Over 20,000 games launched on Steam in 2025 alone, and the journalists, streamers, and platform curators who might cover yours are triaging pitches in seconds. A press kit — sometimes called a game media kit — is what turns a two-line pitch email into an easy yes: every screenshot, trailer file, logo, factsheet, and contact detail a journalist needs, sitting in one public place with no login and no reply-to-you-first friction.
Table of Contents
This guide answers the question directly: what is a press kit for a game, what belongs in one, and how it differs from a general media kit. It then compares the three tools developers actually use to build one — the now-unmaintained presskit(), the hosted Press Kitty, and the self-hosted presskit.gg — before covering the mistakes that quietly get well-built press kits ignored, plus a checklist to run before you send a single pitch.
Quick Answer
A press kit for a game (also called a game press kit or game media kit) is a public web page — ideally at yourgame.com/press — that gives journalists, streamers, and industry contacts everything they need to cover your game without emailing you first: a factsheet, short and long descriptions, 6–12 screenshots at 1920×1080 or higher, a downloadable trailer, transparent logos, and a direct contact email. The two practical tools for building one today are presskit.gg (free, self-hosted on WordPress) and Press Kitty (free, hosted at impress.games, imports data from your Steam page). Both replaced the original presskit() tool, which is no longer practical to newly set up in 2026.
What Is a Press Kit for a Game?
A press kit is a curated collection of assets and facts compiled in one place so journalists and media professionals can cover a game without needing to ask for anything else. In general PR, a press kit might contain a company backgrounder and executive bios; for a game, the format is adapted to what game journalists and content creators actually use — factual descriptions, high-resolution screenshots, a downloadable trailer, logos in multiple formats, and a direct contact email. That structure was standardized by Rami Ismail of Vlambeer through presskit(), which gave the indie community a shared language for what a press kit should contain and where it should live.
A game press kit serves three audiences at once: journalists writing review or preview coverage, content creators who need embeddable video and clean logo files, and industry contacts — platform reps, festival organizers, publishers — scouting new titles. One public URL handles all three, and this isn’t only an indie-dev concern: published and AAA titles run press kits too, usually built by a marketing or PR team rather than the developer, but covering the same core sections.
Press Kit vs. Media Kit: What’s the Difference
The terms get used interchangeably, but they aim at different readers. A press kit is built for journalists chasing a story — it leads with newsworthy facts, screenshots, and a factsheet a writer can turn into an article in minutes. A media kit is a sales document aimed at advertisers or sponsors, built around audience size, engagement metrics, and partnership pricing. For a game, almost everyone means the press-kit version: a page built to get your game covered, not sold as ad space. If you see ‘game media kit’ in a search result, it’s describing the same journalist-facing page — the games industry doesn’t enforce the distinction as strictly as general PR does.
presskit(), Press Kitty, and presskit.gg: How the Tools Compare
presskit() was built by Rami Ismail in about a week and became the de facto indie standard from 2013 through 2017 — hundreds of studios used it, and it’s the reason journalists still expect a factsheet-plus-screenshots layout. The GitHub repo is still online but hasn’t been meaningfully updated in years: it relies on an outdated PHP setup and manual FTP uploads that most current hosts don’t support out of the box. Treat any 2026 tutorial pointing to it as historical context, not a tool to actually install.
Press Kitty is the hosted successor: a free tool at impress.games that builds a kit by pulling data straight from your Steam page, so a live kit can be running within the hour. The free tier covers up to three games with 100MB of storage; the paid Plus tier adds custom domains, dark mode, and removes the ‘Made with Press Kitty’ badge. The tradeoff: on the free tier your kit lives on impress.games’ domain, so the SEO value of people searching your game’s name accrues to their site, not yours.
presskit.gg is the self-hosted alternative: a free, open-source WordPress plugin that produces the same layout on your own domain, with no recurring fee. You keep full data ownership and the link equity when someone searches your game’s name — the closest modern equivalent to what presskit() originally offered, if you already run WordPress.
What to Include: Every Section Explained
Start with a factsheet sidebar — the most-scanned element on any press page: game title, developer, publisher (or ‘self-published’), platforms, release date, price, genre, engine, player count, and social links. A journalist should read it in under ten seconds and know exactly what they’re looking at.
Follow with descriptions: a one-to-two sentence short pitch that’s quotable and jargon-free, then two to three paragraphs plus five to eight feature bullets covering your core hook, mechanics, and tone. Concrete details beat adjectives — ’40-hour open-world RPG with fully voiced dialogue’ lands better than ‘an epic, immersive adventure.’
Screenshots are the single most critical visual asset: include 6–12 images at 1920×1080 or higher (4K gives outlets room to crop), showing active gameplay, environmental breadth, UI in context, and both early and late content — no watermarks, debug overlays, or heavy compression. Embed your trailer and also provide a direct downloadable MP4 at 1080p or higher, plus any B-roll or GIF-length clips streamers can drop straight into a video.
Round it out with transparent-background logos in light and dark variants, key art at full resolution, and a short team or studio bio. A handful of pull-quotes or award mentions from prior coverage — even from a smaller outlet — gives journalists third-party permission to take your game seriously, and a direct press contact email (not a contact form) closes the kit.
Real Press Kit Examples to Study
Before building your own, look at a few live kits. presskit.gg’s site links to WordPress-hosted examples from its own plugin users, a fast way to see the factsheet-plus-screenshots layout applied across genres and studio sizes. impress.games also has a page dedicated to press kit examples, though as of this writing it doesn’t have any live kits listed yet. Studying two or three examples in your genre is more useful than starting from a blank template, since it shows which sections that audience actually expects.
How to Build and Host Your Press Kit
If you already run WordPress, presskit.gg is the fastest self-hosted route — activate the plugin, fill in the factsheet and description fields, upload your assets, and it publishes at a URL like yourgame.com/press. If you don’t have a site yet, Press Kitty is the lower-effort start: connect your Steam App ID and it imports your description, screenshots, and logo directly. Either way, host the kit at a clearly labeled URL linked from your Steam page and official site, keep the contact email monitored, and update it whenever something material changes — a new trailer, a release-date shift, a new platform, or a price change.
Common Mistakes That Kill Coverage
The recurring failures are avoidable: watermarked or debug-overlay screenshots that look unfinished; trailers embedded only on YouTube with no downloadable file, which streamers can’t re-cut; login walls or request-only Google Drive folders; a buried or missing press contact email; and marketing copy so vague (‘epic adventure awaits’) that a journalist can’t extract a single concrete fact to write with. Any one of these is often enough for a time-strapped writer to move to the next pitch in their inbox.
Pre-Pitch Press Kit Checklist
Before you send a single email, confirm your kit has: a factsheet with platforms, price, and release date; a one-sentence pitch plus a longer description; 6–12 unwatermarked screenshots at 1920×1080 or higher; an embedded and downloadable trailer; light and dark logo files; at least one quote or prior-coverage mention if you have one; and a monitored press contact email — all reachable with no login required.
game press kit FAQs
What is a press kit for a game?
It’s a public page or file collection — usually at yourgame.com/press — that gives journalists, streamers, and industry contacts everything they need to cover your game without emailing you first: a factsheet, descriptions, screenshots, a trailer, logos, and a direct contact email.
What’s the difference between a game press kit and a media kit?
In general PR they differ — a press kit targets journalists, a media kit targets advertisers — but in game marketing the terms are used interchangeably, and ‘game media kit’ almost always means the same journalist-facing page as a game press kit.
What is presskit()?
presskit() is the original press kit tool built by Rami Ismail of Vlambeer in 2013, which set the standard factsheet-plus-screenshots layout the industry still uses. It’s still on GitHub but relies on an outdated PHP and FTP setup, so it’s impractical to newly install in 2026.
What is Press Kitty?
Press Kitty is a free hosted press kit builder at impress.games that imports your factsheet, screenshots, and description directly from your Steam page, letting you have a live kit within the hour. It has a free tier for up to three games and a paid Plus tier that adds custom domains and removes its badge.
What is the best free tool to build an indie game press kit?
Use presskit.gg if you already run WordPress and want the page on your own domain for the SEO benefit. Use Press Kitty if you want the fastest setup and don’t mind hosting on impress.games’ domain, or paying for the Plus tier for a custom one.
When should I create my indie game press kit?
Build it as soon as you have a playable build with real screenshots — well before you send your first pitch or apply to a festival, and ideally months before your Steam page goes live, since journalists and curators often check for one before responding to a pitch at all.
Do I need separate press kits for Steam, consoles, and mobile?
No — one kit covering all confirmed platforms in the factsheet is standard. Only split it out if release dates, pricing, or content genuinely differ by platform, in which case a platform note in the factsheet is usually enough without building a second page.
Do AAA and publisher-backed games need a press kit too?
Yes — the format scales from big studios, where a PR team builds it, down to solo devs, where you build it yourself. The core sections stay the same; only who assembles them and how much key art surrounds them changes.
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