Fireside Chat: How Yodo1 Grew Transformers: Earth Wars Webshop Revenue Share 2.2× In Under A Year.

I would like to give a warm welcome Welcome to Lou from Neon and she'll be joined by uh Ionis from Yodo1 Games and they're going to be talking about how Yodo 1 grew Transformers Earth Wars web shop revenue share 2.2 times in under a year. So, please give a warm round of applause.
Give us space.
Yeah.
Hi everyone. Uh my name is Leil. I head up customer success at Neon. Uh my team and I work directly with um customers to grow the direct to consumer revenue. Um today we're going to uncover a very

concrete example of how Yoda 1's Transformers Earth Wars grew um the web shop and the direct to consumer revenue and the first time web shop purchasers by um two more than two times within a year. So yeah, so today I'm joined by Yanes, head of games at Yodan. So Yannes, please can you give everyone a quick introduction about yourself and your background, please?
Yes. Hi everyone. Uh so I'm Janice. I'm the head of games in Euro 1 h managing all our games or alive and all upcoming games. Uh before that I was a general manager in space ape games. Uh I was managing transformers for 10 years now and this is for the first time where we start getting involved in web stores was that was over three years ago the first time we start integrated one.
Yeah. And this year is actually Transformers 10 years anniversary. So yeah it's a very very longstanding and successful games. Um I guess the first question I think the audience would probably benefit is um from your perspective so what made D2C and the web

shop a real priority for transformers?
Yeah. So our game is being one of the older ones. So that's comes to that point where it's a bit harder to grow your game. So you have to figure away how we can have an impact and what I need to do has to have a return of investment. So it was kind of like we either try to invest on UA or we're going to have to start doing some other ways. And for us the what identified is the best opportunity was if we can get some of our players outside of the game and actually spending on the web store then we can increase our margin significant by just taking this 25% that we give to Google and Apple. So we identified it that that's going to be the best result and that we can have and we saw that the market at that point was a bit getting around to be advanced a lot of companies was trying that space. So we thought we would give it a go.
Yeah for sure. I think especially now with UA cost you know rising every year. I think trying to squeeze the additional

uh margin for your game is a very very important factor to consider for games that haven't thought about D2C you know yet. Um I think the second question would be um like one of the first decisions we always make with our customers is how do you train those players who are not familiar with D2C to buy a ver versus you know um the in-game right so how did you guys approach this decision early on when you introduced D2C and the web shop
yeah this there's been I mean the talk right before this was about this like you know we're all trying to figure out how we can you know move some of our audience away from the game in order to to complete the payments on the web store. So uh when we when we started as a company into looking at direct to consumer we thought like our game being a more midcore with a more established community would be the perfect example to do it because we can directly talk with our players. We have an active discord we have social media they're engaging there. So this is where we

decided like let's go and test on transformers and we tried few stuff like over the years that was before we could directly link from outside first social post newsletters we were trying to do stuff in discord then as time passed we just tried to do more stuff as you said like some people said like in inside the game the news feed that says you know there's offers you know go there and then explore like not the website directly just you a website that will link you from inside there to the web store directly. And then like since a year ago when the Epic and Apple finished, we tried to do more direct uh links where you could directly link on iOS and US directly from inside the game to the web store. So we've tried a few things over the years.
Yeah. And I still remember, you know, once the settlement, you know, with between Epic and Apple back in May, you guys immediately adopted some of the

best practices and then the revenue like really shoot up and also the visit um stores, web shops, visit.
It's always helpful to have a good provider like Neon that we have for ourselves because they they are they're tracking the market and always give you insights like you know this is what's happening right now. You should be trying to do that. So we're trying to be on the forefront. Yeah,
you guys always adopt you know one of the some of the best practices we give as well. Um I think one of the other thing that I have seen you guys doing really really well is to tie the whole direct to consumer um strategy very very tightly within your games monetization and also live op strategy as well. So every time I know you guys there's a big promotions happening you guys would always tell the users you know via your direct to consumer channel and that's working really really well as well. Maybe if you can share some of the best practices and your learning to the audience as well.
Yeah. Uh transform is uh most of the monetization happening after events live ops. So nearly like 90% of our revenue

comes from there. We have like premium currency like a lot of other games but most of our players are waiting for the bundle. So we start thinking about what we're going to do in the web store. Uh we we saw different approaches. There were a few companies that were trying to do just the battle pass and some premium currency. H and you know we thought like you know if we want to attract people we need to be able to have exactly what we're doing in game in the web store. Uh so what one of the things we were trying to find a provider was something that allow us to replicate this because we have so many bundles offers and usually they change like uh like twice a week and we need to be you know having exactly one to one situation from inside the game into the web store because otherwise our spenders would be like well I'm not going to go to the web store if you don't have half of the stuff I want to buy. Uh so we were trying to figure a ways when we joined like how can we recreate that we was kind of like all right we have our offers in game we have our live ops tooling know how can we export this

efficiently so like one live ops manager is so can actually support both platforms in one go and we managed to do that so we have like a 100% like you know recreation of all the bundles we have inside the game in the web store and that's give us the best result because everyone knows okay I can go to the web store this added value in there like why would I not buy the stuff and you know that's why we went from around 10% to nearly 45% now of all sales happening on the web store so yeah so that's very impressive and again I am on your guys Discord channel and I remember there was one Friday that I think there was some delay on you guys pushing out the new offers on the web shop and then we actually have all of the players tagging the live ops manager or like you know people saying where are the new offers I want to buy on the web shop. So you guys did an amazing job actually training the users to every Friday come to the web shop and then to buy the you know new offers.

