Steam wishlist conversion rate: what the data says, and why adult games convert better

The median Steam game with more than 25,000 wishlists at launch sells about 0.15 copies per wishlist in its first week. That is the headline figure from GameDiscoverCo’s November 2025 analysis of Steam wishlist conversion, and it is the number most developers plan around. The same report found something that matters to anyone making adult games: NSFW games convert better than the market average.

This page sets out the benchmarks, what the adult-game finding does and does not tell us, what Valve says wishlists do, what drags conversion down, and how to use the figures without over-trusting them. It is written for developers planning a Steam launch. The figures are from the sources linked, which were published between 2020 and 2025.

Key points

• Median conversion is about 0.15. First-week sales per wishlist, for games with 25,000+ launch wishlists.
• Above $10 it is about 0.10. Higher prices convert lower.
• Adult games convert better than average. Removing them lowers the median to about 0.14.
• The spread is wide. Results vary by an order of magnitude between projects.
• Reviews and wait time matter. Poor first-week reviews and long pre-release listings go with low conversion.
• Wishlists are mostly not a visibility factor. Valve says they mainly drive notifications.

What the benchmarks say

The 2025 analysis

The most recent public benchmark is from GameDiscoverCo, a game industry research agency that specialises in discoverability, published on 3 November 2025. It measures first-week sales against launch wishlists.

The report says conversion rates “vary by an order of magnitude between projects”. It also finds no long-term decline in median conversion between 2022 and 2025, while noting that wishlists are getting harder to collect because of competition.

The sample is not described. The report counts all purchases in the first week, from players who wishlisted the game and players who did not, and its data includes big franchises that players buy without wishlisting and viral indie hits that sell far beyond their wishlists. The top performer converted at 29.29 times its wishlists; two other examples were 8.67 and 7.51.

The 2020 survey, for comparison

An earlier survey by Simon Carless, GameDiscoverCo’s editor, of 50 developers in June 2020 found a median of 0.20 first-week sales per wishlist and an average of 0.36. Individual results ranged from about 0.05 to above 1. The sample was small and, the author noted, probably under-represented bigger games.

Read together, the two studies agree that the typical ratio is somewhere between 0.1 and 0.2, but they used different samples, so the difference between 0.20 and 0.15 should not be read as a trend.

Adult games convert better

The 2025 report’s wording is brief: “NSFW games convert better than the market average.” Excluding them lowers the median from 0.15 to around 0.14.

That is a small shift in the median, which tells us something about size. NSFW games are a minority of the sample. For the median to move at all they must be a meaningful minority, and the shift implies that they sit on the high side of the distribution. The report does not give an NSFW-only median, and we do not guess one.

Automaton West’s account of the study, published on 20 October 2025, adds detail. It says adult games were “disproportionately represented among high-conversion titles”. Its explanation: Steam users who buy adult games are likely to be a hardcore demographic with a much higher conversion rate, and adult titles are a niche that stands out as a statistical outlier.

That is one explanation, offered by the reporter. The study itself does not test it. Two other possibilities are worth keeping in mind, as hypotheses and not findings.

1. Adult games are hidden by default. As we explain in how to see adult games on Steam, Steam hides Adult Only games until a player ticks a setting. A player who has gone to the trouble of enabling it is more committed to the category than a casual browser.
2. Adult games may attract less casual wishlisting. The 2025 report notes that “boutique” games people find interesting enough to wishlist but not buy convert poorly. Whether adult games are less prone to idle wishlisting is not something the data can show.

What the finding does support is narrow: if you are making an adult game for Steam, the typical benchmark is a little more favourable than for the market as a whole. It does not mean that any adult game will convert above 0.15.

What Valve says wishlists do

Valve’s own documentation is cautious about wishlists, and a developer should know where it stands.

Notifications. On the Wishlists page, Valve says players who have a game wishlisted when it releases receive an email, a mobile push, or both. Notifications also go out for discounts of 20 per cent or more that last longer than eight hours. A game moving from Early Access to full release triggers another round. Each app has a two-week cooldown across all email types.

