How to pitch a game to a publisher

In October 2021, Johan Toresson of Raw Fury said the publisher received at least 1,500 pitches a year, which he called a modest number, and signed fewer than 1% of them. Raw Fury is not unusual. In GamesBeat's 2018 round-up, its business development head put signings at four to seven games a year, Square Enix Collective at four or five, and the smaller Ysbryd Games at about one.

The obvious reading is that a rejection means the game is not good enough. Usually it means something narrower: the game is not a fit for that publisher's catalogue, the slate is full this year, the budget is bigger than the likely market, or there is not yet enough evidence that players want it. Most of those are things a developer controls. A pitch is not a lottery ticket; it is a case, made to one publisher at a time.

• A playable build that shows the core loop at final quality, even if only for fifteen to thirty minutes. Raw Fury asks for a PC build that conveys the essence of the game to outsiders.
• A costed plan for the rest: months left, monthly burn, and the milestones between now and launch.
• A gameplay video of about 60 to 90 seconds, game first and logo last. A longer playthrough with timestamps is a welcome extra.
• A deck of ten to fifteen slides. Our pitch deck guide has the slides in order.
• A Steam page collecting wishlists, if you can. It is the strongest evidence slide there is, and publishers can check it themselves.
• A one-page controls sheet if the controls are not obvious, and a list of known bugs so the reviewer does not stop at the first one.

Fit is the first filter and the one developers skip most. A publisher whose last ten games are tactical strategy will not sign a cosy farming game, however good it is. Before you pitch, look at each publisher's catalogue on Steam for the last three years: genres, price points, scope, and how those games did by review count and followers.

Then write each pitch for its reader. Name the one or two games in their catalogue yours sits beside, and say why their audience would want it. A pitch that could have gone to any publisher reads like one that did. Our guide to finding a game publisher covers building the list, and the list of indie publishers on Steam shows who has published what recently.

Mind the stated no-gos. In 2018 Raw Fury named VR and free-to-play mobile as poor fits; Square Enix Collective named sports games, MOBAs and battle royales; Team17 named MOBAs and digital card games. Check each publisher's current submission page, because these change.

The email's job is to get the build opened. Team17's list from 2018 is a good skeleton: the premise, team size and experience, project status, target platforms, release window, footage from a vertical slice, and the support you need. In practice that fits in six lines and a block of links:

Raw Fury's own page says it cannot guarantee more than one playthrough, so treat the first ten minutes as the whole evaluation. Its list of what helps a reviewer is worth following for any publisher:

• Skippable cutscenes and intros. The reviewer wants to reach play.
• Checkpoints in different parts of the build, so the best section is reachable without replaying the first.
• English subtitles if the spoken language is not English.
• The controls, on screen or in a separate document.

Send it as a download link or a Steam key on a private branch, never as an email attachment. Start the build on the strongest moment rather than the title screen if you can, and remove anything that is placeholder in a way that reads as broken rather than unfinished.

• The publisher's submission form, where it has one. Most indie publishers do, and pitches through it are logged and read.
• Email to the business development contact the publisher names. Raw Fury's then-head of business development said in 2018 that email was best, and to follow up if you hear nothing.
• Meetings at industry events, booked weeks ahead through the event's meeting system. A ten-minute meeting with the build running beats any email, but only if the game fits.
• Introductions from developers a publisher has already worked with. Ask them how the relationship went, too.

Avoid the weeks of the biggest industry events for cold email; Ysbryd Games' founder said in 2018 that replies are unlikely then. And pitch one publisher's form at a time with a pitch written for it, rather than one email to fifty addresses.

Pitch when you have a vertical slice and can say what the rest costs. Too early, and there is nothing to judge but an idea. Too late, and there is little left for the publisher's money to change, though a nearly finished game can still sign a marketing-only deal.

The timing changes the deal. In Voyer Law's analysis of more than 100 agreements signed from 2017 to 2025, developers kept an average of 58.2% of revenue in deals with an advance (median 50%) and 67.9% in deals without one. Pitching for funding during production buys the money with a bigger share; pitching for marketing near the end keeps more of the revenue but means paying for development yourself. See game publisher revenue share for how the terms work.

If you hear nothing in two or three weeks, send one short follow-up with anything new: a fixed build, a wishlist milestone, a festival slot. Then let it go. Keep a sheet of every publisher pitched, the date, the contact, the reply and the reason given, because the pattern across replies is the most useful thing a round of pitching produces.

Ask once, politely, whether they can say why; some will. Then sort the answers:

Flockbay is a free AI game builder on the official Godot engine, and it prepares the pitch's evidence from the game itself. Video studio cuts the 75-second gameplay video, a trailer and devlogs from your real play; the Steam page drafts the store copy and art so the page can start collecting wishlists, exported as a .zip you upload yourself; and playtest links bring back players, play time and crashes before a publisher plays the build once. The publishing tools are free in beta until 1 December 2026. Flockbay takes no share of your sales and no rights to your game.