"Valve knows it, I know it, and you need to know it": Steam expert tells indie devs to "give away" demos, because actually playing a game beats all other marketing

Indie games are having an increasingly hard time with discoverability; there are more great indie games than ever, but for every one that breaks out and becomes a Balatro-level success, there's likely 50 more that get passed over completely. At the GDC 2025, game marketing researcher Chris Zukowski posited that there is one thing that is absolutely necessary for developers to do to prevent this: demos.

"Here's the universal truth with interactive media [...] you need to give away something, because to play it is to understand it, and you really don't know how a game plays and whether you like it until you try it," Zukowski said. He added, "Demos have the biggest impact for fixing low visibility. That's what it comes down to, folks. Valve knows it, I know it, and you need to know it."

Zukowski also spoke of Choose Your Own Adventure books, which launched in 1977 but didn't really pop off until they arrived for free in libraries in 1980, after which they became an overwhelming success. This example was followed up with examples from indie developers.

"Here's Parcel Simulator. Nothing really worked, they release a demo, and their wishlist chart goes crazy," Zukowski added. "I asked the developer, he said, 'My Steam page has been live for two years and got 7,000 wishlists.' Then he released a demo, and he got 17,000 wishlists in one week. He got as many wishlists as he did for an entire two years before that."

It was the same story for Eden Crafters and Minami Lane, according to Zukowski, proving his point that "you have to release a demo."

"Demos unlock visibility. It allows you to get content creators. It allows you to get festivals, word of mouth, Steam algorithms. This just comes for free with your demo, it's not by itself," Zukowski said.

"You need to get your demo playable as soon as possible," he continued. "The longer you wait on getting your demo up, the longer that flat line where you don't get any visibility, despite posting on any social media platform – that doesn't really work. It's not until you get your demo that you get your visibility."

Speaking of indies, Microsoft recently namedropped Hollow Knight: Silksong in its list of upcoming games, despite the game being MIA for years.