Panel: Championing Community – Building Player Connections Outside the App Stores

[Music] our panel here is going to be championed by our very own Charlie uh Charlie's going to come up and uh from St media and he's going to talk to Tom Connor Archie and Barkley about Champion Community Building player connections outside the app stores Charlie over to you I I bet you're sick of me I've been around everywhere today uh so yeah could I could I please welcome Archie Tom Connor and Berkeley to the stage please uh welcome everyone uh we're going to be talking about uh building player connections outside the app stores we're going to delve into uh workshops and social platforms and other ways of how we can we can um provide uh meaningful connections there so so uh I would like

to welcome I've already welcomed my panelist but I'd like them to introduce themselves and uh we'll start with Connor and then we'll work our way down the line hi everybody my name is there we go hello there we go yeah okay hi everyone my name is Conor mlin I am the VP of Revenue and Partnerships at a company called AGM founded by the former sea Suite OFA uh I'm formerly I've been in kind of ads monetization or monetization really my entire career formerly at vungle liftoff helping Publishers monetize via ads and uh more recently moved over to Agony in a kind of a space that I find kind of far more exciting um and uh very excited to speak to you all today thanks for having me hi everyone uh my name is Tom Gaya I'm the CEO and co-founder of a software business called

we uh have built Community insights and Community Management tools for Discord specifically and we're working with a number of Publishers and Studios like Scope Play and Crafton really kind of focusing on two areas I think the thing that we hear from the industry most is that kind of Discord tells us first whether that be a bug whether that be a change in game mechanics whether that be something that people love um but cutting through the noise of 100 thousand half a million a million messages month and getting that into the right hands uh within uh teaming or with within teams and ores is pretty difficult so we're doing that on the Insight side and then on the engagement side and I think we'll probably talk more in this panel around some of the kind of challenges around um growth in UA um is really we're seeing a bit of a shift um in the industry with with a focus on retention um and the importance of kind of growing uh keeping hold of users and so our tools are helping Drive engagement in communities to to do just that cool are we on yep we're good hey

hey everyone I'm Berkeley aganus uh Chief marketing and growth officer at exola um we're thrilled to be here I'm here in London to kick off the year of a series of events for all of us to be honest and I call it the event Super Highway that we'll be on um we are the leading Global uh video game Commerce company we focus only on video games and supporting uh games from all different genres all different sizes it doesn't matter where you're located where you're from what type of game you have we're here to help you support your business and grow um through the different regions we operate in 200 different geographies around the world 700 different payment methods 130 different currencies and support languages um in 25 different languages around the world uh from everything from Japanese to Brazilian to Portuguese and both portug you know Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal um going into it so um we're we've been investing in web shops for the last 3 years um right before

everything kind of the chaos broke out in the United States from the litigation with Google and apple um and going back and forth and what was happening uh with epic and now we've built uh a pretty solid business over 500 web shops that we've rolled out over the last two years and we've learned a ton um we're here to share some of those insights and what's going on and where we see every we see the industry going the industry is growing people I don't care what you read out there it's growing this is a key year 2024 was a great year for mobile I think you guys would all agree but 2025 is going to be spectacular we're really excited about the opportunity so keep making games um we want more games on mobile and to see that happen awesome I'm Arie I'm head of product at stash uh stash builds uh really premium bespoke uh direct consumer Channel experiences for some of the biggest developers in the world uh we try and work with uh developers who are you know reasonbly out scale um l in

their life cycle with sophisticated teams to build player experiences that really enhance uh uh the kind of gameplay um in every way so that can cover everything from social systems to new forms of content uh to premium e-commerce experiences um we uh you know have been around for a couple years and um uh similarly to some of the other guys up here have you know been really excited about some of the regulatory unlocks that have been happening although I don't think any of us think any of that was required for for um you know the explosion in D Toc that has already been taking place if anything the main thing it's done has just made it more of a talking point in the industry um but yeah we firmly believe that the next phase of uh growth in the games industry will be driven by A Renewed focus on distribution Innovation and that uh the studios that are really getting ahead and have demonstrated and grown the market uh are those that have thought as much about how their players play their game as as they do about you know what their game is to play um so stash is partnering with developers who

