Launch Starts Before Release Day
A game launch is not one announcement and a burst of posts. The strongest launches are built through a sequence of moments that give players repeated reasons to discover, wishlist, follow, play and eventually buy.
We plan video game launch marketing around the development roadmap, platform milestones, demo strategy, festivals, creator access, PR opportunities, community activity and paid support.
Turning Your Video Game Marketing Strategy Into a Marketing Plan
Before starting a marketing plan for a video game, most ‘game marketers’ and devs attempting to market their games forget about the overarching marketing strategy.
I go into a bit of detail on how to formulate marketing strategy for games in this section
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Once you have your overall marketing strategy for your video game, you can scroll down to the major decisions necessary for building a game marketing plan, it focuses particularly on a video game launch but you need to remember that a marketing plan IS NOT JUST FOR A LAUNCH!
A marketing plan can be built for any period of time of your choosing. A launch is typically the most asked about marketing activity with game developers, hence why I’ve kept to a launch plan.
The Big Decisions Needed for a Marketing Plan for a video game.
1. Before You Launch, Make Sure the Game Is Actually Ready
One of the first questions I ask when preparing a video game launch is whether the game is genuinely ready for the amount of attention we are about to generate.
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A release date may already exist, but that does not automatically mean the product, Steam page, marketing assets and campaign are ready to support it. Increasing traffic at the wrong time can simply expose problems to a larger audience.
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When I started working on Arms Trade Tycoon: Tanks with MicroProse, the game had already been announced for several months but had generated very little press coverage, follower growth or wishlist momentum. I was brought onto the project in late, with the original intention was to release as soon as possible; Yes, that was the actual directive.
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After reviewing the game, I pushed back the Steam Early Access release. The game simply was not market-ready. Instead, we agreed on a new Early Access window; the date moved several times before we settled on it. That still gave us a very short runway, but it gave both development and marketing more time to improve the product, positioning, assets and campaign.
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It is important to plan out the game’s launch window early on. This will help in determining a pre launch marketing timeline. From there, you can begin to plan out asset requirements, sourcing artists and production into a Steam launch timeline. Gather any Steam checklists, guides and planners, as it might help cover anything you may have forgotten.
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This is why I treat release readiness as part of video game launch marketing. Sometimes the right marketing decision is to increase activity. Sometimes it is to fix the conversion journey. And sometimes it is to push back and create enough time for the game and campaign to properly support one another.
If the release date cannot move, the approach changes again. Marketing has to prioritise what can realistically be improved before launch, manage expectations around what players will receive and concentrate resources on the areas most likely to affect conversion and launch performance.
2. Your Game Launch Date Is a Marketing Decision Too
A game release date should not be chosen purely because production believes the build will be ready on a particular day. Your game does not launch into an empty market. It is competing against other releases, Steam events, major sales periods, showcases and potentially much larger games that are targeting the same players for their time, attention and money. For that reason, I consider the release window to be part of the overall video game launch strategy, rather than a date that marketing simply receives once production has made the decision.
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Before locking a launch date, I look at what is happening around the proposed release window and, more importantly, whether those events actually compete with our audience. A major AAA release might dominate the overall games conversation but have very little impact on a highly specialised simulation title. On the other hand, a smaller release in exactly the same niche may be much more important to consider. Relevant Steam festivals, major updates to competing games, creator availability, press schedules and industry events can all influence how much attention is realistically available.
The timing also needs to make sense internally. If the trailer, Steam page, screenshots, demo, creator build and campaign materials are not ready, then having a technically releasable game does not necessarily mean you have a market-ready launch. Similarly, I want to know whether the development and community teams will actually be available after release. There is little value in concentrating months of marketing activity into one launch window if the team then has no capacity to respond to technical issues, player feedback or unexpected opportunities.
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Sometimes moving a release by a few weeks creates a much cleaner window and gives the campaign additional time to build momentum. Other times there is little benefit in moving it. The important point is that the game launch schedule should be considered deliberately by production, publishing and marketing together. A release date is not simply the end of the production roadmap.
