Finding Players can be Hard for Studios
Finding players is one of the biggest challenges facing game developers. Getting their attention is difficult enough, but converting that interest into wishlists, purchases and long-term repeat purchasing is where many marketers fall short.
At vMarketer, we approach user acquisition differently. Having worked across game development, publishing and marketing, we connect audience research, positioning, creative, advertising and player experience into a strategy designed around the game and your studio.
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The objective isn't simply to attract more players. It's to find the right players, convert their interest into meaningful commercial results, retain, and build sustainable growth.
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User Acquisition Is More Than Advertising or Creative
User acquisition is often thought of as just paid media. Advertising matters, but there’s a lot more involved when it comes to finding, attracting and retaining users long-term. Sustainable, protracted user acquisition is a key component of a studio’s life, as it is how a studio generates revenue.
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The Different Channels of Video Game User Acquisition
Game acquisition generally combines several complementary approaches. Paid media, including social, search and video advertising, provides targeted reach and opportunities to test demand. Organic discovery comes through storefronts, useful content and player communities. Earned exposure includes relevant creator coverage, press and recommendations that a studio cannot simply buy as placements. Referral activity turns satisfied players into advocates, while offline events and partnerships introduce games through real-world experiences.
Each source has different costs, levels of audience intent and strengths across the game's lifecycle. An effective acquisition strategy does not require every channel to carry equal weight. It identifies the combination that reaches the right players and moves them toward a meaningful action, whether that is a demo, wishlist, purchase, or sustained participation.
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Acquiring new users happens all over the internet
The internet & social media were supposed to bring the world together, but they've actually created a hyper-fragmented place where brands fight for consumers' short attention spans. Unlike a typical consumer product that is purchased, consumed and repurchased or forgotten, video games are experiences. Studios need to attract consumers through moments and actions that appeal to many different audience groups who have varying tastes within the game genre, globally. Marketing video games is more of a challenge, since it is very subjective: where a particular experience is coveted by one player may repel another.
New user acquisition must follow a strategy suited to a video game studio's capabilities and limitations. Just as every game has its own challenges, so does selecting the right paths to finding, tapping into, exciting and converting users who live in their conclaves on the internet.
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Discovery Happens Online and IRL
Games are digital products, but their audiences do not live entirely online. Players discover games through personal recommendations, local gaming communities, physical events, cultural exhibitions, partnerships and traditional media. These offline touchpoints can build trust, generate useful player feedback and introduce a title to audiences that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
For indie and AA studios, the objective is not to attend every convention or invest in expensive mass-market advertising. A focused local showcase may identify valuable playtesters; the right industry event may connect a studio with publishers, creators and media; and a well-designed referral experience can turn existing players into advocates. Each opportunity should be selected for its audience and commercial purpose, not its size alone.
Offline discovery also illustrates why attribution is imperfect: a player may try a demo at an event but only wishlist or purchase days or weeks later. We therefore connect real-world activity to the wider acquisition strategy rather than treating it as a separate campaign. For more on word of mouth, festivals, Gamescom, pop-up activations, partnerships and event preparation, read more about Offline Video Game Marketing.
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New Opportunities for Game Discovery Are Constantly Emerging
The ways players discover games are constantly evolving, creating new opportunities for studios willing to look beyond established marketing channels.
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For example, Discord recently announced plans to make public server pages discoverable through Google Search. This could open another avenue for indie developers to attract players organically, allowing people searching for relevant games, genres and communities to discover their Discord servers.
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Much like Reddit, where community discussions frequently appear in Google search results, Discord could become another valuable source of organic discovery. It's a reminder that effective user acquisition requires studios to continually evaluate emerging opportunities rather than relying on the same channels year after year.
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We've explored what Discord's changes could mean for game developers in more detail.
The Goal Is Not More Players. It Is the Right Players.
Understanding the audience means more than choosing generic genre labels or demographics. We study comparable games, player motivations, platform behaviour and the communities where those players already gather. This helps us decide which messages and channels can attract players with a genuine reason to care.
Nonsense Personas
This is one of my favourite examples of poor audience definition. On paper, King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne have remarkably similar demographic profiles, yet they're clearly very different people.
The same applies to video game audiences. Grouping players into generic sociodemographic cohorts tells us very little about what actually motivates them.
