Panel: Is the Digital Markets Act Really Changing the Mobile Games Market for the Better?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] up next so to ground off the global Trends track uh before we go into our New Frontiers track uh we have a lovely panel uh that is going to talk about the digital markets act uh now with that I would like to welcome Yar peka uh Shalom Gil and Alvaro who are going to be discussing just that thank you for coming today to hear uh a little bit about uh digital markets act that might sound really really boring but will have a quite a bit of impact on the mobile games industry or at least we hope so so I'm

mbeca CA managing director of the European games developer Federation we represent 24 trade associations from 22 different European countries and access to Talent access to funding and access to a route to a top of the value chain are the three things EF focuses on and on the side of the access to a route on the top of the value chain for game developers we have been working for eight years now to open um mobile distribution channels for the uh third party application stores and payment service providers and other service providers in March 2025 we will hear final words from the commission uh on how in line Apple's and Google's implementation plans actually are it's quite clear that they are not in line in the wording of the dma and things will still change however already now we can see that things are changing so let's uh

uh have a s round of introduction of the people who on in our panel who are people who are instead of just talking about change they are really the they are being the change they want to see in the mobile games markets and um let's start from uh Jill uh you are running an alternative in game store could you tell a little bit about your store and what you are doing yeah nice to uh nice to see everyone uh it's always hard to do the panel after lunch so uh we're going to stor through this I'm gild I'm CMO at upch charge we do uh direct to Consumer platform so we help Publishers like huge games uh product Madness up loving and others sell directly to their players by building web stores and then accepting payments globally so kind of like Shopify for mobile games uh great Alvaro uh you are running an Al alternative application store so uh could you tell a little bit more about what you're doing course so so welcome all to to to the

event and to this panel um my name is Alber Pinto I'm one of the co-founders of epid epid is an App Store that distributes apps on Android since 2011 so more than 10 years now and recently we also launched our store for for iOS on top of that we we also we are really focused more on games than in apps nowadays and on top of that we have a platform called catapult that allows developers to do one single integration and distribute across multiple channels multiple stores so they can distribute not only on aptoid but also on other stores from oems for example xiaomi Oppo and others and other stores uh globally so this is quite convenient for them because makes things much straightforward in terms of managing the distribution and uh then let's move to salom um you said that you are running an app growth platform could you tell us what that means in practice sure so I'm Shalom mikeli um managing the entire uh

alternative app stores and the distribution platform for us for DT digital turbine is an app grow platform uh we help app developers to run user acquisition with our carrier Partners we work with the carriers in us and many other places and they integrate applications as pre-installs business H in addition to that we help up developers to monetize them with several products that we have on the monetization side exchange offeral mediation and lastly around a year and a half ago we have launched alternative store H the dma and part of the CH part of discussions around how we can get more value to our economies by integrating a store uh on a pre-installed operation basis and uh running it with the carriers globally we launch it a year and a half ago and happy to elaborate about that uh great so let's start our panel on the short run approach so until March 2025 Things Are bit a little bit unclear on what is

allowed what is not allowed in the digital uh mobile markets at the moment so Apple and Google are trying to block uh in many ways the use of these new alternative stores and payment systems and UA channels that are allowed by the dma but at the same time the service providers like you are trying to overcome those obstacles so Shalom one of the less discussed topics is the impact of dma on advertisement on UA markets so how uh is um dma going to change those Market areas and how are you overcoming any obstacles Apple and Google are sitting on top of on front of in front of you sure so you know in order to speak about how UA changes uh things on the with the dma you know let's think about how the ecosystem grew on Google and uh iOS uh around what is decade and a half ago uh

