How Deep Silver won over thousands of influencers with Dead Island 2

In today's gaming industry, influencer marketing has become an essential strategy for promoting games to a global audience.

However, managing influencer campaigns manually can be a daunting task, especially for AAA publishers who aim to reach millions of potential players at the same time. That's why utilizing a tech platform like Lurkit can significantly enhance the effectiveness of influencer marketing campaigns. This is something that Deep Silver realized and needed to address before its release of Dead Island 2.

Streamlining onboarding for thousands of creators

Jorge Tavera is the Global Influencer Strategy manager at Deep Silver, the AAA publisher within the media company Plaion (formerly Koch Media). In this article we got to sit down and talk to Tavera about how studios and publishers can ensure immediate traction from day one in the content creator community.

"The reception of Dead Island 2 in the influencer community has been great. We generated over six million views on YouTube during the first two weeks. The game came in as number one in sales in Europe during the weekend launch," says Tavera.

With only a small team, Tavera has the experience of onboarding thousands of creators without hassle. Much of the hype around the game can be attributed to the 1,200 creators Deep Silver activated through its creator program. Deep Silver’s Dead Island 2 has already sold over two million copies since it was released in April this year.

"We knew in advance that we wanted to onboard hundreds or even thousands of creators in a very short period of time, both to our creator program and campaigns,” explains Tavera. “The process before was a very manual one. The creator had to fill a form, which would land in an email inbox and then someone in my team had to manually make an evaluation of the creator. When you do that, you realize that you spent a week of work and only onboarded 10 people."

Tavera says that the onboarding process was key to his decision to choose Lurkit.

"Overall, automated onboarding was key for us. We wanted to have time to work with the program and not that much on the onboarding process. This would allow us to put time on the content when we would know that the creators are 100% real and at the same time meet our minimum requirements. This is the flexibility that Lurkit allowed."

Deep Silver knew from the beginning that they wanted to systematically integrate game key campaigns in the creator program.

"This is where Lurkit has an edge compared to other platforms in the market. We have the vision for it to be a campaign-based program, with clear rewards," says Tavera.

Lurkit's program and its ability to integrate the campaigns and the creator program seamlessly was a huge plus for the company.

Exceeded all expectations

Unlike manual methods such as spreadsheets or working with agencies, Lurkit streamlines the influencer marketing process by providing a comprehensive, all-in-one platform. It allows publishers to search and filter through a database of thousands of influencers, analyze their performance metrics, and communicate with them directly to negotiate contracts and track campaign progress. This eliminates the need for time-consuming and error-prone manual work, as well as the high costs of working with agencies.

Deep Silver's goal was 250,000 hours watched on Twitch through Lurkit the first month. The company doubled that to 530.000 in the first two weeks of the campaign. For YouTube, their goal was 100.000 views and they got 6.2 million views in the first two weeks.

"It is not just about the campaigns, but many creators are reaching out and want to continue playing the game. We now have good relations with all of these creators, and it is all thanks to the creator program we built on Lurkit," says Tavera.

Factbox

The Challenge
The creator program at Deep Silver was suboptimal, manual and time-consuming. The company wanted to onboard thousands of creators in a short time for their game Dead Island 2. They needed a platform that could automate the onboarding process, so they could focus on the content.

The Results
The reception of Dead Island 2 in the influencer community has been great, and the game has sold over 2 million copies during launch weekend. 5,000 creators applied to the creator program and Deep Silver onboarded 1,200 creators through Lurkit and reached No.1 in Europe in sales. It reached the Top Five most watched games during launch weekend. Generated 530,000 hours watched on Twitch and 6.2 million video views on YouTube.

The Solution
Deep Silver decided to run its global creator program for Dead Island 2 through Lurkit. Lurkit's automatic onboarding feature allowed the company to onboard creators quickly and efficiently. Deep Silver could also run game key campaigns integrated into their creator program that they built on Lurkit’s tech.

Conclusion
The onboarding process is a crucial part of the creator program, and Deep Silver found Lurkit's automatic onboarding feature to be the key to success. The platform's campaign-based program with clear rewards and its ability to integrate the campaigns and the creator program seamlessly was also a huge plus for the company. Lurkit allowed Deep Silver to onboard hundreds of creators quickly and efficiently, focus on the content, and run successful campaigns. Deep Silver has been able to build good relationships with content creators, and the company's success on Twitch is a testament to the power of influencer marketing.

How Deep Silver won over thousands of influencers with Dead Island 2

The publisher discusses its partnership with Lurkit

Streamlining onboarding for thousands of creators

Exceeded all expectations

Factbox

Synergy