3. What If the Game Isn't Ready, But You Can't Move the Launch Date?
Sometimes delaying the game is the best decision, but sometimes it simply is not possible. Studios may be dealing with publisher commitments, investor expectations, platform obligations, funding milestones or the more basic reality that the business needs revenue. In those situations, marketing cannot manufacture another three months of development time, so the priority becomes reducing launch risk as much as possible within the time that remains.
The first thing I want marketing and production to establish together is which problems are most likely to damage the player's first experience and which marketing promises create the greatest risk if they cannot be delivered.
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A serious onboarding problem is more important than producing another social video.
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A feature being heavily promoted but missing from the release build is more important than creating another set of screenshots.
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A creator build that repeatedly crashes is more important than increasing the number of creators receiving keys.
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When time becomes limited, trying to complete every activity on the original marketing plan often makes the situation worse.
The campaign itself may therefore need to change. We might narrow the features being promoted, reduce the number of channels being supported, delay some creator activity, replace marketing assets that no longer represent the game or change the emphasis of the campaign so that expectations match what players are actually going to receive.
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This happened with Arms Trade Tycoon: Tanks. The game was still evolving during the campaign, and several of the later eras and features that would strengthen the full experience were not going to be available for the initial Early Access release. Rather than market the future version of ATTT, we concentrated the Early Access messaging around the World War I experience that players could actually access and made sure creators, media and campaign partners understood that same positioning.
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This is an important distinction in a game launch marketing plan because marketing is not only generating awareness. It is also creating an expectation of the product. If the trailer, Steam page, creators and advertising promise an experience the player does not receive, stronger marketing can actually magnify the problem.
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When the date genuinely cannot move, my priority is therefore to protect the player experience first, make sure marketing accurately reflects the available game, remove serious store-page or positioning problems, stabilise creator and review builds and then concentrate resources on the campaign activities that are most likely to make a difference. The nice-to-have activities can wait.
4. The Game Launch Is the Start of the Next Marketing Campaign
Launch is obviously an important milestone, but it should not represent the end of your video game marketing timeline. In many ways, release gives marketing something it has never had before: a significant number of real customers playing the product and telling you what they actually think about it.
Before launch, much of your marketing is based on research, testing, wishlists, demos, creator feedback and assumptions about what players will value. After launch, you have reviews, player discussions, creator videos, gameplay clips, purchasing behaviour, support tickets, community conversations and examples of how people are actually using the game. That information should feed directly into the next stage of the campaign.
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Strong reviews can become social proof. Unexpected player behaviour can become excellent social or creator content. A feature that players consistently praise may deserve much greater prominence in future advertising and store assets. A substantial update can give creators and media another reason to revisit the title. Even criticism can be useful when it reveals a gap between what the campaign promised and what players actually experienced.
This is why I prefer to finish a launch already thinking about the next two or three possible marketing beats. That might be a major update, DLC, a Steam sale, participation in a themed event, a creator activation, a new platform release or simply an unexpectedly strong piece of community content that gives us something new to build around.
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Waiting until sales begin slowing down before asking what can be marketed next usually means the team is already reacting too late. Good post-launch game marketing uses the attention, data and player behaviour generated by the release to create the next reason for people to talk about the game.
Don’t forget about post-launch or post game event periods
I’ve seen many occasions where both developers and games marketers forget about a substantial period of time after a launch window or a game event. The old wait and see fails everytime and gets marketing on the backfoot. A marketer’s job doesn’t stop after launch. Post-release sales, pricing strategy, wishlists (yes still important) and interest waiver when marketers ease up post-launch. This tends to lead to an audience perception that the studio has given up on the title. This also applies to major in-game events for games-as-a-service (GaaS) or free-to-play (F2P) games. The tail end of a game event (like end of season pass, special dungeon, world bosses etc) is when you discover a lot about Word ofMouth / community amplification.
5. After Making the Biggest Decisions
So after making the big macro decision for marketing your game: Moving the launch date, fine tuning audience cohorts, personas, messaging takes shape. It’s now time to look at your Competitor analysis & lookalike games (a competitive game isn’t always the same genre and games in the same genre are not always alike), And so moving out of the discovery phase, you are then looking at the channels you have selected, influencers to approach, partnerships etc No games marketer is worth their salt without setting KPIs/Metrics and what benchmarks you want to achieve.