Visibility. The Visibility page says wishlists are generally “not an algorithmic factor, with a few exceptions like the Popular Upcoming tab”. It also says store page traffic and conversion rate are not factors in visibility, and that a game cannot pay for more exposure. The Wishlists page adds that wishlists can affect where a game appears before launch and that wishlisted games get a visual reminder.

No formula. Valve says there is “no formula to accurately predict sales from wishlists”, and sets no numeric target. It recommends launching the Coming Soon page early, staying engaged after launch with updates and discounts, and reviewing the wishlist data after sales.

Timing. On the Coming Soon page documentation, Valve says a new product must have its page live for at least two weeks before release, and that a page should be submitted for review at least seven business days before it is meant to go live. It also notes that a player who wishlists two years out is about as likely to buy as one who wishlists two weeks out.

That last point is worth setting beside the 2025 data below.

What pulls conversion down

GameDiscoverCo compared the 20 games with the highest conversion with the 20 with the lowest. Three differences stood out.

Reviews. The score in the first week was the clearest separator. Players who wishlist a game may not buy it if early reviews are poor.

Waiting. Games listed for longer converted worse. Automaton’s reading of the report is that a longer lead time lets a game collect more wishlists, but does not mean interest keeps building. This sits alongside Valve’s remark that a distant wishlister is about as likely to buy as a recent one: the number of wishlists can grow while the pool of people who will buy does not.

Sequels and boutique games. The report found sequels tended to convert lower, possibly because of high expectations and discounts on earlier entries. Highly unusual, “boutique” indie games can also underperform, because people find them interesting enough to wishlist but not enough to buy.

Price. The median fell from 0.15 to 0.10 for games above $10.

Using the numbers

A conversion ratio turns a wishlist count into a rough range for first-week sales. The examples below use the 2025 medians. They are planning illustrations, not forecasts.

Four cautions apply.

1. The benchmarks are for 25,000+ wishlists. A small game with a few thousand wishlists is outside the 2025 sample. The 2020 survey, which included smaller games, is closer but older.
2. The spread is huge. An order of magnitude means a game with a 0.15 median could plausibly land anywhere from 0.015 to 1.5.
3. Medians hide the bottom half. Half the games in the sample did worse than 0.15.
4. First-week sales are not lifetime sales. The figures say nothing about later weeks, discounts or long-tail revenue.

For what it costs to reach a launch at all, see how much it costs to make a visual novel. For the Steam rules adult games must meet first, see does Steam allow NSFW games and where adult games can be sold in 2026.

What this means for adult game developers

1. Plan on the benchmark, not the best case. 0.10 to 0.15 is a sober range; the viral outliers are not a plan.
2. Protect your reviews. The week-one score separated the top converters from the bottom ones. Ship a stable build, and fix bugs before launch.
3. Do not start the clock too early. A page that sits for more than a year with a fading audience converted worse in the data. Valve’s minimum is two weeks; the right lead time is the one that matches your marketing.
4. Set the content survey honestly. The adult-content settings and the AI disclosure in the survey shape what players see; see AI-generated art in adult games.
5. Use notifications. A discount of 20% or more, lasting over eight hours, triggers wishlist emails, and so does leaving Early Access.
6. Do not rely on wishlists for reach. Valve says wishlists are mostly not a visibility factor, so they do not replace tags, reviews and an audience of your own.

What is still unknown

• The adult-game median. The report does not publish a figure for NSFW games alone.
• The sample size. GameDiscoverCo’s public report does not state it.
• Why adult games convert better. Automaton’s explanation is plausible but untested.
• How the data treats games with the adult setting turned on. Whether Steam’s default filtering affects the wishlist count is not examined.

How this page was put together

The 2025 figures come from the GameDiscoverCo report as published on GameDev Reports on 3 November 2025, and from Automaton West’s article of 20 October 2025 on the same analysis. The 2020 figures come from GameDiscoverCo’s newsletter. Valve’s statements come from three Steamworks documentation pages, read on 20 October 2026. The tables of expected sales are our own arithmetic on the published medians.

Nothing here is a forecast for any game. To report an error, see the corrections standard.