I see quite a lot of games promoting their group in their game by making features accessible to group members only. I never thought much about it until now. Why do games do this? What are the benefits of having players in your group? I’m wondering if I should give group members an advantage, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort.
I can see that it is a way to gather your game’s community and so that you can announce updates/changes/news in the group shout. It could also be indirect advertisement as groups are displayed in a player’s profile page.
It’s just really a way of gathering more “fans” and members to the group, it’s like a double profit, you advertise your game to get people into the game, and at the same time people get into your group.
You don’t gain any money from joining your group, it’s just really a prestige thing, to have a lot of people join your group. Also you pointed out that it mgiht be for making news and stuff, yeah that’s very right, it’s like whenever you create another game, you have a player base that’s actually interested in playing that game, it also helps to get players back once they see news or codes and stuff like that that encourga them into coming back.