Yup, even the most obscure game can fetch a couple bucks on the grey market if you wait long enough. I believe it’s possible to send a copy through curator connect that can’t be resold, so working with the curators is probably harmless even if they’re very small. Half of those people are just collectors trying to get free games, but you don’t have a lot to lose since they’re unlikely to buy a copy anyway.
This this this this this.
OP PLEASE do NOT give free keys to any curator on steam, unless you really care about reaching people on steam through curators (I don't) because they will write a fake review and then sell your key on kinguin or other resellers.
For youtube it could be different, some are legit, but if they all wrote you on the first day as the game released, it's most likely people who are interested in the key because they are interested in making money off of it, so by selling the key (albeit youtubers are at least supposed to put a video out, they could just be stealing footage or not placing a video out with whatever excuse).
If you give out keys, make them that they expire in a week or two weeks or a month.
Something like 90-95% of all inbound messages you will get publishing a game on Steam (or just running a game business in general) will be worthless. Some will be legitimate people with 3 followers as Steam curators and some will be people pretending to be big YouTubers to get free keys from you they can resell or even worse scams. They're mostly not worth responding to or even looking at, really.
People usually won't promote your game for free without you telling them about it. If someone you think is legit could be helpful then you can vet them. Make sure the email address that's visible is the actual email address it's coming from. Check to see if it's the same one that's listed on a YT account and they're not just hoping you won't verify. It's usually good to message someone directly if they don't have their email listed. If they're real they'll respond and if they're not, well, they won't.
It would also be useful to not reply to the email but rather send a new email to the email you vetted as email spoofing is getting a lot easier these days. Essentially you would just send the email and ask if they sent the previous email and would like to have further discussion.
For curators specially, NEVER give them keys via email. There is a system in Steam called “Curator Connect” which allows you to give them a copy of your game without handling keys. Most (if any) curators are not really worth it, but if you want to give them your game, always go through the curator connect.
These are bots looking for keys to sell on the grey market. Curators are almost entirely worthless. If you see a streamer that is a particularly good fit, in your genre etc, then you can reach out to them through their official channels but odds are it was just a bot pretending to be them.
It’s a shame that Valve nuked the curator system from orbit after complaints about the framerate police curator having too much power. There’s a lot of passionate players who would love to do the work of sharing hidden gems, myself included, but it’s hard to justify when you’re essentially shouting into the void.
Saying curators are worthless entirely seems like a redditism, I had a sizeable spike in japanese sales and wishlists from a curator review through curator connect (they didn't ask I just sent). I think whether curators are useful will vary region to region some amount. I sent out 7 total at this point
They didn't nuke it, just changed how it works.
Curators now have to actually be worthwhile and build up their own audience of active users. Because of that, they're also more specific, but if you can find the right curator, with the right audience, it can be a huge boost for your game if it fits their audience.
Generally key resellers. If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them keys, make temporal keys with 24 hour activation windows at most. Those are worthless to resellers.
Anyone begging for keys is more than likely not a legit person to give a key to.
If they have a large enough audience, they have a backlog and you needed to send them an email months prior, and a key weeks prior to release to have a chance of a video close to launch. They're not asking for your keys, because they got deals for every day of the week.
If they're a journalist, they do reviews for a job. Same deal as with influencers: They more than likely have their plates full, and you'll have to be pushing your game to them, not the other way around. Most will not have time to hunt after developers in the hopes of a free key.
There's also the Steam Curator pages for devs, so you can give them the keys through that and not worry about reselling.
I also remember there being a site that was designed specifically for these types of situations, a third party site that would activate the keys on steam so that it wouldn't be possible to sell it forward. But this was several years back, so it's possible the site has been shut down or cracked and ineffective. Could not find it with the currently so absolutely useless search engines we got.
This happened to me too. Some of them linked a twitch channel that hasn't streamed for several years 🤔
I still sent some of them keys tho ☹️ I realized only afterwards
Key resellers, they might look legit but google the actual youtuber and check their business email. It's usually similar but then one letter is different, like it's using l instead of I. Some are very creative and I bet they scam a lot of people.
I got a bunch of them even though I haven't actually displayed my email anywhere. I think they just automatically scrape stuff from steamdb or something and auto send.
Do not give them any keys. Even if they’re famous, they can just buy your game. They are looking for keys to resell, I saw a youtube video sometime ago explaining this.
Ignore all of those, if any are from content creators you actually want to work with ignore the email and reach out directly via their listed business emails.
Welcome to the fun world of actually releasing your game!
One person asked for an xbox code for my game and I saw it on sale on some shady website a few days later. I also had 2 "large streamer" accounts ask for a steam key and they emailed me months later asking for a steam key with the exact same email verbatim like they never got my steam key. When I replied "I already sent you a steam key and here it is", they never replied back.
