I sell art asset packs here on itch.io and occasionally I'll get comments letting me know that a game dev has used my art in their project. I try to play these games whenever I have the chance and I love seeing the art I've worked so hard on being used by such creative developers.
If possible, I'd like to play as many games as I can that have used my art (and maybe feature the games on my YouTube channel) but I'm not sure how best to reach out to devs. Any recommendations?
I often see creators note that they would like to hear from people when they are using their assets in a game, so that they can check it out. Optional, of course. And there are devs who do that, just as you have experienced.
I do not think that you can do too much more here, though. At least I do not see a simple way to really 'track this' (for example if your assets would fall under a very particular tag that devs would use when using it, so you can easily pin down which games have used it). I believe at the end of the day, it is just a matter of 'letting your art out into the wild'. You may stumble on it from time to time, but I do not think there is too much to force the issue.
You could make a collection of projects that have used your assets, at least to keep track of the ones you know about.
You can also email the people who have purchased something, although I would be careful not to do this in a way that looks like marketing as the buyer email is only intended for messages specifically about the thing they bought.
