There are some confused people in the comments, it's industry standard to sponsor streams/have brand collaboration/twitch drops. Every company does it, and 2 million dollars is not much at all. their advertising budget is at least 20x that much, probably more.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

This is true, but one thing I noticed with AC Shadows is that there were a LOT of no-name streamers posting reels with fake hype over the game. It was a little egregious and came off as more than a little desperate.

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Without seeing what you've seen, that honestly sounds more like a symptom of the platform, current internet trends, and algorithm gaming than it sounds like a cheesy viral marketing campaign

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Or just excitement at getting "exclusive" early access as a small streamer. If you don't know there are thousands of others, it'd feel like an opportunity to make it big.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Generally speaking, algorithms on these sites don’t serve me a ton of videos with no views from creators with no followers, en masse. With AC shadows, I was suddenly inundated with these videos, on multiple sites, without ever having looked anything up about it, exclusively by streamers that nobody is watching.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

My buddy is a little streamer (gets maybe a few dozen viewers) and he got early access to it as well. Although he doesn't add any fake hype, he's just a very good hype man.

[–] Prox@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

For real. EA spent north of $10M on streamer sponsorships for the Apex Legends launch and that was like 7 years ago.