The the hardest part is to get them out to see and you know get the the confidence that I can buy something on this which is not the game where you do that and you train that you can find the same content that you can have a good results.
Yeah for sure. And then again I think um sometimes you know one of the first hurdle we see is actually okay now we have users visiting the web shop and they come here every regularly to check but then some of them are just browsing right they haven't actually converted to a real web shop uh purchaser yet. So um we also had some practices and you know tactics to help to drive those uh web shop browser into actually purchasers. So can you also give an overview of you know how you drove both the initial traffic as well as converting those players to become a web shop purchaser.
Uh so traffic and you know we need to keep sustaining we need to keep like growing it. So our approach there was kind of like you know okay we can link

now but why will a person that you know doesn't spend actually go and see what offers we have on the web store. So we decided like you know let's put some uh free gifts in the web store. So it's like people like nonpers will have a reason why I always want to go into the web visit and get some free rewards but then then allows them to have the visibility of what offers we have going on there. Then we started doing more stuff where you say okay we have like really low value conversion bundles uh more options than you're going to have inside the game. So because we know we can you know okay if they someone gets convinced to to buy that even though they might be spending $2 versus four inside the game like you know we get more of a margin so it's not going to be a big give back but they will know the platform they will know you know that they can trust this and actually you know start being a habitual like spenders after that like through neon uh I think we had offers where we could just like if someone does the first

purchase we can have like a 50% promotional discount account of items. You know, there are other tools like you know VIP and loyalty systems that you know are integrated like the more you do a purchase the more you you know keep have a reason to keep spending. So there was a few ways we could incentivize also had promo codes that you could just send like emails all right come to our web store and then get like 40% off for one purchase and you know all that just helps because
to give them the confidence and also like why will I want to do that? Why would I want to leave the game in order to do this purchase?
Yeah. And I think one of the things that you mentioned previously was actually the first time purchase uh promo campaign that we launched together in August. So how that worked was just you know after a user claim a free item then there will be a popup saying leave your email right to uh for um how much percentage um off for your first purchase. And then this way not only you captured those um users email for future like communication um as well as

incentivized them because maybe now with a bigger in uh percentages of discount they're more willing to try the first purchase as well. So yeah so we definitely did a lot of uh tactics together and it's great to see the revenue like really climbing month over months. Now we're about 50% as you mentioned revenue is coming via DTC channel via neon. So again a great year for both of us you know and now this year only going to be higher.
Well yeah it's going to be interesting to see where it goes this year like you know the the talks earlier just feels like you know the the it always changes always shifting the the markets.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think like the last thing maybe if you can um share with the audience is what would be one advice you can give to some of the developers who might on the fence of hm should I try direct to consumer should I not what would be the one advice you give to the audience
I would say you definitely give give it a try like you know integration usual is quite painless like you know we've done two web stores and usually less than a

month someone to integrate even if you are on the on the casual side not meet for like you know with uh things like the Apple direct links out you can find your you can press your audience there. So you should definitely do it because a 25% increase in margin is a big thing for most of us and it can have an impact more than anything else you might be able to do in your game.
Yeah. So um I think that is all of the content you know we're going to cover today in our fireside chat. A big thank you for Yiannis to join us and giving us um you know some great insights and again like it's a great success seeing how uh Transformers grew the um web shop revenue by more than two times you know within a year. Um you know if you guys have any questions please feel free to ask.
Got plenty of time. I just see a hand. I swear I saw a hand. Don't be shy.

There you go. There's one over there. Can we get a microphone? Keep your hand up. Keep your hand up. Can we get a microphone over here, please? Thanks. Um, hi Jonas.
And L, how are you?
Hi. Um just quickly on Google, what do you think? What what do you think with the new Google changes um that they are proposing um to tax or enough tax to charge you for um web payments?
I don't think if we're talking now I think from I saw earlier is around 25% of uh so instead of 30 you're going to be doing 25%. So you're going to be saving 5% based on the proposal changes if you add like 20% on Google and 5% on the on the web store. I don't think at that point it's kind of worth to investigate that because it will also add a lot of complexity and the insights on how much money you're raising and things like that. Uh in that case we

