Have you applied for one too many Steam festivals where you thought your game was a perfect fit only to not get in?  Are you now considering whether or not you should run your own Steam festival?

If so, the good news is that Valve has made it easier than ever for anyone to run their own Steam festival.  But before you go off and do that, here is a list of pros and cons for running your own fest, from someone who has run one before in 2025 (and who is planning to run three separate festivals in 2026).

For reference, here are my own festivals, all detailed in my company's festivals webpage:

• The Spy Video Game Rendezvous (a festival for spy video games)
• The Love, Romance, and Heartbreak Debutante Ball (a festival for games about that tricky thing called love or even a desire to remain single)
• The Let Freedom Ring Jubilee (a festival for games about history, freedom, or baseball - i.e. America's pastime)

https://www.sunnydemeanorgames.com/festivals

For your own potential Steam festival, you should of course start with the official Steamworks documentation here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/promo/organizers

A few things to note as well (these are generally mentioned in the Steamworks documentation but worth calling out here):

• You need a theme that will make sense to players
• You need to make sure your theme doesn't conflict with other existing or upcoming festivals
• You will need a sufficient number of games in that theme (there is no set number here, but if there are only five games, then that's probably not enough)

The ADVANTAGES of running your own Steam festival:

1. Guaranteed admission for your game(s)

The first - and probably most obvious - reason to run your own Steam festival is that your game is automatically in (if you want it to be).  As the decisionmaker for what's in the festival, you can put your game in and nobody can tell you otherwise.  Is your game a text-based adventure playable only in Latin that nobody in their right mind would accept ahead over a thousand other entries that don't rely on the evaluator (and prospective players) being fluent in Latin?  Doesn't matter - your game is in your own festival if you want it to be!

2. You get to set the boundaries of your niche

If you leave it to others to create a festival for your niche, then they will design it in the way that makes sense to them.  And that might mean that your game doesn't fit the way they set the boundaries.

Here's an example - I have a game about a relationship break-up that I want to make.  So I created a festival with a Valentine's Day theme, and I have included games about either romance or heartbreak (it's called the Love, Romance, and Heartbreak Debutante Ball).  If someone else decided to make a festival for Valentine's Day - someone who makes games about romance and doesn't plan to make any games about breaking up - then they might have set the bounds of such a festival to exclude games about breaking up.  By creating the festival myself, I can define the festival - and the entire niche - however I want.  For example, should NSFW games be included in a Valentine's Day festival?  Should games about a desire to be single?  As the tastemaker in this space, I get to decide what fits and what doesn't.

3. You don't need any following at all

Here's the really weird thing - you might expect that in order to be the tastemaker in your space, you need some well-selling games or even a significant following.  But that couldn't be further from the truth!  All you have to do is declare you want to run the festival, create a submission form, and let your fellow devs know that you're running a festival.

The fact of the matter is that devs want to have their games in festivals and will apply for just about any festival that is remotely related to their game (even plenty of festivals that are not related to their game, unfortunately - see the disadvantages section below for more on that).  They do not care what following YOU have because 1. the festival will be on Steam, which is where players already are looking for games and 2. every participant will promote the fest, so the festival gets a combined reach of EVERYONE with a game in it.   Obviously, you having some following of your own that you can promote to is a plus, but you can start from zero and still get devs to apply for your festival.  As long as there is no cost to apply, there is basically no downside for a dev to have their game included in your festival, so devs apply to as many festivals as possible.

4. Build your brand (and your festival is its own IP)

Do you want to be known for making a certain type of game?  Well, if you run a festival for that theme, then you instantly become associated with that type of game.  Other devs will seek you out, players interested in that type of game will follow you, and you'll build a brand in that area.  For example, I make spy video games, so I created a festival for spy video games.  Because of that, I am now an industry expert in the field of spy video games - while other people make spy video games like I do, there is nobody else out there organizing a spy video game festival and promoting the entire niche in that way.  I also have insight into games that don't yet have a Steam page (they applied for the fest before the store page was live), which in some sense, makes me feel like the Geoff Keighley of spy video games (Geoff is the organizer of Summer Game Fest, and he selects the games for that showcase, in case you don't know).   If you start your own Steam festival, then you can be the Geoff Keighley of your niche, too.