are who are thinking about that seriously and finding kind of new ways to make games a delightful experience brilliant I moved over here by the way because I thought it would be better to see everybody's faces better uh so uh one of the topics that we wanted to dive in today and I guess this is quite a nice opening uh opening question for us to dive deep deeply into a bit more later as well um but yeah what other the topics we wanted to dive in today was um uh how to communicate and listen to your players uh to build a relation better relationship with them uh how are the rules changing and what are some things we should be thinking about in 2025 you know we can speak from the community perspective and from the DTC perspective I think it's really important right now I mean so agonum for instance we're kind of a game extension platform right so think of it as kind of a super sized web shop and what we have on our platform we're a Content first game extension platform that essentially br users over to a gamehub where we can

then upsell them and keep them engaged via the look and feel and Via kind of several areas of content that they can engage with now I think that right now what's really interesting about our industry is performance right so once you get players over to your gamehub or your web shop how do you keep them engaged and also how do you keep them uh purchasing off app to kind of avoid and give Publishers back kind of this power to to avoid this 30% Apple and Google fee that exists obviously in game so I mean we spoke to when we were in stealth mode we spoke to a 100 of the top 250 Publishers and 80% of them had 80% of% of them had like a DTC platform some sort of web shop right now 50% of them were operating at 5% or below so 5% of their users had come over to the web shop that was 50% and 80% we're only

generating around 20% or lower of purchases and players coming over to the web shop so right now when you think about kind of gam hubs or web shops or DTC in general I think the one big opportunity everybody thinks about this opportunity right now it's top of mind for everyone we're talking about it we just had web shop Wizardry before this the really big question is once you get players over how do you keep them converting how do you keep them engaged and how do you keep them purchasing because that's the key question between is this the biggest opportunity in Mobile gaming or is this just another opportunity so I think that is kind of what everybody's thinking about currently at agam we're doing around 14% off app on day one from launch because of how kind of engaged we keep our players and the feature set that we have I think that if you're not looking at 50 to 60% off platform within 3 to six months uh you should kind of reevaluate Where You Are so I think it's the

biggest opportunity right now if you can do it well um and that's why everybody should be looking at the reg the providers that they're evaluating in order to do that so just to answer your question on um you know when what the kind of changing of the rules was I think you mentioned so probably the thing that unlocked the kind of new growth in DDC um initially if it was like any macro move was the the first concession Apple made coming out of the 2020 epic verse Apple cases uh which was um the rules used to be that you could not communicate to your users that were acquired via the App Store ecosystem you could not communicate to them about alternative ways to transact um period in any way and so what that meant is if I had a user that downloaded the game through the App Store I then got their email in the app I was not then allowed to email them being like hey we have a web shop um and the first concession Apple made was that they said okay

if you have acquired a user from within the App Store ecosystem you are now allowed to communicate with them outside of the app through those kinds of channels even if you acquired them in the abser ecosystem and that was probably the thing that like kicked off pla scaling significantly um and the rules have become kind of more LAX since then uh such that now um I think these things are really being worked out but in America and Europe um the authorities you know we won't go too deep into the regulations which I love to do but probably another penal yeah um they are all pushing on this idea that actually the communication between the developer and the player should be pretty free and so even if you're not allowed to for example have an alternative payment rail built into your game you should be allowed to tell players in the game hey if you go to a website you're allowed to purchase and you know that's something that developers are becoming more aggressive on because the the kind of regulators are scrutinizing Apple and Google a lot and Apple and Google are much less likely to be really harsh so um that's unlocked a lot more uh ways to

kind of yeah communicate with your players to take that another step further even so cuz everything set a spot on is provide uniqueness provide offers when you're communicating out to your users it's not just a one anddone situation have continuous offers work with your live Ops teams to understand what offers are working what's doesn't is it a topup offer that made sense this week is it a unique scan or a unique bundle of gems or currencies whatever is in your game mechanic to do that we have game developers that we work with tilting Point specifically on Warhammer they do offers twice a week because their consumers have demanded it based on their user behavior and what's going on and they're seeing over 55% of their revenue coming outside of the app it's on their web shop and then driving people into the mobile device to get them to pay play excuse me play on the mobile phone and then while you're still in that sessioned you're still seeing purchases happening it's still going through Apple it's still going through