might just fall back to you know not linking directly from inside the game and just go to the kind of like sideways uh solution of we are going to link to another website that actually links you to the web store or we just go more like social and you know we just tell our players like you know okay just visit our website outside of just the main thing uh because then it creates a problem and that 5% I mean for some games might be important depending on you know the value of your players on your of the value of your of your revenue, but maybe it's not worth enough for other people to just integrate a website and do all that just for that small percentage of drop.
Yeah. And just to add on that, we actually have some games who uh only have like the direct checkout, you know, within the game. Those are like more on the casual side of the games. Although the performance are great but what we've been actually working with them is actually prepare for like a fallback you know if the policy is in fact and when the fee doesn't make sense you know you guys should capture as many like players

email familiar themselves with the web shop concept you know as soon as possible at the same time prepare to just switch off this in-game linking or in-game messaging to avoid that fee but at the same time you know get ready to launch your web shop if you haven't um built a web shop already but for those game who have web shop for a while like you know transformers um a lot of the communication actually happen on discord or social media as Jiannis said and it's actually very very powerful and impactful to actually tell those users about the web shop so just to add on that you know prepare to have the fallback if you haven't thought about it definitely capture as many emails as possible for the communication with your players and at the same time launch your web shop as soon as possible
does anyone else have any questions questions. We still got a little bit of time.
I have one actually. Um earlier on we had someone on the panel say about you know obviously if you're not if you're

not thinking about DTC you're leaving money on the table for developers that are worried or you know that have questions why do you think they are you know they have the concerns about setting up DC uh solutions like what would you say is the biggest concern and how do they combat that? I I think it's the unknowing of what kind of impact is going to have, how many players you're going to send to the web store. There's also the the fear of punishment for the platforms if you were to say doing something that you just like don't want to use their systems and they just go sacri and then don't give them the cut. uh I think is that and also probably the unknown of how long it's going to take to integrate that and the effort it's going to take and if you are a small team like you might not want to you know prioritize that among other things. So it's it's a collection of things like you know we are as a developers we don't have like a huge resources so we need to fe to pick exactly what we want to do and what's going to have the biggest impact. Uh so

different companies have different like reasons why like they go for that. For me at that time it made sense to do web store and it paid up for us and I think for most developers probably would do the same.
Nothing to add he covered all
fair enough any we still got a couple minutes actually. So does any please put your hand up if you have any questions but um we we also had um today we also have our apps business summit that's taking place in the barbcin um and I was at an event mainly for like non-gaming apps in November time and I was speaking to them about uh DTOC and whether they're looking at that because obviously you know mobile games are looking at that and they always say games are typically ahead when it comes to monetization growth etc. Um Neon, like Lou, do do you deal with um uh consumer apps in in general as well? So, non non-gaming apps like who would you say are like some of the some of the people that you work with?

So, we work with um some of like utility apps for example, but those are more on the the PC side, not really on uh mobile yet. I feel like yeah, for mobile, non-gaming, a lot of them probably are still like wait and see. Um but right now we do support non- gaming and we also support not only mobile PC as well. So most of our non-gaming um customers are for mostly on the PC side.
We have about one minute left. Uh I will give one Oh, can we get a microphone? Actually, I'll come over here because I'm closer. Uh yeah, we do have one question.
Yeah. Yeah. Hi. Uh Yiannis, quick one. Um I know you've been running your web shop you know since earlier but what would you say especially in the context of running a web shop that runs across geol locations like what is the operational burden of doing that um what is the cost that you have to pay what kind of partners you have to incorporate in your business so I'm just trying to understand how much work goes into uh

setting up a web shop especially in the context of doing it across geographies.
Yeah. So it's actually quite simple for us like a lot of that is handled by the web store. I think what we had to provide was kind of like a conversion like you know what kind of pricing models we want them to keep
between the exchange ratings and if we we wanted to kind of have parity between uh Apple, Google and the web store. Uh so everything else was just handled from by name side the tool. So we didn't really have to direct go in and do something specific for that store. Uh localization we like we're already localizing in another like nine languages. We will have just upload it on the web store and that that goes out. The only thing we haven't tried if we were to do like uh pricing regional pricing specific different pricing for like different countries like you know like Brazil or something because we are all we had the concern and we still have the concern of like what if someone VPNs

in that market and then you know takes advantage of kind of like having a lower value. This is the only thing like it scares me not just on the website. It scares me on Google and Apple. I know a lot of games have found the success there, but it scares me to say like I want to give better value to someone that, you know, doesn't have as much capital to spend. H but then I'm also afraid of people just abusing that.
Yeah, I know we're out of time, but just to like add on that, you know, Neon operate as a merchant of record. That's why, you know, we are taking all of the burden of setting up um dealing with all of the tax and you know, stuff like that. So the developers don't have to worry about that. That's all they have to care about is how to direct the users, how to convert the users and then again this is usually like a joint effort of uh both our teams as well.
Yeah, thank you everyone. We have a lounge outside so if you have more questions please feel free to stop by and ask.
Yeah, please do connect with both of them.
Thank you so much guys. What a great session.