presskit() Is Dead

If you're searching for "dopresskit alternative," you already know the punchline. presskit() is dead. Not deprecated, not "in maintenance mode," not "looking for a new maintainer." Dead. The PHP it depends on has moved on. The hosting it assumed has changed. The download still works, which is almost worse, because it gives you hope before the 500 errors start.

TL;DR: presskit() requires PHP 5, FTP deployment, and XML editing. None of these are practical in 2026. Modern alternatives: presskit.gg (free WordPress plugin, self-hosted), Press Kitty (hosted SaaS, fast setup), or Milou (static site generator for technical users).

Key Takeaways

• presskit() hasn't been updated since approximately 2014-2017 and breaks on modern PHP.
• The tool was revolutionary for its time but technology moved on.
• presskit.gg preserves the self-hosted philosophy on modern WordPress infrastructure.
• Press Kitty offers the fastest setup for developers who don't want to manage hosting.
• If your presskit() is still working, migrate now before your host updates PHP.

This article covers the full history, explains exactly what broke, and walks through every modern alternative worth considering. If you're trying to pick a replacement, check our full tools comparison guide for broader context on how press kit tools fit into your marketing stack. And if you're specifically weighing Press Kitty against presskit.gg, we wrote a detailed honest comparison for that too.

A Brief History of presskit()

Rami Ismail, one half of Dutch studio Vlambeer (Nuclear Throne, Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers), built presskit() in about a week. The first commits on GitHub date to late November 2013. Rami open-sourced it, made it free, and the indie game community adopted it almost overnight.

The pitch was simple and genuinely good: spend an hour filling out some XML files, upload them via FTP to your PHP hosting, and get a clean, standardized press page. Screenshots in a grid. Trailers embedded. Descriptions formatted. Download links for assets. Everything a journalist needed, laid out in a consistent format that the press learned to recognize.

It worked because it solved a real problem at the right time. In 2013, most indie devs had no press page at all, or they had a half-broken WordPress theme with screenshots buried three clicks deep. Journalists at Polygon, Kotaku, and Rock Paper Shotgun learned the presskit() layout. They knew where to find the trailer, where to grab logos, where the factsheet lived. Standardization helped everyone.

presskit() also had a companion service called distribute(), hosted at dodistribute.com, for managing press contact lists. That domain now redirects to a domain parking page. Gone.

The GitHub repo tells the real story. Active commits ran from November 2013 through December 2014. Then silence. One isolated commit appeared in November 2024 (likely a README tweak), but the actual codebase hasn't been meaningfully updated in over a decade.

Rami moved on. Vlambeer closed in 2020 after shipping their final game. Rami shifted focus to consulting, speaking, and his own projects. Nobody is owed perpetual open-source maintenance. The tool was a gift. But gifts that depend on a specific PHP version don't age gracefully.

What Actually Broke

presskit() was built for PHP 5.x. The code uses patterns and functions that PHP 7 deprecated and PHP 8 removed entirely. Here's what happens when you try to run it on modern hosting:

PHP version incompatibility. Most shared hosting providers now default to PHP 8.0 or higher. Some still offer PHP 7.4 as a legacy option, but even that produces warnings. PHP 5.6 support is essentially gone from commercial hosting. The specific issues include deprecated each() function calls, changed behavior in string handling functions, and strict type checking that presskit() never anticipated.

FTP deployment model. presskit() assumed you'd upload files via FTP. Most modern hosting workflows use Git deployment, CI/CD pipelines, or managed platforms where FTP access is either unavailable or actively discouraged. The "download a zip, unzip via FTP" model feels like installing software from a CD-ROM. It works if you still have the hardware. Most people don't.

XML data format. All content lived in XML files (data.xml for each project). No database. No admin panel. No web interface for editing. You opened a text file, typed between XML tags, and re-uploaded. This was fine in 2013. By 2026 standards, it's like editing your game's dialogue by modifying assembly code. Functional, technically, but nobody should have to.

No HTTPS support out of the box. The tool predates the Let's Encrypt era and the expectation that everything runs over HTTPS. Getting it to work with SSL requires manual configuration that the tool was never designed for.

Silent failures. This is the cruelest part. When presskit() breaks on newer PHP versions, it doesn't always show a clear error page. Sometimes it shows a blank page. Sometimes it shows partial content with mangled formatting. Sometimes the company page loads but individual game pages throw 500 errors. Developers have discovered their press kit was broken only when a journalist emailed to say the link was dead. In practice, developers who've had this happen report that they have no way of knowing how many coverage opportunities were silently lost before they found out. That's like finding out your save file is corrupted after the final boss, not during the tutorial.

The Scale of the Damage

It's hard to pin an exact number, but presskit() was used by thousands of indie studios. Vlambeer's influence in the indie scene during 2013-2016 was enormous. Every GDC talk, every indie meetup, every "how to market your indie game" blog post recommended presskit(). Some estimates put the number of installations in the low thousands.

Many of those press kits are simply gone now. The hosting expired. The domain lapsed. The PHP version changed and nobody noticed. Some are still limping along on legacy hosting configurations, serving pages that might break with the next server update.

For studios with multiple shipped games, the impact was real. Years of accumulated backlinks from press coverage now point to dead pages. Google search results for "YourGame press kit" lead to error pages. Journalists who bookmarked your press page in 2015 get a 500 error in 2026. Developers who've gone through this describe the realization as genuinely painful—years of SEO value and relationship-building suddenly pointing to nothing.

Modern Alternatives Compared

Here's an honest comparison of what's available now. We make presskit.gg, so we're biased. We'll try to be transparent about that bias.

presskit.gg

Full disclosure: this is our product. It's a WordPress plugin. You install it on your existing WordPress site and your press kit lives at yourdomain.com/presskit. Free tier covers 1-2 games with base themes. The Indie tier (EUR 39/year) adds up to 5 games, premium themes, analytics, and custom branding. Studio tier (EUR 79/year) gives unlimited games, Steam API import, key request management, and embargo scheduling.

The main advantage: your press kit survives anything that happens to us. If presskit.gg ceased to exist tomorrow, your data would still be in your WordPress database and your pages would still load. That's the self-hosted argument in a nutshell.

The main disadvantage: you need WordPress. If you don't have a WordPress site and don't want one, this adds overhead.

Press Kitty

Part of the IMPRESS ecosystem. Genuinely good free tier: 3 games, 1 company page, 100MB storage, Steam import, Google Analytics integration. The setup experience is fast. You can have a press kit live in minutes. For a solo dev who needs something today, this is the best hosted option.

The Plus tier adds custom domains, AI translations, high-res assets, and dark mode theming. IMPRESS also bundles coverage monitoring, creator discovery, and outreach tools.

Honest strengths: speed of setup, Steam import on free tier, part of a larger marketing toolkit. Honest weaknesses: your press kit lives on their servers, export features are still "Coming Soon," and concentrating your press kit, outreach, and coverage tracking in one company is a single point of failure.

PressKitHero

Free tier gives you 1 press kit with a custom domain. Paid tier is $20/month for the same thing with unlimited content upload, or $80/month for unlimited press kits. Not game-specific, so templates are generic. At $240/year for a single press kit, the math doesn't work when game-specific alternatives are free or much cheaper.

The "DIY" options

Google Drive folders, Notion pages, plain HTML files. We cover Google Drive press kits and Notion press kits in separate guides. For a direct comparison of presskit.gg against Notion specifically, see presskit.gg vs Notion for Game Press Kits. Short version: they're fine for asset distribution but terrible for discoverability and professionalism.

Migrating from presskit()

If you still have a working presskit() installation (or at least access to the files), here's how to get your data out.

Step 1: Grab your data files. Connect to your hosting via FTP or file manager. Your presskit() data lives in XML files. There's a main data.xml in the root directory (company info) and one data.xml in each game's subdirectory. Download all of them. Also download all images from each game's images/ folder, any logos from images/, and any header images.

Step 2: Map the fields. presskit() XML fields map pretty directly to modern tools:

• <title> becomes your game title
• <description> becomes your game description
• <history> becomes your company history
• <trailer> (YouTube/Vimeo URLs) become your trailer embeds
• <award> entries become your awards list
• <quote> entries become your press quotes
• <credit> entries become your team credits
• <platform> entries become your platforms list

Step 3: Set up redirects. This is the critical part most people skip. Your old presskit() URLs looked something like:

yourdomain.com/presskit/
yourdomain.com/presskit/sheet.php?p=your_game_name

Every journalist article, every press list, every bookmarked link points to these URLs. If you just delete presskit() and install something new, all those links die. Set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. In .htaccess:

Redirect 301 /presskit/sheet.php?p=your_game /presskit/your-game/
Redirect 301 /presskit/ /presskit/

The exact redirect rules depend on your new tool's URL structure. For a detailed migration walkthrough, see our step-by-step migration guide.

Step 4: Tell Google. After setting up redirects, submit your new URLs to Google Search Console. The 301 redirects will eventually transfer SEO authority, but submitting the new sitemap speeds things up.

What To Do Right Now

If your presskit() is still online and working, you're on borrowed time. Your hosting provider could update PHP tomorrow. Your next server migration could break it. Don't wait until a journalist tells you it's dead.

Pick a modern tool. Migrate your content. Set up redirects. Test every link.

If you're starting fresh with no existing presskit() installation, the choice is simpler. You need WordPress hosting anyway? Install presskit.gg. No WordPress and you need something in five minutes? Press Kitty's free tier. Building a studio for the long haul? Invest the afternoon in WordPress setup and own your infrastructure.

The one option we'd push back on is doing nothing. A broken press kit is worse than no press kit. A 500 error page tells journalists you don't care about your own game's presentation. At least a "coming soon" page shows intent. What consistently works is choosing a modern tool now rather than waiting for the "perfect" time—developers who delay migration often find that the perfect time never arrives.

presskit() was a good tool built by a good person for good reasons. It solved a problem that needed solving and it served the indie community well for years. Its time is over. The question isn't whether to move on. It's where to move to.

Pick something that won't require this same article in another ten years.

Free Tool: Game Fact Sheet Generator — Generate a professional fact sheet for your new press kit in minutes. Runs in your browser, no signup required.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I still run presskit() if I find PHP 5 hosting?

Technically yes, but you shouldn't. PHP 5 has known security vulnerabilities that will never be patched. Running unmaintained code on a public server is a risk to your entire site.

How do I migrate my data from presskit() to a modern tool?

Your presskit() data lives in XML files. Download all data.xml files and the images folder, then manually re-enter the content in your new tool. For presskit.gg, we have a migration guide covering the exact steps.

Why did Rami Ismail stop maintaining presskit()?

He moved on. Vlambeer closed in 2020, and Rami shifted to consulting and other projects. Nobody is owed perpetual open-source maintenance. The tool was a gift to the community that served its purpose for years.

What's the fastest migration if I need a press kit today?

Press Kitty with Steam import. Enter your Steam app ID and it pulls your data automatically. You can have a working press kit in under 30 minutes.

Related Guides

This article is part of our series on marketing tools. Start with the complete guide:

• Our indie game marketing tools comparison

Also in this series:

• Press Kitty vs. presskit.gg
• Google Drive press kits vs. dedicated websites
• Notion press kit templates