In addition, the festival itself is its own intellectual property (or IP, for short).  Other devs, press, players, and more will share your festival with people, spreading the word and giving the festival its own brand recognition (which belongs to you as the festival organizer).  For example, Tiny Teams is run by Yogscast and LudoNarraCon is run by Fellow Traveller, and these groups have built a brand identity for their festival.  As you can see, the festival gets its own brand recognition that works in your favor.  People who may not have heard of you will have heard of your festival, so when you say "I am the organizer behind festival XYZ," that enhances your reputation in their eyes.

5. You'll make connections with fellow devs (and with publishers!)

By running a festival for games in your niche, other developers will reach out to you with games in that same niche to be included in the festival (plus, there will be some people who apply who don't fit into that niche who are shooting their shot to get in, which is discussed in the disadvantages section).  Have you ever seen a game out there and wanted to bundle with them, only to find they didn't have easily accessible contact info?  Well, to submit to your festival, devs will voluntarily share a business email.  This way, you can communicate with them in organizing the festival, and over time, this will build your network so that you can all promote the festival, cross-promote each other's individual games, or even arrange bundles.

Best of all, it's not just developers who will submit games to your festival.  Publishers will submit games as well, and now you are able to build relationships with publishers who have games in the same niche that you operate in.  That's just perfect, isn't it?  It can be a struggle to find a publisher who is a good fit for your types of games, and once you have a connection at a publisher, you can skip the "cold call" for that publisher (e.g. sending your pitch deck to some generic inbox and having no idea who sees it - or if anyone even looks at it) and instead communicate directly with your contact.

Remember that a publisher is not just investing in a game, they are investing in the person making that game.  And if you can successfully organize a Steam festival, then you are a person who follows through and gets things done, which makes you a safer bet than some other developer who may or may not have completed a game before but almost certainly has not coordinated amongst dozens or more people at various organizations to put on a Steam festival.  Also, you have even done the publisher a favor by including their game(s) in your festival, so they will look on you favorably for that alone.

Now, I should say that there is no guarantee that participants (whether developer or publisher) will want to work with you on things beyond the festival, but by raising up the niche you all occupy, you are building a positive reputation with those you most likely want to associate with in the future - the people working in your same space.  The networking aspects should not be overlooked, especially with publishers.

For more information on how others in your space are your compatriots, not your competition, see this article entitled "Bundling is giving" from Chris Zukowski of How To Market a Game (HTMAG): https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/12/14/bundling-is-giving

6. It's possible to make some supplemental income (but be careful with this)

If you're wondering what direct return on investment (ROI) you can get from running a festival (e.g. Can I measure the sales I get from people who wishlist during the festival?  Or is this just going to be a time and money sink that makes my game take longer and therefore will delay when I get my first dollar of revenue?), then I should note a couple of things.

First, it is possible to break down your wishlists by tranche (e.g. by month) to see both the number of wishlists and the conversation rate by tranche.  This isn't a perfect assessment of how many people wishlisted directly from the festival, but you can get a general baseline compared to non-festival periods and measure any bump in wishlists/sales during the festival period.  There is an example of a graph by monthly tranche in this article from HTMAG: https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/02/06/how-cosmoteers-4-5-year-marketing-campaign-shows-that-wishlists-dont-get-stale

Second, it is possible to monetize a festival to bring some income through the door even before the festival takes place, if you are worried that you won't see the financial benefits until later on when your game releases or if you need money before the festival takes place in order to hold the festival at all.  But note that monetizing in this manner is a delicate balance and works best for those with an outside following since this following guarantees eyeballs and makes festival participation a safer investment for fellow devs/publishers.

That said, one method to convert a festival into a revenue source is an application fee.  This is straightforward in that anybody has to pay a certain amount of money for their game to be considered for the festival.  However, this is obviously not great for the games who are declined, as they pay money with no tangible results.

Another method is to charge for supplemental aspects, like a booth at an in-person convention or inclusion in an online Direct.  In this scenario, it is free to submit games, and only the games which are accepted have to pay for these supplemental aspects.

Note that you CANNOT charge to be included in the festival or for specific placement in a festival (e.g. higher up on the page).  These are explicitly forbidden in Valve's documentation.  Also, charging devs can reduce your submission volume, which is probably not a good thing if you're looking to get a festival off the ground.

Please note that this is not a recommendation for you to monetize your festival.  But running a festival takes time and can have expenses (such as designing festival artwork), so if you need some money to pay for putting the festival on, there are options to get the festival to cover its own expenses.  Just remember that these options generally involve taking money from devs/publishers rather than from players.

