13 Common Game Marketing Mistakes Indie Developers Must Avoid

Game competition is growing fiercer, with 19,000 games released on Steam alone last year—30% more than the year prior in 2024 and talked about in this article here. Games need to be marketed, and that is what will ultimately set them up for success, as many indie and solo developers realize.

Unless a game developer comes from a marketing background, they will likely make mistakes in marketing because it’s a skill that takes time to develop. At Glitch, we work with many games ranging from solo developers to large studios. Here are some of the most common mistakes we see with solo devs and indie developers, which we want to lay out so you can avoid them when developing and marketing your game.

1) Not Branding Their Marketing Assets

One of the first mistakes we see indie developers make when marketing their game is failing to brand their content—resulting in potential players having no idea what the game is called. This is especially common on sites like Reddit. Take, for instance, this example trailer below (hypothetical example):

While the video looks cool, I have no clue what the name of the game is or how to research it further.Any content—be it video, image, or otherwise—that is posted anywhere needs to have a source or attribution easily tied back to the game. Here is an improved example of the same clip:

In the improved example, we add the game’s name at the end. A suggested further improve would to add a call to action such as "Wishlist Now On Steam" telling viewers they can wishlist the game. Always make sure your assets are branded to your game.

2) Poor Descriptions Of Their Games

The next common mistake we see from indie developers is having poor descriptions of their games. This happens because, as developers, we’re very close to our projects; everything seems obvious to us. We think, “It’s obviously an RPG” or “This is obviously a completely unique feature” or even “The story’s point is obvious”. The result is often a poorly written descriptions that do not communicate the necessary details. For example:

“Mission One: By the creator of Atari. Introducing revolutionary AI NPCs to your gameplay.”

This description tells the user almost nothing about the actual experience , gameplay or even what the game is about. Instead, try to think the description in terms of what will the user understand in about 180 characters or less. This means including:

1. Name of the game
2. The genre
3. Common gameplay mechanics
4. Player mode
5. Goal of the player or brief story hook

For instance:

“Mission One is a single-player RPG that uses AI NPCs to create a life-like open world where you must put an end to the tyranny of the Queen of Hearts.”

Now, when a user is quickly browsing games, a description like this gives them enough of an idea to decide whether it’s for them and if they want to dig deeper. A good way to test your description is by asking a random stranger (not family, friends, or co-workers) to read it and then describe the game back to you. If they don’t know what the game entails, refine your descriptions.

3) Marketing To Other Devs And Not Consumers

Another mistake is creating content aimed at other developers rather than consumers. Often, when we hop on a project and see what marketing has been done, it is generally long-form, highly technical, and over-explains things.

This kind of content is good for fellow devs who want an in-depth look, but not for consumers primarily want to be entertained. Short, fun, and light content works best for consumers. If you’re in the early stages of development, read this article on short-form devlog content. Devlogs can be entertaining and brief while keeping consumers engaged.

If you’re in a later stage of game development, showcase gameplay videos, artwork, short trailers, and other visually engaging material. The goal is to let consumers enjoy it with minimal effort. Keep things brief, concise, and fun.

4) Making Their Stuff Hard To Find

When marketing your game, you’ll likely have multiple “properties”: a storefront (Steam, Itch, Epic, etc.), X/Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, a website, maybe even a newsletter. Often, when we come onto projects, all these assets are scattered and hard to find.

This is bad because it disrupts the customer’s discovery process. When someone is evaluating whether to buy or play your game, they may do a series of things—like reading Steam reviews, checking your Instagram, and joining your Discord. If they can’t easily move from one piece of information to the next, you’re hindering their research process, which can cost you a player.

The easiest solution is to have a single linking system or website. A common choice is a simple LinkTree or a self-hosted webpage that lists all your links. We provide a free self hosted solution on Github here: https://github.com/Glitch-Gaming-Platform/Glitch-Link-Website

In all your profiles (i.e., on social media), direct users to this one location. This way, they can easily access all your properties and properly research your game.

5) Difficult To Read Press Kits

A common mistake we see with indie developers is putting their press kits in Dropbox or Google Drive and expecting editors to search through those folders to learn more about the game.

