I'm reposting the editorial note I wrote for the Dec 7th GDNet Direct newsletter issue addressing the use of the email list for sending out full-issue advertisements. Another one is going out today (the same one actually as the one sent last December) and I want to be sure that everyone knows the deal behind these.

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So this email landed in my Inbox last week:

"I didn't like that you started sending ads over the regular gamedev list."

It was from someone who unsubscribed after receiving the special issue containing the Full Sail advertisement. I realized then that I had never announced any sort of policy regarding these ad-only special issues, so I'm going to rectify that right now.

This list currently goes out to 22,729 confirmed members. We work on a double opt-in basis so after signing up you are sent a confirmation email that you must reply to in order to complete your subscription, so we're relatively certain that most of these members are real people (as opposed to the 300,167 members who have *not* confirmed their subscription). As the list has grown to this massive size, so has our overhead for sending out so many emails on a weekly basis.

To help offset this cost we're allowing companies to place full-issue ads, which will be dispatched NO MORE THAN TWICE PER MONTH. Even as the list continues to grow larger, this will be more than sufficient as we can always increase our advertising rates to match growing membership. Therefore this will not change in the future. This also does not mean that *every* month will see two ad-only issues being released, and these issues will never replace the *real* GDNet Direct newsletter weekly issues.

If anyone has any more concerns, never hesitate to drop me an email.