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[ViktorTheBoar]

If you ever put a game on Steam, you'll meet them. People claiming to be famous youtubers or twitchers or reviewers or whoever. As you probably know, it's mostly scammers or their robots trying to get some free keys to resell on g2a or wherever. What do you think is the best course of action for them?

a) ignore and report for spam.

Easiest, doesn't require much effort. The problem is, there's always a possibility of ignoring/reporting a real reviewer.

b) waste their time with stupid questions and hoops, 419eater style.

The problem is, you probably waste more of your own time than theirs.

c) Send a fake key.

If they are real reviewers, they will let you know that the key is fake. Problem with this approach is that only the g2a buyer loses out here. Scammer and g2a get their money's worth.

I know that g2a's practices is arguably much worse than piracy and it looks like a good idea just to flood them with wrong keys. But is that really a good idea? Please discuss.

[Schoq]

If only the g2a (no clue what this is) buyer loses out on the fake key why would these scammers bother trying to get legitimate keys to begin with

[Bad_Dude 2017]

im pretty sure all the youtubers who are worth their salt do not hunt out emails of obscure indie developers.
you should compile a list of outlets and send out giveaway keys/review copies yourself, thats how everyone does, including AAA publishers.
so a)

[ViktorTheBoar]

im pretty sure all the youtubers who are worth their salt do not hunt out emails of obscure indie developers.
you should compile a list of outlets and send out giveaway keys/review copies yourself, thats how everyone does, including AAA publishers.
so a)

We got lots of real revewers, giveaways etc. You can't just ignore everyone. Especially after you try to contact a million billion people to review your game and most of them don't reply. You start feeling bad for people who genuinely want to do something with your game. But they are hidden among so much scam

[eliasfrost]

Why not send a confirmation email to the youtuber in question to check if they did actually send you a mail. If (s)he did, wouldn't they be waiting for your reply anyway? If they didn't, either they'd be confused or won't reply and you know someone tried to scam you.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

A youtuber without a following of +10k , should buy a game himself because growing up his youtube gaming channel should be an investment.
Imo you should just ignore people asking for keys as they aren't helpful at all.

[ViktorTheBoar]

Why not send a confirmation email to the youtuber in question to check if they did actually send you a mail. If (s)he did, wouldn't they be waiting for your reply anyway? If they didn't, either they'd be confused or won't reply and you know someone tried to scam you.

Yeah, that actually helped us find some new people :D

A youtuber without a following of +10k , should buy a game himself because growing up his youtube gaming channel should be an investment.
Imo you should just ignore people asking for keys as they aren't helpful at all.

If they have +10k followers, it became a job to them and they already get hecktons of free keys from everyone because everyone's fighting for a time slot. And it's much harder for real indies that have cheap/free marketing.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

A youtuber without a following of +10k , should buy a game himself because growing up his youtube gaming channel should be an investment.
Imo you should just ignore people asking for keys as they aren't helpful at all.

If they have +10k followers, it became a job to them and they already get hecktons of free keys from everyone because everyone's fighting for a time slot. And it's much harder for real indies that have cheap/free marketing.

well that was my point, serious youtubers will never ask for free keys

[JWK5]

Aspiring ones might. It doesn't hurt to be reviewed by someone on their way up (unless they are absolutely terrible, which is why you should at least check out the previous works of whoever is asking for keys before handing them out).

[J-Snake]

A youtuber without a following of +10k , should buy a game himself because growing up his youtube gaming channel should be an investment.
Imo you should just ignore people asking for keys as they aren't helpful at all.

If they have +10k followers, it became a job to them and they already get hecktons of free keys from everyone because everyone's fighting for a time slot. And it's much harder for real indies that have cheap/free marketing.

well that was my point, serious youtubers will never ask for free keys

"Big youtubers" is probably more correct.

Aspiring ones might

Yes, I had a request from a new youtuber who was serious about it. And he did a good job with his channel. It is rare, but you never can tell. I suggest to simply ask them to verify themselves on their youtube channel. But there is a good rule of thumb, if you see comical names (especially, check the mail name) like "Hanzo Hanzores" or references to big youtube channels then you can safely ignore such requests.

[ViktorTheBoar]

Aspiring ones might. It doesn't hurt to be reviewed by someone on their way up (unless they are absolutely terrible, which is why you should at least check out the previous works of whoever is asking for keys before handing them out).

We gave keys to any real youtuber. Really any of them. Five subscribers? No problem, have fun. But the scammers annoy me to no end 

[ViktorTheBoar]

BUT there's also fake websites with copy/paste steam reviews:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/5kwt4y/beware_of_copypaste_reviews_in_exchange_for_steam/

freaky

**edit found a link explaining this