Trapster wants to make it easier for studios to market their games through creators and influencers.
Today, Sept. 30, Trapster launched a creator marketing platform built specifically for game makers. Studios can sign up for Trapster’s platform and create a campaign, with creators able to enlist in the campaign to post videos across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Studios on Trapster work with creators using the cost-per-mille (CPM) model, paying by the view instead of offering a fixed fee for branded content.
Trapster co-founder and chief executive officer Pavel Beresnev described his platform’s CPM-style payment approach as a benefit for both game studios that want to more closely measure the impact of their advertising spend and for smaller content creators who want to be paid for their videos’ performance, rather than commanding a large fixed rate thanks to their follower counts.
“If you’re a mid-sized creator, not a superstar, it’s super complicated to make studios find you,” Beresnev said in an interview with GamesBeat. “They don’t think about the algorithm; they don’t think about views. They think about followers.”
Trapster went live to the public this week after an invite-only beta period earlier this year that included 252 studios and over 800 creators. During this initial period, Trapster campaigns generated over 177 million views, driving over 2 million game wishlists, per Beresnev, who said his company had calculated this number by tracking games’ wishlist performance over the course of Trapster campaigns. Studios that participated in Trapster’s early-access period include Wargaming, Kwalee, Red Rover Interactive, Aerosoft, Alice Games, Techland, and Owlcat Games. One of the largest U.S. creators using Trapster at the moment is Gromo Gaming, who boasts over 354,000 followers on TikTok.
Trapster is launching during a particularly challenging period for game marketing and advertising, with traditional discovery tools becoming increasingly ineffective in a market saturated with new releases. Beresnev noted that game discovery is increasingly shaped by creators in 2026 — but that many studios are still inexperienced at identifying the right partners and administering campaigns. Trapster is intended to fill this gap.
“Trapster was built to make creator marketing more accessible, measurable,
and efficient,” Beresnev said in a press release. “Our performance-based model helps studios reach relevant audiences while creating more opportunities for creators to discover and earn from new games.”
Trapster is operating lean and low-to-the-ground. So far, Beresnev and his co-founder have raised $200,000 and spent about $40,000 of that money to build the platform. Since signing its first clients in April, Trapster has already processed over $750,000 in studio payments and paid out over $500,000 to participating creators, resulting in platform revenue of over $150,000 thus far this year, according to numbers shared by Beresnev.
Trapster has big plans for the future — but those plans don’t currently involve additional fundraising. For now, the company employs 11 people, with plans to staff up significantly in the coming year. Beresnev signaled additional expansions to come on the mobile and Chinese sides of the market. Trapster is also looking to enter the retail space by enabling participating creators to sell game codes directly to their fans through the platform.
“We’ve already started working on this,” Beresnev said. “We found a partner who will provide us a lot of keys for a lot of games, and we will do some white-labeled stores, super natively integrated into the platform.”