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Video Game Marketing Plan Example: Phantom Galaxies
Phantom Galaxies was a live service MMO. We developed pre-launch community/contributor events like Astrafite Rush, where we introduced a core gameplay mechanic: Mining newly discovered Astrafite ore and fighting off a specialized sub-faction of swarming pirates. Who doesn’t like space pirates!
The whole event was launched a few months after the big cinematic cutscene reveal announcement. The marketing plan included various tactics to ramp up hype in the community, grow player pre-registration signups and resulted in Discord growing to 100K active members.
The game marketing plan doesn’t have to be restricted to advertising and posting of content. Include everything: community engagements, twitter spaces, AMAs (Ask me anything) townhalls and everything in between you are planning - yep it’s a plan.
Most Important First Step in a Marketing Plan
Important and first part, well the first part you write down, when building a games marketing plan are your objectives. These are measurable outcomes for your campaigns. A lot of inexperienced games marketers guess or skip these as they lack the understanding or experience needed to set and reach these goals.
In my experience, you want to keep your marketing plan objectives simple and straightforward. Something that is easy to understand and measure:
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Objective A: Campaigns to increase wishlist to sales conversions by 14% for the period.
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Objective B: Acquire 600 new email subscribers for pre-registration site.
Also these metrics don’t all have to be about sales, but since marketing’s job is to drive sales, it is pretty important. Don’t use vanity metrics for the marketing plan. They mean nothing. You want to say “This marketing effort X will result in Y”
In individual campaigns you can talk about vanity metrics but only as a secondary discussion points.
6. Video Game Asset production, always forgotten and always missed
The proper planning and scheduling of key marketing assets is one of developer’s biggest pet peeves with games marketers. Poor planning or a total lack of planning for key marketing creative assets typically means more pressure on the production art team, higher asset costs if needing to be outsourced or most likely the assets being dropped altogether, resulting in weaker marketing.
I will admit, asset production planning is quite difficult, even for a 26-year games marketer like me. Having the foresight to know what to produce 6-12 months out from a launch or event is extremely stressful. I’m not talking about the typical: Key Art, Steam capsules, store assets, websites etc. I’m talking about the other specific creative requirements for the other stages, tentpoles, events etc throughout the marketing plan’s duration. Understanding and having experience within the development lifecycle is a rare but valuable lived experience.[link]
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A Real-life asset production schedule
Here is an actual asset production schedule I created and managed for Divinity 2: Ego Draconis from Larian Studios. At the time I was a Brand Manager for DTP Entertainment in Hamburg Germany. I can’t show Phantom Galaxy’s version due to commercial confidentiality.
As you can see it is quite detailed, including file formats, resolution, purpose and notes. What is not shown are the links to creative briefs and detailed plans for particular assets.
So there were several major in-game events, the actual Phantom Galaxies 1.0 launch and major asset production all being part of the launch marketing plan, it was a big one. The plan itself spanned 8 months, hit several tentpole activities, trade shows like Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom and many community-led events. We had large mecha models [link] created by XX, and other pop-culture partnership alignments and in-game brand activations.
All of these tactics, activations, advertising, game events, community activities stemmed from a strategic directive, formulated in the Studios Games Marketing Strategy.
7. What Should a Video Game Marketing Plan Include?
A video game marketing plan will typically include your marketing objectives, target audiences, positioning and messaging, campaign timeline, marketing channels, creator and media activity, asset production requirements, budget, KPIs, launch activities and post-launch marketing. Yep, it can get quite big.
Video Game Marketing Plan Formats
There’s a lot of debate as to how to properly construct a marketing plan. It can be a powerpoint or side presentation deck (most common), word or gDoc, a spreadsheet (usually this is the planner) or a calendar. I’ve actually also seen some made in Canva.
The worst format I saw was while on Phantom Galaxies - they used Trello. Yep, yuck. Trello is OK for task management (well that’s a stretch) some games marketers swear by it, I call them liars.
Video Game Marketing Planner & Marketing Calendar
Not to be confused with a games marketing plan. So this is the meaty part of a marketing plan for your game. This planner or calendar is typically broken down into weeks of the year. Following the classic week numbering system known as ISO 8601standard.
Then place the ‘key beats’ or important (related dates) into the planner.
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The pre-launch, launch and post-launch game events and anything else from your live-ops events or Games-as-a-service event planning.
