleased Steam games, not just because those players can be converted to sales either at launch or via future discounts and events, but also because they help developers size up the scope of their engaged audience and set expectations for launch. It's similar to pre-order metrics, and maybe more so for book pre-orders than games, which have a different pre-order culture around them.
The secret? Don't make it annoying. "The banner in the main menu for wishlisting Graveyard Keeper 2 triggers the Steam Overlay. Not the browser. The Overlay opens up and allows for a frictionless one click wishlist action, since users are already logged in," Nichiporchik says.
Nichiporchik describes this marketing ploy as an "unorthodox approach" and thanks developer Lazy Bear Games for its trust, but this whole flash in the pan strikes me as an increasingly normal way to leverage Steam's systems. PC gaming is largely past the days of 'gaming' Steam with tags or hidden flags of some sort, but we still see developers find ways to maximize or work around Valve's tools and algorithms in order to reach more people.
As marketing goes, it's among the most palatable because it can help developers stay healthy and help players find games (and deals) they're actually interested in. This process also often informs the features that Valve adds to Steam, like with the recent addition of official Early Access 1.0 release dates.
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