TL;DR: Press coverage compounds over time: it builds credibility, SEO, social proof for algorithms, and triggers content creator coverage. Build a targeted list of 200-400 contacts who cover your genre. Small and mid-tier outlets convert better than cold-pitching IGN. Have your press kit ready before you pitch, since journalists will click your links within minutes.
Key Takeaways
- Response rates for cold pitches to large outlets hover around 5-10%; smaller outlets are dramatically higher
- Content creators often drive more wishlists than traditional press, with a single YouTuber potentially outperforming articles in major outlets
- Your one-sentence hook is the hardest and most important thing to get right; if you can't explain your game compellingly in one sentence, the pitch won't save you
- Timing matters: pitch 6-8 weeks before launch to top-tier targets, 3-4 weeks for full list expansion, and avoid major AAA events
- Trading up works: if you go viral somewhere, immediately pitch press about the virality itself
Most press pitches get ignored. That's not a guess. Journalists at major outlets receive 100 to 200 emails per day during busy seasons. Your lovingly crafted pitch sits in an inbox alongside AAA embargoes, event invites, and 40 other indie emails that all start with "Dear Sir or Madam." The response rate for cold pitches to large outlets hovers around 5 to 10 percent on a good day.
This is the reality. And it's actually fine. Don't panic.
Because press coverage isn't about blanketing the internet with emails and hoping someone bites. It's about sending the right pitch, to the right person, at the right time, with the right materials ready to go. Developers who understand this get covered. Developers who don't end up on Reddit asking why nobody replied.
I've sent hundreds of press emails across multiple projects. Some got picked up by IGN. Some disappeared into the void. The difference was almost never the game itself. It was the pitch, the timing, and whether I'd done my homework. This guide is everything I've learned, distilled into something you can actually use.
What Press Coverage Actually Does for You in 2026
Let's get honest about what press coverage can and can't do.
A single article on a mid-tier outlet won't sell your game. It won't. If you're counting on one Kotaku feature to fund your retirement, please recalibrate. But press coverage stacks. It compounds. And it does several things that are hard to replicate any other way.
Credibility. A mention in PC Gamer or Rock Paper Shotgun becomes a trust signal you can plaster everywhere. What developers consistently report is that even a single mention from a recognizable outlet transforms subsequent outreach—journalists are more likely to respond when they see you've been covered before. Your Steam page, your pitch deck, your publisher meetings. "As featured in..." carries weight.
SEO and discoverability. Articles from high-authority sites rank for years. Someone searching "best roguelike deckbuilders 2026" will find that PCGamesN roundup long after launch week fades.
Social proof for the algorithm. When external traffic spikes hit your Steam page, Valve's discovery algorithm notices. Chris Zukowski has documented this extensively on howtomarketagame.com: bring enough outside traffic, and Steam starts doing the heavy lifting through its Discovery Queue. The Momento team saw exactly this. Their TikTok influencer campaign drove 1.6 million views, which triggered Steam's algorithm to feature them in the Discovery Queue for two weeks straight. That sustained featuring, not the TikTok views themselves, pushed them to 75,000 wishlists.
Content creators pick up on press coverage. Journalists and YouTubers read each other's work. One article can trigger a cascade. When Choo-Choo Charles went viral on Twitter, IGN and GameSpot both reuploaded the trailer. The combined views hit 20 million. That developer earned over 85,000 wishlists in two weeks.
So yes, press coverage matters. But it matters as one part of a system, not a lottery ticket.
What You Need Before You Pitch Anyone
Sending a pitch email before your materials are ready is like entering a boss fight without saving first. Journalists will click your links. If what they find looks unfinished, they'll move on and they won't come back.
A Professional Press Kit
This is where most developers lose the game before it starts.
A Google Drive folder with scattered PNGs and a text file labeled "game_info.txt" tells a journalist you're not serious. They've seen it a thousand times. What they want is a clean, professional press page with high-resolution screenshots (9 to 12 minimum), a trailer, game description, studio information, logos, and key art. All downloadable. All organized.
This is literally what presskit.gg was built for. One WordPress plugin, professional press page in minutes. But whatever tool you use, the bar is: can a journalist write an article about your game using only your press kit, without emailing you a single follow-up question? If yes, you're ready. If no, fix it first.
A Steam Page That's Actually Done
Your store page is the backup to your pitch. Journalists will check it. They'll look at your capsule art, read your description, watch your trailer, and scroll through screenshots. If your Steam page looks like a placeholder, your pitch dies right there.
Your capsule art deserves special attention. As Chris Zukowski puts it bluntly: do not make your own capsule art. Even if your game looks beautiful in motion, a screenshot slapped onto a capsule image signals amateur hour. Hire an artist. Expect to pay $250 to $2,000. It's the single most-seen marketing asset your game will ever have.
A Trailer That Hooks in Five Seconds
Journalists don't watch full trailers when scanning pitches. They click, watch five seconds, and decide. Your trailer needs to communicate what makes your game interesting before anyone's thumb reaches the scroll button.
Lead with your hook. Not logos, not studio names, not a slow fade from black. Gameplay. The thing that makes your game different from the 14,000 other games on Steam this year.
A One-Sentence Hook
This is the hardest thing on the list and the most important. You need one sentence that makes a stranger care about your game.
The classic formula is "X meets Y." Tape to Tape was "NHL 94 meets Slay the Spire." Nova Drift was "Asteroids meets Path of Exile." These work because they give the reader two familiar anchors and let their brain fill in the gap with something exciting.
But you don't have to use that formula. "A train named Charles is trying to kill you" worked pretty well for Choo-Choo Charles. The point is: if you can't explain your game in one sentence that makes someone raise an eyebrow, your pitch email won't save you. Get the hook right first. Everything else flows from it.
Building Your Press List the Right Way
A press list isn't a phone book. Blasting 2,000 generic addresses gets you nothing except a reputation as a spammer. Building a targeted list of 200 to 400 contacts, where each person has a genuine reason to care about your game, outperforms a mass-email strategy every time.
Who to Contact (and Who to Skip)
The biggest mistake developers make is not doing basic research on who they're contacting. I've seen devs send farming sim pitches to journalists who exclusively cover FPS games. That email gets deleted in under a second.
Start by identifying outlets that cover your genre. Then find the specific writers at those outlets who've written about games similar to yours. Read their recent articles. Check their social media bios. If a journalist at IGN just published a roundup of upcoming roguelikes and your game is a roguelike, that's your person.
Small and mid-tier outlets are your best friends. The conversion rate on pitches to sites like Shacknews, GamingOnLinux, Destructoid, TheGamer, and genre-specific outlets is dramatically higher than pitching Polygon or Kotaku cold. These outlets are actively looking for interesting indie games to cover. The big names are drowning.
Finding the Right Contact
Generic tip addresses (news@, tips@, contact@) are a last resort. You want personal emails.
Here's how to find them:
Byline tracking. Read articles on your target outlets. Note who writes about indie games in your genre. Most journalists have their contact info in their author bio or Twitter/Bluesky profile.
Masthead pages. Many outlets list their staff with roles and sometimes emails.
Social media. Game journalists are extremely online. Most have their DMs open or list a business email on Twitter, Bluesky, or Mastodon profiles. Many prefer being contacted on social media first. A quick "Hey, would it be cool if I sent you a press email about my upcoming roguelike?" goes a long way. It also proves you're a real person, not a PR bot.
Press distribution platforms. Games Press (gamespress.com) is widely used by journalists to find news. Keymailer connects you with press and content creators for key distribution. These aren't replacements for direct outreach, but they expand your reach.
Events and conferences. GDC, PAX, Gamescom, and smaller regional events are press-list goldmines. Journalists attend these specifically to discover new games. Meeting someone face-to-face for even 90 seconds creates more goodwill than a dozen cold emails. If you're showing your game at a festival, bring business cards (yes, still), and follow up by email within 48 hours while they still remember your face.
The Press List Spreadsheet
Keep it simple. You need columns for: name, outlet, beat/genre focus, email, social handles, date contacted, response status, and notes. Google Sheets works fine. Update it as you go. This spreadsheet becomes one of your most valuable marketing assets because you'll reuse it across every milestone (announcement, demo, launch, DLC).
Track everything. "Responded but said not right now" is different from "no response" is different from "covered us." This context matters for follow-ups.
A note on list size: some developers agonize over whether 50 contacts is enough. It isn't. And 2,000 is too many to be meaningful. The sweet spot sits between 200 and 400 contacts. That's enough to generate real coverage momentum if your pitch is good, without diluting your effort into spam territory. Build your list in tiers: Tier 1 (dream coverage, maybe 20 to 30 outlets), Tier 2 (realistic targets, 80 to 100), Tier 3 (long shots and niche sites, the rest). Prioritize your time accordingly.
Content Creators Are the New Press
This section could honestly be its own article. For many indie games in 2026, YouTubers and streamers drive more wishlists and sales than traditional press coverage does. Period.
Tape to Tape made $635,000 in its first eight days with minimal press coverage. How? Streamers. Hockey fans on YouTube and Twitch picked it up and played it obsessively. Nova Drift sold nearly 400,000 copies, largely because a single YouTuber (Ultra C) played the game 596 times on stream. Each stream pulled around 5,000 views.
The math is clear. A YouTuber with 50,000 subscribers in your specific niche can move more wishlists than a generic article on a major outlet that reaches a million people who don't care about your genre.
How to Find the Right Creators
Search YouTube and TikTok for your genre plus terms like "best upcoming," "hidden gems," or "you need to play this." The people making those videos are exactly who you want. In practice, developers find that creators who already make "roundup" or "hidden gems" content are far more likely to respond positively than general gaming channels with similar subscriber counts.
Look for creators in the 10,000 to 200,000 subscriber range. They're big enough to matter, small enough to actually read your email. Mega-creators with millions of subscribers are the equivalent of cold-pitching Kotaku. Possible, but don't bank on it.
The Momento team used a brilliant approach: they tracked TikTok users who had liked or interacted with their content, DMed them casually ("Thanks for liking and following us! We can't wait to show you more"), then asked if they'd like to cover the game. Almost everyone said yes. Only one creator out of many asked for money. That influencer campaign generated 1.6 million views across nine creators.
Treating Creators Like Press
Send them the same press kit you'd send a journalist. Include a key or demo access. Make it easy for them to make content. If you have b-roll footage (raw gameplay clips without UI for them to use as overlay footage), include that too. Creators love b-roll because it makes their production look better.
For a deeper guide on this specific topic, check out our article on How to Get YouTubers to Play Your Game.
Short-Form Video Changes Everything
TikTok and YouTube Shorts have created a new category of coverage that didn't exist a few years ago. A 30-second clip showing your game's hook can rack up hundreds of thousands of views. The Momento team's TikTok influencer push generated 1.6 million views across nine creators, and the biggest single video came from one of the smaller channels (The Cozy Gaming Club, 62,000 followers at the time, 1 million views on one clip).
The lesson: you don't need mega-influencers. You need a handful of niche creators who genuinely like your genre. A cozy game creator with 20,000 followers who's passionate about room decorators will outperform a general gaming account with 500,000 followers who doesn't care.
Also worth noting from every case study I've seen: the content that performs best is shockingly simple. No memes. No wacky edits. Just gameplay with a clear explanation of what makes the game interesting. Straightforward wins.
Free Tool: Press Email Generator — Generate a ready-to-send press pitch email in 60 seconds. Runs in your browser, no signup required.
Crafting the Pitch Email
Your pitch email has about 15 seconds to work. That's how long it takes a journalist to scan the subject line, skim the first paragraph, and decide if they care. Every word needs to earn its spot.
Subject Lines That Get Opened
The subject line is everything. If it doesn't get opened, nothing else matters.
Here's what works: genre + hook + timing context. Examples:
- "Roguelike deckbuilder with fishing mechanics, demo live now"
- "NHL 94 meets Slay the Spire, launching March 15"
- "Horror game where a spider-train hunts you, trailer attached"
Here's what doesn't work:
- "Check out our new game!" (What game? What genre? Delete.)
- "Press release: Studio XYZ announces Title ABC" (You're not EA. Nobody's waiting for your press release.)
- "EXCLUSIVE OPPORTUNITY" (No.)
Personalization helps more than any formula. If you reference the journalist's recent work in the subject line, open rates go up significantly. "Loved your Balatro deep-dive, thought you'd dig our poker roguelike" tells the journalist you actually read their stuff. That alone separates you from 90% of their inbox.
The Email Body
Keep it short. Five paragraphs max. Here's the structure:
Paragraph 1: The hook. One to two sentences. What's your game, and why should they care right now? Use your one-sentence hook here.
Paragraph 2: The details. Genre, platform, release window, price point. The facts they'd need to write a news blurb.
Paragraph 3: Why now. Are you launching? Hitting Early Access? Just dropped a new trailer? Participating in Steam Next Fest? Give them a reason to cover you today, not "eventually."
Paragraph 4: The links. Press kit URL, trailer link, Steam page. Make these clickable and prominent. Don't attach massive ZIP files to the email.
Paragraph 5: The close. One sentence offering a review key, demo access, or interview availability. Sign off with your name, title, and studio.
That's it. No life story about how you quit your job to follow your dream. No three-paragraph explanation of your game's lore. No "I know you're busy, but..." preamble. Journalists already know they're busy. You reminding them doesn't help.
A Template You Can Actually Use
Subject: [Genre] [Hook], [Timing context]
Hi [First Name],
[Game Title] is a [genre] where [one-sentence hook]. [One sentence about what makes it unique or interesting.]
It's coming to [platforms] on [date/window], priced at [price]. [One notable fact: "featured in Steam Next Fest" or "85% positive reviews in Early Access" or "from the creators of X."]
We're reaching out because [we just launched / our demo drops next week / we have a new trailer]. [If personalized: "I thought this might be up your alley after your recent piece on X."]
Press kit: [URL] Trailer: [URL] Steam page: [URL]
Happy to send a review key or set up a chat. Thanks for your time.
[Your name] [Studio name]
Adapt this. Don't copy it verbatim. Journalists can spot a template from orbit.
The Follow-Up
Follow up once. Maybe twice. Never three times.
The timing matters. Wait five to seven days after your initial email. Your follow-up should be short: "Hey, just bumping this in case it got buried. Happy to send a key if you're interested." That's it.
Game journalists have confirmed this publicly. Ana Diaz at Polygon has said directly: always follow up. Nine out of ten times, the moment a developer pitches her isn't the right time. That doesn't mean she's not interested. It means the timing was off, and a gentle follow-up at a better moment can make the difference.
But there's a line. Two follow-ups is the absolute maximum. Three puts you on someone's mental blacklist. If they haven't responded after two, let it go and try again with your next milestone (new trailer, launch date announcement, demo release).
Timing Your Outreach
When you send your pitch matters almost as much as what's in it.
The Outreach Timeline
Six to eight weeks before launch: Start reaching out to your top-tier targets. These are the outlets and creators you most want coverage from. Give them time to plan, request keys, and fit you into their editorial calendar.
Three to four weeks before launch: Expand to your full list. Send keys to anyone who's expressed interest. This is your widest push.
Launch week: Send a brief "we're live" email to everyone on your list, including those who didn't respond earlier. Sometimes the hook is "it's out right now and reviews are strong." Attach your launch trailer and any early review quotes.
Post-launch: Don't stop. Sales milestones, major updates, and DLC releases are all valid reasons to re-pitch. The relationship doesn't end at launch.
Seasonal Windows
Some months are dead zones for indie press pitches. Others are golden. Plan accordingly.
Good windows:
- January through February (post-holiday drought, outlets need content)
- March through April (pre-summer, relatively quiet)
- September through October (back from summer, pre-holiday)
Harder windows:
- June (Summer Game Fest, E3 successor events, every AAA publisher is screaming for attention)
- Late November through December (holiday releases, GOTY coverage, year-end lists dominate)
- Gamescom week in August (same problem as June but compressed into one week)
Steam Next Fest Is Its Own Press Strategy
If you're participating in Steam Next Fest (February, June, or October), treat it as a discrete press event. Journalists and content creators actively scout Next Fest for games to cover. Having a polished demo live during the festival gives them something concrete to play and write about.
Your outreach should start two to three weeks before Next Fest begins. Mention the festival in your pitch. "Our demo will be playable during Steam Next Fest starting [date]" gives the journalist a built-in news hook and a deadline. Coverage during Next Fest also compounds with the festival's own traffic, creating the kind of external visibility spike that triggers Steam's Discovery Queue.
Day and Time
This is less critical than people think, but it's not nothing. Tuesday through Thursday mornings (in the journalist's time zone) tend to get the best open rates. Monday mornings are inbox triage. Friday afternoons are mentally checked out. Weekends are worse.
After the Pitch
You got a response. Someone wants a key. Now what?
Managing Keys Like a Professional
If you're copying and pasting Steam keys from a text file into individual email replies, you're going to have a bad time at scale.
Set up a system. Keymailer and Terminals.io both let you manage key requests, verify that the person requesting is who they say they are, and track which keys went where. presskit.gg also includes a key request feature that integrates directly with your press page, so journalists can request access right from your press kit.
Track every key. Know who has one, when they received it, and whether they've published anything. This data helps you understand your conversion rate and refine your list for future projects.
Embargoes
Embargoes work like this: you give journalists early access to your game (or trailer, or announcement) under the agreement that they won't publish until a specific date and time. This lets multiple outlets prepare their coverage simultaneously, which means you get a coordinated wave of articles on embargo lift day instead of a trickle.
Embargoes are standard practice for AAA, and they work for indies too. If you've got enough interest (say, five or more outlets wanting keys), consider setting an embargo timed to your launch.
Keep embargo communication crystal clear. Specify the exact date, time, and time zone. Put it in the email subject line. Put it in the email body. Misunderstandings here burn bridges.
When Nobody Responds
Silence is the most common outcome. Get comfortable with it.
No response usually isn't personal. It means the journalist was busy, your game wasn't right for them at that moment, or your email landed on the wrong day. Don't take it as a verdict on your game's quality.
What you can do: build the relationship for the long term. Follow their work. Reply to their articles on social media (genuine replies, not "great article, btw check out my game"). When your next milestone hits, they'll recognize your name. Press outreach isn't a one-shot transaction. It's a slow accumulation of familiarity and trust.
As Polygon's Ana Diaz has put it: nine out of ten times, the moment someone pitches isn't the right time. But cultivating a longer relationship changes those odds over time.
Measuring Whether It Worked
You did the outreach. Some articles published. Now, did any of it actually matter?
Steam Traffic Analytics
Steamworks gives you a traffic breakdown showing exactly where your store page visits come from. After a press article goes live, check your external traffic sources. You'll see referrals from the specific outlets that covered you.
The numbers might be humbling. A single article on a mid-tier outlet might send 200 to 500 visitors. But remember: these are high-intent visitors. Someone who clicked through from a PC Gamer article about roguelikes and landed on your roguelike's Steam page is far more likely to wishlist than a random Discovery Queue impression.
UTM Parameters
If you're sending different press kit URLs to different outlets (and you should), add UTM parameters to track which sources drive traffic. Most link shorteners make this easy. The data helps you understand which outlets deliver actual visitors versus just publishing into the void.
The Compound Effect
The real impact of press coverage rarely shows up in a single traffic spike. It shows up six months later when someone Googles "best farming sims 2026" and finds an article that mentions your game. It shows up when a YouTuber reads that article and decides to check out your game for a video. It shows up when a publisher sees "as featured in Rock Paper Shotgun" on your pitch deck and takes the meeting.
Press coverage is a long game. Measure the immediate traffic, sure. But understand that the real ROI accumulates invisibly over months.
Trading Up: Virality to Press
Here's a tactic that works surprisingly well and that most devs overlook. If your game goes viral anywhere (Reddit, TikTok, Twitter, a random forum), immediately pitch press outlets about the virality itself. "Our trailer just hit 2 million views on TikTok" is a news story. Journalists are always looking for content that'll drive traffic to their sites, and a game that's already proven it can capture attention is a safer bet than an unknown.
The Momento team did exactly this. Their initial TikTok success led to an article on GamesRadar, which led to more visibility, which triggered Steam's algorithm. Each step fed the next. The lesson: press coverage and social media aren't separate strategies. They're a feedback loop. Use each to amplify the other.
The Uncomfortable Truth Nobody Tells You
Here's what most press coverage guides won't say: the game matters more than the pitch.
If your game looks unremarkable in screenshots and your trailer doesn't hook anyone in five seconds, the world's most perfectly crafted pitch email won't save you. Choo-Choo Charles didn't go viral because of a brilliant PR strategy. It went viral because "evil spider train hunts you on an island" is an irresistible concept that makes people hit the share button.
Chris Zukowski estimates that 80 to 90 percent of a game's commercial success comes down to the product itself: genre, concept, art style, and how well it fits what the market actually wants. Press outreach is the last 10 to 20 percent. But that 10 to 20 percent, well executed, can be the difference between obscurity and a sustainable launch.
So before you spend weeks building a press list and agonizing over subject lines, step back and ask: does my game have a hook that makes strangers want to share it? Can I explain it in one sentence and watch someone's eyes light up?
If the answer is yes, everything in this guide will work for you. If the answer is "not yet," that's okay. Work on the hook. Sharpen the concept. Make the trailer undeniable. Then come back and press send.
The inbox is waiting. Make sure you've got something worth opening.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many press contacts do I need?
Between 200 and 400 is the sweet spot. Build your list in tiers: 20-30 Tier 1 (dream coverage), 80-100 Tier 2 (realistic targets), and the rest Tier 3 (long shots and niche sites). Quality beats quantity, so every contact should cover games like yours.
Should I focus on press or content creators?
Both, but content creators often drive more wishlists for indie games. A YouTuber with 50,000 subscribers in your specific niche can move more wishlists than a generic article on a major outlet that reaches a million people who don't care about your genre.
What if nobody responds to my pitch?
Silence is the most common outcome. It's not personal. Follow up once after 5-7 days with new information if possible. If still no response, let it go and try again with your next milestone. The relationship builds over time, not through a single email.
When should I send my pitch emails?
Six to eight weeks before launch for top-tier targets, three to four weeks for your full list. Avoid sending during GDC week, Summer Game Fest, or the same day as major AAA launches. Tuesday through Thursday mornings in the journalist's time zone tend to perform best.
Related Guides
Dive deeper into each aspect of press coverage: