DTF
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
DTF is a Russian-language site of user blogs about games, film and technology. Formally it is not a forum with threads but a feed of posts: any registered user starts a blog, publishes posts and comments on other people's. The platform describes itself as a "place to discuss games and film" with industry news, reviews, analysis and memes.
For a brand it is worth understanding the setup straight away: there is no separate "business account" here — a company registers the same kind of blog as a private person. But the platform's rules explicitly restrict such blogs, and the restrictions are lifted only by a paid subscription. This is DTF's key feature: marketing on behalf of a company is allowed, but exclusively inside the paid perimeter.
DTF belongs to the same network as vc.ru: they share an advertising department and a programmatic interface. If you have worked with vc.ru, the mechanics will be familiar; the subject matter and the audience are what differ.
Who's here
The network's operator reports 8 million users a month on dtf.ru and 20 million users a month across all of its projects together. This is the platform owner's statement about itself in a commercial context, not an independent measurement; the page does not state the date the figures were calculated for.
The interface language is Russian; we found no other language versions on the pages we checked. The platform does not publicly give a breakdown of its audience by country, age or gender. The thematic core is set by the platform itself: the rules say that DTF is a platform "about games, technology, series and film", and that wording is the basis for banning politics as a main topic.
Getting started
Registration is ordinary, by e-mail. An important country-specific detail: the help section reports that sign-in through foreign services "no longer works", and that a Yandex account can be linked in the profile settings. In other words, the familiar sign-in with Google is not available on the platform.
If several employees run a blog, we found no separate team-access mechanism on the public pages — collaborative work implies shared login credentials. Take that into account in your security policy.
An account has a rating: it is made up of all posts and comments and of how other users rate them. A verification badge is issued at the platform's discretion — it requires a filled-in profile, activity and public recognition. A company can get a separate mark a different way: a Pro subscription gives you a "black check mark next to the blog name" and a short address of the form dtf.ru/company.
What you can publish
Posts are assembled in a built-in editor. The platform states the limits on attachments plainly: images and GIFs — up to 15 MB, video and audio — up to 100 MB; formats jpg, png, gif, webp for images, 3gp, mp4, mov for video, mp3, m4a for sound.
The prohibitions are listed in the rules. Besides the obvious ones (pornography, cruelty, drugs, insults, racism), casinos and bookmakers, VPNs and pirated content are named separately — these are the categories advertisers most often get wrong. Politics "must not be the main agenda of a blog or of comments".
The main thing for marketing is the advertising rule. The platform states it without reservations: "Posts promoting commercial services, offerings or links, including through contests, are prohibited on DTF". Brand blogs are covered separately: if a blog is created purely for advertising — the name, description or logo contains a company name, and the posts promote services — the platform "may apply restrictions to it", and those can be lifted by buying Pro.
How to grow
What the free mode gives you
Not much. In the rules update of 23 June 2025 the platform described the procedure like this: accounts created for advertising or for promoting commercial services will be restricted, and posts by companies without Pro are hidden from the feeds by default. Commercial contests are prohibited by a separate clause: "Contests run for commercial purposes are prohibited".
The Pro subscription
The platform describes its paid mode for companies with a set of four items: up to 60 posts a month, "distribution on DTF" with inclusion in the recommendation system, indexing by search engines, and a black check mark next to the blog name. The Pro Max plan adds "20,000+ additional impressions a month" in "Popular" and in recommendations, showing only your own material in the recommendation block under posts, and the "Button" tool in the editor — a conversion button instead of an ordinary link.
Note the platform's own reservation: articles may be hidden from the feeds for breaching the editorial policy or the rules even with an active Pro subscription. The subscription can be paid by card or by invoice; a renewal reminder arrives 5 days before expiry, and accounting documents are issued only when paying by invoice.
Advertising
Display advertising is sold not by the platform itself but by the network: the network's advertising page describes a "built-in advertising platform with an auction model and detailed targeting of the audience" and refers you to the sales department for details. There is no rate card and no minimum budget on the public page.
Path to monetization
Authors on DTF are paid not by the platform but by readers. Donations work, and the terms are given as numbers: the minimum single donation is 100 rubles, the maximum 10,000 rubles, the fee around 6.5 %, and the minimum withdrawal 250 rubles.
There is no ad revenue share, affiliate programme or author fund on the pages we checked. The Plus subscription is a payment from a user to the platform, not income for an author: 129 rubles a month, the first month for 1 ruble, and 98 rubles a month when paid annually for turning off advertising, a video avatar, a badge and voiced articles.
Tools and automation
The network does have a programmatic interface, and the documentation is public. The specification is called Osnova API and serves three sites at once: the base addresses are api.dtf.ru, api.tjournal.ru and api.vc.ru. The same source gives the rules of use: no more than 3 API requests per second, a mandatory User-Agent header in a specified format, and authorisation via the X-Device-Token header. A token is valid for 3 months, a refresh token for 1 year.
A material limitation for scheduling: version 2.0 of the specification we checked has no method for creating a post, and the documentation itself notes that not all methods are available and that some requests have to be taken from version 1.9. Put simply, the API is aimed first of all at reading and at client applications, not at publishing from a scheduler.
Limits and rules
- Advertising. Posts promoting commercial services, offerings or links, including through contests, are prohibited.
- Brand blogs. They are restricted if created for advertising; the restrictions are lifted through a Pro subscription.
- Spam. Prohibited are mass posting of identical or meaningless messages and aggressive link placement.
- Metric inflation. Inflating your rating and other manipulations are prohibited; accounts created for manipulation are blocked immediately and permanently.
- Blocks. The scale is progressive: 3 hours, 6, 12 hours, 1 day, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 days and a permanent block. The 2025 rules update describes a start at 6 hours, doubling for each subsequent violation — the wording of the two documents differs, and we were unable to resolve that discrepancy.
- Reinstatement. 1 year after a block you can write to moderation@dtf.ru.
- Subject matter. Politics must not be the main agenda of a blog or of comments.
Who it's for
It suits game studios, publishers, developers and services for gamers who are willing to pay for the right to speak on behalf of a brand. The deal here is honest: the platform does not pretend that free promotion is possible — it explicitly restricts advertising blogs and sells the removal of those restrictions. If you have the budget for Pro, you get a predictable channel with search indexing and inclusion in recommendations.
It suits individual authors and specialists who write on the platform's topics under their own name and sell nothing directly: growth through rating and donations is open to them.
It is not for you if you counted on running a company blog for free: the posts will be hidden from the feeds. It is not for off-topic brands — the platform draws the circle of subjects itself. It is not for categories such as casinos, bookmakers and VPNs: the rules prohibit them.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself like this: «A place to discuss games and film. News from the games industry, reviews, analysis, memes. Create your own posts, comment on other people's, rate the content you like.»
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: ru
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
Catalogue section: all similar See also: catalogue index · region: Russia and CIS · scheduler comparison · find by situation · platform restrictions