How to Promote Your Game: Secrets of Successful Game Marketing

You know what Horizon Zero Dawn, Untitled Goose Game, and the latest Supermarket Simulator have in common? They all became hits thanks to smart marketing. The approaches were completely different though — depending on budget, audience, and the nature of the game itself.

Rule number one: visual identity is half the battle

Before we talk about ad campaigns and trailers, there’s a basic principle to understand: the game needs to sell itself even during development. Visual style, character design, location atmosphere — all these work as advertising long before release. That's why many studios turn to professional game art studio teams to create a unique artistic style that's instantly recognizable. When your game's art stands out from competitors, half the marketing work is already done.

Take Hollow Knight from Team Cherry. The game became a cult classic not just because of gameplay, but thanks to its unique hand-drawn style that sticks in your memory from first glance. Every screenshot looked like art people wanted to share.

AAA projects: marketing as a military operation

When Sony prepared the Horizon Zero Dawn release in 2017, game ads appeared practically everywhere. Subway billboards, YouTube videos, PlayStation partnerships — classic expensive strategy of total coverage. Marketing budgets for such projects sometimes exceed the actual development budget.

Major publishers spend between US$ 50 and US$ 150 million marketing flagship titles. Electronic Arts uses everything for FIFA or Battlefield promo: from TV commercials to sports event sponsorships. Rockstar Games ran a campaign worth over US$ 100 million before GTA V's 2013 release, including trailers that racked up tens of millions of views within days.

An example of an impressive game in 2025 is the marketing of the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 from GSC Game World. The studio lit up a shopping mall in the center of Kyiv, which became a viral event. This is not just outdoor advertising - it is an immersive experience that resonates with the cultural context, especially important for a country at war and with problems with electricity supply. When marketing becomes part of the urban space, people talk about it themselves. Newspaper pages spread it, and you don’t have to pay for advertising, the publicity spreads on its own.

Indie: how to go viral without a budget

If you don't have millions for advertising, you need to play a different game. Untitled Goose Game from Australian studio House House — perfect case of viral indie marketing. The game about a troublemaking goose became a meme long before release. Why? The concept was so absurd and charming that people wanted to talk about it. Twitter exploded with fan art, GIFs, and jokes.

The studio didn't spend a single dollar on traditional advertising. Instead they released the right trailer at the right moment, and the community did all the work. YouTubers and streamers picked up the game instantly — PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye, and other big channels made let's plays that got millions of views.

That leads to the next obvious thing: for indie games, influencer marketing is no longer “nice to have”, it’s the main growth driver. StreamElements reports that in 2024 more than 65% of players found new games on Twitch or YouTube. And when a large streamer with hundreds of thousands of followers picks up your game, it’s basically a free ad campaign worth thousands of dollars.

TikTok and the new era of virality

We're seeing a new trend now: hyper-casual simulators going viral on TikTok. Supermarket Simulator, Powerwash Simulator, Gas Station Simulator — all these projects became hits thanks to short video content. The mechanics are simple: a 15-second video shows satisfying gameplay (arranging products on shelves, washing a dirty car), add a trending sound — and voilà, millions of views.

Banana is a good example of how social media hype can work on its own. It’s a simple, almost absurd clicker on Steam that spread mostly through TikTok memes. The game itself is extremely basic and free to play, but people kept installing it simply because it was everywhere. At its peak, SteamDB shows that Banana had over 800,000 concurrent players. Not because of deep gameplay — but because everyone was talking about it.

Gameplay as marketing

Some game mechanics are marketing tools themselves. Leaderboards — simplest example. When a player sees they're ranked 53rd in the world, there's a desire to improve results and share achievements. Dark Souls uses bloodstains and messages from other players — this isn't just a gameplay feature, it's social proof that the world is alive and thousands play it.

Photo mode in games like Ghost of Tsushima or Spider-Man — that's genius marketing. Players create millions of screenshots, share them on social media, and tag the game — free advertising made by users themselves. Sony actively uses user-generated content in their official accounts.

Referral programs in mobile games — classic. "Invite a friend and get 100 gems" — simple mechanics that turn every player into a marketer. Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga built entire empires on virality through social interaction.

Different leagues — different marketing

The main mistake many developers make — trying to copy big studio marketing. If you're an indie team with a US$ 50,000 budget, don't try to imitate Activision. Focus on community instead.

A Discord server for your game isn't just a communication channel, it's a platform for creating a loyal audience. Among Us became a 2020 phenomenon not through advertising (the game came out in 2018), but through organic growth in Discord communities and streams.

Reddit is another goldmine if you use it right. A game with a strong hook — unusual mechanics, a distinct visual style, or just a satisfying gameplay loop — can blow up from a single post on r/gaming or r/IndieGaming and bring in thousands of Steam wishlists. That’s exactly how Valheim took off. The team at Iron Gate, a small studio from Sweden, shared a simple gameplay gif on Reddit. It pulled in over 80,000 upvotes, and the game snowballed from there.

Publishers and platforms

Epic Games Store actively buys indie project exclusivity, giving developers guaranteed revenue before release. For many studios, this is a chance not just to survive but to invest additional funds in marketing. Kena: Bridge of Spirits got Epic exclusivity and simultaneously huge marketing push from the platform itself.

Xbox Game Pass changed the rules for indie developers. Getting into the Game Pass catalog — that's instant access to millions of subscribers. A Plague Tale: Innocence from Asobo Studio became much more popular after being added to Game Pass than during initial release.

Practical tips

1. Start marketing early. Don't wait for release. Show first concepts, development GIFs, behind-the-scenes. YouTube devlogs work great.
2. Find your niche. Better to be a leader in a narrow category than get lost among thousands of competitors.
3. Use Steam Wishlist. Wishlist numbers affect Steam algorithms. Launch wishlist campaigns through Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok.
4. Partner with streamers. You don't need to find people with millions of followers. Micro-influencers (10-50k subscribers) often have more engaged audiences.
5. Demo versions. Steam Next Fest — ideal platform for testing marketing hypotheses. Release a demo, collect feedback, adjust strategy.
6. Localization. Don't ignore non-English markets. China, Japan, Latin America — huge audiences that often stay off Western developers' radar.

How to Promote Your Game?

Game marketing isn’t something you do once right before launch and forget about. It starts on day one of development and keeps going long after the game is out. FromSoftware is still actively supporting the Dark Souls community, even though the first game came out back in 2011. And Minecraft — the best-selling game of all time — is still being marketed 15 years later, without ever really stopping.

Most important — understand your audience. What do they like? Where do they spend time? Which influencers affect them? Answers to these questions will give you much more than any universal marketing plan. Your game is unique — and marketing should be just as unique.