Depends on how bad you need the money. If not, then you're (probably?) better off accumulating more wishlists and polishing your game. Here's the all the Steam festivals for the 2nd half of 2025: store.steampowered.com/news/group/4...

i'll need to find another project to work on to not go mad in the mean time

Also, AFAIK there's not *that* much of a difference between 500 WLs and 1000 or 1500. The breakpoint seems to be ~6000-7000 which lands you on "popular upcoming". Do you perhaps have some data showing that 1000 WLs is some kind of inflection point?

steam never let me have store pages for my lewd games before they saw a complete build

That mostly down to which reviewer you get, imo. Some are more strict than others. Sucks that the whole process is so random and arbitrary, but there's not much we can do apart from respecting Valve's rules and hoping for the best.

i think i got singled out for additional screening

everyone said the algo doesnt push you until 1000, but ive had people telling me for years i need even more than that but i always had to launch as soon as possible because i was close to bankrupcy

It's rough out there, especially with the recent payment processor crackdown. But speaking from experience here: we didn't notice any bigger "push" from Steam after passing 1k WLs. It only started climbing after 5500 or so WLs, which was during the summer Next Fest IIRC.

I mean you gotta weigh the pros and cons. Depending on how many WLs your game is getting per week. If you're getting only a trickle, you might wanna launch sooner than later. It all depends how much you want/need those Next Fest WLs.

i got 19 today and curators have started reviewing it now, they were how i got to 1k last time done! had to push the launch date to 21st october for it to let me submit it now i can make a r/incremental_games post since i dont have to save my post for the launch

Yeah curator reviews will net you a good chunk of WLs. It's a good idea to reach out to them proactively. Most will accept and review a game in exchange for a couple of curator keys.