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It always helps to include key events & trade shows that you may or may not have planned.
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Planned press tours/ first looks etc
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Don’t forget Steam Next Fests or any console partnerships like PlayStationPlus etc.
A Games Marketing Planner and Games marketing Calendar Layouts
There are many ways you can layout your marketing planners. The following is from an officially FEI Licensed Equestriad World Tour game on Mobile iOS & Google Play that I worked on previously. I would recommend using this format if you plan on highly repetitive activities else your plan will stretch out and be hard to read. The purple colors are nice and fit with the branding but are unnecessary, the purpose is functionality, and us game marketers don’t have endless hours to make them pretty and update the style when the plan suddenly shifts (it nearly always does).
Color coding legends & keys for your Games Marketing Planners
Game marketing planners do get complicated. I recommend color coding sections and key activities and tactics so they are easily identified. In the screenshot from Go Gallop for Equestriad World Tour, the critical activations / planner actions are in a darker purple. I looked at a deeper level of complexity to help game devs but I found that the simplest visual approach worked best.
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I would recommend only putting key social post items on this planner and link to a publishing schedule spreadsheet with all social posts on it. Now some would say to just schedule them in something like Agora but from my experience what happens is that posts slip through the cracks, dont get properly vetted and checked. Use a proper approval process.
8. Your Launch Marketing Must Match the Game Players Are Actually Getting
ATTT was still actively being developed throughout the campaign.
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Several later eras and features that would eventually strengthen the full game were not yet available for the Early Access release. We could have marketed the future version of ATTT. Instead, we concentrated the Early Access campaign around what players could actually experience, particularly the World War I era, and made sure creators, media and campaign partners understood the same message.
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This matters. Your trailer, creators, PR and store page all create expectations. If the game players receive does not match those expectations, stronger marketing can actually make the problem worse.
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This is why I prefer launch marketing to work closely with development. Marketing needs to know what is coming, what is moving, what has been cut and what is genuinely ready before building campaign promises around it.
9. Fix Your Steam Page Before Sending Traffic to It
Once we've understood the game and its audiences more clearly, we started improving the touchpoints players would encounter throughout the campaign. That included websites, social media, community channels and, importantly, the Steam product page.
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Messaging was tightened across those channels and the Steam page was updated to improve its ability to convert the people we were sending there. We also developed an asset production schedule covering the video, static creative and other materials required for the campaign. This is another reason I don't treat wishlist growth simply as a traffic problem. Sending more people to a Steam page that doesn't communicate the game properly can just scale the problem.
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During the ATTT campaign we tested:
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Different messaging
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Static versus video creative
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Ad variations
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Landing page versus direct Steam traffic
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Store-page copy
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Different audience segments
We also learned where not to spend.
Paid game advertising placements on large mainstream gaming sites such as Game Informer and PC Gamer generated traffic, but much of that audience bounced without taking meaningful action. The audience was generally looking for a very different style of game. The size of the gaming audience does not matter if it was the wrong gaming audience.
That is why good Steam marketing is as much about conversion and audience alignment as it is about generating traffic.
10. What I Measure During a Video Game Launch Marketing Campaign
A successful game launch campaign should be measured long before the game actually releases. I do not like evaluating a campaign using one headline number in isolation because almost every metric needs context. Ten thousand wishlists might be an excellent result for one niche game and disappointing for another. A creator generating 100,000 views might drive a significant increase in store activity, or those views might result in almost no meaningful player action at all.
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Before launch, I am particularly interested in momentum and causation. I want to understand whether wishlist growth is accelerating, what happened immediately before that acceleration and which traffic sources are sending people who actually take a meaningful action. If we change the Steam capsule, screenshots, trailer or positioning, I want to know whether the behaviour of store visitors changes with it. If particular gameplay features consistently generate better engagement across social posts, creators or advertising, that should influence what the wider campaign emphasises.
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Where a demo is involved, I also want to understand more than the number of downloads. Player feedback, obvious confusion, recurring bugs, playtime and the parts of the demo people are talking about can all reveal whether we are presenting the strongest experience effectively. The same principle applies to creators. Views are useful, but I also want to know whether the creator understood the game, whether their audience responded positively, what people discussed in the comments and whether the activity coincided with stronger Steam traffic, wishlists or community growth.