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To build meaningful player cohorts, we look deeper:
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Interests and motivations: What games, genres, mechanics and experiences excite them?
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Where they exist online: Which communities, creators, forums and platforms do they engage with?
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Brand affinities: What other games, entertainment and brands do they identify with?
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Intricate details: Unexpected interests, from a love of cat doilies to mechanical keyboards, that can reveal new ways to connect with specific audiences.
The goal isn't just to define who your players are, but to understand what makes them respond.
I wasn't able to identify the original creator of this image to credit.
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Not all players are equally valuable
The objective isn't to attract every possible player. It's to reach players with a demonstrated appetite for the genre, pricing model, and gameplay experience. Also, if you attract the wrong audience, your conversion rates suffer, and game churn and refunds increase.
An acquisition campaign can look healthy inside an advertising dashboard and still produce a weak commercial result. Cheap clicks, high reach and strong engagement are useful only if the campaign is attracting people who actually want the game. That is why we care about player quality as much as acquisition volume.
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For indie and AA studios, this is particularly important because there is rarely enough budget to treat everyone as a potential customer. The audience and market position need to be clear before acquisition can become efficient. Our Indie Game Marketing Strategy work goes deeper into that positioning and market-alignment problem. OR for larger studios, look at Games Marketing Strategy
User Acquisition Changes Throughout Development
The right acquisition approach depends on where the game is in development.
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During Development
Early acquisition work is often about learning. We may be testing who responds to the concept, which parts of the game create interest, how players describe the experience and whether the current positioning reflects what the market actually values. This is where acquisition connects closely with our Indie Game Marketing Strategy and Game Marketing Support During Development work. Marketing signals can help the studio make better commercial decisions while there is still time for production to respond.
Testing the wide range of channels, content types and early messaging to gauge potential interest and from which cohorts. We also want to ensure no hidden/special game features are leaked to prevent AI-cloned games from beating us to market. It is quite a balance, and now an extra layer to deal with makes it even harder for studios and marketing teams.
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Pre-Launch
As the game becomes more market-ready, acquisition shifts toward building qualified demand. Steam visibility, store conversion, demos, creators, festivals, community and paid testing can all provide evidence about which audiences and messages are strongest before the largest launch spend begins. More about steam marketing
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Launch
At launch, the challenge is concentration. The strongest channels, creative, creators, media activity and store experience need to reinforce one another while player attention is at its highest. Our Video Game Launch Marketing page covers how we approach the release period itself without treating launch as the beginning of marketing.
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Post-Launch and Live Growth
After release, acquisition becomes more closely connected to sales data, reviews, retention, updates, discounts, new content and reactivation. Major updates can provide renewed platform visibility and reasons for creators and existing players to return. As we have seen with our Droid Trivia post-launch work, improvements to a game and the communication around them can form part of its ongoing acquisition strategy. The audience that responded at launch may not be the one that drives its next phase of growth.
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Retention is Also a Part of the User Acquisition Strategy
Acquiring new players is only part of the challenge. Keeping them engaged is equally important to building a sustainable player base. If a game struggles with retention, studios can find themselves spending heavily on acquiring new players simply to replace those who have left, rather than achieving meaningful growth. There is little value in attracting large numbers of qualified players if a poor onboarding experience, frustrating mechanics or unmet expectations cause them to abandon the game shortly afterwards. Improving retention helps reduce the pressure on acquisition budgets, while increasing opportunities for longer-term engagement, monetisation and organic growth.
This is why I believe marketing and development must work closely together. As a development-aligned marketer, I look beyond the channels bringing players into a game and examine their experience once they arrive. Player feedback, engagement data and acquisition performance can reveal opportunities to improve the game itself, strengthening both retention and future marketing effectiveness.
User acquisition should not be treated as a one-way funnel, but as a continuous cycle. Satisfied, engaged players are more likely to recommend a game to friends, create content and become advocates within their communities. This brings us back to the importance of word-of-mouth marketing: a better player experience can generate new acquisition opportunities, reducing reliance on paid marketing over time.
Paid Media Should Amplify What Works
Paid media gives studios speed and control. It can help test audiences, compare creative approaches, generate qualified store traffic, retarget interested players and scale combinations that already show evidence of fit. What it cannot do is permanently compensate for weak positioning, poor creative, a confusing store page or a game that is attracting the wrong audience.
