FAQ

IndiePump is a discovery platform for indie games, built around three groups of people who normally never meet. Players find new games and vote for the one that deserves the month’s Top Choice Award. Developers and publishers list their games and hand out review keys. Content creators and press request those keys and post their coverage back on the game.

Not to look around. Browsing games, creators and past award winners is open to everyone.

You need a free account to vote, to list a game, or to request a review key.

Yes. Voting, listing a game, adding review keys, requesting keys and posting coverage are all free. There is nothing to pay and no card to add.

Three doors, depending on why you are here:

• Player and voter if you want to discover games and vote. Sign up here.
• Creator, influencer or press if you cover games and want review keys. Join as a creator.
• Developer or publisher if you have a game to list. Submit your game.

If you are genuinely both a developer and a creator, email info@indiepump.com and we will sort the account out for you.

With your email and password, or with the Continue with Google button, on the sign-in page. Both lead to the same account as long as the email address matches.

Use the Forgot your password? link on the sign-in page. The reset email arrives from an @indiepump.space address, so check your spam folder if it does not show up within a few minutes.

Check spam and promotions first, then try requesting it again from your account. If nothing has arrived after ten minutes, email info@indiepump.com from the address you signed up with and we will verify the account by hand.

One award, once a month, decided entirely by community votes. The game with the most valid votes when the month closes takes that month’s IndiePump Top Choice Award and keeps the badge for good. Previous winners live on the Awards page.

Anyone with a free IndiePump account. You can create one with an email address or with Google, and you can vote the moment you are signed in.

One vote per account, per month. You can change your mind and move it to another game at any point before the month ends, and only your final choice counts.

When voting closes at the end of the month. Standings are deliberately hidden while a month is running, so nobody can see who is ahead and pile on, and no game is written off early.

To keep the result honest. An award decided by whoever can click fastest from the most browser tabs is worth nothing to the developer who wins it, so every vote is tied to an account.

Yes, and most winners do exactly that. Point your players, Discord and mailing list at your game and ask them to sign in and vote.

What is not allowed is voting for yourself many times over: extra accounts made to inflate one game are marked invalid and removed from the count.

Every game listed on IndiePump is in the running, released or not. Browse the full field on the voting page.

Fill in the form on Submit your game. Have your studio and contact details, the game title, its Steam page link, a short pitch and a longer description ready. Launch date and price can both be set to TBA if you have not announced them.

Straight away in almost every case. Submissions go live as soon as the form is accepted. The one exception is a listing that looks like a duplicate of a game already on the site, which is held for a human to look at.

Nothing. Listing a game, distributing keys and receiving coverage are free for developers and publishers.

Yes. Open your developer dashboard, go to Titles and edit the game. Trailer, description, release date, price, store links and press kit can all be changed whenever you like.

You paste your keys into the vault in your developer dashboard. Nobody sees them there but you.

When a creator asks for one, the request lands on your dashboard and you approve or decline it. Approving hands one key over automatically and tells the creator by email. Declining costs you nothing and needs no explanation.

Yes. When you approve a request you can add a note, and it travels with the key: embargo date, spoiler rules, a build password, whatever the creator needs to know before they record.

Creators and press with a profile on IndiePump. Before you decide, you can open that profile and see their platform, audience size, how recently and how regularly they publish, and the rating other developers have given them.

Coverage links posted by creators appear publicly on your game, and in the Coverage view of your dashboard. Fifteen days after you hand a key over you can also rate that creator, which is what builds the rating everyone else reads.

Zero to five stars, given by developers who have actually handed that creator a key. It is one rating per key, so nobody can bury or boost a creator with repeat scores. Zero is a real score and it means the coverage never happened.

At indiepump.space/developer-dashboard/ once you are signed in. It holds your titles, your key vault, incoming requests, the coverage you have earned and your studio profile.

Not yet. Use the same submission form, once per title, and every game will sit under the same account. If you are bringing over a large catalogue, email info@indiepump.com first and we will help you move it.

Anyone who covers games in public: YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, written press, podcasts, curators. There is no follower minimum. Apply on Join as a creator with a link to the channel or outlet where your work lives.

New profiles are checked before they go live, so allow a little time between applying and appearing in the creator directory.

Sign in, open Find New Games in your creator dashboard, and hit Request key on anything that interests you. The request goes straight to that developer.

The developer has not answered yet. Nothing is required from you. The status changes on its own to Approved, and the key appears in your vault, or to Denied.

It varies from minutes to never. Developers are under no obligation to grant a key, and a small studio in the last week before launch may simply not get to it. A request that has sat untouched for a couple of weeks is usually a no.

You are not contractually bound to. But posting your coverage back on IndiePump is what raises your rating, and your rating is the first thing the next developer looks at. Taking keys and never publishing is the quickest way to stop getting them.

Open Coverage in your creator dashboard and paste the link to your video, stream or article against the game it covers. It then shows publicly on that game, which is free discovery for you as well as for the developer.

From the public data the platforms themselves publish: subscriber and follower counts, recent uploads and how regularly they arrive. It is refreshed automatically and nothing private is read, so IndiePump never sees your analytics, your revenue or your watch time.

Because Twitch deletes stored VODs after about two weeks for most channels, so there is very little history left to measure. That is a Twitch storage rule, not a judgement about you, and it is flagged as such on your profile so developers do not read it as inactivity.

IndiePump’s check-in credits. Sign in and check in each day, and an unbroken streak pays more the longer you keep it going. Coins are then redeemed for perks inside your dashboard. They are a bonus on top of the platform, never a paywall in front of it: nothing you can do for free today starts costing coins tomorrow.

In the Profile section of your dashboard: creator or developer. Players and voters can edit theirs from My Account.

Email info@indiepump.com from the address on the account and we will remove it. What we hold and for how long is set out in the Privacy Policy.

The ones needed to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences, such as light or dark mode. The full list is in the Cookie Policy.

Not other members. Developers see the creators who request their keys, and creators see the developers who grant them, by profile and channel, and the notifications between them are sent by IndiePump. Your address is not published on the site.

Account mail, such as sign-up and password resets, and the notifications that make the platform work: a key granted, a request answered. Anything else is opt in and can be stopped from the link at the bottom of the message.

Please tell us. Use Report a Bug in your dashboard sidebar, which sends us the page you were on, or write to info@indiepump.com. A screenshot and the browser you were using saves everyone a round trip.

Yes, and a lot of what is on the site started as somebody’s email. Send it to info@indiepump.com or through the contact form.

Try the shorter Help page, or just ask: info@indiepump.com. A person reads every message.