Influencers can’t save a game with no momentum
Reading posts of devs who struggle to gain traction and consider spending a lot of money on marketing to save it, I feel a common misconception is to think that influencers or aggressive marketing can turn things around and save your game.
If you struggle to gain traction on your own, chances are that the game is simply not appealing enough, and even if a popular influencer ends up playing it, it will not magically make everyone buy it.
An interesting recent case is Gorilla Showdown, a new multiplayer game that was part of the Zlan, one the most watched game competition in France, it gathers millions of viewers over 3 days. Interestingly, this game was the only non-popular game showcased (others were stuff like AoE or Worms), I assume the developers had some kind of agreement with the organizers of the Zlan to have their game among the roster. The game didn't manage to gain traction on its own before the event, and despite being watched by millions of viewers, in only gained 40 followers and has the same review count.
It's also something I experienced with one game I released and that flopped, I kept thinking 'I just need one popular guy to play it and it will be fine!', I got lucky and one youtuber with 17m suscribers played it, the video had a million views but it didn't change anything sales wise. After that I made another game that managed to gain traction on its own, and with this one the influencers did have a large impact on the sales.
Influencers are a multiplier, if your game can get traction on its own, they will make it snowball, but if it doesn't, it's like multiplying 0. So if you're hesitating to X thousands on marketing to try to save your game, it may be better to invest that money in the developement of the next game instead.