This is my first time hosting a local gamejam! It's mainly for teens, and I was wondering if the community had any tips for finding sponsors/support?? My group has been cold-emailing creators/company but we've been getting no responses :(
I didn't enter with the intention of winning the cash prize or placing in the top ranks. The biggest draw of this jam was getting feedback from a supposed publisher.
The jam, organized by eclipse publishing announced the winners (on its Discord server) one hour before the submission deadline. In addition, the "winners" were instructed to claim their prize in that same message.
When the submissions closed (a little less than two hours later) the judging was completed and the official winners were announced. They were the same three users who had been announced earlier, plus one other participant, with a two-way tie for first place.
- No evaluation criteria were provided
- The jam was removed from itch (it's no longer accessible) its back on
- And both my Discord teammate and I were banned
Minutes later, he deleted all the jam's channels from Discord, accused us of personal harassment via private messages (which didn't happen), and shut down the jam.
I just want to leave this message so that, if you ever come across another jam organized by these "publishers" in the future, you'll be careful.
The JAM: https://itch.io/jam/eclipse-publishingjam
Edit 1.
Current announcement:
Archive announcement: https://web.archive.org/web/20260821032723/https://itch.io/jam/eclipse-publishingjam
As you can see, they also removed the prize from there.
Hey! I'm organising Wrapped Up 2026, a Christmas game jam running this December.
I'm currently figuring out sponsorship and was wondering if anyone here has experience getting sponsors for smaller or first-year jams.
I'm mainly thinking about things like software licences, asset credit, subscriptions or other game-dev related prizes, rather than huge cash prizes.
For those who've organised jams before, how did you approach sponsors, and are there any companies you've found particularly open to supporting smaller jams?
Any advice or experiences would be really appreciated! 🎄🎁