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Paid marketing needs financial discipline. A low cost per wishlist can still produce a negative return after accounting for purchase conversion, regional pricing, discounts and platform fees. A wishlist represents interest, not a guaranteed purchase. For premium games, we assess cost per wishlist alongside expected purchase conversion, selling price, regional mix, discounts, platform fees and the margin available to recover acquisition costs.
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We therefore use advertising as part of the acquisition system rather than as an isolated service. Our Video Game Advertising page covers paid-media strategy, campaign execution, optimisation, attribution and scaling in more detail. Testing creative angles, regional audiences and channel combinations helps establish whether demand is repeatable before the studio commits significantly more spend.
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Knowing When Acquisition Is Ready to Scale
created. Audience fatigue, limited creative variety or rising acquisition costs can quickly change the economics. Scaling is a commercial decision, not simply a decision to increase spend.
Game Marketing Creative: Giving Players a Reason to Care
A game can have outstanding visuals, innovative mechanics and years of development behind it, but none of that matters commercially if potential players cannot quickly understand what makes it worth their attention. Effective game marketing creative needs to communicate more than features. It needs to convey the experience, appeal to the motivations of its intended audience and demonstrate why someone should choose this game over the many alternatives competing for their time and money.
Different players are attracted to different aspects of the same game. One strategy player may be drawn to complex tactical combat, while another is more interested in base building, resource management or exploration. Even within a single genre, these motivations can vary considerably. Understanding those differences allows us to develop creative that speaks directly to different audience groups rather than relying on one message to appeal to everyone.
This goes well beyond producing attractive trailers, screenshots or advertisements. The creative must communicate the game's genre, establish what makes it distinctive and set expectations that the actual gameplay can deliver. A spectacular trailer might attract millions of views, but if it appeals to the wrong audience or misrepresents the experience, that attention may never translate into meaningful sales.
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Creative Testing Reveals More Than Campaign Performance
Creative testing is an opportunity to better understand the market, not simply discover which advertisement generates the cheapest clicks. By testing different gameplay features, messages, formats and creative approaches, we can identify what motivates different groups of players and which audiences demonstrate genuine interest in the game.
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These findings can influence the wider marketing strategy, from audience targeting and channel selection to positioning and store presentation. They can also provide valuable feedback to development teams about which aspects of the game resonate most strongly with prospective players.
At vMarketer, we approach Game Marketing Creative as part of the wider acquisition strategy, closely connected to audience research, product development and commercial performance. The objective isn't simply to produce more creative assets, but to continually improve how effectively the game communicates its value and attracts players most likely to become customers.
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Acquisition Does Not Stop at the Store Visit
For many PC and console campaigns, the storefront is where multiple acquisition paths finally meet. A player may have seen an ad, watched a creator, read about the game or encountered it through Steam before deciding whether to wishlist, download a demo or purchase.
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The promise made by the acquisition campaign therefore has to continue on the store page. If advertising sells tactical combat while the Steam page presents base building first, the campaign creates unnecessary friction. If creators are generating interest but the trailer and screenshots do not communicate the same experience, attention can disappear before conversion.
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Our Steam Marketing work focuses on store presentation, discovery opportunities and conversion in more depth. Importantly, Valve does not treat raw store-page traffic, conversion rate or a fixed wishlist threshold as direct visibility-ranking signals. We distinguish those platform rules from correlations observed in marketing data, so studios do not build their plans around algorithm myths.
Turning Creators, PR and Communities into Player Acquisition
One of the biggest challenges in video game user acquisition is getting players to notice a game in the first place. There are thousands of competing titles, countless creators producing content and communities already dedicated to particular genres and gaming experiences. Breaking through that noise isn't simply a matter of spending more money on promotion. It's about getting your game in front of the right audiences, through people and channels they already engage with.
Content Creators and Streamers
Content creators and streamers can be particularly effective because they allow potential players to see a game being experienced rather than simply advertised. The right creator can demonstrate its appeal, explain complex mechanics, generate excitement and introduce it to an established audience. But audience relevance matters far more than follower counts alone. A smaller creator with a highly engaged community interested in your genre can deliver more meaningful results than a much larger personality whose viewers have little interest in the game.
We cover this topic in more detail Influencer Marketing for Games
PR & Media
Public relations offers another opportunity to reach established audiences, but effective games PR is more than distributing press releases. Journalists and publications need a compelling reason to cover a game, whether that's an unusual concept, an interesting development story, a significant milestone or something genuinely newsworthy. Building relationships with relevant journalists and understanding what interests their readers is just as important as the announcement itself.
