Introduction

I have developed and published games for a few years now and as a developer and publisher I get bullshit in my inbox all the time. From scammers to terrible offers and publishers that don't seem to understand who they are trying to advertise to. In this blog I will list a bunch of various things I have seen as a developer and how to avoid falling for it. This is primarily aimed towards new developers, but it could be useful for experienced developers as well.

Releasing a game

On steam, you must give customers a way to contact you in case they run into some issue with the game. This can be a URL to a website, an email or a phone number (what ever you do, never give out your personal phone number). You could of course just enter some fake email to avoid having to deal with nonsense. However, if you do that, you may miss out on decent offers. Do keep in mind though that most offers you will get are terrible if you decide to share a real email, at least to begin with. Let me go over the terrible offers you will get by sharing your email.

Steam curators

Many steam curators will ask you to share keys, but not through the steam curator page. They want keys via email, and usually any amount from 2-7. This is because the curator option has some limitations and they don't want that. They want your game added to their personal library. It's not unusual for them to ask for multiple keys for giveaways as well. Giveaways could be helpful publicity, though not if all they do is share keys of your game with friends, or if their group consists of barely any viewers/members.

1: Always check how legit the curator page is. Do they have a decent amount of followers? Do they write proper reviews with good grammar?
2: Check if the email that contacted you is listed on the curator page.
3: It does not make sense to send out a large number of keys for a singleplayer game. If they ask for a large number of keys, ask them why they need so many.

4: Send keys via curator connect, not email unless they give you a good reason as to why and seem legit. You are sharing the game for the purpose of getting a review, not handing it out for free. Why does it matter if the curator key they get has some slight limitation, like not counting towards the reviewers total amount of games? In my experience, if you send them keys via email instead, they will stop responding to you the moment you've sent the keys.

5: If they make standard emails without going into any details about your game, such as “We find your game very interesting”, ask them why they think your game is so interesting. In a lot of cases, if the person that reached out to you is a bullshiter, they won't respond. If they can't be bothered to respond, don't send them any keys.

6: Don't pay them anything. In rare cases, some curators will ask for money for a review. This is a complete waste as there are hundreds of curators out there that will review your game for free.

Fake streamers/youtubers

I have seen a lot of bullshit streamers and youtubers. Here is a list of things to look out for and how to deal with these fools.

1: Always check their twitch, youtuber or other platform they use. It's not uncommon for them to pretend like they stream or make videos and hope you won't investigate any further. I can't count on my hand how many times someone asked for a key, told me their streaming/youtuber name and when I check it out, they have 1-3 streams from 4 years ago and 10 views per youtube video. In some cases, they're not even a let's player. I once got an email from a movie reviewer asking if he could get a key for my game.

2: Always ask them anything. Doesn't matter what it is, just ask them something. Most of them will not respond. If they don't respond, they won't review your game either. I once made the mistake of sending a key for one of my games to a youtuber. He had a discord server with a decent amount of people in it and an active youtube channel. Sent the key, never got a response after that and he never made a video about my game as promised. This is why you should always check if they will bother responding to you before you send them anything. And sure, you could make the argument that sending them keys is fine, you don't lose anything. It's the principle. If I worked months or years on a game, you better believe I won't hand out keys to liars.

3: If someone has sent you an email before, check to see if that email is identical to the one you just got. I have seen so many bullshiters send the same copy-pasted email to me over and over again, until I decided to just block them. One example of this was some girl streamer that said she “Just got back to streaming again and your game would be perfect for me to play!”. I said no since her last stream was 2 years ago so I didn't believe she just got back to it. A year or so later, my next game came out. Same girl sent me an email saying she “Just got back to streaming again”.

Terrible offers from sites

The same rule applies here . Always check how legit a site is before you fork over money to them. I have seen so many offers from people that overestimate their market value and don't seem to understand who they are talking to. I recently got an offer from some guy claiming to have an email list with influencers, developers and game journalists. I think it was like 1000 emails or so. Composing an email and sending it to your email list should take, what, an hour at most right? What would you pay for such a service? 30 dollars or something like that seems reasonable? I think so too. No, this dude wanted 900 dollars. Yes, 900 dollars to send an email through an email list, are you kidding me? “Oh, but it took me a lot of time to get 1000+ people!”. If pay for say, a car mechanic to fix my car, should I also pay him for the time he spent learning about cars? For the costs of getting his tools? No, lol. I'm not paying 900 dollars because it took you some time to start your business. The thing is, he also sent me client results in his email. The result ranged from 3 million views thanks for media exposure from the people on his email list, to literally 0 views. He wants 900 dollars to MAYBE get you exposure. It could be a million views, it could be literally nothing. As a low budget indie developer, I don't have 900 dollars to just throw away.

1: As with the previous things I have mentioned, check if the person/site seems legit. Ask questions! Do they have any analytics? Do they have any traffic to their site?
2: Is the risk worth it? Is it worth spending hundreds of dollars to maybe get some results? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
3: Does the price they ask for even make sense?

Conclusion

I may update the list at some point if I remember something I forgot to add, or some new dumb emails show up. I think this is the majority of things to avoid though.
There are legit people out there. There are people offering services for reasonable prices. They are unfortunately burried underneath a pile of trash though. Many good sites and people won't reach out to you in the first place, too. You have to reach out to them. You have to let people know your game exists if you want it to sell any copies at all, but be sure to do proper research and don't give your games away to people that don't deserve it. The best way to avoid this would be to not have a public email in the first place, if you are okay with missing out on a few potentially good offers as well. One thing I would recommend as well is to keep a personal blacklist and save sites and curators on those that aren't worth your time.