Google and the app stores and doing that but really look at what your users are are saying by their behavior and then double down on those offers look at it try different times a day try different days of the week um they have situations where if they miss it on Friday at like noon the community blows them up and goes where's my offer for the weekend because I want to have a session with my friends I want to do this on you know I'm going on a road trip I need something to do because it's a three-hour train to Northern UK whatever the situation is to provide that uniqueness and that value because they will call you out they will tell you if that offer is not valuable they'll either tell you socially through the emails respond back to the email and what's going on that offer didn't make any sense there's no value to me or they will make that decision based on our purchased behavior and you need to understand that what's going on and maybe the final thing that I just add to that is to make sure that you are communicating where your players habits already exist and that isn't just in your game um um I don't know how many of

you have seen Matthew B's 2025 gaming report but he talked and went deep on some of the stats around Discord where we focus and 90% of the 200 million users on that platform are playing 14 times a month up to 90 hours a month right that's more than two working weeks in a month it's insane so you've got to make sure that you are communicating those offers and those opportunities where your audience are and charliie the original question was about are you listening to the audience the beauty of realtime Community platforms like that is that alongside your offers not only can you get you know your kind of your your own uh internal analytics and data you can also just you can listen you can get that feedback and when you start to bring together that qualitative and quantitative data you can kind of unlock and find real golden insights in that brilliant so Tom what I'll do is um I'll come to you real quickly for this one so we we're seeing a shift in the social platforms where communities are being built with play and and you have a load

of insights in this especially like T Discord in particular is increasingly uh increasingly the core platform for Publishers in studios uh how are we seeing strategy shift on Discord then yeah Tom I guess this is more directed towards you but you guys can also waigh in yeah I mean I think uh the first thing to talk about is it's kind of a why the shifts and I think really what you know when we started to build this business three years ago saw the kind of core traditional social platform become really broadcast media formats so short form content really valuable top of funnel but not really places for conversation and connection which has kind of created this space for Discord and hey Reddit has been around for a long time but we've seen it really had that growth as well in recent years um I think combined with that you know a decade of real growth of the gaming industry and whil we all feel very positive about it you know if we look at the the underlying numbers last year we started to see some stagnation and we started to see some challenges around

user acquisition bottlenecks driven by I think just the amount of content out in the ecosystem right 19,000 games launched on Steam last year there are now 700,000 mobile games across Android and iOS 5,000 console games so you're kind of shouting into the wind and then we've got this change around cookies and and tracking um and advertising costs also increasing so I think all of that is also leading to the industry going when we get a user we have to hold on to them for de life right and those users those highly engaged users end up in your Discord communities you know alongside those stats of how much game time they're playing we've been able to prove that on average a Discord user is six times more valuable than a non- Discord user they put their hands in their wallets and so historically Community has often kind of been seen as this cost and kind of managing toxicity that's starting to shift where I think organizations are thinking about it within a kind of more of a revenue lens and so we're just seeing more investment

and smarts into how we can build and better engage those kind of community ecosystems and I think that what these guys are doing and the webstore opportunities and and kind of turning Discord from a separate Island for conversation into fully connected ecosystems is really exciting you're going to see a lot more selling through platforms like Discord I think over the next 18 24 months as well I was thinking this as well I was I I when I was looking at what Discord has been doing over the past two years I was quite surprised that Discord doesn't have a shop yet right because Discord coming out with a shop is something that they tried they tried and I don't think that they'll stop um trying I think that it I think that we're going to see Discord try to launch a shop at least again or successfully Do It um I think with the communication of your players what you know what we want to achieve at agonum and I believe at all web shops is just funneling users to a place where they have the freedom to be able to engage with Rewards more affordably so that

