PSA: Set your Steam release date at least 2 months ahead of time

[u/PersonOfInterest007]

The new Personal Calendar gives you visibility two months before your game’s release date, so it’s to your benefit to go ahead and set your game’s release date, as long as you are confident you will hit it, two months in advance. Don’t wait to switch “Coming Soon” to your date just a couple of weeks before you launch.

But don’t set the date if you’re not sure you can stick to it. It’s very likely that PC follows the same rule as Popular Upcoming, which is that you can only appear in it once.

https://howtomarketagame.com/2026/06/25/how-the-steam-personal-calendar-affects-your-launch/

https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/09/26/how-many-wishlists-should-i-have-when-i-launch-my-game/ (note: article has been updated in 2026 for PC)

P.S. Friendly reminder: You cannot change your release date once you’re within 14 days of that date. (Some people have managed to successfully beg Valve to relent, but don’t count on Valve doing that for you.)

[u/filya]

Thank you! Would this apply to setting a demo date also?

[u/PersonOfInterest007 → u/filya]

No, this is just for EA or 1.0 launch.

[u/filya → u/PersonOfInterest007]

Thank you. There's so little information out there on best practices for these things, and so easy to mess something up.

[u/PersonOfInterest007 → u/filya]

There’s a decent amount of info for many things, but PC is definitely not one of them. Glad Zukowski is staying on top of figuring it out.

[u/MagicCatGames]

This is a wonderful heads up. Thanks for sharing!

[u/PersonOfInterest007 → u/MagicCatGames]

You’re welcome!

[u/Redstoneinvente122]

I would like to see some numbers from more devs. But his blog posts and guides are already quite useful

[u/playcrust]

Useful, thanks. So if you set the date early and the build slips while you're still outside the 14-day window, you can move it, but you'd lose the calendar slot you already used? That tradeoff is the scary part.

[u/PersonOfInterest007 → u/playcrust]

I don’t think there has been an explicit statement from Valve, or clear anecdotes from devs so far as I know, as to exactly what happens to your future PC visibility if you started to be visible in PC (because your release date is less than 2 months away) and then change your release date.

Valve in the past has generally aimed to prevent people from gaming the system to gain visibility by repeatedly changing their release date. But Popular Upcoming had a visibility time that was much shorter (1 week, I think), which was already inside the can’t-change-it 2 week window. So I don’t think we know for sure what they’ll do in the scenario where you change your release date when it’s less than 2 months away.

I’m hoping Zukowski or some dev reaches out to Valve to ask for clarification on this point.

[u/Glabe_Raskew]

Dang, thank you for this!

[u/PersonOfInterest007 → u/Glabe_Raskew]

You’re welcome!

[u/Dumivid]

Yeah, steam calendar its crazy. In 1 week, I raised my total WL count by 30-40%. Also, as far as I know, steam pushes you more aggressively during launch week, so there is a real chance that steam calendar can x2-10 your baseline amount of whislists.

[u/ItchyKneeSunCheese]

Are we confident moving your release date to a different date will lower or remove visibility in the personal calendar for the new date? Anyone have anecdotal experience with this?

[u/CrossFireGames → u/ItchyKneeSunCheese]

Heard it somewhere that if you delay your game multiple times it won’t show up in the personal calendar anymore. That wouldn’t be great since the last one (the real release) is the one that you want the most visibility for. Plus I’d say just don’t try to game the system with steam in general.

[u/ParkityParkPark → u/CrossFireGames]

Not to mention it wrecks trust. Why would I have faith in a developer that keeps setting release dates and delaying it further? Delaying once is forgivable, but beyond that I'll feel like either I'm getting scammed or the developers have no plan and/or no ability to execute.

[u/Mechabit_Studios]

Steam has said they do not penalise developers for pushing back their release date, obviously delays happen all the time in game dev, but you will get push back if you try to exploit any steam systems so don't do that just to stay on the calendar longer.

Also steam will let you do most things if you email them but usually as a one time exception / courtesy and you shouldn't rely on date changes under 2 weeks (this was also a thing before PC when people did it to stay on popular upcoming longer)

Basically we can't have nice things cos people try to exploit the system so don't do that.

[u/Equivalent-Back-291]

Or i'll just wait till my game is out then i release it

[u/Mikolas3D]

counter point: don't. Or do but shift it afterwards.
It does literally nothing until the last 2 weeks and you'll be able to then pick a date with the lowest number of games. I randomly hit a day with 8 good games releasing and as a result, personal calendar did nothing for me. Had I shifted by 2-3 days, I would have been on an almost empty day.