The DISADVANTAGES of running your own Steam festival:

1. It takes time away from making/promoting your game

This may be an obvious point, but putting your time into getting a Steam festival off the ground takes time away from making and promoting your own game.   You only have so much time in the day, so it's up to you how best to spend it.  As an example, let's assume that your festival gets 100 applicants, and you spend just 3 minutes looking at the Steam page for each game (assume there's a 90-second trailer, and you spend another 90 seconds reading the page and looking at screenshots).  3 minutes multiplied by 100 games equals 300 minutes or 5 hours.  That's a better part of a workday spent evaluating games that are not your own, and assumes only 100 entries when the larger, more well-known festival can easily surpass 1,000 submissions - and only 3 minutes per game.  It also does not account for time spent getting the word out for devs/publishers to know about it so they can submit their games (emails, DMs, Reddit posts, or whatever approach you want to take).  It also doesn't consider time spent writing the submission form, creating a logo, answering questions from applicants, informing applicants of acceptance/rejection, submitting a form to Valve, communicating with participants as the festival approaches, and getting the word out on the festival to press/content creators/players.

Now, it's true that all of this work does benefit your game in some regard (your game is going to be in the festival, after all), but does spending all this time putting together an entire festival provide the same return on investment (the investment here being time, not necessarily money) as focusing on your own game?  Bear in mind that for the festival to even exist - let alone succeed - it is going to take a bare minimum amount of time to set up.  You could take that time and instead use it to make your game and/or promote your game.  There's also no minimum amount of time required for say doing a social media post or implementing a new feature in your game.  So instead of spending a large amount of time on one thing (setting up a festival), you can try lots of different things, see which give you the biggest benefit, and invest more time into the things that work best.

2. There is no guarantee your festival concept will be approved by Valve (i.e. all your work might be for naught)

Valve does not approve every festival automatically, so there is a chance that you can arrange the festival, submit it to Valve, and they do not accept it.  There can be any number of reasons for this, such as the festival theme cannot be conveyed to players in a simple manner, there are already other similar festivals, your festival doesn't have enough games, etc.

Note that there are no clear rules here on what constitutes a simple enough theme, how different a festival needs to be versus other similar festivals, how many games are required, and so on.  As a result, you could very well end up hitting a roadblock that you cannot get around.  For example, if there are some other similar festivals, there's not a lot you can do about that other than change your festival in some way or partner with the other festivals, and either approach may lose some of the advantages above.

As a result, there is a non-zero chance that all the work you put in to set up the festival results in zero impact to sales or wishlists for your games because the festival doesn't even happen.  You could still get benefits from having built out your network and making new connections, but the lack of quantifiable results in terms of sales or wishlists is a real downside.

3. Even if approved, it's unlikely your festival will receive Steam featuring

Another complete bummer is that even if your festival is approved, it's quite unlikely that your festival will receive "Steam featuring."  Steam featuring is a term that means the festival will receive a slot in the Special Events section of the Steam landing page.  This is valuable real estate since it's the home page that everybody sees upon logging in, and anything shown there gets a lot of eyeballs from players.  However, few festivals receive this visibility and most are instead relegated to a page one click away from the main page.  Being one click away may not seem like much, but unfortunately on the internet, being one click away drastically reduces the number of people who make that click to get there.

This is not to say it's impossible to secure Steam featuring for your first time hosting a festival.  But to accomplish that, you're going to need some high-selling games (again, no specific threshold exists here on how many games or how well-selling) and a clear theme.   If you're bringing your own audience to the table (e.g. you have some high-selling games in your own portfolio), then that increases your chances of being able to secure Steam featuring because you're less dependent on signing up high-profile games.

Even if you don't get Steam featuring in your first time hosting the festival, it should be noted that doesn't mean future iterations of your festival won't be able to get Steam featuring.  Once you have held the festival, you should have an easier time signing up games in future editions because you now have a thing you can point to that says, "I have done this before" and "This is what it will look like."  That becomes a much easier sell to gather more games next time and can help you get to that Steam featuring in the future.

But again, Steam featuring is not guaranteed, and before you decide to hold your own Steam festival, you should probably assume it won't get Steam featuring and ask yourself if you would want to hold the festival without this visibility.  Would you want to hold it for multiple years if it doesn't ever get Steam featuring?  This is something to consider before you invest your time and effort getting a festival off the ground.