they can you know engage further with the game as well as think about you know from I come from the adside think about these ad viewers who are not typically IAP based users right who are going over we're thinking about whales we're thinking about VIPs what about the ad players who could not typically afford or engage with this I AP ecosystem what about transitioning them over to a place where it does become more affordable to engage with the with their games further and more kind of dynamically so that's something that we really want to do kind of as well um and linking these kind of players to Discord with their where there's kind of a community that's a very kind of uh I think beneficial way to do it on the AGM side what we do is we link directly to kind of a gamehub where you can engage with that content piece that I mentioned with the news with the events bespoke leaderboards and then you can kind of you know upsell them from there based on kind of daily rewards loyalty programs and cash back rewards but um but yeah Discord is also

kind of a a beneficial way to kind of bring your community over to your webshop so it's it's an important conversation because it's not that if you build it they will come tality you have to go to the Discord you have to go to the reddits you have to go to the social media platforms Blue Sky other things that are coming on board who knows what's going to happen with Tik Tok in the United States give it a minute it's going to change um but what's happening is you've got to build that and create that engaging opportunity create that uniqueness listen to what they're saying you know I I didn't like that offer I don't want skins I want gems you know okay got it like make the adjustment make the shift in what's going on because web shops are there you know we here to provide that opportunity and that execution and conversion done at the end of the day we hear it all the time two challenges user acquisition incrementality the whales like web shops are set up for whales to convert that dolphin into a whale as we like to call it somebody who might have

not purchased in a month or somebody who's only spending $25 we're seeing transactions a hundred ,000 for a mobile game and what from The Experience what's going on and making that conversion and that leap and you're driving that arpo up and then you're getting more monthly active users more engagement you're getting more repetition and the word of mouth that's going to happen particularly if it's a community based game and they're like where'd you get that from got it from the web shop and you're going to start to have those conversations that happen the plat platforms and from the communication are critical to drive that engagement to your web shop because otherwise they may not know about it you're going to need to spend on SEO you're going to need to do different things from the basic web e-commerce mechanics but listen to the community Through the platform and just the final thing on that is the the beauty of platforms like Discord which are really kind of sandboxes you can get very creative in there is that you can start to reward and incentivize that behavior so if you if you go and purchase something from the Discord Community you can start to track those

user IDs and then you can give people a custom role back in the Discord Community you can give them access to closed channels you can move them um up to different uh you know give them XP points rank them up within the Disco community so now you're actually incentivizing that purchase Behavior where that habit and that fandom and that discussion is already taking place and when you bring those things together it's a really powerful combination yeah I think so why why has like Discord and these these out of app like channels become more important to developers I think that um there's probably like three main reasons and so one is exactly as you're saying the kind of dynamism of what you can do in Discord or what you can do in the web is so much more open than what you can do in a native app environment especially one that's like regulated by App Store policies that can be quite you know controlling I don't think players realize that but even just having a back and forth conversation between developers and players is not something that's lends itself to much to to in apppp and Discord unlocks that but also then Discord has you know player-to-player Communications being

visible to developers which is super valuable because you see what's working you know not necessarily just on stated preferences but on revealed preferences and then the second so so one is the kind of added functionality of these out channels and then the other major unlock and the reason developers are so keen on you know investing heavily in these channels is because I think a lot of the app developers out there really are kind of traumatized by idfa deprecation and rightly so where they realized how vulnerable they were being dependent on um you know these massive platforms for any kind of visibility to in like visibility into or communication with their players and they realized that actually Apple and Google could at any moment with very little warning um completely disrupt how you operate your game what you know about your players how you can communicate with them um and in ways that I think you know are not always in the best faith or don't appear that way so they've all realized they need to create these um direct channels

