What this means for an indie dev:
The realistic strategy is:
🔹 YouTube Shorts as your primary organic reach play — game footage, funny moments, quick dev updates
🔹YouTube long-form for trailers and devlogs (search-driven, evergreen)
🔹X/Twitter for gamedev community and press — not for player reach
🔹Discord for community building — your actual audience lives here, not on any feed
🔹Steam Next Fest — still the most reliable way to get a visibility spike, but getting saturated and more competitive
🔹The old playbook of "post on TikTok, get viral, get wishlists" is broken. The new reality is: you need multiple small channels working together instead of betting on one algorithmic lottery ticket.