What 2,200 games at Steam Next Fest tell you about discovery
By Oleg Sidorkin, CTO of Cinevva
Steam Next Fest isn't just an event. It's a dataset. Over 2,200 games showed up in February 2026 with demos, trailers, and hopes for wishlists. The results are in, and they confirm something indie developers feel but don't always say out loud.
Next Fest rewards games that already have an audience. If you're starting from zero, the festival alone won't change that.
Standout indie games from Steam Next Fest February 2026
The numbers
presskit.gg analyzed the data and the tiers are pretty stark:
| Tier | Wishlists earned | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 10,000+ | Almost always entered with 10K+ existing wishlists |
| Gold | 7,000-9,999 | Strong pre-existing community or content creator push |
| Silver | 1,000-6,999 | Where most games land |
| Bronze | 0-999 | The median sits around 460 |
The median game earned 460 wishlists. That's with a demo available, a store page live, and Steam actively promoting the event. Four hundred and sixty wishlists for a week of dedicated visibility on the largest PC gaming platform on Earth.
Momentum compounds. Obscurity compounds too.
The Diamond tier games almost all entered with 10,000+ existing wishlists. They had content creator coverage before the festival started. Their capsule art communicated instantly at thumbnail sizes. They'd done the marketing work before showing up.
The games entering with fewer than 1,000 wishlists? They mostly gained a few hundred more. The festival amplified what was already there. It didn't manufacture something from nothing.
This pattern isn't unique to Next Fest. It shows up everywhere in discovery. YouTube recommends videos that are already performing well. Spotify surfaces songs with existing listens. Store algorithms everywhere reward engagement with more engagement.
If you have momentum, Next Fest is a multiplier. If you don't, it's a participation certificate.
Genre matters more than you'd think
Co-op games overperformed across the board. Content creators want to play with friends on stream. That social dynamic generates clips, which generates views, which generates wishlists. The social play loop feeds the social media loop.
Survival and crafting games stayed strong despite how crowded the genre feels from the developer side. Players still want these games. The supply hasn't exceeded the demand.
Narrative games and visual novels struggled. The format of Next Fest works against them. Demo browsing rewards fast visual clarity. You need to understand what a game is within seconds of seeing its capsule art and maybe watching ten seconds of gameplay. Story-driven games need context that thumbnails can't provide.
Roguelikes could still break through, but only with strong differentiation. "It's a roguelike with a twist" needs the twist to be visible at a glance.
Why we're watching this closely
This data matters to us because Cinevva was built specifically for the problem it reveals. Our reels-first discovery shows real gameplay, not curated screenshots. You scroll through clips, see something that looks fun, and you're playing it instantly in your browser.
We're not trying to replace Steam or compete with Next Fest. The data tells us these platforms work great for games that already have visibility. The question we care about is: what happens to the other 2,000 games? The ones that are genuinely good but didn't enter with an existing audience?
Those games need a discovery path that doesn't depend on pre-existing momentum. Somewhere a player can stumble onto a game they'd never find in a store, because they saw five seconds of it and it looked interesting. That's the gap we're building into.
The Steam Next Fest strategy guide we published earlier this year covers the tactical side. This piece is about the structural takeaway. Discovery on the biggest platform in PC gaming is increasingly a rich-get-richer system. If that's the only system, a lot of great games will stay invisible.
Related:
- Steam Next Fest February 2026 data
- Steam Next Fest strategy guide — tactics for making Next Fest work for you
- Co-op Game Design — co-op games consistently overperform at festivals
- How to Launch Your Game on itch.io — an alternative discovery path for smaller games