Scope
Plain-language definitions of the launch-conversion vocabulary, the terms that describe turning a wishlist (a player saving your game on Steam to buy later) into a paid sale, alongside the benchmark numbers in steam wishlist conversion rate.
A to Z
- Day-one conversion
- The share of a game's launch-week sales that happen on release day itself. Steam sends its one wishlist release notification on that day, which is why studios track day one separately from the rest of the week.
- Direct wishlist purchase conversion
- The share of players who had your game wishlisted and then bought it, counting only those buyers. Steamworks, the developer dashboard Valve gives a game's owner, reports it; the figure runs lower than the Week 1 sales-to-wishlist ratio below, because that second measure also counts buyers who never wishlisted.
- Discount cooldown
- Valve's rule that a game cannot be discounted within 30 days of another discount, and cannot be discounted at all for 30 days after a price increase in any currency. Seasonal Steam sales are the main exception.
- Discount notification
- The email Steam sends to players holding your game on their wishlist when a discount of 20% or more runs for more than eight hours on the lowest-priced package. A two-week cooldown per game applies, so a run of short or shallow discounts generates no notification at all.
- Launch discount
- A price cut configured before release and applied from the moment the game goes on sale. Valve caps it at 40%, requires it to run no shorter than 7 days and no longer than 14, and blocks any other discount in the game's first 30 days.
- Launch notification
- The single email and Steam client alert Valve sends to wishlisters when a game releases. Steam sends it once, does not repeat it, and never gives the studio those players' contact details.
- Launch week
- The seven days from release, the standard window for measuring launch performance, usually written as Week 1. Most published Steam benchmarks are Week 1 figures, so comparing a first-month total against them flatters your result.
- New & Trending
- A section on the Steam store home page that surfaces recently released games selling and reviewing well. Valve says a title "may appear" there "if the title is doing well" and may be "bumped off this list quickly" when many popular products release at once. It publishes no entry criteria, so no wishlist or sales number guarantees a slot.
- Refund window
- Valve's standard refund terms: a player can return a game within 14 days of purchase with under two hours of playtime. For a game bought before release the two-hour limit still applies, but the 14 days do not start until release day, so pre-purchase refunds land inside your first two weeks of sales.
- Review summary threshold
- The minimum number of reviews before Steam shows a worded rating such as "Mostly Positive" on a store page, which is 10. Below that the page states it needs more user reviews to generate a score, so a launching game spends its first days without its strongest piece of social proof. Valve separately says review score does not change how often Steam's own systems surface a game, as long as it sits at Mixed or above, meaning 40% positive or better.
- Week 1 sales-to-wishlist ratio
- Total units sold in launch week divided by the wishlist balance at launch. This is the figure most published Steam benchmarks quote, and a realistic 2026 base case is 10 to 11 Week 1 sales per 100 wishlists, with strong launches near 20% and weak ones under 5%. Treat that as a directional planning band, not a forecast for one game.
- Wishlist balance
- The number of wishlists a game is actually holding at a given moment, after the players who bought it or removed it have dropped out of the running total. It is the number you divide launch-week sales by, so using a lifetime additions figure instead inflates the count and understates conversion.
- Wishlist decay
- The belief that a wishlist added long before launch converts worse than a recent one. Published analysis grouping wishlists by when they were added found launch conversion relatively flat across those age groups, so age alone is a weak predictor, as do Steam wishlists go cold sets out. Recent wishlist growth still matters, but as a read on current demand rather than a verdict on older wishlists.
- Wishlist deletion
- A player removing your game from their wishlist without buying it. Valve's wishlist report tracks additions, purchases and deletions as separate lines, so a flat total can hide heavy adds cancelled out by heavy deletes.
- Wishlist nurturing
- Staying in contact with interested players between the wishlist and the launch, so release day is not the first time they hear from you. Because Steam sends one launch notification and hides wishlister identities, nurturing runs on channels a studio can contact directly, such as an email list or a Discord server; how to keep Steam wishlists warm covers the practice.
Which numbers are Valve's rules and which are benchmarks
Six of the numbers above are fixed platform rules. Everything else on this page is a measurement or an estimate, and mixing the two is how launch plans end up resting on figures Valve never guaranteed.
| Rule | The number | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Launch discount cap | 40% maximum | Steamworks discounting |
| Launch discount duration | 7 to 14 days | Steamworks discounting |
| Discount cooldown | 30 days between discounts | Steamworks discounting |
| Discount notification trigger | 20% or more, over 8 hours | Steamworks discounting |
| Refund window | 14 days, under 2 hours played | Steam refund policy |
| Review summary threshold | 10 reviews | Steam store review-score tiers |
How the terms group
Four are measurements of the same launch: wishlist balance is the pool going in, Week 1 sales-to-wishlist ratio and direct wishlist purchase conversion are two ways of dividing sales by that pool, and day-one conversion describes how those sales spread across the week.
Six are levers Steam controls: the launch notification, the discount notification, the launch discount, the discount cooldown, New & Trending placement, and the review summary threshold. You can plan around each, but you cannot add a second launch notification or buy a New & Trending slot.
Three describe the pool shrinking: wishlist deletion removes players before launch, the refund window removes some sales after it, and wishlist decay is the assumed third cause the evidence does not support.
That leaves wishlist nurturing as the only term here a studio owns outright, which is where most of the upside sits. Studios that pair each wishlist with a direct channel convert up to 2.8x more wishlisters into Day 1 players; Engage captures email and Discord alongside the wishlist, then sends the launch-day message Steam's one-time notification cannot cover.
The four studios most often confuse
Week 1 sales-to-wishlist ratio versus direct wishlist purchase conversion. Both get called "wishlist conversion", and they measure different things. A game holding 20,000 wishlists at launch that sells 2,400 units in Week 1 has a 12% Week 1 sales-to-wishlist ratio; if only 1,500 of those buyers had it wishlisted, its direct wishlist purchase conversion is 7.5%. Both are correct, and quoting the second against a benchmark built from the first makes a healthy launch look broken.
Wishlist balance versus wishlists added. Balance is what you are holding now; additions are everything ever added, including the players who since deleted or bought. A game with 25,000 lifetime additions and 4,000 deletions is holding 21,000, so dividing Week 1 units by 25,000 rather than 21,000 reports a conversion rate roughly 16% lower than the real one.
Launch notification versus discount notification. The launch notification fires once, automatically, on release day, and you cannot trigger another. The discount notification is one you can trigger later by cutting the price 20% or more for over eight hours, making the first real discount the second free contact Steam gives you.
Wishlist decay versus wishlist deletion. Decay is the assumption that old wishlists are worth less, which the grouped-by-age evidence has not supported. Deletion is a real, countable event in Valve's wishlist report where a player removes the game outright. Chasing "fresh" wishlists guards against a problem the data does not show; watching your deletion line tracks one that does.
Sources: Steamworks documentation (partner.steamgames.com: discounting, visibility, user reviews, and wishlist reporting), Steam's published refund policy, publicly documented Steam review-score tiers, and published Steam launch-conversion benchmark data as compiled in Steam wishlist conversion rates and do Steam wishlists go cold.
