Marketing for Video Game Studios & Publishers
Gaming invented modern influencer disclosure law. Most gaming campaigns still aren’t built to survive it.
Influencer marketing, PR, media buying and branding for game studios, run with the same disclosure and compliance discipline we already apply for regulated gambling clients, in a category where the FTC has been actively enforcing since 2016 and per-violation fines now reach $53,088.
Quick answer: Uberman runs influencer marketing, PR, media buying and branding for video game studios and publishers. Gaming is where the FTC’s modern influencer disclosure enforcement began, and current civil penalties run $51,744 to $53,088 per undisclosed post, so we build compliance into every campaign from the brief stage instead of treating it as a legal afterthought.
Gaming didn’t just adopt influencer marketing rules. It wrote them.
Three cases, over five years, built the foundation of how the FTC still evaluates influencer campaigns today, and all three happened in this exact industry.
Warner Bros. settles FTC charges for paying influencers, including PewDiePie, to promote Shadow of Mordor without adequately disclosing the payment relationship.
The FTC brings its first-ever complaint against individual social media influencers over CSGO Lotto, a skin gambling site two YouTubers owned and promoted without disclosing that ownership.
The FTC settles with gaming network Machinima over paying gamers up to $30,000 to post undisclosed endorsements of the Xbox One console.
Under the FTC’s current civil penalty schedule, violations run $51,744 to $53,088 per post, not per campaign. Each undisclosed sponsored video, stream or post is a separate violation, so a campaign with just ten non-compliant posts can carry potential liability well over $500,000, and the brand shares legal responsibility alongside the creator, not just the creator alone.
Sources: FTC on the Warner Bros. settlement, FTC on the CSGO Lotto case, MarTech on the Machinima settlement, Promise Legal’s current FTC penalty guide.
What studios actually spend, by tier
| Tier | Typical PR budget | Total marketing budget |
|---|---|---|
| Indie | $0 – $1,000 (self-managed) | Varies widely, often under $50,000 |
| AA | $2,000 – $15,000/month | Low six figures to low millions |
| AAA | $15,000 – $100,000+/month | $10M – $100M+ |
One team, not four vendors with four different disclosure standards
Most gaming marketing agencies specialize in one lane: reach, or performance install numbers, or PR. Compliance usually gets handled separately, if at all, by legal after content is already live.
Influencer Marketing
Creator sourcing and management with a documented contract, disclosure wording specified per platform, and content reviewed before it publishes.
PR
Launch coverage, review copy distribution, and trade press relationships, run the way a real press cycle needs, not as a single announcement.
Media Buying
Paid campaigns across the platforms covered on our paid ads and media buying page, coordinated with the creator and PR timeline instead of running separately.
Branding
Studio and title identity built to stand out in a crowded storefront, not a generic template that looks like everything else in the genre.
Compliance Review
Disclosure audits across active creator relationships, so a studio knows its actual exposure before a regulator or a journalist finds it first.
Reporting
Real conversion and cost-per-result numbers, not just impressions and follower counts dressed up as success.
Four steps, compliance built in from the start
Audit the current creator relationships. Before adding new campaigns, we check whether existing sponsored content already carries real disclosure risk.
Build disclosure into the brief, not the aftermath. Exact wording and placement specified per platform before a creator ever posts.
Coordinate creator, PR and paid timing. A launch date works harder when all three land together instead of arriving as separate, disconnected pushes.
Report on results and compliance together. A campaign that hit its install target but left disclosure gaps behind isn’t actually a clean success.
What studios ask before starting
Why does gaming have such a long history of influencer marketing enforcement?
Because some of the FTC’s earliest and most important influencer disclosure cases happened in gaming. Warner Bros. settled FTC charges in 2016 for paying influencers, including PewDiePie, to promote Shadow of Mordor without adequately disclosing the payment relationship. In 2017, the FTC brought its first-ever complaint against individual social media influencers over CSGO Lotto, a skin gambling site two YouTubers owned and promoted without disclosing that ownership. Those two cases still shape how the FTC evaluates gaming influencer campaigns today.
How much can an undisclosed sponsored gaming post actually cost a studio?
As of the FTC’s current civil penalty schedule, violations run $51,744 to $53,088 per post, not per campaign. Each undisclosed sponsored video, stream or post counts as a separate violation, so a campaign with ten non-compliant posts can carry potential liability well over $500,000, and the brand shares legal responsibility alongside the creator.
What’s a realistic marketing budget for a game launch?
It varies enormously by scale. Indie titles often launch on a few thousand dollars of self-managed PR outreach. AA titles typically run $2,000 to $15,000 a month on PR alone. AAA titles run $15,000 to over $100,000 a month on PR, with total marketing budgets for a major release commonly reaching $10 million to $100 million or more across all channels combined.
Why would a studio hire Uberman instead of a dedicated gaming marketing agency?
Because most gaming-only agencies specialize in one channel, usually influencer reach or performance user acquisition, and treat compliance as an afterthought handled by legal after the fact. We run influencer marketing, PR, media buying and branding as one coordinated plan with disclosure and review built into the process from the brief stage, the same discipline we already apply for regulated gambling clients where the compliance stakes are just as high.
Do smaller studios need to worry about FTC disclosure rules too, or just AAA publishers?
Every studio needs to worry about it. The per-violation penalty applies regardless of studio size, and a smaller studio with a tighter budget can be hit just as hard by stacked violations as a major publisher, sometimes harder relative to its total marketing spend. Compliance isn’t a luxury reserved for big budgets, it’s a fixed cost of running any paid creator campaign.
Planning a launch, or worried about what’s already live?
Tell us your title, your timeline and your current creator roster. We’ll tell you honestly where the campaign opportunity is and where the compliance risk already sits.