Hi, I am a fan of a youtube game reviewer. I asked him to check out my game, but I was not lucky of course. I am wondering if reviews are paid works in most cases. If anybody has a game reviewed by youtube stars, can you share your experience?
Most "youtube stars" typically go out and find their next content, have it pointed to them by a friend, or notice it's a rising trend. I would recommend finding a few smaller guys associated with your main targeted youtuber and maybe they'll pass it to them or something. Source: Many reviewers "about pages" and various videos where they explain it. Edit: Also, be sure to offer them a "free/reviewer" copy. This will likely entice them to review it as it's at no cost to them.
There are loads of YouTubers out there, so it's worth constructing some solid emails (not just copy-paste "play my game" kind of stuff) to send to them individually. They all receive lots of these emails, so make sure you use good spelling and grammar, get to the point of why they should play your game (what makes it special) and provide them with a free copy to do so. Good luck!
I have yet to contact a Youtuber myself, but I have done quite a bit of research on the matter, so take it how you will! First, focus on the smaller channels first as they are much more likely to respond to you. But also make sure you are picking channels that are a good fit for your particular game, and vice versa. Don't just blindly send your game to every channel that does let's plays, reviews, etc. You'll have better luck fine tuning your approach. Second, always use their business email listed on the About page of their channel. Don't spam links in the comment section. I'm sure I can speak for most when I say that's not only unprofessional, but really annoying! Also, they likely won't pay attention to a comment as often as a well worded email anyway. Third, no, they shouldn't expect to be paid to play or review your game. Generally, they would not ask this of you either, but if they did, I would run the other way. Finally, just remember that it can be as good to be featured on several small channels as it is to be on one big one. Those numbers will add up faster than you might think, especially if they are loyal followers in the first place. Also, I completely agree with what dammit said above me as well. Take some time with your emails and write a different one for each channel if possible tailored to that channel specifically. Good luck, and let us know how it goes!
I don't know how many subscribers you need before you are considered a "YouTube star" but I have almost 50,000. I can tell you this, the big people are hard to get in contact with. I'm signed with Polaris which has some of the top YouTube people like PewDiePie and AngryJoe, and many other top stars. We each have network managers and I wanted to ask angryjoe about an idea I had, and even though we were in the same network, I never could get in contact with him. One thing I do know is that they probably wont review your game unless it is really good. When you have a lot of subscribers you have to be very careful of what you upload, because one bad game review could lead to hundreds or thousands of people unsubscribing. So unless you have something special I would forget that. If you want me to take a look at it, maybe I can do a review for ya lol.
Why not give Jim Sterling a try? He's reviewed quite a few Steam games recently and the quality of those were very mixed. Be ready for some unforgiving criticism though...