we you had basically applications that resulted with or organic growth right you had the first early H Angry Birds back then you had the mini mini clip eightball eightball pool games H you had Subway Surfers those applications generate relatively organic growth but the industry didn't grow up organically only the industry grow up mainly around paid media paid user acquisition but how do you do paid user acquisition for alternative distribution for alternative apks and what what is it even alternative APK custom APK custom APK is an application that doesn't have Google billing inside but if you don't have Google billing inside then you are not able to be in Google store so if you're not in Google Store how do you do distribution right and that was a challenge in the past you know actually a decade and I'm happy to said that there are Technologies today that actually solve this channel challenge if you are installed on the on the operating system of a device then there are Technologies today that override installing permissions and instead of running a very much a very Challenge and

hurdle of a download because you know you run this you about to download an application custom APK and then you have a scare screen are you sure you want to download this application maybe you us here in the industry we can say yes because we understand what's happening but my dad will see it and will say he'll probably turn off the phone because it doesn't know what to do and we need to create a simless smoother easier frictionless operation and for that we have Technologies like uh like single tab that enable you to download those applications and that is enabled to have in tier one countries at scale and the user acquisition can happen programmatically and non programmatically in the same way it happened with Google and iOS so those Technologies exist and this is part of how we can actually drive growth for user acquisition for custom custom APK and this is why the dma is actually changing so the change is uh happening um chill if there is someone now in audience that is uh planning to start

running their own iname uh uh Ina payments uh through their own um in game store so what are the actual things that Apple and Google allow you to do and what are the things they do not allow you you to do at the moment so that answer varies depends on region so maybe we can focus on the EU for example it's it's one of the most advanced things you regions and things you can do so sticking to that um earlier this year Apple release new terms in response to the dma those terms require an often like a developer has to choose to adopt these terms and they include um um an install fee so uh 50 cents per year per user for any install above 1 million uh if you opt into those terms uh again earlier this year Apple introduced new terms that allow you to include link outs in your app and charge people elsewhere the topic of like apks and and uh alternative app stores and side loading and and versions of your app

that have like third party payment Riders is not exactly covered fully but link outs and stuff like that there are terms that dictate what you need to pay and if you include link outs in your app it's different if you opted into the new terms or not opted into the new terms if you have it's two fees that sum up to 15% of whatever their user is making for the first year after you send them out through link out and if you're staying in the old like standard terms it's 25% um so technically there are terms technically it is regulated but the conditions are so 25% is is borderline the 30% you're paying now so the conditions are so laconic so like uh um um um not favorable that only hand fuel of the developers even only a hand few of developers even considered adopting them so that's where we stand today it's uh technically regulated but uh so unfavorably and in fact the dma is looking into sorry the EU is looking into uh is Apple actually compliant to

the dma by offering so unfavorable terms and that's also one of the reasons why hdf is now fighting uh on the commission level against uh Apple's terms and luckily the commission has opened the investigation to see if this new fee structure is fair for the developers so hopefully by March 2025 things will change but the I think to main thing is that the new third party payments uh service providers are into markets this route is now building up on its exist in so it's not something theoretical anymore um alaro if you are planning to distribute your game uh through an alternative Mobile store like uh app toid um how app CLE are trying to stop you and uh what are the things that you can do in these stores at the moment well you can you can do a lot but uh looking into the what we have in place with dma well actually if you read dma and you you read the the website the official

website of the commission it's like a dream in terms of opening the market and allowing everybody to distribute freely not only through alternative stores but also directly and so this is what is stated in the dma but of course then there's the the interpretation of it being done by Google and apple and what we see is that much of the constraints that were in place before and we've been fighting for an open market since 2014 it was was the first complaint we did with the commission uh against Google we are fighting for this for a long time what we see in the market today and what was implemented by by Google and apple is still very limited on Google side we didn't see much um uh improvements um on Apple of course they open up for the market and they allow new stores but as was already mentioned by by Gil by Shalom there's a lot of constraints on the advertising so all to promote and push for for user acquisition there's a

lot of constraints I won't mention the details but it's it's really difficult to do this outside of Google and apple platforms um it's it's about friction in install time it's a the the the for a user to install an alternative store for example and to install then a game from that alternative store it's it's a pain and especially not only because there's too many steps and if you use Google's or Apple's platform it's like a of clicks and it's done it there's a lot of friction but there's a lot a lot of um um messaging that induces fear among users for example like this can be harmful for your for your device Etc so people are afraid of installing even if it's a well-known third party store so this friction is all is also a big problem and the third one for example on on Apple's case is the the the fees because the fees are applicable not only to the developer and if you compare as