Journalists are busy and get a lot of pitches every day. A freelance journalist might receive 10 to 50 pitches daily, while major publications can get up to 500 submissions. Unless you’re a major studio or publisher like Bethesda, Microsoft, or Square, as an indie developer, you need to make your press kit exciting in under 30 seconds. That’s not possible if someone has to dig around in your files.

If you have a website, consider building your own press kit page. If you don’t have the time, at Glitch we offer free digital media kits for games. Another site that offers this is Impress Games. These builders help you create beautiful, easy-to-read press kits that you can send to journalists, giving you a better chance of a response.

6) Making Themselves Unreachable and Providing No Support

Marketing is not just about promoting your game; it’s also about connecting with your players and retaining them. One of the most detrimental things developers can do is make themselves unreachable. Take, for instance, this negative Steam review:

The user is clearly frustrated because they can’t seem to get any response from the developer. And this was marked as the most helpful review. This is extremely detrimental to building a strong brand around your game and a loyal fanbase.

Problems like this represent a larger issue: if you want your game to be successful, you need to run it like a business. If the developers do not want to engage directly with their fans—who are, after all, their customers—then at least have someone handle the primary point of contact. This role is typically called a community manager. Open up your DMs on social media accounts and respond, create a business email and respond, have a Discord channel and be present. If you personally don’t want the contact, hire or appoint someone to do it for you.

7) Not Producing Enough Content

Creating content can be time-consuming. Blog posts like this can take 6–8 hours to produce. A good 60-second social media video might take anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours to create. And that cuts into development time. But content is how you engage people and build awareness—it’s necessary.

You should post content at every stage, from the inception of your game through development and after launch. Think of these guidelines when posting content:

• Over 1 Year Out: Post content about once or twice a week, so at least 4 times a month. Make sure you have your storefront up to gather wishlists or pre-orders.
• 6 Months to 1 Year: Post around 3 times a week; focus on growing your following, email list, and other assets.
• 2 Months to 6 Months: Post anywhere from 3 to 6 times a week. We want to grow your wishlists and overall awareness.
• 1 Month: Drive home awareness, engagement, and conversions—posting at least 6 times a week, if not more!

Games that successfully launch are those that have been generating wishlists and marketing for at least a year. If time is an issue, one of the tools Glitch offers is automated social media, which analyzes your content and engagement, compares it to your wishlists and installs on your store, and suggests areas of improvement. This can make posting much easier to keep up with while still meeting the requirement for consistent content.

8) Marketing Too Late

The games that are most successful often start their marketing a year or two in advance of launch.

A common misconception is that marketing equals paying for advertising, but that’s just a subsegment of marketing known as paid promotion, which typically happens 1–3 months before launch.

Marketing involves a lot more—ranging from researching your game’s competitive landscape, to organic social media, to player retention. Marketing should be part of the entire life cycle of the game. If you want to learn about all aspects of marketing, you can read our marketing guide and also Chris Zukowski’s “How to Market a Game.”

The mistake we often see is that developers start their marketing too late. This includes:

• Setting up their storefront only a month or two prior to launch, instead of a year or two in advance.
• Starting promotions only in the final months.
• Beginning audience development after launch.
• Doing paid promotions in the final days without understanding their audience first.

Marketing at the last minute makes it much harder to build up sufficient wishlists and truly learn how to reach your audience. TL;DR: Start your marketing at least 1 year out—if not more.If you have to run a last minute campaign, read this article here on last minute campaigns.

9) Not Testing Their Games and Getting Feedback

Playtesting is actually part of both marketing and development. A mistake we see, especially with solo devs, is the belief that because they’ve personally tested the game multiple times, they don’t need external playtesters. Here are a few reasons why that approach is misguided:

1. People will play your game differently than you do, finding bugs because they do things you never anticipated.
2. Playtesting is a great way to connect and learn how your audience thinks. You can glean insights into which features they like and might want more of—this can help you refine your marketing strategy.
3. Finding repeat issues among multiple users will reduce negative reviews. Fewer negative reviews means more potential players and better algorithmic exposure.

Test your game thoroughly before launching. One of the features we offer at Glitch is a database of playtesters you can tap into. Testing more that just about bugs, it’s also about understanding your audience and building a community.