um uh just like as a survival mechanism brilliant so I I was going to ask about um whether you guys could share some some data but I think you you guys have already gone through a bunch of bunch of stuff there so I'll skip that question um but I'd like it sort of feeds into the next question are enough developers taking advantage of this opportunity and if not why why not like are there scenarios where it's just not worth it for developers or is it is it a case of just is it is this opportunity like what what how would you define this opportunity yes but so so taking advantage of the opportunities current state of DTC through through the social channels but also from the web shop perspec I would say that what we've seen is a lot of developers getting something Bare Bones but functional up and running I think a lot of developers are aware this is something that's happening in the industry there been a lot of macro news that makes it exciting and so um almost everyone I speak to is either now dipping their toes in or like got something going on I don't think

developers yet have fully realized the full potential of like what's possible in this environment so now even in our conversations with developers they're moving from like okay we got this up it's functional you know we have you know a Discord channel right and now we're working with them to really innovate in ways that kind of make something new possible um and that's where I would really encourage every developer to like take risks and invest in this as an initiative to enhance like your overall product value prop because one I think it's very rare that you can actually find something that is going to grow your product as much as this can right if you are a developer of a game that's been out for a few years and you're not rapidly scaling what else can you find that will grow your bottom line by over 30% like very very little and on top of that you know there's a highly highly competitive feature landscape it's almost it's extremely difficult now to differentiate your game on product um uh but there's like much more scope for for differentiating in you know out of

core gameplay Services uh like your community like you know loyalty so I'm a huge raid Shadow Legends player right and I don't think raid would be playable if it wasn't for the community that like you know Fosters it's everything from Community created tools to to guides and uh Discord groups and like the content creator community and really like I think developers who Empower their communities are going to be you know Head and Shoulders Above the Rest these days because what what one of the best things about his school right is as you mentioned you kind of proceed up from like being a server member to being a mod right but you're almost like players want to be doing this they want to be engaging with your content they want to be engaging with each other and like a part of these products they love um it's really just about like can you let them uh so I think everyone's kind of somewhat interested in it but I don't think people fully realize what they could be doing in the space I think it's also uh to Archie's point when I was working back in ads and I wanted to get you know vungle as an STK Network into a certain publisher what we would talk

about is oh maybe this is going to attribute 2 to 5% increase in cpms right which overall would you know towards your bottom line get you to kind of an 8% increase if you move 14% of your users off app and transacting on a web shop or in ourc a gamehub you're looking at a 31% increase in net revenue right so this is in my opinion I'll say it again I think it's the biggest opportunity in Mobile gaming by a mile I think almost all of us would agree about that you know there are we can go back to the Discord kind of link out I think a lot of the skepticism from you know casual and hybrid casual you know hardcore and midcore games definitely should be doing this there's no debate about that I think hybrid casual and Casual gaming titles are a little bit skeptical about their users not necessarily being whales being interested more in kind of being more susceptible to being ad viewers etc etc but what what's really important I think in our industry is bringing down the

various friction points towards ensuring that players actually engage and purchase off app so you know sending them to multiple different locations before getting to the web shop I think if we bring down that kind of those amount of friction points by linking them directly to a place where they can purchase and then using live Ops on the gamehub or the web shop to then upsell those players so that they are kind of so that specific reward WS are tailored to that exact kind of user attribute which is kind of what we're doing at agonum now I think that brings down the friction points to the point where it's a seamless transition from game to gamehub or web Shop upsold with a specific reward that's tailored to that specific user to then return back into the game and I think the more that we bring down those friction points and those several different kind of areas of Engagement where a user has to kind of go to in order to actually get this reward or take advantage of uh kind of a

