How many months before launch should you lock your Steam date?

There's no fixed number of months. Lock once your wishlist count clears your tier minimum and your conversion rate (if measurable yet) looks healthy. For most studios that lands somewhere in a 6-to-12-month window from the point those numbers clear, but a game that gets there early can lock sooner, and one still climbing toward its tier minimum shouldn't lock on a calendar alone.

What happens if you lock a launch date too early?

You've committed to a finish line for an audience that isn't ready yet. That either forces a launch at a wishlist count well below your tier minimum, or forces a delay after announcement, and a delayed date reads as instability to the same players the firm date was meant to motivate.

Should you announce a launch date before hitting your wishlist target?

Only if the announcement itself is expected to help close the gap, for example, a reveal trailer that drives a real wishlist spike. Even then, treat the date as provisional until your numbers actually confirm it. Re-announcing a delay costs more credibility than waiting a few extra weeks to lock would have.

Does Steam Next Fest change when you should lock your launch date?

It can. A strong Next Fest result (a real jump in wishlist velocity, converting well during the event) is evidence your numbers have cleared the bar, and can justify locking a date shortly after. A weak result, especially entering with under roughly 500 wishlists, is evidence you're not ready yet, and locking a date right after a weak showing skips past the signal it just gave you.

When should you lock your Steam launch date?

Why the date should follow your numbers, not a calendar

A launch date does two jobs at once: it gives your team a finish line, and it gives players and press a reason to act now instead of later. Locking it too early, before your wishlist count or conversion rate has actually cleared a real threshold, means committing to that finish line for an audience that doesn't exist yet.

Your tier minimumis the low end of the wishlist-count range for the revenue bracket you're aiming at, set out in how many wishlists do you need on Steam (see also the readiness glossary for the full set of terms and numbers). Example: if you're targeting the $250K-$999K tier, your tier minimum is 30,000 wishlists, the bottom of that tier's 30,000-50,000 range. Checking your actual count against this number, rather than a generic "6 to 12 months out" rule, is what tells you whether locking now makes sense.

Check your numbers in this order before locking a date

Check your wishlist count against your tier minimum. A studio targeting the $250K-$999K tier wants to see its count approaching 30,000 before locking, not while still climbing toward 15,000.
Check your conversion rate isn't a red flag, if you can measure it yet. See wishlist count vs conversion rate for how to read that number; a healthy wishlist count sitting on a clearly broken conversion rate isn't ready to lock against yet.
Leave enough time for one more push after locking. A date locked with zero runway left to run a final marketing push (a Next Fest entry, a trailer drop, a review embargo) wastes the momentum a firm date is supposed to create.
Announce once, and don't move it afterward. A date that shifts after announcement reads as instability to the same players a firm date was meant to create urgency with.

Common timing mistakes

Locking a date to hit an external deadline(a publisher milestone, a personal runway limit) without checking where your wishlist count and conversion rate actually sit. The date exists to serve those numbers, not the other way around. If the deadline is genuinely fixed, that's a reason to spend the remaining time differently, not a reason to ignore the numbers.

Comparing your count against the wrong genre's numbers. Hit rates vary enormously by genre, what clears easily for one genre can be an unrealistic bar for another. Compare your wishlist count against similar titles in your own genre, not a single industry-wide number.

Treating Next Fest entry timing and launch-date timing as the same decision. A Next Fest entry gives your wishlist velocity a temporary boost (documented at 3x to 10x normal, see the glossary), but entering with fewer than roughly 500 wishlists sees little benefit from it. Run your Next Fest entry before locking your launch date, and use its result as one more data point on whether you're ready, not as an afterthought once the date is already set.

Setting the date so far out that momentum fades before it arrives. A date locked 18 months ahead gives your audience time to forget the game exists again before release. Once your numbers actually justify locking, a 6-to-12-month window from that point tends to work better than a longer one.

Sources: Public Steam revenue-tier wishlist and Next Fest velocity benchmark data, as compiled in how-many-steam-wishlists-before-launch; Steamworks Next Fest documentation.