The GameRelease.net service is open. Here’s what the service includes:

INDIE PRESS RELEASE SERVICE (the reason why you might want to consider joining: Promote your game – get traffic & downloads and your game into gaming magazines)

BONUSES (private forums, ebooks, networking opportunities, game dev sparring)

There’s 2 account types. One is the full membership ($150) and the other is a trial account ($30). Full membership gets you all the benefits, while the trial account let’s you test the service (you get 1 PR to distribute) and you can later upgrade to full membership (by paying additional $120).

Licence
See licence terms

I’ll explain each of these in detail.

• The PR service: Insiders get access to the GameRelease.net service that has a nice list of contacts. Not all contacts are listed in the service, and the total of active contacts vary a bit (it’s checked infrequently, and non-active contacts are removed from the list). This PR service is the “meat” of the Insiders membership, and should probably be the main reason to think about joining the service. Other factors should be thought as “additional bonuses”.
• You may use the PR service for your own products. (If this is an issue, please email me and we’ll figure out something)
• At the moment you may use the PR service maximum once per month, which means you’ll get plenty of PR subscriptions to build a campaign. If you have new screenshots to share one month, videos the next – you can handle this. You are free to build hype even when your game is in development with no extra cost. (If you want to get even more PRs, please email me and we’ll figure out something).

Then list of the “additional bonuses”:

• Noise-free private forums: Insiders get access to private forums where all the action happens. Discuss with others and participate in sparring and other perks. All this takes place through forums.
• Ebook: There are several ebooks that cover various areas of game production. These range from generating sales to programming tips and more.
• Networking opportunities: Insiders share their LinkedIn, Twitter (and possibly other) details with each other (if you want). There’s hundred or so members at the moment, which makes Insiders a pretty nice way into networking with other game developers.
• Sparring section: This is another new process for the members to help get games done efficiently. Each month, developers are encouraged to participate and list their main goals for the next month. Each month – around 15th day – we’ll have a checkpoint and check how the progress has been, and what kind of issues there might have been. These span new discussions which will be separately handled. These discussion are aimed to happen in a very practical level and help encourage developers to get their product done more efficiently. It’s not a “training” section (where “somebody tells you what to do”) but rather a system for kicking some developer buttocks to get things moving. We all know that indie developers need that kick or two every once in a while.
• Other: There are some other things happening and the membership is evolving and changing as things go forward. Things like an “Insiders mailing list” (handled by the vbulletin) was recently introduced so that anyone who wants, can receive notifications and thus “reduce forum polling”.

Image from Dreamstime

Those of you who think about joining:
I think the service is not for everybody, and I’ve made my best to come up with reasons why you should not join, and some reasons why you might perhaps want to consider membership.

The “Don’t join” if part:
# Don’t join if you think $150 is a lot of money.

# Don’t join out of curiosity about what’s inside (You already know if you’ve read the above)

# Don’t join if you think that the PR service will make you automatically tons of money since it requires skills from you too, solid game, well done PR, luck and some other factors what make games sell. PR service is just one part of the big wheel. There’s training available, but it requires some experience to write PRs that work. The PR service is one weapon, to be used wisely.

# Don’t (necessarily) join if you want just the Insiders forums access, and have no plan to use the PR service at any point – the meat is in the PR service, other things should be considered as “additional bonuses”. There are members who enjoy the forums a lot and find them very beneficial, but I think it’s pretty accurate to say that at this point the PR service is the meat and others come as additional bonuses.

Now to the “consider joining if” part:
# Join if you think that the service can help you sell about 10-20 extra copies of your game (depending how you price your game). I’d say this is very much possible, but won’t happen automagically.

# Join if you are interested about the new Sparring section. I really haven’t talked about this much, but basically it offers monthly checkup points and butt kicking for getting your game/project done in properly manner. It’s pretty new so no any guarantees on that. I like it, and presume there’s others too who have enjoyed it. It’s a new thing.

# Join if you think you could also benefit from the added bonuses to the PR service: like the discussion forums and ebooks.

# Join if you plan to use the PR service for promoting your game’s various development stages (ranging from alpha to beta and more). This is what the PR service is planned for: to help indies promote their games with an indie friendly pricing. Alongside the PR service is the forums and sparring that supports your game dev if you choose to participate.

Please ask, I’ll be glad to reply:
One last thing – if you don’t know if the service is right for you, then please feel free to ask and questions from me regarding the service. I do my best to shed light to issue if possible.

I’ve made it so that now you can own the service. You pay once, and get access to it.

Simply email me if you want to get something clarified.

Image courtesy of Dreamstime

NOTIFICATION:
If you just want to try the service, then PLEASE choose the $15 per month option. Don’t pay one-time fee if you are not sure if the service is for you. Due the indie friendly price & nature of the service (PRs for example require your skills too to make them work) there’s no money-back guarantees.

Both are pretty indie friendly prices ($15 per mo for 12 months or $150 one-time payment).

Join:
Please register at the forums and purchase the membership (fill your username in the Plimus screen) and I’ll activated your account.

If there’s anything… just email me.

Juuso

The service has been running since 2005 and aims to stay online for years to come.