discount um I think that is going to be the key to where hybrid casual um hyper casual hybrid casual and Casual gaming titles as well as the midcore and hardcore guys are really going to benefit and be able to kind of turn the key on the revenue opportunity here and and I I totally agree and the beauty of of the opportunity here is that you can connect all of these things together now so you can actually you know in Discord you can start to drive somebody to sign up to get a user ID or connect their user ID they can then start getting emails you can start to reward them from that if you're really thoughtful about those different user Journeys you can get all of it to sync together and to create a story and a path and a narrative that you want to um and that's that's the opportunity today is how to all those different steps across email across social across your community platforms be really thoughtful about what actions you want people to take and then how you're going to nudge the next action and reward them an incentivize for that because you can join the dots on those things to kind of

push that user where ideally you're trying to get them to yeah you guys are absolutely right I mean the are people using web shops are they developing web shops do they see the value in it the numbers don't lie the answer is no overwhelming yes it doesn't matter what genre and we're seeing casual games female game players are used to e-commerce they're used to the website go to a website they can even use their mobile browser and make that purchase as well we've we've developed over 500 web shops we've learned across all genres it doesn't have to be a big huge AAA game to be on a web shop can be a casual game and we've accepted over a billion and a half dollars in two years in transactions coming through these web shop experiences because you bring all this connective tissue game developers you want control your game from A to Z every experience is part of your brand and part of your engagement you design these web shops up to be an extension of your game the answer is not should you have a web shop it's when M it's when do you develop and when do you launch that

web shop do you launch it in the on day one depends depends what your audience is saying depends on what your data points say wait three months we see a lot of situations like that want to learn from the mechanics and what people are buying and making AC uh purchases in app apply that to your web shop experience it's build a web shop it should be part of your portfolio your go to market plan your go to market strategy everything you have it doesn't matter where you are in the world to make that happen unique opportunities you can do from a Commerce perspective you can use reward points if you're in Poland now with us and Master Card we can accept pay with points instead of purchasing that transaction on your MasterCard you do it with points that you built up on groceries movie tickets clothes whatever you can use that to in your end-game economy and make that experience more fruitful and more easier to transact you limit the amount of friction opportunities that are there that sometimes happen on the mobile device you could have Wi-Fi issues you could have bandwidth you could have

different things going on the web shop just opens all of that up to where you can take the control back so um you know we spoke about you know a couple strategies here and especially last year as well um are there any learnings you've taken from the past 12 months that that that sort of changed your advice from what you were telling people about a year ago Don't Be Afraid M like literally don't be afraid our friends in Asia Don't Be Afraid um we've all been in these conversations like what's going on it says it in the terms of service that you can do this I don't know how many meetings we've been and we printed it out and said here it is like what's going on and here's the validation point they're not going to kick you out of the out of there now if you go do links and other things that you're not supposed to do that says in the terms of service you're going to run into the problem um with them and what's happening follow the rules we'll all help you guide you through that process and make sure you do it safe pure simplistic as you go forward but put it in your plan you know

at first we were even like e does this game make sense or you know you just want the big game it only this works for AAA and then we had a couple uh casual games come into it that I think that's one of the big learnings we've had it doesn't matter the genre um so these small smaller games that you think is like you know half million dollars in Revenue they should have a web shop too and they're generating more profitability for their next game right it's 90% Plus on every dollar versus 70% so every dollar made you know you're making 90% on every dollar versus 70% the opportunity is there for everyone I would say though I think your point about Don't Be Afraid is a very good one because whenever we work with developers it's a it is a question of risk tolerance and what they're willing to risk and so I always say developers like hey getting 25% more revenue is great but being kicked off the app store is existential so obviously that is the thing to concerned about and the other kind of fact is that Google and apple are not you know courts of law they're not democracies they dictatorships right so um you know I don't mean that

insulting way but like there isn't anyone you can really appeal to if Apple you know kicks you off um uh now that and as such like their their decision- making processes are like not super visible but it's very very clear they are responding to the scrutiny they're under because um uh people are very large Studios and small Studios but visibly large ones are doing very aggressive things that a year ago I my advice would be like this is a higher strategy for for example like um Monopoly goes web shop links out from within the shop to the Loyalty program and you're one click away from the the web shop and so you know like we had always operated under the rule that you would probably want to be two clicks away from being the web shop but um I I think that what we're picking up on is that the um you know there is a little more hesitation by Apple and Google to take Extreme Action when um you know people are found to be pushing the rules of what they're allowed to do uh and and as such I would be like encouraging developers to be a

