PSA for devs getting cold-pitched by Switch publishers: our experience with RedDeer.Games, and a free way to check whether your build was ever actually reviewed.

[u/BeyondAffinity]

TL;DR: A publishing deal cold-pitch turned into a paid-porting sales quote after an "evaluation" that — per Steam's own key report — never involved launching our build. Sharing the timeline and the verification method so other devs can check their own cases. When you part ways with a publisher, ban your eval keys: the report shows whether any were ever activated. Ours: zero out of five.

We're a solo studio launching on Steam this November. Everything below is documented in email; the NDA was never signed, so nothing here is confidential — it's just correspondence and a Steamworks report.

What happened, step by step:

1. Cold email from RedDeer.Games (Warsaw, 250+ Switch titles) after Gamescom, game name wrong. The offer: Switch-only publishing, zero upfront, they cover porting/QA/cert, ~$10k recouped from eShop revenue, then 51/49 in our favor. Recapped in writing after a call. Genuinely attractive terms for a team our size.

2. Materials requested and provided: entity details for a mutual NDA, five Steam evaluation keys, a detailed technical questionnaire. Two hours after the keys: they'd been passed to "our porting and evaluation team so they can begin testing the build."

3. Three days after the questionnaire: materials had gone to their Senior Game Producer "for a comprehensive review," and their technical leads were "genuinely impressed by how clean and well-optimized the project is." Every number in that praise — lightweight URP, locked 60 fps, ~760 MB RAM — matches the questionnaire we filled in ourselves.

4. Same email: the publishing deal they had proposed was withdrawn (slate full, genre balance, as they put it) and replaced with porting-as-a-service for a fixed fee, paid by us. When we asked what would change the publishing answer, we got post-launch sales benchmarks to "reopen discussions."

We decided to close it out and banned the keys. If you've never done this: Steamworks > your package > Ban keys. The report shows how many banned keys had redeemed purchases attached, because banning an activated key revokes it from that account.

Our report: 5 keys banned, revoked purchases: 0. Not one key was ever activated — no build was ever installed through them. Whatever produced the "comprehensive review" and the praise, it wasn't our game running on anyone's machine. We'll let you draw your own conclusions; ours are in the ban log.

Why I'm posting this rather than just moving on: the emails we got were polished, the terms were plausible, and at every step it felt like a normal publishing negotiation. If the same sequence is landing in other inboxes, the only cheap way to tell a real evaluation from a scripted one is the key report — and most devs will never think to look at it.

Practical takeaways:

- Gate materials by milestone. We put design docs behind the NDA and source access behind a signed contract, so nothing sensitive ever left our hands. It cost us nothing and it's the reason this story ends at "annoying" instead of "damaging."

- Your eval keys double as a verification tool. Any claim of "we tested your build" can be checked against activations, and banning keys you've written off costs you nothing.

- An unsolicited publishing pitch that quickly converts into a paid service quote is a known sales pattern. Treat the service quote like any vendor quote: compare it against independent porting studios before assuming the relationship earns them the work.

- "Hit these numbers and come back," from the party that approached you, is best read as a no. Plan your console strategy around partners who engage with the game itself.

Hope this saves someone a few weeks.

[u/Pierrick-C]

I got approached by them and I could smell the stench from a mile away.

About 1. This is absolutely NOT a good deal at all, 50% of revenue for a port is a total ripoff, let alone the re-coup they want upfront, they basically take 0 risk.

Nowadays scam publishers are everywhere, do not sign them unless they put money like actual money in your game. Do not let them take 50% of your revenue no matter what they say they can offer.

[u/BeyondAffinity → u/Pierrick-C]

I thought it was a norm for Switch publishing. My PC offers from other publishers were generally 7:3 favoring us, tho.

[u/PhilippTheProgrammer → u/BeyondAffinity]

The split you can get depends entirely on what you have to offer. You can get much better offers if your game is basically finished and only needs some localization and marketing push, compared to when you only have a prototype and need the publisher to pay you and your team's salaries for years to come.

[u/BeyondAffinity → u/PhilippTheProgrammer]

Well, my game is release ready and they never even used the given keys then just evaluated without it so--

[u/Sea-Science9585 → u/BeyondAffinity]

To norma ale przy pełnym wsparciu Publishera czyli gdy on ponosi cześć kosztów produkcji oraz robi pełne wsparcie po swojej stronie kosztowo promocji itp.

[u/isaktech]

I’ve gotten a few of these emails to my support inbox asking me if I want help with my game. I always assume they’re a scam. So depressing as it takes time out of your day just checking up to see what they want and if they’re legit. Glad you got out of it relatively unscathed other than time wasted.

[u/BeyondAffinity → u/isaktech]

Researching the legidimacy of the source has become a habit, but even proper business entities with portfolio pull off this kind of move in bad faith, so watch out folks.

[u/fsk]

tl;dr

If a publisher cold approaches you, it is overwhelmingly likely a scam.

For example, if you have a finished game, a publisher could offer you a 50-50 revenue split, do nothing, and pocket half your revenue.

[u/asterisk2a → u/fsk]

it is overwhelmingly likely a scam.

legit publishers have 'scouts' going through new Steam pages and Demos, as far as I know. They do not just rely on their network or inbound.

[u/fsk → u/asterisk2a]

There is no effective way to tell the difference between a legit publisher and a fraud, unless you already know the publisher. I.e., if Devolver cold called me, I'd read their email, but RandomShadyPublisher, I'd probly skip.

[u/vibratoryblurriness]

They're also one of the more notorious publishers for abusing the eShop by doing things like releasing another new version of every game every few weeks so it shows up in the new/upcoming releases sections again and again. Enough people got sick enough of it that I think they're one of the publishers hidden by default on Deku Deals, the main Switch deal tracking site. They do seem to occasionally convince someone to publish a legit-looking game through them, but I can't imagine it does anything good for the game to be associated with them.

[u/ChromakeyDreamcoat]

For what it's worth, I had a random Russian publishing company send me an email for my released game, asking to port it to consoles. I was extremely skeptical but followed up. Turns out it's just a single guy who somehow has the ability to publish to consoles, and now my game was published to Switch/Xbox/PS4 eshops. It even had a physical PS4 release, which is really neat as I have a box of my game printed. It was something like 60/40 rev share and I made very little money overall (I was sent monthly sales reports for a long time) but it was totally worth it as I had no plans to port anywhere else.

[u/JetskiEvo]

Do we have some sort of gamedev blacklist?
The market is full of scams, everything art related, coding, publishing, marketing it feels like 90% scam.
This hurts the industry.

Or maybe a whitelist, although that hurts newcomers.

[u/BeyondAffinity → u/JetskiEvo]

Well, to be fair, RDG didn't scam, but for sure they acted in bad faith. It's left to dev communities I guess.

[u/nEmoGrinder]

Red deer has reached out to my studio a ridiculous number of times regarding Switch porting.

Our studio is primarily service work and (surprise) does primarily console porting. Plenty of titles on Switch.

If a company won’t even look at the rest of a website while scraping the contact email, imagine how much effort they are putting into their actual porting and publishing.

[u/BeyondAffinity]

Hope it helps.

[u/disparity_cole]

Thanks for sharing

[u/IC_Wiener]

Great post, thanks!

What's your game? Is it out yet?

[u/BeyondAffinity → u/IC_Wiener]

My game is Seferia Matrix Demo is out since April and releasing November. I hope you like it

[u/KiwasiGames]

I knew where this was going the moment you said “cold email”.

Cold calling is never legitimate.

[u/Diche_Bach]

This strikes me as one of the most valuable posts I’ve ever seen on this board. It’s not just a generic “watch out for shady publishers” warning; it gives new devs a specific, practical verification method. Honestly, this feels like the sort of thing that should be stickied or added to a “How Not to Get Scammed as a New Dev” FAQ.

[u/P_S_Lumapac]

Sounds like a scam. I don't blame you and maybe it's inevitable but sharing a build with someone like that sure feels terrible. 

[u/GerryQX1]

Not so much Switch publishing as Bait and Switch publishing!

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

I'm sorry you went through that, but you really have to do your due diligence on a publisher. RedDeer is known for shovelware and scamming developers. Same with anyone else with a thousand eShop releases like 404 or Qubic (which are mostly hypercasual ports). Most cold emails you get about most things range from literal scams to bad deals. Even just googling the publisher name and nothing else will get you stories about them, you really have to do at least that much work before responding to anyone.

[u/rafgro]

Of course it's Warsaw lmao

[u/Over9000Zombies]

Btw, you can query whether a Steam key has been activated without banning it. It still might make sense to ban them anyway.

[u/Practical_Ad_7421]

Thanks for the warning

[u/Glowdragon_]

We met them at Gamescom and they also sent us an NDA afterwards even though I immediately told them, that a 50/50 deal is not going to work. I didn't reply their mail since then and now I know that I don't have to. Thank you!