The “Game Journalist” Method

How to get free Steam CD Keys

 Contents
1. Intro
A) Requirements
2. Basic Method
A) Getting started
B) How to
C) Complications
3. Advanced Method
A) Getting started
B) How to
C) If the developers need proof
4. Extra information
A) Waiting time
B) Thank you
1. Intro

A) Requirements
- Good understanding of the English
language. Ability to write without
major grammar mistakes.

- Lots of patience.

- Social awareness.
2. Basic Method

A) Getting started
First of all, you will need to choose a website
that focuses on Game Reviews. A good
example of a site like this is:
http://www.fz.se/ or http://respawn.fi/
When choosing your website, it is important
to not go for the well-known sites like; IGN,
Metacritic, GameSpot, PC Gamer etc.

Choose a lesser known site. This will make

the approach which I will explain later on
more believable, and more likely to work.
After you have chosen the website of your
choice, you must make an email account.
I suggest using “Gmail” as it has an easily
recognizable address and as it is a
trustworthy email service provider.

When making your email account, you must

invent a fake persona. If you have chosen an
American website, your name should be
American. If you have chosen a German
website, your name should be German.

Examples:
German - “Dietrich Höwels”
American - “Joshua Greenfields”
German - “dietrichhöwels.respawn@gmail.com”
American - “joshuagreenfields.fz@gmail.com”
If you have followed the steps properly, your
persona should at least contain the following:

● An identity, as in a name.
● A workplace, any lesser known Game
Journalist/Review website should work.
● An email containing the persona’s first
and last name plus area of work.

You now have your persona and you are ready

to start contacting some Game Developers.
B) How to contact Game Developers
To get in contact with the developers of a game
you’d like to get for free, you will firstly need to
locate their website. You can do this by checking
the steam store page of the game you’d like, and by
then googling the company name of the developer,
not the publisher (in most cases).
Once you find the Game Developer’s website,
you will have to navigate through their site to
find either their email or a contact form. You
will find one of these under one of the following
tabs, and/or by scrolling down to the bottom of
their page (in most cases):
● Contacts
● Press
● Presskit
When you have either found their email or a
contact form, you are ready to send them an
email. Remember, try not to be too greedy when
contacting them, and create a unique message
for each time you use the method. Tailoring a
message for each developer’s game certainly
helps with getting their goodwill. You should try
to be formal, as you are asking the developer to
give you an item which you will conduct a
professional review on.

After you send your email, they might reply back

to you after a few days, with an email containing
the Steam CD Key you wanted.

The email you will have to send can be written in

about the same way as the text in the picture on
the next page.
 C) Complications
Sometimes you might get a reply back asking if
you can present any proof to them that you are
indeed representing the website of your choice.
All other methods fail to have an answer for this,
but this Ebook does in fact know how to bypass
this. To see how, please read section 3C.
In other cases, you might be sent a link to a
Steam CD Key distributor where you have to sign
up with your persona email address. This is no
issue, simply fill out the details required with
your persona’s information, and you should be
good to go, receiving the CD Key within hours or
less.
3. Advanced Method

A) Getting started
The Advanced Method contains
a lot of the same steps as
the Basic Method, so make sure
to read them both.

To get started with the more Advanced

Method of getting free Steam CD Keys, you
will need to follow every step from the Basic
Method apart from a few ones. Instead of
choosing a lesser known Game
Journalist/Review website, you will now look
for a well-known website which has already
made a review of the game you are looking
for. Instead of creating an entirely fake
persona this time, you might want to
impersonate someone working at for example
IGN, if that is the website of your choice.
Once you have decided on a website and an
identity, you will need to make an email
account, just like you have to with the
Basic Method.

Example:
“johndoe.ign@gmail.com”
“peterparker.pcgamer@gmail.com”
“peterpan.gamespot@gmail.com”

When your email account is created, you are

good to go. You can now start contacting
Game Developers with a few exceptions.
 B) How to contact Game Developers
using the Advanced Method

To get in contact with game developers using the

Advanced Method, you will need to go through the
exact same steps as in the Basic Method. This time
however, you can only contact them via direct email.
This method is not doable with contact forms.

Once you have the direct email address to the game

developer of your choice, you are ready to proceed.

You will need to use the website https://emkei.cz/

from now on. Emkei will allow you to spoof emails.
The basic idea of this Advanced Method is to
send the game developers an email from a
verified address, such as an; @ign,
@gamespot etc. We are, as previously said,
able to do this via the use of https://emkei.cz/.
Sending emails via Emkei makes emails look
like they came from whatever email you may
wish. I’ll start by showing you how this
works, then I’ll teach you what to write to the
game developers.

Example of an email received via Emkei:

You will need to fill in the appropriate
information in each field shown in the picture on
the next page. The example shown in the picture
contains the basics of what you will need to do.

You NEED to make the game developer continue

the email conversation via your
[INSERT NAME].[INSERT WORKPLACE]@gmail.com
as we can not receive emails via Emkei, only send.
This will definitely not work everytime, and will
be hard to do more than a few times.

Emkei does not store any logs of what you write in

your spoof emails as they are not legally required
to.
 C) What to do if the developers need proof

If the developers ask for proof that you are indeed affiliated
with a website by asking you to send them an email from the
website of your choice’s @ address , then we can easily get
around that, and we can even exploit it.

Simply go to https://emkei.cz/, then you write an email roughly

similar to the email shown in the picture on the next page.
4. Extra information

A) Waiting times

Waiting times differ for each Game

Developer, and may also vary depending on
holidays, weekends and other no-work days.
Heavy email load may also slow down a
potential response. Be patient, have some
fun with it. Take your time writing and
composing beautiful unique emails.

During the first 24 hours I tried these

methods, I managed to SE over 12 different
games for a collective value of over 160$.
 B) Thank you
Thank you for buying this Ebook. I hope it will be helpful in
your “Game Journalist” SE Adventures! Remember to have
fun, and let me know if you manage to pull off something
special ;-)

Links used:
Emkei - https://emkei.cz/
Steam - http://store.steampowered.com/