Gaming Communities
Communities also play an important role, particularly in maintaining interest between major marketing activities. A healthy community creates opportunities for direct interaction, feedback, playtesting and ongoing engagement.
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Over time, its members can become advocates who introduce the game to others through recommendations, shared experiences and their own content.
The real opportunity comes from connecting these activities rather than treating them as independent campaigns. A creator's coverage might introduce the game to new players, press coverage can reinforce its credibility, and community engagement can maintain their interest until they're ready to wishlist, play or purchase. Each activity can strengthen the others, creating momentum that extends beyond an individual announcement or campaign.
Measuring Video Game User Acquisition Effectiveness
Acquisition should ultimately be measured by how effectively the studio moves relevant people from discovery to commercial outcomes. Reach and engagement help indicate whether a message is getting attention, but qualified visits, store or demo conversion, wishlist movement and purchases tell us more about whether that attention is useful. For live games, activation, returning players, retention and player value help establish whether acquisition is creating durable growth rather than temporary spikes.
Attribution is rarely straightforward. A player may discover the game through a creator, read coverage, see an advertisement and purchase through Steam days later. No single click report captures every influence. We therefore combine channel data with store analytics, campaign timing, community feedback and reasonable commercial estimates, making it clear which results are measured and which are inferred.
The objective is not a dashboard full of impressive numbers. It is to determine which audiences, channels and messages deserve more investment, where players are dropping out of the journey, and whether the cost of acquiring them makes sense for the game's business model.
Wishlists Represent Interest, Not Guaranteed Sales
Steam wishlists have become one of the most closely watched metrics in PC game marketing. Developers, publishers and marketers place enormous emphasis on growing wishlist numbers ahead of launch, and for good reason. Wishlists help build early traction, provide an indication of market interest and can contribute to important discovery opportunities on Steam.
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However, a wishlist represents interest, not a guaranteed purchase. A player might wishlist a game because they like the concept, want to follow its development, are waiting for a discount or simply want to remember it for later. Their level of purchase intent can vary significantly.
This is where studios need to look beyond the headline numbers. Generating 50,000 wishlists might look impressive, but the commercial value depends on how many of those players ultimately purchase the game. Even a low cost per wishlist can become expensive when purchase conversion is poor, particularly after accounting for regional pricing, discounts, platform fees and other costs.
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Acquiring the right players is therefore just as important as acquiring more of them. Organic discovery, creator campaigns, community activity and paid advertising all attract players with different motivations and levels of purchase intent. An effective user acquisition strategy considers not only how efficiently wishlists are generated, but how those players are nurtured, engaged and converted into paying customers.
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Wishlist growth is an important milestone, but it is only one step towards commercial success. The real objective is to turn that early interest into sustainable sales, engaged players and long-term growth. That requires an acquisition strategy extending beyond the wishlist itself, through launch and into the game's commercial life.
What This Looks Like in Practice
MicroProse: From Limited Traction to More Than 61,000 Net Wishlists
On one MicroProse campaign, the game had limited traction and the original plan was to move quickly toward release. We spent time with the product, worked with the development team and separated the audience into different motivations rather than treating everyone interested in tanks as the same customer.
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That changed how we positioned the game, which assets we prioritised and where we spent. Facebook and Reddit became strong direct-conversion channels, while YouTube played a greater awareness role. Creator support also needed more than keys. Complex gameplay required guides, walkthroughs and direct support so creators could show the game properly.
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The campaign ultimately generated more than 61,000 net wishlists, including around 12,000 in the week before launch, reached #1 on Steam Popular Upcoming. The important part was not one channel. It was connecting product understanding, audience, creative, media and conversion into one acquisition system.
Undeads: Building Acquisition Around More Than Paid Reach
At Undeads Games, acquisition relied on a wider growth system that combined campaigns, community, referral mechanics, incentives and product activity. One major growth campaign, Undeads Rush, added around 150,000 verified users over about three months, with most of that increase arriving early in the campaign.
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The lesson was similar: acquisition accelerated when the audience had a reason to participate, share and continue engaging. Media spend can bring attention into the system, but the product, offer, referral mechanics, and community determine how far that attention travels.