YoYo Games’ GameMaker Studio 2, a leading 2D game engine, is well-known for its ease-of-use and dedicated support system from its internal team and community of developers. Countless game creators have used the engine to hone their skills or make their first video game. This made YoYo Games’ decision to release a simple package deal for educational institutions to distribute to students a no-brainer. From a PR perspective though, announcements such as these can easily be dismissed as being too “niche,” which meant we had to take a heavily targeted approach during pitching.

We began by assessing where a professor of game development might gather their news. Video game B2B sites, hubs for industry-insiders, such as Gamasutra, GamesIndustry.biz and GameDev.net were now priority number one in terms of pitching and messaging. To accommodate, we skewed our press release towards appealing to these sites by providing key details such as packaged pricing details and specific features that are great for learning. Maintaining YoYo Games’ well-regarded human element was also important and we achieved this by explaining how the company is dedicated to its users and genuinely loves the idea of students using GameMaker Studio 2.

After seeding the news early to our specified targets and later pushing the announcement to a wider media base, we secure some excellent coverage from sites such as:

Working with YoYo Games and GameMaker Studio 2 continues to be a really terrific way to diversify our internal challenges and experience. We’ve always loved the company’s genuine passion for game development and we’re grateful to be a part of bringing this stellar game engine into the hands of students.