It feels pretty great when you’ve got a game and instead of having to reach out for press, people are contacting you in hopes to cover your game. Your indie game marketing efforts are yielding results. While some of these requests may be genuine, there are frequent cases where indie developers get tricked into giving away game keys only for those keys to be sold elsewhere online. One developer found that about 70% of the keys he sent out were to scammers.
The main way to avoid fake YouTubers, Streamers, and other Media outlets is to do research on the people contacting you. We at Mana Marketing double confirm our media list, to make sure we’ve got honest and real content creators. Where do you start? And what are some telltale signs that you likely won’t be getting a video/article in exchange for your keys? Let us delve into some pointers!
Does the e-mail address check out?
Does this person claim they write for Generic Big Media Company? Most company emails have a structure to them (i.e. [email protected] or [email protected]). Check to see if the contact email on the media site follows the email address you received a message from.
At times, we have worked with freelancers who use their own email addresses, so getting messages from an address that isn’t aligned with the media channel’s structure doesn’t 100% mean they don’t write for them. It can also be that they mistakenly sent out a request from their personal email.
Do look out for people who tries to use an email that looks like a real one though. They’re hoping you wouldn’t notice the subtle difference in your excitement for indie game marketing coverage (i.e. [email protected] or [email protected]). How do you figure out if they’re legit? On to the next point…
Has this person created content before on that media outlet?
If a writer is claiming they’re part of a publication, it is unlikely you’re their first gig there. Check to see if their first name and last name pulls up any hits on Google. A simple “John Smith Generic Big Media Company” should return you something.
If you can’t find anything, you can kindly let the emailer know you’ll reach out to the editors of the site and that you’ll refer the news piece back to them within the email—a lot of media outlets help forward your email to their staff writers if you have a valid reason to “Attention” them. If you end up being put back in touch with your emailer, they should be understanding as to why you took extra precautions, but apologize for the inconvenience nonetheless.
Contact an editor
Media sites usually have an editor that deals with different aspects of news (i.e. reviews, previews, hardware news), or there’s an editor-in-chief. Try reaching out to confirm if the person contacting you indeed writes for them. While a lot of messages to the general editor accounts often go unanswered (they have a lot of emails to go through), having a straightforward title in your email can prompt them to give you a quick reply to confirm or deny the existence of that supposed writer.
Is the media outlet real?
Okay, so let’s say the person reaching out owns the channel and they have lots of subscribers. The mind boggling thing is that the whole thing can be a front. Check out this YouTuber that has a channel with 60k subscribers:
Look pretty good and his email checks out. Reddit user ice_nelis reveals that all of Kamikaze’s subscribers are bought fakes (all bots), and has been selling the Steam keys he has received on Steam Gifts. Seeing the list definitely makes our blood boil, and it’s sad to see how many developers have been scammed out of keys. Again, a good look through of Kamikaze’s YouTube will reveal that he has very low view counts compared to subscribers. He has since then moved on to another YouTube account that lists the same email and Steam name, selling the same keys.
A good tell is also when they ask for multiple keys, whether it’s for their friends or for a supposed giveaway. Unless if your game is a co-op game, or that channel has a proven record of doing good giveaways, try to stick to one key.
Check their channel to see if they play your genre of games
Before we send out your game to our media list, we usually send out a qualifying email first to see who is interested and will be able to make a video within a certain time period. This is to help avoid sending out unnecessary keys, and also to allow content creators to choose if the game matches the content their audience enjoys.
As a general marketing tip, even if you’ve sent out a game key to a YouTuber, they may play the game then feel he/she didn’t like it, or ends up thinking it won’t be a good fit for their channel. In this case, it’s better off not released as a video. Ever seen someone play a game they don’t like? How much did that make you want to buy/play it?
Good content creators know this and it is unlikely they’ll reach out to you if their channel has never touched your genre of games. So this is a quick test you can do to start off your research on the person. See a channel that only has videos of minecraft, but they’re reaching out for your sci-fi FPS? That doesn’t quite check out. While there is the fact that the channel could be new and the YouTuber is still trying to identify the type of games they like working with, or a channel is looking to branch out from their usual genres, always double check to verify how legit they are.
Check to see if they actually own that media outlet
Did a big YouTuber just email you wanting to try out your game and make a video for their viewers? Make sure to check that they actually own the channel they’re referring to. There has frequently been emails that reference a big YouTube channel that they own, but in reality they have no correlation with that channel. They are simply link dropping a channel with high subscribers or viewers and hoping that’s all you were looking for.
In a Gamasutra article, Matias Kindermann, the developer for PIXELMAN, looked into two emails they got that turned out to be people posing as highly subscribed YouTubers. This scam technique is more common that you might think.
On Twitch, some streamers post their email address somewhere on their profile. On YouTube, you can check for email addresses associated with that account through the channel’s “About” tab. Under “Details”, there’s usually a “For business inquiries” email that you have to prove you’re not a robot to access. Otherwise, YouTubers also frequently list their email in their “About” tab’s description. Take TotalBiscuit for example:
Ask them for verification on official social media channels
While a writer may not have access to the publication’s official social media channel, a lone YouTuber or Twitch streamer should. Thank them for their interest in your game and kindly ask them to verify their ownership of that channel by sending you a direct message on Twitter or Facebook (hyperlink your accounts for them so they can easily find you). This should be quick and easy on their end. Remember to follow their official Twitter if you wanted them to direct message you and your Twitter’s settings don’t allow for rogue messages.
Alternatively, you can also ask them to send you a YouTube message from their YouTube account. While most content creators don’t check YouTube’s in-platform messaging because it’s notorious for being bad, them sending you a message is different.
There’s other methods for verifying the person behind the email, such as a face-to-face video call, but that’s definitely not feasible in most situations, especially if you have lots of key requests. Get creative and feel free to share in the comments what methods you’ve used, or if you’ve got a lesson learned to share.
What to do if you’ve already been scammed?
Some studios/developers use up the offending keys as soon as possible, however, this may lead to innocent third-party buyers who bought the code to be negatively impacted. An example of this was done by Unknown Worlds. Though it can be argued that people should not be buying from shady third-party key sites in the first place.
Reporting the scammer can lead to them simply changing their alias and selling their keys through other means. That’s exactly what Kamikaze did as outlined previously in this post and it’s not difficult.
A more creative example that has less to do with scammed keys was what Game Dev Tycoon did with their game. For those who torrented a cracked version of the game (that the studio Greenheart Games actually released themselves), they were met with the fate of their indie studio going bankrupt due to the simulated users pirating their game. Great thinking ahead!
What you can do after figuring out someone is a scammer?
Spread their name/channel. Get the word out for people to blacklist this person or at least be wary. Don’t do this unless you’re certain, as an innocent content creator may find it hard to be whitelisted again.
No matter how angry you might be, keep cool. You don’t want to be arguing publicly on social media with the scammer and then come off as a bad guy. Most people won’t know the full story, and some might make a judgement based on how rude a certain person may sound rather than what the facts are.
With all this said and done, there’s still a million other ways people can ask for keys without you questioning their motives. Feel free to share any experience you’ve had and be diligent. Always make sure you’re tracking how many keys you’ve sent out and to who.
If you’re looking for someone to take care of sending out keys for you, we can reach out to our media list at Mana Marketing. We’ve got different plans to fit your marketing budget, so don’t hesitate to give us a shout!
The post Are you getting scammed for keys while marketing your indie game? appeared first on Manamark.
