Next Fest
Next Fest is a front-page visibility and discovery event for upcoming games on Steam that have a demo which happens every February, June, and October. 1
It is designed to show customers as wide a variety of games as possible at the beginning of the fest before using data on how customers respond to recommend games later on in the fest. Games that are released, do not have demos, or have already participated in Next Fest once cannot participate. Reviews (whether positive or negative) and wishlist numbers do not have an effect on how visible the game is during the event. 1
In particular, to take advantage of this event, Steam recommends doing the following 1:
- Make a good demo
- Try to get people playing it on Steam when the event happens
- Time the notification email about the demo being available with whatever has the most marketing impact, like the beginning of Next Fest or some other event your game may be participating in.
- The tags are an important part of how Steam decides which games to recommend, so you should make sure those are in order.