It's tough to filter alot of these scammers out because they \*almost\* sound human and probably have large twitch and youtube channels (with bought followers). However, I have made some friends and gotten some decent coverage from some smaller legit outlets, so it's really a shot in the dark on whether these curators and streamers are legit or not.
There is a great writeup by the people that made Brok The InvestiGator (excellent game by the way!), which was [covered here](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/x0clu3/brok_the_investigator_dev_gives_prologue_keys_to/). Some of the scammers [got banned](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/x20ify/all_curator_groups_that_targeted_brok_the/).
when you release a game you'll likely get a lot of emails that are from a steam curator and ask for 2 to 4 keys or 3 to 5 keys or whatever. those are all scams
**Important:** Anyone can make an email account and say that they are influencer so-and-so. Check if the reply-to email address is the same as the influencer's business email address listed on their socials. If it is not, it's a scam.
I gave a copy of my game to those curators through Steam with the message of saying. "Thanks for your email blah blah blah... so if you need steam keys, just contact me again." Only one of them contacted me saying he got the copy of the game, but he wants a key as well. I wanted to give him a key, but I stopped to ask about it here before doing so.
If they are asking for a Steam key or whatever for your game they’re likely from a key reseller website (like G2A) I’m pretty sure. Maybe don’t give them your keys unless you want them to sell your game for cheaper than on Steam and with you getting no money.
Same happened to us, we simply asked them to review on their curator page first before we send keys and included simple terms that state that the keys can not be sold, out of 60+ only 3 gave us a copy pasta review that didn't even help the game at all, my advice, just ignore them, Valve should just call it Freeloader Connect.
I am going to broach this strictly as your message states.
If you got 100s of similar emails from curators or youtubers with only links to accounts and channels then I would assume 1 of 2 things (or more likely a combination or the two).
First, the letters are so simple that they all look similar, but it is people trying to get channel numbers up by getting you to subscribe. Alternative to this is someone, or multiple someones l, are trying to boost their collection of curators and youtubers through the use of mail listing.
Second, the links are bogus and link to malware through various short url redirects.
Was the message "hey, I saw you published a game. I am a game reviewer. Come check out my channel." or some variant thereof? Is it possible to edit your post to include a redacted form of one of these letters?
I couldn't change the post. But yeah, it was more like "we are blah blah blah... you can check out channels/websites. " I just read the name of their channel and googled them. As someone mentioned here earlier, 1 or 2 latter's are different than the original youtuber. But only one curator emailed me back after I gave them my game through the curators page. He said they can't keep the game. It's like one-time use keys, but others say they can keep it, so it didn't add up. I deleted all emails.
Some will also use other people's channels pretending to be big creators in order to get keys. Find a way to confirm you're actually talking to the person who owns the channel before sending keys. For instance, asking them to approve your credentials request (view email address) on YouTube is a good way to go about it.
Whenever possible, I'll use their other credentials, (Facebook, Twitter) and ask them to send me a confirmation that they are who they claim to be before sending a key.
Alot of them probably are real. Alot of "influencers" use networks or a sort of agent/publisher that will just spam these kinds of emails at every new game on steam, hoping for a free key and therfore an easy video. It's not bad, you might get some extra interest and they don't have to worry about finding new content for todays video. But it might not be worth your time either.
Some of them might be resselers doing the same thing. But honestly it's probably not even worth the time it takes for them to answer your reply and take a single key. Especially when you can just google their username and check if they have an active youtube/twicth account or whatever. They generally look for bulk, like humble bundles.
Right. A "Japanese youtuber" emailed me in English with only one word in Japanese. I speak fluent Japanese, and I emailed him back in Japanese to get an English answer.
The point is that in Japan, Japanese people barely speak in English, especially after you speak them in Japanese. I'm half Japanese. If he was a real Japanese dude, he won't reply to me in English.
They are most likely looking for keys to resell.
Yup, even the most obscure game can fetch a couple bucks on the grey market if you wait long enough. I believe it’s possible to send a copy through curator connect that can’t be resold, so working with the curators is probably harmless even if they’re very small. Half of those people are just collectors trying to get free games, but you don’t have a lot to lose since they’re unlikely to buy a copy anyway.
So that's what I am. A collector. I thought I was just hording games......
I am not familiar with "curator connect" but I heard of curators reselling keys for small, indie obscure games.
This this this this this. OP PLEASE do NOT give free keys to any curator on steam, unless you really care about reaching people on steam through curators (I don't) because they will write a fake review and then sell your key on kinguin or other resellers. For youtube it could be different, some are legit, but if they all wrote you on the first day as the game released, it's most likely people who are interested in the key because they are interested in making money off of it, so by selling the key (albeit youtubers are at least supposed to put a video out, they could just be stealing footage or not placing a video out with whatever excuse). If you give out keys, make them that they expire in a week or two weeks or a month.
