People Want Free Stuff: How New Blood Interactive Grew a Cult Gaming Audience With Gleam

New Blood Interactive did not build its audience through massive marketing campaigns or elaborate brand strategy. Over nine years, the indie publisher has run 35 Gleam campaigns by focusing on something much simpler: giving its community prizes they actually care about.

The studio behind ULTRAKILL, DUSK, Gloomwood, Faith: The Unholy Trinity, Amid Evil, and Blood West has used Gleam consistently to grow its email list and social following while keeping costs relatively low.

Dave Oshry, CEO of New Blood Interactive, puts it plainly:

"Our game ULTRAKILL is very very popular and people want free stuff. We use these giveaways to bulk up our social follows and email list and don't have to spend much in return, just give away some merchandise and free games. It's a win-win. Gleam makes it easy."

Who New Blood Are

Founded in 2014 by Dave Oshry, Aaron Alexander, and Kreyg DeZago, New Blood Interactive has become one of the most recognisable indie FPS publishers of the last decade. Its games draw heavily from classic shooters of the late 1990s while combining modern movement systems, fast combat, and highly stylised presentation.

Most of the studio's communication happens directly through Discord, Steam, Twitter, and YouTube, where the relationship between developers and community is intentionally informal. That closeness is a significant part of why their giveaways perform the way they do.

The Campaign

For their 10th birthday, New Blood partnered with Ironside Computers to give away a one-of-a-kind custom ULTRAKILL PC. The campaign ran on Gleam and generated:

• 65,678 impressions

• 185,928 actions

• 14,457 entrants

• A 22.01% conversion rate

Twitter was the strongest referral source, driving 14,907 impressions at a 42.99% conversion rate. Direct traffic produced the largest volume of actions overall, with 124,506 completed actions from 39,684 impressions. The campaign also generated 22,866 viral share clicks from 1,426 sharers, producing 3,439 successful shares at a 15.04% viral conversion rate.

Nearly half of all entrants came from the United States (47.87%), with the UK, Canada, Australia, and Brazil rounding out the top five countries. The most completed actions were checking out the Anniversary Steam Sale (23,405), visiting the Ironside PC site (22,287), and shopping the New Blood store (21,498).

Why the Prizes Work

The hardware partnership with Ironside meant New Blood could offer a premium prize without funding it entirely themselves. That approach, partnering with brands whose audience overlaps with their own, is central to how they keep campaigns cost-effective while still offering prizes worth entering for.

A custom ULTRAKILL PC attracts exactly the audience New Blood wants: PC gamers already interested in retro FPS titles. That reduces the low-intent entrants that often inflate entry counts on generic giveaways.

Learn More About ULTRAKILL

ULTRAKILL is a fast-paced ultraviolent old school FPS that fuses together classic shooters like Quake, modern shooters like Doom (2016) and character action games like Devil May Cry.

Learn More About ULTRAKILL

ULTRAKILL is a fast-paced ultraviolent old school FPS that fuses together classic shooters like Quake, modern shooters like Doom (2016) and character action games like Devil May Cry.

Learn More About ULTRAKILL

ULTRAKILL is a fast-paced ultraviolent old school FPS that fuses together classic shooters like Quake, modern shooters like Doom (2016) and character action games like Devil May Cry.

Growing the List

Each campaign is designed to support long-term audience growth. Entrants complete actions tied to social follows, YouTube visits, and newsletter signups. New Blood uses Mailchimp to manage the email side.

As Dave puts it: "We use Mailchimp by putting all the emails from each giveaway into our mailing list and hope people don't unsub. Sorry we're not fancy with our insights."

That simplicity is the point. The campaigns work not because of sophisticated automation or segmentation, but because the audience entering them already cares about the games.

What Other Game Studios Can Learn

New Blood's results point to a few things that translate well to other indie publishers.

Giveaways perform best when the prize is specific enough to qualify the audience automatically. A custom gaming PC built around a specific game title attracts fans of that game, not just anyone looking for free hardware.

Hardware and brand partnerships can significantly expand what a small studio is able to offer without carrying the full cost internally.

And consistency matters. Over nine years, New Blood has made giveaways a repeatable part of how it grows and maintains its community, rather than a one-off promotional tactic.