How many games are on your wishlist?

Epic Games Store
(Image credit: Epic Games)

Assuming you have a wishlist, roughly how many games are on it? Do you use Steam's wishlist feature to keep it organized, or does yours have its home somewhere else? Do you use your wishlist to make sue you receive notifications when games release or come on sale or come out of Early Access. Do you add games then completely forget about them like an alcoholic detective forgetting his troubled past?

How many games are on your wishlist?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

(Image credit: REMEX)

Andy Kelly: There are currently 18 games on my Steam wishlist. A mix of stuff I'm waiting to go on sale, and lesser known upcoming games I find intriguing. A lot of them have been 'coming soon' for years, like bush pilot sim Deadstick and dreamy driving game Transmission. I dunno if these will ever come out, or are even still in active development, but I like using my wishlist to check in on them now and again.

Robin Valentine: I'm not super organised with my wishlist, but I do tend to add stuff on Steam when I see something cool that I suspect I'll soon forget about otherwise. It could probably do with a prune at this point—it's up to 122 games, which is probably ambitious even for me. 

Writing this out has just made me realise that I've gotten so used to having a huge pile of shame that I've basically built a second, theoretical pile of shame for the future. 

(Image credit: Team Reptile)

Natalie Clayton: I have a single item on my wishlist and it's Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. I should, really, get better at using the thing, but I find my head just doesn't gel with this kind of planning. Besides, most of the things I'm really, truly excited for either don't have pages set up, or may not necessarily come to Steam at all.

Rachel Watts: I currently have 162 games on my wishlist, 15 of which have actually released and are available to play. I definitely use my wishlist as a way of keeping up with new releases, especially for indies where there are SO MANY. Wishlisting also helps smaller games get noticed by Steam, so every time I spot a game that's still early in its development, if it has a Steam page you bet I'm going to wishlist it.

(Image credit: Studio Zaum)

Alan Dexter: I've got 11 games on my Steam wishlist, three of which are duplicated on my Epic Games wishlist—I'm not a single-game-store kinda guy. They are mostly games I've earmarked for benchmark inclusion, although there are a few on there that are just for enjoying in their own right: No Man's Sky (which I played briefly when testing VR and really enjoyed), Disco Elysium (still haven't got round to playing this), and Frostpunk (I'm just not sure I can cope with the bleakness of this game right now). I do like wishlists, but I've got such a massive back catalog that I rarely get around to actually buying anything new. These lists will probably just grow and grow.

(Image credit: Games Operators)

Christopher Livingston: I have 70 games on my wishlist. Naturally, my #1 is probably the same game just about everyone has in their top spot: Cyborg Mechanic. A simulation game about fixing up injured cyborgs.

Other highly anticipated titles filling my wishlist: Bakery SimulatorElectrician SimulatorDinosaur Fossil HunterZoo Cleaner, and of course, I Am Jesus Christ. If a weird simulator crosses my vision, onto the list it goes. I probably won't wind up playing most of them (except Cyborg Mechanic, which I am definitely going to play), and a lot of them will probably never even get released. But I don't want to forget I saw them! I just like the idea of weird sims.

Sarah James: I just checked and I currently have 23 games on my wishlist. Most of them have been there for ages and I'll get notified when they go on sale, which is nice—or soul-destroying, depending on the state of my bank account at the time. It's mostly taken up with old Final Fantasy games at the moment, either ones I've never played (or did play but need to own on PC) but didn't feel I could justify the full price when I first added them. Others are random games I'll see or hear about that sound cool and I may get around to picking up at some point. 

(Image credit: Studio Zevere)

Wes Fenlon: I currently have 15 games on my Steam wishlist, which is a mix of games that at one point I decided I should buy and games that I wanted to keep an eye on to cover on PC Gamer someday. In the former category I've let a dozen Steam sales pass without actually buying them. Sorry, Owlboy and Blue Revolver. In the latter I need to give a shout out to She Dreams Elsewhere, which I added to my wishlist in March 2019 after seeing a demo at GDC. More than two years later, it's still "Coming soon." The list of games I'm excited for lives only in my fractured brain, but right now the top of that list is a fan translation of Boku no Natsuyasumi, a slice of life sim about spending a week in the Japanese countryside as a boy in the 1970s. It's 20 years old, but being able to play it in English for the first time is going to be a real treat.

Phil Savage: I generally use my wishlist as a way to bookmark games to consider in the next Steam sale. But the seven that are currently on my list have been on there for a while—some for a few years, never being bought. That's probably a sign that I'm actually just not that interested in them. So... hold on a second... there. Now there are no games in my Steam wishlist. Sorry, Greedfall.

(Image credit: Jacob Janerka)

Jody Macgregor:  I've got wishlists on a couple of storefronts, and over 300 games on them. Plus a lot of DLC. Like other people I add stuff that isn't out yet as a way of keeping up with it, and stuff that is out so when there's a sale on I can idly grab one off the top. Paradigm is 69% off right now, I respect that. Maybe it's time to play a surreal adventure game.

Andy Chalk: 148. I'll throw pretty much any pre-release game that looks kinda interesting onto my list, mainly to do a little solid for indie devs, but it's handy for keeping track of things that I actually want to remember exist, too. 

The first game I added to my wishlist is apparently The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, on November 9, 2015. It's possible I'm doing this wrong.

From our forum

Pifanjr: I have 4 games on there (6 before I opened this thread). Heat Signature, Cultist Simulator, Dominions 5, Fata Deum. And then the DLC for Civ VI and Total War: Warhammer II. I use the list partially to get a notification when they are on sale and partially to just not forget these games exist. Most of these have been on there for months or perhaps even years.

(Image credit: EA)

mainer: Current wishlist on Steam sits at 73. Before the Steam Summer Sale started, it was at 83. Yeah, I bought 10 games this year on the SSS, whereas the past two years I didn't buy anything. Only one of those would be considered a "new" game, that being the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the rest were older games (at greatly reduced prices) that I either had in boxed cds/dvds, or were games I had on other store fronts that I really wanted on Steam.

I'll wishlist a game on Steam if it interests me so that I can keep track of it; development progress, release projections, updates, etc. It doesn't always mean I'll eventually buy the game, but if I hear/see/or read about a game that sounds interesting to me, whether on PCG or elsewhere, I like to keep track of it to see how it progresses and when it's released, whether in early access or actual final release. On one hand, I've discovered a lot of games, especially Indie games, that I would have never know about otherwise; and on the other hand, it's saved me money by not just buying a game because it sounded or looked good.

My current top 5 Steam Wishlist games:
1-Elex 2
2-System Shock
3-Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
4-Solasta: Crown of the Magister
5-Weird West

JCgames: I keep a wishlist, then buy games when they are a few dollars years later.. then they sit in my library and wait for me to play for a few more. It's so hard for me to pass up 2 dollar sales! I never bother with checking e-mails for sales, I just click on the wishlist and see whats cheap from time to time. It also helps me keep track of a few games that have been on my wishlist for 5+ years waiting for it to launch. Maybe this is the year asylum!

Ryzengang: My steam wishlist (which is only one I really use) is sitting at 77 right now. Is it organized? LOL no, I don't bother to upkeep it to that extent. Really it is used for two things: (1) Keeping an eye on early access games or games that are yet to release and (2) getting notified when games are on sale. To the first point, my current wishlist is perhaps 50% or more future releases that I'm keeping an eye out for. Especially in the case of indie titles, I primarily do this to remember they exist and to check reviews when they come out. For bigger titles I'll be reminded one way or another that they are out.

(Image credit: Hempuli Oy)

XoRn: I keep my wishlist fairly low. If a game goes on a good sale and its on my list and I still don't buy it, then I usually kick it off the list. I have 12 games now and plan on buying 3 of them for this steam summer sale (Spelunky 2, Baba is You, and Due Process).

ZedClampet: I've read the other responses so far and am just going to plead insanity.

The thing is, I don't watch Netflix or television of any sort. When I'm tired in the evening, I just window-shop Steam, spending more time looking for games than actually playing them. I look at all the upcoming games, use the tools they give to pull up niche games, go through my discovery queue, etc. I have meant to actually go through my wishlist and start removing games, but even then I have a problem, and my thinking goes something like "There are tens of thousands of games on Steam. If I remove this from my wishlist, I'll never find it again..."

But I'm going to clear it out eventually because it's pretty useless the way it is. Just for the record, it has 760 games on it. As I said, it's not my fault. It's the insanity.

PC Gamer

The collective PC Gamer editorial team worked together to write this article. PC Gamer is the global authority on PC games—starting in 1993 with the magazine, and then in 2010 with this website you're currently reading. We have writers across the US, UK and Australia, who you can read about here.