The Riftbreaker case: how to get almost 250 thousand additions to the vishlist even before the release

The Riftbreaker game from a small Polish studio EXOR was added to the wishlist on Steam almost 250 thousand times before the release. The co-founder of the company, Pawel Lekki, told Gamasutra about how they managed to achieve such impressive indicators.

Performance of the game after the announcement

• EXOR announced the game on March 8, 2019 with a CG trailer. However, the initial press coverage brought almost no results;
• a day later, The Riftbreaker received a feature on Steam in the “Offer of the Day” section, which led to a curated list with all the company’s games;
• thanks to the feature in the first month, the developers received about 8 thousand additions to the vishlist;
• EXOR was already pleased with the results, since the studio’s previous projects had 10.5 thousand vishlist after nine months of marketing;

The beginning of the promotion and the first 95 thousand vishlist

• the company began to release regular news about the progress of development and alternate them with larger announcements;
• EXOR also promoted the game with the help of posts on Imgur, which in April 2019 were converted into about 1.5 thousand vishlist;
• participation in various exhibitions like E3 and PAX East did not give a significant increase in the number of vishlists. However, this allowed the studio to get in touch with influencers who played an early build at events;
• On November 14, the company sent preview copies to bloggers and streamers. Over the next two weeks, 12 thousand users added The Riftbreaker to the wish list;
• by the end of 2019, the game had 50,000 vishlists — EXOR planned to achieve such an indicator only by release;
• In March 2020, EXOR released the first gameplay trailer for The Riftbreaker exclusively on PC Gamer. Unexpectedly, it generated traffic and converted into about 2 thousand vishlist;
• participation in the Digital Dragons exhibition and a positive preview of Eurogamer brought almost 4 thousand more additions to the vishlist;
• By June 15, 2020, The Riftbreaker added 95 thousand users to the vishlist.

Schedule for adding The Riftbreaker to the vishlist (December 2019 — June 2020)

Demo release and success in the Steam Summer Festival

• especially for participation in the festival, EXOR released a demo of The Riftbreaker, which became one of the most popular games of the event;
• after that, the game was added to the vishlist 42 thousand more times, and it got into the top 50 Steam games by this indicator;
• Since the demo could only be played during the event, EXOR decided to release a separate prologue for The Riftbreaker. To do this, the developers polished the mechanics and translated the project into 10 languages;
• the prologue, released on August 5, was downloaded 295 thousand times and generated a total of 18 thousand vishlist;
• The next day, EXOR launched a two-week sale of its games, which gave The Riftbreaker another 56 thousand vishlist
• The growing interest in Steam has also led to an increase in popularity on Twitch, including the streamer Lirik with 2.6 million subscribers.

Schedule for adding The Riftbreaker to the vishlist (August — September 2020)

Results

• after the release of the prologue, EXOR made a deal with the Chinese publisher Surefire Games, which launched a marketing campaign in China;
• thanks to this, a major influencer on the Chinese website Bilibili drew attention to the project, which led to an increase in external traffic;
• By September 21, 235 thousand users have added the game to the wish list. This is almost five times higher than the initial expectations of the company;
• now The Riftbreaker is added to vishlists on average 400 times a day (before the release of the prologue, the average was 80 vishlists per day);
• EXOR has hired a community manager and regularly conducts streams where employees talk about the development and the latest news;
• the company used almost all the tools of free promotion, responding in time to bursts of interest and trying to convert them into even more vishlist.

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