10) Running Marketing Tests That Are Too Short

We see plenty of indie developers who do about a week of testing to gauge results:

This is how you get false positives and negatives on what works and what doesn’t when promoting your game. When running marketing tests, you need to test:

• Different kinds of content (trailers, short-form devlogs, quizzes, reaction videos, etc.).
• Each content type multiple times—sometimes a content type works great, while other times it flops.
• The best time of day to post content on social media.
• How many times a day should you post on social media.
• Different hashtags; if you’re doing paid campaigns, test various targeting options.
• Different verbiage, layouts, and imagery on your landing pages.
• Various images, taglines, and calls to action in your ads. You’ll need around 10k impressions to start forming reliable conclusions.

All these tests simply can’t run in a single week and yield accurate results. At minimum, you need 1–3 months of marketing tests to really understand what works. Take your time running your marketing campaigns and experiment a lot.

11) Not Knowing Their Marketing Data

Imagine you walk into a doctor’s office and only say, “It hurts” before fainting. It would be challenging for that doctor to figure out what’s wrong. If marketers are the doctors, then data is what they need to diagnose problems. Many developers come to us with marketing issues, and because we’re data-driven, we ask questions like:

• What is the awareness like at the top of the funnel?
• How are you converting from awareness to interest to actual conversions?
• Where do you see a fall-off? Is there anything unusual in the data when compared to industry averages?
• What is your average organic reach percentage? Your average engagement rate?
• Do you know the path users take when they evaluate your content?
• How many views does your storefront get, and where do they come from? What percentage converts to wishlists?

We often find many developers don’t know or understand these numbers due to a lack of formal marketing training. As seen below, our questions are "interesting" and not typically asked:

Game development often focuses on building the product, not the business side. To improve, developers need to:

1. Turn on analytics across all platforms or implement tools like Google Analytics to track data.
2. Use a central tool that can aggregate all your data into one place. Excel can be a start but quickly becomes cumbersome with larger datasets. Tools specifically designed for marketing analytics can speed things up.
3. Learn the industry standards and the formulas needed to assess results.

This ties back to our notion of “running your game like a business.” At Glitch, we specialize in collecting data on all your content and linking it back to your game’s storefront. That way, you can make truly data-driven decisions, as illustrated in the example graph below:

When you market, data becomes your best friend. Capture as much of it as you can and use it to guide your marketing logically instead of relying purely on feelings.

12) Sloppy Store Fronts

Your storefront is the first impression of your game. Like a website, users will decide in 5 to 10 seconds if it’s worth their attention. While some storefronts, like Steam, enforce uniformity, others—like Itch.io—can be the wild west, allowing for everything from masterpieces to disasters.

This ties back to “Knowing Your Data.” To test if your storefront is working, look at the number of unique views versus the number of wishlists or conversions. For example:

If you find your storefront’s conversion rate is 5% to 15% or above, you’re in great shape! If it’s below that, you likely need improvements such as:

• A compelling trailer video
• Multiple gameplay videos
• High-quality images and screenshots
• Clear, concise, and well-formatted text
• A compelling story hook that piques interest

Also, relating to marketing too late: launch your storefront at least a year before your game is ready. Collecting wishlists over a long period is one of the best ways to reach that 10k wishlist goal to help your game excel at launch.

13) Not Marketing At All

The last and biggest mistake in game development marketing is that 54% of game developers do not market at all. We did a survey among indie developers and found the following chart:

The numbers closely align with other data discussing the lifetime revenue of games—where about 50% don’t make over $4k.

According to venture capitalist Matthew Ball’s research, the disparity in games not making any money is actually getting worse.

If your goal is to earn revenue or have a substantial player base, not marketing your game is no longer an option in the face of increased competition. Developers have to decide if they want to:

• Market the game themselves
• Embrace marketing automation tools
• Hire consultants or agencies to do the marketing

Leveling Up Your Game Marketing

Marketing is as critical to your game’s success as the code that powers it. By avoiding these common pitfalls—like late marketing starts, poor branding, or failing to engage your audience—you can build awareness, drive wishlists, and grow a loyal player base. Remember, marketing isn’t just an afterthought; it’s a continuous effort that should evolve with your game. Start early, stay consistent, and treat your marketing strategy like any other essential part of development. The sooner you level up your approach, the closer you’ll be to achieving your game’s full potential!