Gil was saying for example if you compare the the old terms and the new terms many developers and top developers if they just moved to the new terms they are paying more to Apple even if they are having uh the same or less service and this doesn't make sense at all and goes against the spirit of of the dma but also on the app stores for example if we want we launched our iOS store and it's in soft launch we are not opening to the to the world because if we open open we don't know how many users we'll have and if this scales which is good for us we have to pay Apple this doesn't make sense so there are several examples friction um the fees the the installation and and the acquisition there are several examples like this there are others that we've been fighting for but these are probably the the most key the the key ones the most important ones yeah I tried to install epic Mobile store a few days ago and I CAU in the process that's like

so it's very very interesting uh user bad that for sure hasn't been optimized for the smooth experience yeah any anyone interesting in the space here in the U that has like an EU iOS account try try to install the epic game store epic released a bunch of videos that like explain how to do it don't watch them try yourself first then watch them and see how easy it is but it's like it's it's hidden in plain sight the toggles you have to tog on and that teaches you like the length of which the platform will go to try to up fisc and just like hide those steps and luckily the commission is fighting that at the moment and let's see where they land uh do you have any comments at this point on the any other points discussed if not let's move the second part of our discussion so yeah there are problems in the table the commission is fighting uh Apple and Google hdf and other trade associations are pushing the commission to uh go for further with their

enforcement and hopefully in March 2025 apple and Google's terms will change to be more favorable for third party distribution channels and payment services and so on so and that will change many things uh so Alvar how do you think the markets will change uh thanks to Alternative distribution channels will European mobile game markets become equally fragmented as uh Chinese mobile games markets are now in the number of different stores will we see a wave of Niche stores will be there new crossplatform distribution Chels or will the publisher stores come back or will something completely different happen well I think the beauty of having this open market is is that the sky is the limit actually we can all of them all of these Solutions we have alternative stores that can be Niche stores of course they can be uh more um tailor made for a specific geography and we see some apps App Stores emerging

like this but it can also be direct to Consumer approaches from from developers so I think this opens a lot of possibilities and actually we've been constrained by these options of Distributing in these two channels so I think developers can if we solve the friction problem if we solve the the fees problem uh developers can start to use for example platforms like ours we which allow you to distribute across multiple channels in one single integration because of course there's this pain for the developer to okay now I need to handle multiple channels it's a challenge on the other end I'm not dependent on one single and if they stop me Distributing I'm done and this happened with several developers along the years so to have multiple channels for them it's good it's of course you need to pay attention and manage this but there's space in the market for platforms such as ours that allow you to distribute and manage all these channels

at one single in one single console so direct distribution alternative stores definitely and so this at least this two is something that will happen if we solve this problems we still facing with with Apple and Google so let's take one step further uh Sal one of the biggest Promises of uh digital markets Act is uh enabling site loading on uh web games uh on a mobile store mobile environment basically meaning that you would be a instead of this kind of playable ads you would be able to actually directly download the game on your uh uh device or even start directly playing the web game from ad do you think this dream can become a reality one day I think that this dream is actually is not a real it's not going to happen in reality it's happening right now and I can you know relate I didn't want to uh share about epic back then when we spoke about a few minutes ago but I can share regards to this question that we're doing this with epic epic launched their game as or

