How to tell if your idea for a Steam festival has legs

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Last updated: September 2026

This is article 2 of 4 in my "How to Run Your Own Steam Festival" series.  To start with the first article, please see "The advantages (and disadvantages) of hosting your own Steam festival" here: https://sunnydemeanorgames.com/news/articles/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-hosting-your-own-steam-festival


So after reading part 1 in this series (linked above) and coming here, that means you've decided that you want to run a Steam festival, right?  But how do you know if your idea for a Steam festival is a good one?  Or maybe you have a few ideas and don't know which to choose.  Here is a list of questions that can help you decide.


First, read up on the Steam festival questionnaire so you know exactly what information Valve is looking for when you submit your festival concept to them: https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=938 (I assume you've already read the Steamworks documentation on hosting third-party sales events, but if you haven't done that, you should read that as well).


1. Are there enough games on Steam that fit your theme?

As you could see from reviewing the Steam festival questionnaire form, they require you to provide a list of games that will be in your festival.  But are there even enough games that fit your theme to put on this festival?  You may be tempted to just open up a submission form and see how many games get submitted.

But before you open up a form and seek submissions, you should have a rough idea of how many games on Steam even fit your theme.  Are you pulling from a well with thousands of games, hundreds of games, or only dozens of games?  Luckily, you don't need to go searching through the vast depths of Steam to get this answer.  You can quickly get a sense in a few different ways.

  • Steam tags (The page with all Steam tags can be found here https://store.steampowered.com/tag/browse, and once you click on a tag on the left-hand side, it even shows you how many games have that tag without you having to navigate to another page.  Now, the Steam tagging system is perfect - plenty of games are mistagged - but this will give you a starting point)
  • itch.io tags (Steam doesn't have tags for everything, whereas itch has a more extensive tagging system in some areas.  So if there are no relevant tags on Steam, you can try looking on itch.  If there is a relevant tag on itch with say over a thousand games, you can probably assume there's at least a decent number of such games on Steam, even if the exact number of games on itch isn't relevant for a Steam festival.  Again, this just about getting a ballpark estimate of whether the pool of games for your theme is large or small)
  • Is there a relevant subreddit or Discord?  How many dev posts are there highlighting different games?  How many people are in the subreddit or server?
  • Searching Steam for a key phrase
  • Searching Reddit for a key phrase

If you find a ton of games with your theme, then great!  If not, don't despair.  Should you find there are no relevant tags on Steam or no easy way to find games matching your theme, that means it will similarly be difficult for players to find such games on Steam - and it may in fact prove that a festival with your theme is needed!  For example, I wanted to create a theme for spy video games, but there was no such tag on Steam.  But that just told me that hosting a festival page for spy video games would CREATE a place that Steam players could go to year-round (not just during the time the festival is running) and find a bunch of spy video games all in one spot.  In fact, it seems the festival proved the need for a tag, as Valve added a tag for "espionage" after the Spy Video Game Rendezvous festival's second annual edition.  So while it would be great to already have some tags you can use to identify the games meeting your festival theme, if that's not the case, don't worry too much - the lack of related tags could be making the case for exactly why your festival should exist.


2. What is the festival identity?

Can you name five well-known games that fit your festival theme?  You probably won't be able to get these games, but this exercise helps crystalize what kinds of games you're aiming for.

To help you figure out your festival's identity, what are a few games that really capture what the festival is all about?  These can be "grail" games that you don't really have any hope of getting in your fest but which help you figure out what games would be a great fit for your festival.

After you have these games picked out, do these games cover all aspects of your theme?  Or do you they actually point to perhaps a narrower theme?

This will also help you figure out where the boundaries of your festival should be.  As an example, let's say your festival theme is "games with guns" - did you pick all games that are first-person shooters?  Did you pick all games where you play as a soldier?  Or did you pick a first-person WW2 game, a third-person game about an Old West gunslinger, a shopping sim about a person who restores antique weapons (without any combat in the game), a game about an alien with a raygun, and a game about a construction worker with a nail gun?  If you only picked games where you fire a conventional weapon, would you accept these other kinds of games I listed in your "games with guns" festival?  That's a question for you to decide with regard to your festival theme and what kinds of games it may attract.

After you have your five key games and what they have in common/how much variety they represent, feel free to brainstorm some "out there" kinds of games that could feasibly be seen to fit the name of the festival.  Then, decide if you would include or exclude them.  And you can use this information to see if your festival name fits what you have in mind, if you should alter it in some way, or if you simply alter the eligibility criteria for your festival (without changing the name).


