Advertise With Held Games

Held Games reaches people who are actively researching retro handhelds, emulation setups, and the hardware that runs them. Our readers arrive mid decision. They are comparing devices, troubleshooting firmware, and working out what to buy next.

If your product genuinely fits that audience, we are open to working with you. This page covers what we offer, what it costs, and the standards that apply to every placement. Please read all of it before reaching out.

What We Offer

$500. We research and write the piece ourselves, to the same standard as our editorial work. You supply a brief and the product details. We handle the writing, structure, and images.

You get one round of factual review. You do not get approval over our opinions or our conclusions.

Supplied Article Placement

$350. You provide a finished draft. We review it, edit it for house style, and publish it if it meets our standards.

We reserve the right to decline any draft, or to request changes, after payment has been discussed but before it is taken. We do not publish drafts we would be embarrassed by.

Display Advertising

Handled exclusively by Mediavine. We cannot sell display inventory directly. Please contact Mediavine for programmatic buys.

This is the part most inquiries are really about, so we will be direct.

Every outbound link in sponsored content carries rel="sponsored". Every sponsored post carries a visible disclosure at the top, in line with FTC guidance. Both of these are conditions of publication, not negotiable extras, and they apply at any price.

We do not sell dofollow links. We do not sell links inserted into existing articles. We do not sell homepage placements. If what you need is ranking signal rather than audience, we are not the right site for you, and we would rather say so now than waste your time.

We also do not accept payment to remove, edit, or soften existing editorial content.

Editorial Standards Apply Without Exception

Sponsored content on Held Games follows the same rules as everything else we publish. Two of those rules catch people out, so they are worth stating plainly.

Held Games covers ROM hacks, fan games, decompilations, and recompilation projects as news. We do not help readers obtain them.

That means we publish no links to GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, SourceForge, Nexus Mods, Modrinth, CurseForge, itch.io, or Steam Workshop. It also means we do not publish individual account handles or pseudonyms for the people behind these projects. We refer to a project by its name, and to its author as "the creator" or "an independent developer".

Many of these projects use licensed assets. Naming the person behind one, or pointing traffic at where it lives, can make that person a target. We report what happened. We do not act as distribution.

This applies to sponsored content exactly as it applies to our own. A draft built around a repository link is a draft we cannot publish.

We do not link to, name, or describe how to reach ROM sites, game file aggregators, or any source of copyrighted game data. All of our emulation coverage is written for people playing games they already own. Sponsored content is held to the same line.

What We Decline

We do not accept sponsored content from:

  • Gambling, casino, betting, or sweepstakes operators
  • ROM, game file, or "free download" sites
  • Game key resellers and grey market storefronts
  • Cheat, boosting, or account services
  • Cryptocurrency, NFT, and token projects
  • Anything unrelated to retro gaming, handheld hardware, emulation, or adjacent consumer tech

We also decline anything we would not be comfortable showing our readers, whether or not it appears on this list.

Reviews Are Not For Sale

We are happy to receive review units, and we disclose them in the review. Sending us hardware does not buy a score, a recommendation, or a publication date. If we do not like a device, we will say so.

Sponsored content and reviews are separate products. A sponsored article is never presented as a review.

Turnaround And Terms

  • Turnaround: 7 to 10 business days from an approved brief.
  • Payment: In advance, before work begins.
  • Placement: Permanent, provided the content stays accurate. We may update or retire a sponsored post if it becomes misleading.
  • Disclosure: Permanent and visible. We do not quietly remove disclosures later.

Get In Touch

Email stubblefieldsolutions@gmail.com with the subject line "Advertising Inquiry".

Please include your company, the product, your proposed topic, and the destination URL. Inquiries that do not say who the end client is will not get a reply.

Detailed audience figures are available on request.

See our Editorial Policy for how we source and verify content, and our Disclosure page for how affiliate links work.