4. Are you going to keep making games in this niche? Do you want this to be part of your brand identity?

Since you're unlikely to get Steam featuring (which brings a massive visibility bump) in your first year holding a Steam festival, what you're mostly doing is building your brand in your chosen niche.  This makes sense if you're going to continue creating similar games - e.g. I have an ongoing series of spy video games, so it makes sense for me to create a festival for spy video games and host it each year (it's called the Spy Video Game Rendezvous).  But if I only ever made one spy video game, then moved onto other projects (or didn't know if I was going to continue making spy video games), then it might not be worth sinking time and effort to get such a festival going.

Therefore, you should ask yourself if you are going to continue making games in the niche you're working on right now.  If so, starting up a Steam festival for that theme can pay dividends going forward on future projects as you're building up your brand identity.  But if you're going to switch to something completely different (or don't know what's going to be next), then creating a Steam festival may be investing in something that has a short shelf-life.  As an example, if you make a festival for action games since that's what you're working on now, but then want to make a cozy game next or an atmospheric action-free horror game next, then establishing yourself as a developer of action games through an action-oriented Steam festival may hurt your branding in the long-term.  Alternatively, you may end up feeling like you have invested heavily into one sort of game and feel compelled to stick in that genre, so do keep your future game development plans in mind when evaluating whether starting a Steam festival is right for you.

5. Some of the submissions you receive may be so out of left field it makes you a bit upset

This is a weird one.  When you have open submissions for your festival, anyone and everyone will apply.  This is both good and bad.  Among the games that do not fit the theme, some people honestly see some way that their game fits the theme, while others are clearly off the mark and either don't understand the theme or are just applying for every festival they can find.  The submissions that clearly have no business being in the festival I have found to be more than a bit annoying, even bordering on infuriating, because there are already enough games that legitimately fit the theme for me as the organizer to wade through.

So just note that running a festival with open submissions can take its toll on you, both in the sheer number of submissions to review as well as in how off the mark some of them can be.  On the plus side, though, you can control this flow somewhat by clearly outlining what types of games meet the theme vs. do not meet the them and you can modify your guidelines further as games start to come in the door (but no matter how narrowly you define your festival theme, there will be those who fire off their submission anyway).  In addition, once you have closed the submission window and have your final set of games that you have personally curated, it starts to feel good as you notify those who are accepted and build your network with this group as you set up the festival.

6. Are you even going to see this festival through to fruition?

It's hard enough to make a video game, and many video games that begin development don't make it all the way to release.  Hosting your own Steam festival adds more work on top of trying to get your game out the door, so if it's already difficult to get a game to market, then it is even less likely to get that game to market if you're devoting some of your time to organizing a festival.   Therefore, you should ask yourself if you really have the bandwidth to take this on.  If you set out to put on a festival only to drop the idea later after you've put some work into it, you'll have wasted some of your previous time and effort and may take a reputation hit with others in the industry.

Or let's say you decide to drop this game idea and work on something else (maybe funding didn't come through, you found there wasn't a good market fit, or whatever reason) - would you really still want to pursue this festival if you drop your current game?  It's probably best to only commit to organizing a festival if you're fairly certain that you will actually follow through on making the festival happen and that likely includes evaluating whether the game you're working on is certain to make it to release (or tying back to disadvantage #4 above, if your current game gets dropped, would you make a different game in this niche or would you move on to some other type of game outside this niche?)

Wrap-Up

There you go - six advantages and six disadvantages of running your own Steam festival, from a solo dev who has run a festival before and who has decided to push further in on this approach and host as many as three festivals in one year in 2026.  In my case, I have festivals for spy video games (the Spy Video Game Rendezvous in May each year), for games about that tricky thing called love (the Love, Romance, and Heartbreak Debutante Ball around Valentine's Day each year), and for games about history and freedom (the Let Freedom Ring Jubilee in July 2026 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence back in 1776).  You can find information - including sign-up links - on each of these festivals here: https://www.sunnydemeanorgames.com/festivals

If you do decide to create your own Steam festival, here are some other resources you may find helpful:

• A post-mortem on running a Steam festival, from the organizer of the Otome Fest: https://arimiadev.com/otome-games-celebration-2025-postmortem
• Thirteen best practices for setting up your Steam festival page (hint: your festival page planning should start before you even setup the submission form for other devs to apply for your festival): https://sunnydemeanorgames.com/news/articles/thirteen-best-practices-for-setting-up-your-steam-festival-page

Are there any advantages or disadvantages to hosting your own Steam festival that I missed?  Is there anything here you disagree with?  Feel free to leave a comment below.