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Steam wishlist to sales calculator.
Turn your wishlist count into the sales you can plan around: launch week, first month and first year, as a low, typical and high range from GameDiscoverCo's published launch data. Every benchmark is dated, and below it is a real launch, ours, with the raw Steamworks numbers.
Your launch
Wishlists outstanding on launch day (Steamworks: Wishlist report).
Price 0 = free to play. Revenue rows assume GameDiscoverCo's 9.5% median refunds and Valve's 30%; VAT is not removed, so use the Steam revenue calculator for the full breakdown.
| Benchmark | Week one | Year one | Dev keeps, year one |
|---|
- Release-day wishlist email: Steam emailed 50 people who had it wishlisted. 12 claimed it within a day (24%), 15 within Steam's 7-day window as of Oct 22.
- Wishlists, lifetime: 88 added, 8 deleted, 28 converted, 52 still outstanding.
- Free licenses: 3,898 lifetime. That is about 44 times the wishlists we ever had, because most free claims come from people browsing free games, not from wishlists.
- But: 68 lifetime unique players and a 10-minute median play time. Claims are not players.
How it works
- Week one = wishlists × a conversion ratio. We show three: 0.10 (median for games over $10 at launch), 0.15 (median for games launching with 25,000+ wishlists in the year to September 2025) and 0.22 (median week one for 700 games launched since September 2023 with at least 5,000 wishlists). GameDiscoverCo counts every week-one sale, not only wishlisters.
- First month uses the same 700-game sample: median 0.27, and 0.06 at the 10th percentile up to 1.34 at the 90th. That spread is the honest answer to "how many will I sell".
- Year one = week one × 2.32 if the game is under $10, or × 2.7 at $10 and up: the median units multipliers from about 5,000 launches, July 2023 to July 2025.
- What moves you up or down: GameDiscoverCo found games that underperformed had a 67% (Mixed) median user score in their first week, against 91% for games that beat expectations. Reviews and price matter more than the raw wishlist number.
Our real launch, free game edition
O'BLOCK is free, so it can't tell you what a $15 game will sell, and we won't pretend it can. What it shows is how different the numbers look when the price is zero (Steamworks, read Oct 22, 2026):
- Release-day wishlist email: Steam emailed 50 people who had it wishlisted. 12 claimed it within a day (24%), 15 within Steam's 7-day window as of Oct 22.
- Wishlists, lifetime: 88 added, 8 deleted, 28 converted, 52 still outstanding.
- Free licenses: 3,898 lifetime. That is about 44 times the wishlists we ever had, because most free claims come from people browsing free games, not from wishlists.
- But: 68 lifetime unique players and a 10-minute median play time. Claims are not players.
Lesson: on a free game, wishlist conversion looks great and claim counts look huge, but neither is players. On a paid game, every sale is a decision with money behind it, so the ratios above are much lower and much more meaningful. We wrote up the whole launch: 2,077 claims, 16 players, 30 GB.
Sources
- GameDiscoverCo: The state of Steam wishlist conversions, Simon Carless, Oct 17, 2025 (0.15x, 0.10x over $10, 0.17x 2024 poll)
- GameDev Reports: GameDiscoverCo conversion benchmarks of Steam wishlists into sales in the first month, May 10, 2024 (700 games; 0.22 week one, 0.27 month one, 0.06 to 1.34)
- GameDiscoverCo: What long tail should you expect for your PC game in 2026?, Simon Carless, Jul 21, 2026 (2.59x, 2.32x, 2.7x)
- GameDiscoverCo: Steam refunds, Feb 4, 2025 (9.5% median)
- O'BLOCK: our own Steamworks dashboard, read Oct 22, 2026, 12:38 to 12:45 PM ET
FAQ
What is a good Steam wishlist conversion rate?
For games that launched with over 25,000 wishlists in the year to September 2025, GameDiscoverCo's median was 0.15 week-one sales per wishlist, and 0.10 for games over $10 (Oct 17, 2025). An earlier sample of 700 games launched since September 2023 had a median of 0.22 in week one (May 10, 2024).
How many wishlists do I need to sell 10,000 copies in week one?
At the 0.15 median, about 67,000 wishlists (10,000 / 0.15). At 0.10, the median for games over $10, about 100,000. At 0.22, about 45,000. It is division, not a promise: the same studies show games converting at a tenth or ten times the median.
How many first-year sales come after launch week?
GameDiscoverCo looked at about 5,000 games launched July 2023 to July 2025: the median game sold 2.59 times its week-one copies by the end of year one (2.32 times under $10, 2.7 times at $10 and up) (Jul 21, 2026).
Do wishlists work the same for a free game?
No. A free game converts wishlists into claims, and also gets claims from people who never wishlisted it. Our free game O'BLOCK got 3,898 free licenses from 88 lifetime wishlist adds, but only 68 people have played it. Use paid benchmarks for paid games only.
Does Steamworks count conversions the same way?
No. Steamworks' wishlist conversion only counts buyers who had the game wishlisted. GameDiscoverCo's ratios divide all week-one sales (wishlisters and everyone else) by wishlists at launch. Compare like with like.
See the game behind these numbers
O'BLOCK is the free Steam game whose launch data is on this page: a sneaker-flipping haggling sim where you start with $300 and a shoebox, the buyers lie, and the finish line is a billion. Wishlisting or playing it is the fastest way to see a small launch from the inside.
Play O'BLOCK free on Steam →Who made this
Matt Busel, a one-person studio that launched a Steam game this week and publishes its real numbers. Nothing you type leaves this page.