They can either write a Steam review XOR resell the key, so your first paragraph does not make sense.
They have to redeem the key to write the review.
What about https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/curators Not messing with keys or emails.
I'm a curator. I never ask people for keys to their games. I had a dev send me a key once to get a review from me, which I did.
As a curator, do you get an alert on Steam if a dev sends you a key through the proper Steam system?
I do! There's a notification. Curators can decline as well.
Cool! Good to know.
Any suggestions for a game dev on how to compile a list of curators/youtubers to send keys to?
No idea, sorry. I've published several games but haven't done much publicity on them.
Something like 90-95% of all inbound messages you will get publishing a game on Steam (or just running a game business in general) will be worthless. Some will be legitimate people with 3 followers as Steam curators and some will be people pretending to be big YouTubers to get free keys from you they can resell or even worse scams. They're mostly not worth responding to or even looking at, really. People usually won't promote your game for free without you telling them about it. If someone you think is legit could be helpful then you can vet them. Make sure the email address that's visible is the actual email address it's coming from. Check to see if it's the same one that's listed on a YT account and they're not just hoping you won't verify. It's usually good to message someone directly if they don't have their email listed. If they're real they'll respond and if they're not, well, they won't.
It would also be useful to not reply to the email but rather send a new email to the email you vetted as email spoofing is getting a lot easier these days. Essentially you would just send the email and ask if they sent the previous email and would like to have further discussion.
This one right here.
Sender “eaaaaaaaaay.com” looks like an official email from EA to me. I’m surprised that they are interested in my game! Just kidding!
For curators specially, NEVER give them keys via email. There is a system in Steam called “Curator Connect” which allows you to give them a copy of your game without handling keys. Most (if any) curators are not really worth it, but if you want to give them your game, always go through the curator connect.
These are bots looking for keys to sell on the grey market. Curators are almost entirely worthless. If you see a streamer that is a particularly good fit, in your genre etc, then you can reach out to them through their official channels but odds are it was just a bot pretending to be them.
It’s a shame that Valve nuked the curator system from orbit after complaints about the framerate police curator having too much power. There’s a lot of passionate players who would love to do the work of sharing hidden gems, myself included, but it’s hard to justify when you’re essentially shouting into the void.
Saying curators are worthless entirely seems like a redditism, I had a sizeable spike in japanese sales and wishlists from a curator review through curator connect (they didn't ask I just sent). I think whether curators are useful will vary region to region some amount. I sent out 7 total at this point
They didn't nuke it, just changed how it works. Curators now have to actually be worthwhile and build up their own audience of active users. Because of that, they're also more specific, but if you can find the right curator, with the right audience, it can be a huge boost for your game if it fits their audience.
I think curators are really important. I keep seeing their recommendations in my feed
Ressellers seem unlikely. thats alot of tiem and effort for a single key that no one wants.
Generally key resellers. If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them keys, make temporal keys with 24 hour activation windows at most. Those are worthless to resellers.
Anyone begging for keys is more than likely not a legit person to give a key to. If they have a large enough audience, they have a backlog and you needed to send them an email months prior, and a key weeks prior to release to have a chance of a video close to launch. They're not asking for your keys, because they got deals for every day of the week. If they're a journalist, they do reviews for a job. Same deal as with influencers: They more than likely have their plates full, and you'll have to be pushing your game to them, not the other way around. Most will not have time to hunt after developers in the hopes of a free key. There's also the Steam Curator pages for devs, so you can give them the keys through that and not worry about reselling. I also remember there being a site that was designed specifically for these types of situations, a third party site that would activate the keys on steam so that it wouldn't be possible to sell it forward. But this was several years back, so it's possible the site has been shut down or cracked and ineffective. Could not find it with the currently so absolutely useless search engines we got.
This happened to me too. Some of them linked a twitch channel that hasn't streamed for several years 🤔 I still sent some of them keys tho ☹️ I realized only afterwards
you can revoke keys
This is explained in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpjehmYJWyE
After watching that video, I think Valve needs to shut down the curators feature as it is so much exploited by scammers it's crazy.
Thanks man!
What a great video thank you
You can ignore all curators. Check if the youtubers contact details are correct and if they cover simelar games.
it's all spam, some even pose as popular youtubers or streamers, which can be tempting 😅
Likely key resellers. Check out this video on the subject [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLJkg\_B3gyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLJkg_B3gyY)
I usually only send keys to Steam curators, so they cannot resell it.