bit more aggressive and you can be extremely aggressive but still be well in the bounds of what the largest developers in the world are doing so we have more examples of very very large developers doing more aggressive things and and seeing no repercussions from it yeah I think the I I think that the the one thing that you're really not allowed to do is you're not allowed to link out to a web shop directly as long as you link out to the transaction flow that's something where you get hit with that 27% fee because you're still under that kind of Apple and Google uh kind of or within that orbit if you link out to a Discord or you link out to a gamehub where there's like news and events you can upsell them bananas or tires or in-game currency right you can upsell them whatever you want because you're out of that orbit so I think the real the the thing to kind of take into account is how do we link them somewhere like a Discord or you know or a Game Hub where they can engage with that content

and then we can upsell them in that same place and I think that's the that's the real worth noting though if I was to bet on one major change being forced by regulatory movement it would be linkout being allowed because that is the area that both the American court system and the European Union's Regulators are really not budging on that they think that developers should be allowed to link out without having to pay a fee so you're not I would actually disagree I would say if anything our current direction and and where the kind of government legislation is is trying to deleverage uh the monopolies like Apple and Google and not give power back to them I think we're actually going in the opposite direction where Apple and Google are going to lose more power around their sorry how would allowing link out be giving them power well allowing them to allowing players to link out to a gamehub would deleverage uh the power of Apple and Google right I mean suddenly they're not they're linking out players from their orbit where they're able to take 30% players

in the game see a see a button where they can go to like a game hub for instance be upsold and take advantage of rewards that that are more affordable taking money thereby away from Apple and Google so it does to really clarify what I say that The Regulators will force Apple and Google to allow link out to allow linkout correct okay yeah yeah you just answered like three or four questions in one that was amazing um so we have one minute left I'm I'm conscious that I've been hogging all the questions does anyone in the audience have any questions please I would like to give you a little bit of the spotlight otherwise we'll just quickly WP up come and get it microphone here don't be shy no okay brilliant so uh one one final quick one super super quick fire uh 2025 predictions go starting with me but it's starting with starting with you Archie okay I think you will see like out of nowhere hits coming from games that are doing

Innovative distribution first strategies uh so for example like cross media um like from launch or unusual sequel stuff like I think happy is one to watch here where you know their game performance keeps getting better and better and you know they're doing things like sequels to mobile games pretty Innovative yeah uh you're going to see more consolidation shocker a little bit um that's going to come into it but games with IP you're going to Excel and it doesn't have to be Spider-Man cuz that was a couple years ago but that game we all thought was going to be terrible was amazing um that came out but e it doesn't matter create your own IP leverage that and go into it something that's ownable something you can create more of a buzz around it's not just in game it could be social media content characters do your your social chat from Discord from the character do different things like that and you're going to see your game those games grow and Excel and they're going to have this kind of like cultish following that's going to happen and just kind of you that's when things explode on the

internet um I think we will start to see some more deals done and I think Discord will IPO this year and probably kind of submit itself as core platform to to the gaming industry well there be other platforms that can jump on that other social platforms that can jump on the we'll see okay I think you're going to see I I think you're going to see that 80% number of the amount of Publishers in the top 100 or the top 250 go to 95% I think I think that everybody is going to get in 2025 I think everybody is at least going to FLIR with the idea of launching a workshop really can we get a round of applause please so honestly we could have kept that going for another hour I had I had loads loads of stuff but thank you so much guys for uh for taking part uh I think same time again next year yeah let's do it um yeah maybe thank you guys that was great and I think I think the key thing that I'm taking away from this is you know we are see a transition coming we don't quite yet know what it's

going to look like but either way there are tools we can already take advantage of