How Deep Silver Successfully Partnered with Thousands of Influencers for Dead Island 2

The gaming industry has come to rely heavily on influencer marketing as a key strategy for reaching a global audience. However, manually managing these campaigns can be overwhelming, particularly for large-scale publishers aiming to engage millions of players simultaneously. This is where leveraging a tech platform like Lurkit can significantly boost the effectiveness of influencer marketing efforts, a realization that Deep Silver came to before the launch of Dead Island 2. As the Global Influencer Strategy manager at Deep Silver, a subsidiary of Plaion, Jorge Tavera shared insights on how studios and publishers can achieve immediate traction within the content creator community from day one. The reception of Dead Island 2 among influencers was overwhelmingly positive, with over six million YouTube views generated in the first two weeks and the game topping sales charts in Europe during its launch weekend. Tavera's team, despite being small, successfully onboarded thousands of creators without hassle, largely attributing the game's hype to the 1,200 creators activated through Deep Silver's creator program. Since its release in April, Dead Island 2 has sold over two million copies. Tavera emphasized the need to efficiently onboard hundreds or thousands of creators in a short timeframe, both to their program and campaigns. Prior to using Lurkit, the onboarding process was manual, involving form submissions, email inboxes, and manual evaluations, which was time-consuming and inefficient. The ability to automate this process was a key factor in choosing Lurkit, allowing the team to focus on content creation with the assurance that creators were legitimate and met the minimum requirements. Deep Silver aimed to systematically integrate game key campaigns into the creator program, an area where Lurkit excelled compared to other platforms by offering a campaign-based program with clear rewards. Unlike traditional methods such as spreadsheets or agency partnerships, Lurkit provides a comprehensive platform for influencer marketing, enabling publishers to search, analyze, and communicate directly with influencers, thereby eliminating the need for manual work and reducing costs. The campaign saw significant success, with Twitch watch hours doubling the initial goal of 250,000 hours to 530,000 in the first two weeks, and YouTube views exceeding the goal of 100,000 to reach 6.2 million in the same period. The success of the campaign and the creator program has led to lasting relationships with creators, all facilitated by Lurkit.