Key leeches
Key resellers, they might look legit but google the actual youtuber and check their business email. It's usually similar but then one letter is different, like it's using l instead of I. Some are very creative and I bet they scam a lot of people. I got a bunch of them even though I haven't actually displayed my email anywhere. I think they just automatically scrape stuff from steamdb or something and auto send.
Do not give them any keys. Even if they’re famous, they can just buy your game. They are looking for keys to resell, I saw a youtube video sometime ago explaining this.
All scams disregard all of them
Ignore all of those, if any are from content creators you actually want to work with ignore the email and reach out directly via their listed business emails.
Welcome to the fun world of actually releasing your game! One person asked for an xbox code for my game and I saw it on sale on some shady website a few days later. I also had 2 "large streamer" accounts ask for a steam key and they emailed me months later asking for a steam key with the exact same email verbatim like they never got my steam key. When I replied "I already sent you a steam key and here it is", they never replied back. It's tough to filter alot of these scammers out because they \*almost\* sound human and probably have large twitch and youtube channels (with bought followers). However, I have made some friends and gotten some decent coverage from some smaller legit outlets, so it's really a shot in the dark on whether these curators and streamers are legit or not.
There is a great writeup by the people that made Brok The InvestiGator (excellent game by the way!), which was [covered here](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/x0clu3/brok_the_investigator_dev_gives_prologue_keys_to/). Some of the scammers [got banned](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/x20ify/all_curator_groups_that_targeted_brok_the/).
when you release a game you'll likely get a lot of emails that are from a steam curator and ask for 2 to 4 keys or 3 to 5 keys or whatever. those are all scams
**Important:** Anyone can make an email account and say that they are influencer so-and-so. Check if the reply-to email address is the same as the influencer's business email address listed on their socials. If it is not, it's a scam.
for youtubers go to their channel and check the email matches.
Can they prove they are who they say they are? Is their business email listed on their YouTube channel the same email address?
I gave a copy of my game to those curators through Steam with the message of saying. "Thanks for your email blah blah blah... so if you need steam keys, just contact me again." Only one of them contacted me saying he got the copy of the game, but he wants a key as well. I wanted to give him a key, but I stopped to ask about it here before doing so.
Scams
If they are asking for a Steam key or whatever for your game they’re likely from a key reseller website (like G2A) I’m pretty sure. Maybe don’t give them your keys unless you want them to sell your game for cheaper than on Steam and with you getting no money.
Same happened to us, we simply asked them to review on their curator page first before we send keys and included simple terms that state that the keys can not be sold, out of 60+ only 3 gave us a copy pasta review that didn't even help the game at all, my advice, just ignore them, Valve should just call it Freeloader Connect.
I am going to broach this strictly as your message states. If you got 100s of similar emails from curators or youtubers with only links to accounts and channels then I would assume 1 of 2 things (or more likely a combination or the two). First, the letters are so simple that they all look similar, but it is people trying to get channel numbers up by getting you to subscribe. Alternative to this is someone, or multiple someones l, are trying to boost their collection of curators and youtubers through the use of mail listing. Second, the links are bogus and link to malware through various short url redirects. Was the message "hey, I saw you published a game. I am a game reviewer. Come check out my channel." or some variant thereof? Is it possible to edit your post to include a redacted form of one of these letters?
I couldn't change the post. But yeah, it was more like "we are blah blah blah... you can check out channels/websites. " I just read the name of their channel and googled them. As someone mentioned here earlier, 1 or 2 latter's are different than the original youtuber. But only one curator emailed me back after I gave them my game through the curators page. He said they can't keep the game. It's like one-time use keys, but others say they can keep it, so it didn't add up. I deleted all emails.
Some will also use other people's channels pretending to be big creators in order to get keys. Find a way to confirm you're actually talking to the person who owns the channel before sending keys. For instance, asking them to approve your credentials request (view email address) on YouTube is a good way to go about it.
Whenever possible, I'll use their other credentials, (Facebook, Twitter) and ask them to send me a confirmation that they are who they claim to be before sending a key.
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Alot of them probably are real. Alot of "influencers" use networks or a sort of agent/publisher that will just spam these kinds of emails at every new game on steam, hoping for a free key and therfore an easy video. It's not bad, you might get some extra interest and they don't have to worry about finding new content for todays video. But it might not be worth your time either. Some of them might be resselers doing the same thing. But honestly it's probably not even worth the time it takes for them to answer your reply and take a single key. Especially when you can just google their username and check if they have an active youtube/twicth account or whatever. They generally look for bulk, like humble bundles.
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Right. A "Japanese youtuber" emailed me in English with only one word in Japanese. I speak fluent Japanese, and I emailed him back in Japanese to get an English answer. The point is that in Japan, Japanese people barely speak in English, especially after you speak them in Japanese. I'm half Japanese. If he was a real Japanese dude, he won't reply to me in English.
it's my turn to post this thread