The Impact of Video Game Trailers and Releases on Stock Market Dynamics: An Event Study Analysis

Video game trailers combine product disclosure and promotion, but their stock-market implications remain uncertain. We examine 6170 deduplicated trailer events and 2470 releases for 24 selected listed publishers during 2010–2023 using total-return market models, overlap-adjusted inference, and within-game comparisons. The evidence for a negative average three-day return around first archived trailers (CAAR −0.20%) is suggestive: the revision-specified joint criterion—significance under both the two-way clustered test and the BMP test with the Kolari–Pape–Pynnönen adjustment—is not met. Exploratory daily results show the average response concentrated on the trading day after the archive date (AAR −0.15%); the three-day estimate is significant under the two-way clustered test (p=0.023) but not under the adjusted BMP test (p=0.088). The direct within-game comparison does not establish a trailer-release difference. Release returns are not detectably different from zero, yet equivalence within ±0.10 percentage points is not established. Gameplay response magnitude and the primary September placebo provide no confirmatory support. A validation audit identifies substantial archive-order disagreement, and timing sensitivities qualify interpretation. These results document modest, uncertain associations within a selected publisher sample; they do not establish that markets react more strongly to promotional promises than to released products or identify an attention mechanism.