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As release approaches, the emphasis begins shifting towards conversion. Store traffic, sales velocity, wishlist activity, creator coverage, reviews, paid-media performance and community sentiment all start providing signals about how the launch is behaving. The important part is being able to interpret those signals quickly enough to act on them. If one creator or piece of content suddenly performs extremely well, there may be an opportunity to amplify it. If the same complaint appears repeatedly in reviews or Discord, that may require development or messaging changes. If a channel continues consuming resources without producing meaningful player response, it may be time to reduce its importance.
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After launch, I use the same information to determine what happens next. Which audiences actually converted? Which features are players talking about most? Which creators should we continue working with? Which messages performed better than expected? Where did we spend time or budget without getting enough back? Those answers should influence the next update, content beat, creator campaign, sale or wider marketing activity.
The numbers tell you what happened. The more valuable part of video game launch marketing is working out why it happened and what the team should do next.
11. Video Game Launch Readiness Checklist
Before I consider a game ready for a major video game launch marketing push, I want confidence across several areas rather than simply confirmation that the build technically runs.
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The first is the game itself. The build needs to be stable enough for players, creators and reviewers, and ideally it has been tested by people who were not involved in making it. I want to know whether there are obvious onboarding problems, whether the important features being promoted are actually available and whether the experience delivered by the build matches what the marketing campaign has been promising.
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The positioning also needs to be clear. The team should be able to explain what the game is, why the intended audience should care and what differentiates it from the alternatives already competing for that player's attention. This should come from more than an internal description of the feature set. Marketing should have enough audience and player feedback to know which experiences, mechanics or motivations consistently generate the strongest response.
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The Steam or store page should then translate that positioning properly. The capsule needs to communicate enough at a glance, the trailer needs to reach the strongest selling experience quickly, the screenshots should sell the game rather than simply document what the build looks like, and the copy and tags should reinforce the same market position. If the campaign is driving people to Steam, the store page itself is part of the campaign and needs to be treated accordingly.
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Marketing assets need similar preparation. There should be enough gameplay footage, screenshots, renders, trailers and other creative to support activity throughout the launch rather than only the announcement day. I also want enough different hooks available to test because the creative angle we initially believe will perform best is not always the one the market responds to.
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Creator, media and community readiness matter as well. The creator build needs to work, creators should receive enough information to understand the game properly and outreach should prioritise people whose audiences genuinely fit the title. The press kit should be accurate, relevant media should have what they need and someone within the team needs clear responsibility for community management when new players begin arriving.
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Finally, the team needs to understand how success will be measured and how launch operations will work. Marketing should know which metrics matter, where traffic is coming from and which channels appear to deserve more or less investment. At the same time, everyone should know who owns marketing decisions during launch, who monitors reviews, who handles creator problems, who manages community issues and how serious product problems are escalated to development.
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Working out a checklist
The purpose of a game launch readiness checklist is not to create another hundred tasks for a development team that is already overloaded. It is to identify the weaknesses most likely to damage the launch before you expose those weaknesses to the largest audience the game has encountered.
12. The First 48–72 Hours: Don't Just Watch the Sales Dashboard
Launch day can create the impression that the hard work is over. The campaign goes live, creators begin publishing, the store page changes from Coming Soon to Buy Now and everyone starts refreshing the sales dashboard. In reality, the first 48–72 hours are one of the periods when marketing, community and development need to be working most closely together.
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This is when all hands are on deck; I usually get very little sleep over these first days and weeks.
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I treat those first few days almost like live operations for the launch campaign. Marketing should be watching where traffic and sales are coming from, which campaign assets are performing, what creators are publishing and whether particular messages or pieces of content are gaining unexpected traction. If something is clearly working, there is little value in waiting until the end-of-month report before deciding whether to support it further.
Community provides another important stream of information. Players will quickly tell you where they are confused, what they enjoy, which bugs are affecting them and what they are sharing with other people. This information needs to move quickly between community, marketing and development because a recurring question may indicate poor onboarding, unclear store messaging or a product problem that could begin affecting reviews if it is not addressed.