3. How would you advertise your festival in one sentence?

This is something Valve asks on their festival questionnaire form, so it's helpful to think about.  For my "games with guns" festival example above, this could be something like:

"Give these games with guns a shot"

What you come up with here doesn't have to be especially witty, but it will serve double-duty in getting Valve to approve the festival and in getting players to check out your festival, so it's worth trying to come up with something decent before deciding if you have the right festival idea or not.  If you're really struggling to distill your concept to a single sentence, it may be a sign that your festival idea is too disjointed or too complicated and could use some refinement.


4. Will people be able to find your festival based on its name? (aka Search Engine Optimization or SEO)

Please do an internet search (e.g. via Google) to see if your desired festival name already relates to something else.  This is just simple search engine optimization (SEO).  There may be a similar Steam festival or something completely unrelated to video games that shows up in the results.  If so, the festival name may not be a great one to use since people will have a harder time finding it by googling, and it will be harder to secure a top search result when other things are already using the name.

In particular, if there is a similarly-named or similarly-themed Steam festival, then this may make it difficult to get the festival concept approved by Valve.

On the other hand, if there are no results returned or everything seems like a real stretch, then you have a good festival name on your hands from an SEO perspective, as you're not competing for top search results with other relevant topics and you'll have an easier time securing the top SEO spot yourself.

This assumes you already have a desired festival name in mind.  If not, then use the "grail" games you identified in a previous step to think about what word or phrase connects those games you selected.  As a last resort, you can brainstorm words or phrases related to your festival theme and see if that gives you a starting point for a suitable festival name.


5. Will you be able to get the word out on this festival theme?

A festival theme is only as good as the number of people it attracts who are interested in that theme.  A large number of games fitting the theme can indicate there is sufficient customer interest in the theme (presumably, lots of people are making that kind of game because plenty of people are interested in playing them).

But we must also consider how well you can draw people in to your festival.  As an example, is there someplace where fans of this festival theme would congregate?  Take a moment to think about where the players interested in your festival theme could be found.  Are they on a particular subreddit or Discord server? (and are you permitted to do a post about the festival there or is self-promo not permitted?)  Are there content creators and/or members of the press who cover the games in your theme?

If so, these are places where you can let people know about the festival and support your idea to put on this festival.  If there are no such places or tastemakers in this space, then that will make things more difficult and could be the tie-breaker between doing one festival theme versus another (if you have a couple ideas you're trying to decide between).


6. What imagery matches your theme? What key art would make sense?

In order to hold a Steam festival, you're going to need a festival name, a festival logo, and some artwork at the bare minimum (and perhaps some kind of character artwork to serve as a festival mascot).  In the same way that your game's capsule artwork does some heaving lifting on getting players to click-through and see your game's store page, players will see the festival artwork and have to decide based on that whether to click through to see what games are in the fest.

Therefore, think about what kind of artwork would pair well with your festival theme.  Unfortunately, Valve does not permit the use of artwork from game capsules, so you won't be able to leverage what you're already using in your game capsule and will need something different.

For the example of my "games with guns" festival, an image of a character with a gun would probably be enough to convey the theme.  At this stage, I likely don't need to know whether that character is a soldier, a gunslinger, a sniper, or what - but if you're struggling to figure out what imagery could pair with your festival theme, then you may end up with capsule art that doesn't pull in players and all your hard work in putting the festival together would go to waste (or at least it would deliver worse results than could otherwise be expected).

Note that you do not have to create artwork at this stage - Valve does not require artwork as part of the initial festival questionnaire step, so this is merely a thought experiment at this point (artwork is not needed until you are putting together the festival page, which happens only after Valve has approved the festival theme).


Bonus: Is this hypothetical "games with guns" festival a good idea? How many boxes did it check off?

Well, I would say it checks off a lot of boxes (there are certainly a lot of games that fit, I had a very simple tagline, and the key art imagery would be easy enough to convey the theme), but it's ultimately not a great theme to me.  That's because it's very broad.  I think the only way it could work is with an emphasis on games that utilize guns in unique and surprising ways (gravity guns, glue guns, nail guns, a gunbrella, etc.) but even then, that's probably going against the expectation of a player finding their way to a festival with games about guns and likely expecting there to be a lot of action games.  So ultimately, I don't find this to be a great theme, even though it may on the surface appear to meet many of the criteria laid out above.


Hopefully, your own festival theme has checked a lot of boxes from the set of questions above.


For more articles from my How to Run Your Own Steam Festival series, please see these links: