Game publishers are presented with a few marketing routes for their upcoming titles, from event appearances to Steam Store Page optimization to playable demos. But almost all game publishers will, at some point in their promotion cycle, turn to influencer marketing to reach their anticipated community online. The idea here is to convert viewers into future players by generating awareness for the game, showcasing the quality of the gameplay, and hopefully driving viewers to places like Steam where they can wishlist the title.
But the efficacy of this strategy has always been hard to pin down. So today, in a special collaboration with game discovery experts GameDiscoverCo., we’re going to dive into the connection between live streaming viewership and Steam wishlists by looking at a number of recently released titles. We’ll see which titles benefited most from streaming, and what kinds of events can prompt support from the live-streaming community.
The Known Connection Between Sales and Streaming Viewership
Before we jump into wishlists though, it’s worth establishing how streaming correlates with final sales. We took a sample of nine games released in 2025 and looked at their daily hours watched post-release versus the number of copies sold for those respective days. Bucketing those days together by hours watched across the entire sample gives us a nice glimpse into the relationship between the two.
There’s a clear positive relationship here: More hours watched on live streaming correlated with more copies sold. In fact, looking at the trend line across this sample suggests that for every 41 hours watched post-release, 1 copy of the game is sold on average. Of course this is a small sample size so take that with a grain of salt, but it provides us with a starting point for thinking about how live-streaming awareness converts to sales. We also have a case of the chicken and the egg here: Is it that more sales mean more popularity and therefore a larger live streaming audience? Or is a larger live-streaming audience driving people to buy these games?
The data feels ambiguous, so we’re going to focus on something a bit more tangible and immediately relevant to publishers considering influencer marketing prior to release: Steam wishlists. In the following sections, we’ve picked specific games from the above sample to investigate how their viewership lines up with Steam wishlists per day.
We explore two types of wishlist counts in the following sections:
- Cumulative wishlists: The total number of wishlists on a given day
- Net wishlists: The net change in wishlists from one day to the next (daily gain or loss)
Mecha Break Uses Streaming to Generate Western Awareness from Betas
For our first choice, we selected a game with a primed, dedicated fanbase that would really shine by showing off its gameplay. As an anime-inspired shooter, Mecha Break felt like the perfect fit, relying on influencer marketing to “break” into the Western market. Looking at Steam wishlists, it’s clear that the main driver of conversions was Mecha Break’s two open betas which allowed prospective players to get their hands on the game’s mechs. Other than these key events, wishlists maintained a steady rise up until Mecha Break’s release (at which point wishlists “dropped off” as wishlisted customers converted to sales).
Zooming in on the pre-release period and switching to net wishlists per day rather than cumulative wishlists, there’s a beautiful overlap between the number of wishlists being generated and the number of hours being streamed of each game. During Mecha Break’s open betas, there’s a roughly 1:5 ratio of wishlists:hours watched generated. While the beta periods lasted for roughly two weeks in each case, the bulk of wishlists aligned with streaming interest rather than beta availability. The Game Awards 2024 also bumped up wishlists, but had no live-streaming coverage and a far smaller effect than either beta.
Streaming Amplifies Wishlists for Clair Obscur’s Showcase Appearances
Clair Obscur faced a very different challenge to Mecha Break: The game’s publishers had to figure out how to get their game to stand out among a crowded RPG space. Ultimately, though, Clair Obscur generated the vast majority of its Steam wishlists post-release thanks to word-of-mouth marketing (with a 3X increase in wishlists in the quarter after the game’s release date). As such, Clair Obscur provides an interesting example of a game that might have benefited from more live-streaming awareness pre-release.
Scaling up the pre-release period, bumps in wishlists stand out a bit more. Most of the significant wishlist generations came from showcases and demos, particularly the Xbox-centric showcases like Xbox Games Showcase 2024 and the Xbox Developer Direct in January of 2025.
The one standout instance of influencer marketing came when Knekro streamed a demo of Clair Obscur in the lead up to Future Games Show. The stream drove the highest live-streaming viewership for Clair Obscur in its pre-release period and aligned with over 14K net Steam wishlists generated on the same day – larger than other non-showcase peaks. That’s a strong start, but teaming up with more streamers (or mixing in a wider variety of streamers) could have taken awareness for the game to the next level. Of course, Clair Obscur has since become a sleeper hit: Publisher Kepler Interactive should consider using more influencer marketing when they release their follow-up title to boost the profile of their burgeoning series.
AAA Release Monster Hunter Wilds Relies Less on Streaming for Steam Wishlists
Finally, we wanted to look at Monster Hunter Wilds: A game from a legacy AAA series that wasn’t concerned so much with generating awareness as it was with proving itself to be culturally relevant. The shape of this curve looks very different, with the peak in live-streaming interest from the game’s release week drowning out a lot of the other signals. As seen with Mecha Break, wishlists also decreased upon the game’s release as curious onlookers converted to sales.
In the pre-release period, it was the first beta for the game that really grabbed live-streaming attention. At the peak of the open beta weekend, roughly 100K net Steam wishlists were generated per day driven by 2M daily hours watched on live-streaming. Interestingly, however, the second open beta actually saw small drops in net wishlists per day. This could be attributed to the proximity of the second beta to the game’s full release: Previously curious customers may have realized that Monster Hunter Wilds wasn’t for them and dropped off (though this effect is negligible in comparison to the 3.3M wishlists prior to release).
Apart from betas, the other driver of wishlists for Monster Hunter Wilds were the State of Play showcases in May and September of 2024. These events saw jumps of ~50K and ~75K net wishlists respectively, with a corresponding difference in live-streaming interest for each showcase. As seen with Clair Obscur’s feature at the Xbox Developer Direct, more live-streaming interest might have been able to further amplify the reach of these showcases and drive more Steam wishlists as a result. But overall, the data suggests that streaming coverage is less necessary for generating wishlists for a hyped AAA title.
_
The few examples we’ve investigated here leave us with some key insights:
- Live streaming viewership closely correlates with wishlist generation
- Live streaming viewership amplifies the number of wishlists being generated by increasing the reach of other marketing efforts
- Established series rely less on live-streaming for wishlist generation as they already have brand awareness
_
Figuring out the cause-effect relationship between streaming and game discovery is confounded by so many factors. However, the games we’ve looked at here support the idea that streaming amplifies the reach of other marketing efforts like demos, betas, and game showcases, ensuring they reach a wider audience. Streaming is a natural place for conversation around these titles to flourish among gamers, building excitement prior to release. And, as a bonus, passionate streamers build trust in these titles while urging viewers to add these games to their Steam wishlists.
If you’re interested in more insights into console and PC game discovery, check out the amazing work by GameDiscoverCo. and keep in touch with them via their excellent newsletter!
To keep up to date with the latest insights into live-streaming popularity, follow Stream Hatchet and receive exclusive newsletter-only content:
