Streamers and Press — Combining Strategy

How indies can combine creator coverage and press to cut through today’s release noise.

Streamers vs press indie game PR strategy

For indie game PR, understanding the dynamics of streamers vs press is crucial. Practical guidance on timing, targeting, and outreach — so your game isn’t drowned out by today’s release volume.

This guide outlines a streamers vs press indie game PR approach so your launch isn’t drowned out.

Awareness and exposure

As an indie, the level of awareness for a new game can make or break its success. Demos, trailers, devlogs, as well as showcases such as Steam Game Fest, are pivotal in elevating the amount of exposure a game gets prior to launch. Since the beginning of 2025, 48 games per day have been released on Steam. If even half of those were supported by press releases and playable demos, you can appreciate that media and content creators have a lot to pick through — that’s almost 250 new games per week, every week.

---

“If you build it” is not a strategy

To quote the Kevin Costner baseball movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” The days of just uploading your release candidate to Steam and praying for the best are long gone. Just because you built and launched a game isn’t enough to expect consumers to immediately descend onto your Steam page — in fact, I don’t think it’s ever been a sound strategy to rely on hope alone.

Timing matters

Developers need to think about how best to utilise a strategy that combines press and creator coverage to get their game in front of the community they are hoping to target. Timing is important — start too early and people will have long forgotten the game; start too late and the game loses its “fresh” factor and runs the risk of clashing with another fad or gaming trend.

A disciplined calendar makes a streamers vs press indie game PR plan far more effective.

Creator roundtable (video)

Build a well-researched target list

The key here is to build a well-researched target list of streamers and content creators who could help you build community, alongside strong candidates for gaming press that support and champion indie titles. This starts with looking at content creators who played similar games to yours. You need to know who created these types of videos, what type of videos they produced, what sort of access to the game they had, how long they played for, and how many views the video got — all these questions are important to help you target the right content creators for your game.

See our press kit template for indies.

Pitching press and creators

Press journalists receive between 50 and 100 pitches a day, so for your email to stand out it needs to get to the point fast. Streamers and content creators are also too busy to read long-winded email pitches about how being an indie dev is hard, that you’ve worked for three years on it, or that you have half a dozen other games and used to work for Ubisoft and broke away to create your own game. In both cases, your communication approach to press and content creators should be friendly, short, to the point, and direct. Invariably, sacrificing a Steam key in the pitch email is good practice too. It saves time waiting for the reply and puts the key in their hand from the outset.

Clear assets and a tight pitch are what make a streamers vs press indie game PR campaign easy to say yes to.

Prepare weeks in advance

As an indie, you need to streamline the time you spend on raising awareness. Maximise showcases and demo events, but allow enough time to pitch creators and press so that they can also get behind your game and what you are building. Combining this outreach takes work, and you should prepare well in advance — several weeks ahead of your outreach.

Creator inbox reality

YouTube channel owner Gamerzakh (144,000 subs) revealed he gets sent 10 game keys per week. Colonel Failure (58,000 subs), another channel owner, said he gets 20–30 keys sent to him every week. YouTuber Nookrium, who has over 114,000 subscribers, gets sent 100 keys per week on average from developers, PRs, and publishers asking him to “check out my game.” Of those 100 keys, he plays perhaps one or two games which get featured on his channel.

Fit matters

Colonel Failure went on to mention that many of the keys sent to him are not games he would typically play or broadcast, primarily because the developer or publisher did not do the proper research to see if the game was a “good fit” for his channel.

A note from Fix Gaming Channel

I can speak from both sides: I run an outlet and multiple YouTube channels. On a “good” week, I receive around 100 game pitches — sometimes more. It’s impossible to cover everything, so yes, it becomes cherry-picking. Not because developers don’t deserve coverage, but because time is finite — there are only so many minutes in a day.

Even just sorting the inbox is a job: opening, reading, checking links, following up. And to the few I haven’t replied to yet — I will. Please keep updating me and sending builds. It’s rarely about lack of interest; it’s about time, timing, fit, and bandwidth. Personal interest, audience fit, and schedules all matter for outlets and creators alike.

Learn more about Fix Gaming Channel or submit your game for coverage consideration.

---

Enjoy our content? Support Fix Gaming Channel with a donation via
Buy Me a Coffee
to help keep independent game journalism alive.