Most studios reach out to press two weeks before launch and wonder why nobody covers them. By then the calendar is full, the embargo math is impossible, and the journalists who might have cared have already filled their week. Get the timing right and you turn a cold pitch into a planned slot on someone's schedule.
Start your PR clock from the announcement, not the release. For a typical indie or AA title, that means opening relationships three to six months before launch day, with the heaviest outreach landing two to four weeks before you ship. The exact window flexes with your scope: a small premium release can run a tighter cycle, while anything chasing print-adjacent outlets, console certification, or a coordinated review push needs the longer runway.
The single biggest mistake is treating launch day as the starting gun. Coverage is a scheduling problem before it is a writing problem. The earlier a journalist knows your game exists and that something is coming, the easier it is for them to slot you in instead of triaging you into the ignore pile.
Pick your launch date, then reverse-engineer the milestones that have to happen before it. PR is not one event; it is a sequence of moments that each deserve their own touchpoint. If you map them on a calendar, the question of when to start answers itself.
- T-minus 3-6 months: announcement and reveal trailer, when you first put the game on press radar and open your media list.
- T-minus 6-8 weeks: review-key planning and embargo dates set, so press can block out playtime.
- T-minus 2-4 weeks: keys and the press kit go out; this is your heaviest outreach window.
- T-minus 1 week: embargo lifts or staggered coverage begins, timed to maximize visibility.
- Launch day and after: launch trailer, day-one follow-ups, and a second wave for outlets that missed the first.
Notice that the work front-loads. By the time you are sending keys, the relationship should already exist. Cold-emailing a stranger and asking them to cover you tomorrow almost never works; warming them up over a couple of months changes the odds entirely.
Timing only helps if the assets back it up. Reaching out early with nothing to show wastes the goodwill you are trying to build. Before your first real pitch, you want a live Steam page collecting wishlists, a short trailer that communicates the hook in under thirty seconds, and a press kit a journalist can use without emailing you back for basics.
If your build is not stable enough to hand to press, you are not ready for keys, no matter what the calendar says. A buggy preview build does more reputational damage than a delayed pitch. It is better to push your review window back a week than to send something that crashes in the first ten minutes.
Launch is rarely the only newsworthy moment, and that changes when you start. If you are joining a Steam festival, entering early access, or dropping a major content update, each of those is a separate PR cycle with its own three-to-four-week lead. Studios that plan around these beats get multiple bites at coverage instead of betting everything on one day.
Be realistic about your news value, too. A wishlist milestone is not a story to most outlets, but a striking trailer, a named creative lead, an unusual mechanic, or a real-world hook can be. Start earlier when your hook needs explaining and the audience needs time to get it; you can compress the timeline when the pitch lands instantly.
Plenty of studios read this after the ideal window has closed. That is recoverable. Triage to the outlets and creators most likely to care about your specific genre, send keys immediately with a same-week-or-flexible embargo, and lean on a launch-week push plus a post-launch update beat rather than mourning the announcement coverage you missed.
Late PR is real PR. It is simply narrower, so you spend your effort on the highest-probability targets instead of spraying a wide list. And whatever you do next, start the clock earlier for your following project; the studios that build relationships continuously always launch from a stronger position than those starting from zero each time.
If you want a head start without building the whole machine yourself, our PR Starter Pack lays out the assets, timeline, and outreach groundwork for a launch like yours. Map your dates first, then decide how much you want to run in-house and where a hand would help.