Write for Us Game: How to Find, Vet and Pitch Gaming Guest Post Sites

Maybe you've sunk 200 hours into a live-service shooter, or you've just finished a jam game and want other developers to read the postmortem. You searched "write for us game" or "video games write for us" and found pages of copied lists. A gaming contributor page is the notice a game publication posts for freelancers and volunteers. It says which games it covers, what it won't run and how to reach an editor. This URL used to be DigitalTreed's own call for gaming posts. Now it points you at the game sites that still invite writers, and it shows how we checked them.

First up is what game editors ask for, then the gaming and video game search strings that surface writer pages. Next come the footprints that sink a site, from mod APKs to free V-Bucks pages, and how community dev blogs differ from edited publications. Then you get the 2-minute card and the sites we verified on October 31. A pitch email, five topic ideas and the disclosure rules for free keys and sponsored links close it out.

What game editors ask for before they say yes

PC Gamer and Gfinity, the two freelance pages on our list, put the same test in different words: have you played this game a lot, and lately?

PC Gamer wants "An expert on one or more popular games, hardware components, or areas of PC gaming". Gfinity asks guide writers if they're "fully up to date on the latest content", and its footer says the work comes from staff "who have played & researched the games".

Patch numbers are where that shows. PC Gamer's page lists "patches, changes to the meta, weird bugs" among the things happening in the games it covers. A build guide written on last season's balance numbers is out of date before it runs. So put the version, the platform and the date you played into the pitch, and the editor can see the piece is current before reading a word of it.

Recycled copy is the fastest way to a no. Gfinity says "please don't pitch us a piece you've already written elsewhere" and asks you to check it hasn't run the idea already.

One of Google's helpful content questions is whether a page offers "original information, reporting, research, or analysis". A trailer recap built from the publisher's press release doesn't, however tidy the prose.

Review copies add one more rule: the embargo. Valve's Steam key documentation says its pre-release keys "are intended for small beta tests and press/influencer access". It also says it's "never OK to sell" them.

If your code came with an embargo, give the editor the date and time zone in the first email. Then post nothing about the game anywhere until it lifts, and that includes your own blog.

Speed counts too: GamingTrend tells applicants that "Some reviews will require a 7-day turnaround (video games)", so don't offer a review you can't finish within a week.

Gaming and video game search strings, from review sites to dev blogs

Once you know what editors want, the next job is finding the editors who still want outside writers. Google's search tips page covers the quote marks, the minus sign, site: and after: used below. The first block finds writer pages for players' sites and for game development blogs. The second checks one domain you're already looking at.

Find gaming writer pages
"write for us" "video games" -casino -betting
"freelance" "pitch" guides minecraft OR roblox OR valorant
"become a contributor" gaming reviews after:2026/01/01
"we're looking for writers" esports
"write for us" indie games "review copies"
"submit a blog" "game development" postmortem
"guest post" "game design" -"link insertion"

Check one gaming site (replace example.com)
site:example.com "mod apk"
site:example.com "free v-bucks" OR "free robux"
site:example.com generator
site:example.com casino OR slots OR "sweepstakes"
site:example.com "watch free" stream
site:example.com "sponsored post"
"example.com" "guest post" price

One catch: Google's page doesn't document OR. Split those lines into two searches if the results look off. Run any writer page you find through our HTTP response code tool before you build a pitch around it. If it now redirects to the homepage, the call has probably ended. Skip those.

Don't read too much into an empty check either, because Google's site: operator notes say "The list of URLs returned is not always exhaustive".

Mod APKs, free V-Bucks and casino games: footprints that sink a gaming site

Those searches find writer pages; the harder question is what's already on the site. Gaming has its own spam: modded app downloads, cheat and hack tools, currency generators, casino games dressed up as games, and links to unlicensed streams. A link from a site carrying any of these sits next to pages that Google or the platforms themselves treat as harmful.

Mod APKs and hack tools are downloads before they're anything else. Google's spam policies warn that site owners sometimes don't realize their "downloadable files are considered malware". On Android, Google Play Protect "checks your device for potentially harmful apps from other sources", in Google's own words. A page offering a paid game's premium version for free is exactly that kind of other source.

Currency generators work another way. Roblox's fraud and scams page says "There are no sanctioned offerings of free Robux." A promise of free Robux, it warns, "may be a way to get your personal information". Google's social engineering guide lists the moves such pages push people into: "sharing a password, calling tech support, downloading software". If a site runs even one "free V-Bucks" or "free Robux" post, skip it.

Casino-style games are trickier, because they look like games. Google Play's gambling policy sets social casino apps apart. Even an app allowed to run gambling ads gets this rule: "App must not provide simulated gambling content (for example, social casino apps; apps with virtual slot machines)". Google Ads runs a separate social casino games certification. Apple's App Review Guidelines say real-money gaming apps "must have necessary licensing and permissions in the locations where the app is used". A gaming blog full of slot reviews and bonus codes? That's a gambling affiliate, whatever its logo shows. Look at the main menu first. A Casino or Betting tab sitting next to Reviews answers the question.

Unlicensed streams and cracked downloads carry copyright risk. Under Google's spam policies, many "valid copyright removal requests" can lead it "to demote other content from the site in our results". Google handles those notices under the DMCA, the federal law behind US takedown requests.

Our run counted some of this for you. Besides its base list of casino, CBD and similar words, the game scan read each sitemap's slugs for a gaming list. That list: "betting", "casino", "sportsbook", "mod-apk", "apk", "slots", "poker", "gambling", "bookmakers", "promo-codes", "hacks-tool", "cheats-tool" and "cheat-codes". Three hits or more and the site was out.

In the game section, 18 candidates fell to the word rules. Of those, 13 went on sitemap counts and 5 because the writer page itself used a flagged word. Across the sitemap drops, the words that showed up most were "poker", "gambling", "slot" and "casino". The heaviest single count was "casino" in 90 slugs on one site. Three more were casino or betting sites with a gaming name, and the run dropped them on their homepage title alone.

Why not cut at one hit? GamingTrend, on our list, has two "poker" slugs, and a games site can cover a poker game without taking a single bet.

What the word count can't see matters just as much. It had no entry for V-Bucks, Robux, generators or streams, so those checks stay with you and the second search block. Game Developer shows both sides. The run dropped it because its blogging guidelines used the word "betting", which on our copy sits in a sidebar news headline about Roblox "betting big on AI". So we ran the checks the run never reached. Its sitemap lists seven author profiles named for slot, poker, casino and CBD terms, such as "poker bola", "Rick Slot" and "JUST CBD". That's over the cut of three, so it stays off our list.

Community dev blogs are not edited publications

Beyond the sites above, game developers have one more route, and it works differently. Game Developer's blogging guidelines say: "Game Developer Blogs are for articles about game development by and for game developers."

Anyone in the industry can post there. The page is blunt about what that means: "Blogs are not edited and will be posted in the condition they are submitted."

That suits a dev with a postmortem to share, since the page names postmortems and technique tutorials among the formats that do well. It also allows a link back to your own game: "Backlinking to your blog, website or game purchase page is allowed." The link-building route is shut, though. "We do not accept submissions from tech vendors." Promotional posts break its terms, and Featured Blogs are picked on merit: "We do not respond to solicitations for featured blog placement." Studios can't hide behind a brand name either: "We do not allow company profiles."

We didn't list it, for the reason given above. The open sign-up that lets any developer post also let in those slot and CBD profiles, under the same /author/ path your own profile would use. Treat an open dev blog as a place to share work, not as a vetted byline. Nobody edits your copy before it goes out, so a typo or a dead build link goes out under your name. An edited site such as PC Gamer reads your pitch first, decides whether it fits, and only then puts an editor on the draft with you. If your piece is mostly code, our software development write for us guide covers engineering publications that take tutorials.

Is this gaming site worth a pitch?

That depends on five rows you can score in about 2 minutes, and a site that gets through all five without a red is worth a pitch.

Stop at the first red. You'll find the full checklist, including audience and payment checks, in our niche sites hub for vetting guest post sites. Rows one to four use data our run saved for each site, and row five is your own footprint search.

One red ends it. Two or more yellows mean you read a handful of recent posts before you write a single line of the pitch. Does the site file guest posts in their own category? Check that category with our noindex tag checker; if it carries a noindex tag, those posts stay out of search. The rank row uses Tranco, a "Research-Oriented Top Sites Ranking". Its methodology page says each list blends a month of daily rankings with the Dowdall rule. That tells you a site gets visits, not whether its readers play what you play.

Here's the card applied to every site on our list, scored from the run's records and our same-day reread:

• PC Gamer. Writer call: form route, yellow. Tranco: #5,397, green. History: PC Gamer in every yearly title since 1996, green. Sitemap words: clean, green. Readers: UK and US, green.
• Gfinity Esports. Writer call: form route, yellow. Tranco: #117,520, yellow. History: Gfinity in 2017, 2024 and 2026, blank titles in 2019 and 2021, yellow. Sitemap words: could not be read, yellow. Readers: UK and global, yellow.
• GamingTrend. Writer call: volunteer team with a quota, yellow. Tranco: #178,846, yellow. History: an untitled page in 2005, then Gaming Trend titles, green. Sitemap words: 2 hits (poker), yellow. Readers: US, green.

No red anywhere, and every one of the three carries at least one yellow; the repeat yellows are rank past 100,000 (two sites) and form route (two sites). Five other causes turn up once each. Gfinity Esports collects the most (five) and PC Gamer the fewest (one). A yellow isn't a skip. It's a reason to open three recent articles and check whether they match the kind of piece you'd send.

Write for us game: the gaming sites we verified on October 31

Rows one to four come straight from the run's records. Each site below cleared the run's checks on October 31, 2026 with no red on the card. We read its writer page again that day to confirm the invitation still stood. That's all the Vetted stamp in our header means. It doesn't promise traffic, pay, a reply or a link. All three writer pages the run kept still asked for writers in the same words the run had saved.

So the table has three rows, against a goal of 15 to 25. We didn't pad it. Of 148 gaming candidates, 64 had no writer page the checker could find, and another 32 blocked our checker, so we never saw their pages. One more was a paid staff job advert, which the run treats as a hire rather than a guest slot.

Of the three listed, two take freelance pitches from outsiders, both through a form rather than an email address. GamingTrend recruits volunteers onto its team, a standing role with a monthly quota rather than a one-off guest post. Its current call lists tabletop games, tabletop RPGs, hobby, gear, and movies and TV; video games aren't on that list, though the page still mentions 7-day video game reviews. Publication names are plain text; each row links only to its writer page, with rel="nofollow".

The "Readers" column is the run's note on each site's audience, not a traffic figure, so read "UK and US" as a hint about spelling and examples. PC Gamer's page also warns that "we receive more applications than we can individually respond to", so silence after a form is normal there.

If your beat is sports games or esports leagues, our sports write for us guide checks sports sites the same way. Writers who cover several niches can use our big guest posting list; none of the sites in this table appears there or in our other niche guides.

The run kept its manners. Every request named DigitalTreed in the user agent and obeyed robots.txt, and it spaced requests to any single host by 1.5 seconds or more. If a host showed a block page, the run moved on without a workaround.

We had no Ahrefs, Semrush or Similarweb account, so the Tranco rank (the October 29, 2026 list, ID PYK6J) was our only traffic signal. One smaller game blog below the top million passed our other checks and published in October, and a November 2, 2026 traffic check put it in the table above. We pulled yearly homepage titles through the Wayback CDX API, taking one capture per year with its collapse option. The Wayback Machine help pages explain how to read a site's captures by date.

A smaller gaming site with a volunteer writer program

The gaming site we set aside turned out to have more search traffic than its missing Tranco rank suggested. In Ahrefs' free traffic tool on November 2, 2026, its estimate was in the tens of thousands, though it has fallen sharply since August. Its call is for unpaid volunteer staff writers, not one-off guest posts.

What we tested

Our checker took 148 gaming candidates on October 31, 2026, and it kept three, set one aside as a smaller site, and dropped 144. The drops by reason: no writer page 64, bot checks 32, dead hosts 24, gambling or download words 18, casino sites 3 and gone quiet 3. The biggest loss was big publications with no public writer page at all. One of the three listed sites sits inside Tranco's top 100,000. The funnel below shows where each candidate fell out. Where the run couldn't read a sitemap the row stays yellow, and you can try that file yourself in our XML sitemap validator.

A pitch email for game editors, plus five topic ideas

All three sites on our list take pitches or applications through a form, not an inbox, so treat the template below as the text you paste into its fields.

Keep it short. Gfinity's advice is "Keep your pitches nice and concise", and it wants a paragraph on your guide-writing experience plus examples; PC Gamer wants evidence that you know a game deeply. Ours is a made-up sample. Fill in the braces, and keep the version and disclosure lines even when they feel fussy.

Subject: Pitch: {game} {season or patch}: {the specific thing you found}

Hi {editor first name},

I've played {game} for {hours} hours on {platform}, most recently on
version {patch number} ({date}). After the {patch} changes, {finding,
in one sentence, with the number that proves it}.

The piece: {guide / feature / analysis}, about {word count} words,
with {screenshots / clips / a table} I captured myself.
I checked your site and didn't find this angle covered.

Past writing: {link 1}, {link 2}
Review copy or key: {none / provided by {publisher} on {date}}
Embargo: {none / {date, time, time zone}}

{your name}

Short of a solid angle? Each of these needs hands-on play or build work, which is the thing editors can't get from a press kit:

1. A patch-by-patch log for one live game: what a balance change did to your own win rate or clear times over a month.
2. A retro game on modern hardware: how it runs on today's PC or handheld, with the settings you tested and the ones that broke.
3. A guide for a game in Gfinity's or PC Gamer's wanted list, written for one exact task a player gets stuck on.
4. For developers: a postmortem with real wishlist, playtest or sales numbers from your own game.
5. An accessibility review: which options a game has, tested one by one, and what a player with that need will still hit.

One last check before you send: swap another game's name into your first line. If the sentence still works, the angle isn't specific enough yet.

Free review keys, paid streams and rel="sponsored"

So far, nobody has paid anybody, but in gaming value moves early, through a free key, an early build or a paid stream for the publisher. The FTC's FAQ on endorsements is direct about keys. "It doesn’t matter whether the company gives you a code, ships it directly to you, gives you money to buy it yourself, or reimburses you after you buy it." Once you've had a free or discounted product to review, it adds, "your connection to the company should be disclosed everywhere you endorse the product". The agency's Disclosures 101 for influencers says: "Financial relationships aren’t limited to money."

Streams get their own warning in that FAQ: "Since viewers can start watching at any time, they could easily miss a disclosure at the beginning of the stream". So repeat the disclosure through a long playthrough. The FAQ also says: "We also advise that you add a disclosure to any description of the stream before potential viewers click through to it."

For the label, the native advertising guide lists "Sponsored Advertising Content" among the terms readers understand, and it tells advertisers not to use "Promoted".

Gaming has a precedent here. In July 2016, the FTC settled charges with Warner Bros. over paid YouTube videos of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. The complaint says the company paid influencers, "gave them a free advance-release version of the game" and told them "not to disclose any bugs or glitches they found". The FTC's business blog on the case faulted disclosures tucked into the description box below each video, and the final order followed in November 2016.

Then there's search. Google's spam policies name "Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links" as link spam. A 2017 Google post about article campaigns warns against "Stuffing keyword-rich links to your site in your articles". The fix for a paid post is the link attribute, since Google's outbound link guide says to "Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements" with sponsored. Its 2019 nofollow post says nofollow also works: "either is fine". Guest content as such isn't the issue. Google's site reputation abuse update says "having third-party content alone is not a violation of the site reputation abuse policy".

Do you sell sponsored posts on a gaming blog of your own? Then the payment risk is yours. Our guide to buyers who skip payment covers deposits and holding the draft until you're paid. We're not lawyers; have one read any per-post deal before you sign it.

Questions from game writers

How we made this guide: Our numbers come from a single site-check run on October 31, 2026. Later that day we stored new copies of every kept writer page and of Game Developer's blogging guidelines. Every quote was checked against them and against the run's own copies. The reread removed nothing, and we added nothing by hand. In review we also ran the run's remaining checks on Game Developer, which it had dropped over a news headline; its sitemap's author profiles kept it off the list. No one on our side pitched a site, filled in a form or logged in to any site. Facts checked by the DigitalTreed team on October 31, 2026.

Original version: November 2023, as our own request for gaming posts. We rewrote it on October 31, 2026 for writers who pitch gaming publications.

Sources

• Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search
• Google Search Central: Qualify your outbound links to Google
• Google Search Central Blog: Evolving nofollow, new ways to identify the nature of links (September 10, 2019)
• Google Search Central Blog: A reminder about links in large-scale article campaigns (May 25, 2017)
• Google Search Central Blog: Updating our site reputation abuse policy (November 19, 2024)
• Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
• Google Search Central: Social engineering (phishing and deceptive sites)
• Google Search Central: site: search operator
• Google Search Help: Refine Google searches
• Google Legal Help: Report content on Google
• Google Play Help: Use Google Play Protect to help keep your apps safe
• Play Console Help: Real-Money Gambling, Games, and Contests
• Google Ads Policy Help: Gambling and games
• Apple Developer: App Review Guidelines
• Steamworks Documentation: Steam Keys
• Roblox: How to Avoid Identity Fraud, Scams, and More
• Tranco: A Research-Oriented Top Sites Ranking Hardened Against Manipulation
• Tranco: Methodology
• Internet Archive: Wayback CDX Server API
• Internet Archive Help Center: Using the Wayback Machine
• FTC: FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking
• FTC: Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers
• FTC: Native Advertising: A Guide for Businesses
• FTC press release: Warner Bros. settles FTC charges over paid gameplay videos (July 11, 2016)
• FTC Business Blog: FTC challenges influencer campaign for Warner Bros. Shadow of Mordor game (July 2016)
• FTC press release: FTC approves final order requiring Warner Bros. to disclose payments to online influencers (November 2016)