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The development team therefore also needs visibility of which problems are materially affecting the launch. Not every negative comment or feature request should become an emergency patch, but issues that are preventing players from progressing, damaging first impressions or creating widespread frustration need to be identified quickly.
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Devs need to also be in Discord - observing and noting player feedback. Avoid responding or getting into heated arguments - which happens quite a lot and can derail and you lose credibility, especially when that argument is all over Reddit
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Creator campaigns require the same level of attention. Sending a Steam key is not the end of influencer marketing. Creators may encounter technical issues, misunderstand a mechanic, need additional information or produce unexpectedly strong content that should immediately be amplified through the wider campaign. This is one reason I prefer marketing teams to maintain actual relationships with creators rather than treating outreach as a bulk distribution exercise.
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Reviews should also be read rather than simply reduced to a percentage score. A repeated complaint can reveal a technical problem, an expectation created by the marketing, poor onboarding or evidence that the campaign is attracting the wrong audience. Conversely, positive reviews often reveal the parts of the game players value most, and those comments can become useful information for future positioning and content.
Launch produces an enormous amount of noise. The team's job is to determine which signals actually matter and who owns the response. Launch week is one of the worst times to discover that marketing, production and community do not know who is responsible for making that decision.
13. Video Game Launch Marketing: What I Check 30–40 Days Before Release
A month before launch, I want clear answers to these questions:
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Is the build stable enough to support the campaign we are about to run?
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Does the Steam or store page explain the game quickly enough?
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Are we leading with the strongest player experience?
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Do our trailer(s), screenshots, ads and creator briefs tell the same story?
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Are creators receiving enough information and access to cover the game properly?
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Which channels are actually generating meaningful player response?
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Are we spending money sending the right audience to the game?
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Are there production changes that require marketing assets or messaging to change?
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Do we have enough creative ready to react if one message or asset performs particularly well?
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What are we prepared to change if launch performance differs from the plan?
A good video game launch strategy should make those answers clear before release day arrives. If they aren't clear, the priority isn't another social post. It's working out what is missing.
What This Looked Like at Launch: Arms Trade Tycoon Tanks
ATTT had a short marketing runway, a limited budget and a product that was not particularly easy to communicate through conventional gameplay advertising. But once we understood who the game was really for, we could build the campaign around the right aspects of the product.
We combined playtesting, audience research, Steam optimisation, creative production, creator outreach, specialist communities, social content, targeted advertising, media activity and regular work with the developer.
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The campaign ultimately generated:
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61,000+ net Steam wishlists
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12,000 additional wishlists during the final week before launch
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Only 3% wishlist deletions
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6,000+ Steam followers
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#1 on Steam's Popular Upcoming list
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#5 among MicroProse's best-performing releases at the time
What I find more useful than the final numbers, however, is how we reached them.
There wasn't one magic campaign. Some things worked well. Some didn't. We tested, learned, stopped spending time on channels that weren't delivering, refined the audience, improved the Steam journey, helped the developer strengthen parts of the product and continually adjusted the campaign as launch approached.
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That is what video game launch marketing looks like in practice.
Our Video Game Launch Marketing Services
Campaign Calendar
Map announcements, builds, trailers, creator access, press beats, events and paid support.
Launch Reporting
Track campaign response and identify what should be adjusted during release.
Prepare for what changes at launch
Launch plans need structure, but games rarely ship in a perfectly predictable environment. Builds move, platform approvals change, creators publish at different times and unexpected player reactions can shift the conversation.
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We build launch plans with decision points and contingencies so the campaign can adapt without losing its core direction. That can include backup creative, flexible announcement timing and alternate content priorities.
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Experienced coordination matters because the team should be focused on shipping the game, not rebuilding the marketing plan every time production changes.
Frequently Asked Questions About Video Game Launch Marketing
Major launch planning should begin early enough to influence demos, store assets, creator access and campaign beats. Waiting until the final weeks removes many of the strongest options.
The focus should move toward conversion and coordinated momentum: store readiness, creator coverage, media, community communication, social proof, paid amplification and clear launch messaging.
Build around milestone windows and assets that remain useful if timing changes. Avoid making every campaign dependency rely on one fixed date before production confidence supports it.
We look at traffic, store behaviour, sales signals, player feedback, reviews, creator content, community sentiment and paid performance so the team can respond quickly.