Steam sends one launch notification, and a 14-day cooldown gates who receives it
Valve documents four events that notify wishlisters, and nothing else on a store page triggers one: a news post, a trailer swap, a price rise and a release-date change all send nothing. An App ID is the number Steam uses to identify a single product, so every rule below counts per game, not per studio.
| Trigger | What Steam sends | What the developer controls | Documented limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| The game releases, in Early Access or full release | Email and mobile push to users holding the game on a wishlist at that moment | The release date and time | Fires once, automatically |
| Early Access to full release | A second email | Whether the game uses Early Access at all | One further notification |
| A discount at or above 20% | Email and mobile push | The discount size and how long it runs | The discount must last over 8 hours |
| A public demo goes live | Email and mobile push | When to press send | Once only, inside 14 days of the demo first releasing |
Early Access means selling a playable, unfinished version before the finished 1.0 release.
Valve publishes no delivery or open rate for any of these, and no Steamworks report exposes one. Treat the launch notification as a single send you cannot measure.
Cause 1: another notification for the same game fired inside the last 14 days
Space every notification-triggering event at least 14 days apart. Valve's cooldown rule is that a customer notified about an App ID within the last two weeks receives no further email about that game until the cooldown passes, and it covers every form of email about that App ID. Valve adds that the period may be extended during high notification traffic, such as a seasonal sale.
Worked example. Release a demo on 1 March and send the demo notification on 5 March, then launch on 12 March: everyone notified on 5 March is still inside the cooldown, so the launch email does not reach them. Move the launch to 20 March and the cooldown has cleared. This is the most controllable cause on the list, and it is decided weeks earlier, when the demo and discount dates go in the calendar.
Cause 2: the wishlister never verified their email address, or turned the emails off
Assume a real gap between wishlist count and notified players, and do not try to compute it. Valve states that only customers who have verified their email address with Steam receive notifications, and that some set their email preferences to refuse some or all of these emails.
Neither the verified share nor the opt-out share is published, and no Steamworks report breaks it down, so a studio holding 20,000 wishlists has no way to tell how many of those 20,000 accounts were reachable at all.
Cause 3: an Early Access release already used one of the two notifications
Count Early Access as a separate launch, not a rehearsal. A game that releases into Early Access notifies wishlisters at that moment, then notifies them again at full release: two documented sends spread across two moments, rather than one saved for 1.0. The trap is a short Early Access period, because leaving it fewer than 14 days after entering puts the second email inside the cooldown from the first, and the 1.0 notification is the one suppressed.
Cause 4: the discount was under 20%, or ran for less than 8 hours
Set a launch or post-launch discount at 20% or more and run it for longer than 8 hours, or expect no notification at all. Valve's threshold is any type of discount at or above 20%, whether a curated feature spot, a weeklong deal or a custom discount, lasting over 8 hours.
A 15% launch-week discount sends nothing, and nor does a 20% discount running for a four-hour window. A 20% discount running for a week does send the email, subject to the same 14-day cooldown, which is why a launch-day price cut and the launch itself cannot both reach the same player.
Cause 5: the demo notification was never sent inside its window
Send the demo notification deliberately, from the demo's app landing page, inside 14 days of the demo first going live. Valve allows the action once and only within those two weeks, and re-enabling a disabled demo later does not reopen it, so a missed window is gone permanently. Because it competes with the launch email for the same cooldown, send it early in the demo's life, while the launch is still more than a fortnight away.
When a missing notification is not a problem
- The wishlister already bought the game. Purchases show in the Steamworks wishlist report alongside additions and deletions, and a converted wishlist needs no launch email.
- Conversion looks low, but nothing about the notification failed. How many notified players buy is a separate question with its own benchmark range, covered in steam wishlist conversion rate.
- Non-English wishlisters report a different experience. Valve does not document the language or regional behaviour of these emails, so an inconsistent report from players in one country is not evidence of a fault.
- A few players say they saw nothing. Anecdotes cannot separate an unverified address from an opt-out, and there is no published delivery rate to check them against.
Escalation: what to check in Steamworks, then what to add outside it
- Rebuild the notification calendar. List every notification-triggering event with its date: demo notification, Early Access release, discount start, full release. Any two dates less than 14 days apart mean the second one reached fewer people.
- Read the wishlist report for the launch window. Steamworks shows daily additions, purchases and deletions, plus a regional breakdown. Purchases in the first days are the only usable evidence that the notification landed, because no report counts sends.
- Add a channel the studio controls. Steam gives one launch send, on a cooldown, to an unknown share of the list, and never hands over a wishlister's contact details.
Engage sends automated, personalised email across the pre-launch and launch-day stages that Steam's single notification cannot cover. In Ubisoft's Might & Magic: Fates campaign, that flow produced 2.8x higher Day 1 conversion, 6.64% against 2.37% through the standard storefront flow.
Sources: Steamworks: Wishlists, Steamworks: Demos, and Immutable customer data from the Ubisoft Might & Magic: Fates launch campaign.