around a month ago and they recognize the value of having ignite h on on device and actually we measured it we have it in different slides that we share with clients you know how many clicks does it take you to download a custom APK from a mobile web environment just anyone knows how many clicks does it take to download a custom APK there's a hand raised how many clicks one guess no not you H so guys it takes 27 clicks down 27 we counted clicks to download a custom APK from mobile web that is not an invite that is not um there is custom APK just from mobile web H and it's a it's a friction that nobody will do it like small percentage of users but that's not how we create an economy that's not how we create adoption with Ignite and with the per permissions that we have on on the carriers level we decreased it to two clicks with two clicks you can download the APK from a

mobile web environment you can download it from Cross promotion you can download in different ways but you have to have of course distribution of the carriers um so that's so I don't think it's a future future future will be a huge mass adoption of it but that's already happening right now and that's within the know educational stages that we need to explain how and what it's very technical H and when you connect that to a developers needs to continue growth and you connect that to the carriers needs hey we want to be part of this ecosystem because hey we enable it but we don't see any revenues out of it then it comes into this kind of win-win H situation and we definitely see it right now and I think that the future will be a bigger and higher and much more greater adoption not only in us but especially here in Europe uh indeed so um future is happening now and it's definitely happening on mobile uh in this side so the browser games might be coming back um chill one of the key as um also that many of the developers are

struggling at the moment especially after the all the restrictions Apple has uh set on actually reaching the players is uh h building this kind of relationship uh with your players and maintaining it and keeping them in your Loop and um before Apple and Google used to facilitate that now the relationship is getting much much trickier so what kind of opportunities do you see on that side so we've been working with clients for uh the past two years in building their like web stores the direct to Consumer strategies and it started the main driver was margin but as they started working on this a nice like side benefit that they saw that maybe even like it's even bigger and more meaningful to their longevity and future uh that they saw from actively developing a direct to Consumer strategy is that they started fostering direct uh player Communications and relationships so think newsletters Discord servers

WhatsApp group messenger group all of a sudden they started being able to communicate directly to their players it started with like uh Innovation necessity drives Innovation right so like if I have a 100 million players uh on iOS but Apple says that I cannot send them one sort of message which is like a link to my store um so if I can't use push notifications and I can't use ingame inapp like messenger inbox app says I can't and I can't contact them I'll ask you the question are they even my players they installed my app but are they really my players if like the platform says I can't speak to them directly and it's what we called bow relationships and that's where uh the industry started from like two three years ago and more and more Publishers and developers have started understanding the great importance of having these direct uh communication channels and no matter what regulations will lead us to no matter how like we the the the pieces will fall as they may

we know for sure that uh any developer who's not currently working and investing on creating community and creating social and creating direct communication channels they're probably late to the party they should start so because no matter what the regulation will land on no matter how they decide to do strategies and direct to Consumer they will for sure benefit from at least having a way to communicate directly to the players could be social media could be um Community Management Communications uh chat groups and there's a bunch of strategies that work and work well um but just developers need to do something it's super super important critical and it's is going to be even more important in the in the couple of coming years um do you have any U part comments on this topic you want like to mention I can double click on that and say that you know developers you know speaking with developers they came and said ah yeah we tried alternative stores in the past and everything and developers have this kind of you know feeling that it didn't work for them because up until now it was generally ating very small percentage from the revenues but what

you tried in the past in the past decade is not the reality and the and the circumstances today are completely different and that comes and says you know if you tried it in a specific OEM then you were always blocked or restricted to this o OEM OEM operating manufacturer H and today you have technologies that enable you to go cross oems you have a technology that enable you to create faster adoption and there was no better opportunity in the past to be part of the alternative ecosystem like today h I think that you know we could come and say that we have learned as an industry what we need to do and definitely the dma and regulations around the world are changing the way developers every in each and every country will have to work and relate ER because those opportunities will enable them finally grow the revenues to what they were thinking will happen in the past 10 years but it wasn't the right time sometimes it's timing in life and this is the right timing for alternative alar do you have anything to yeah just just complimenting what what Shalom is saying is that we we strongly believe

that we need also the help of developers developers need to embrace this new opportunities and uh as as he was saying there was some eventually bad experience in the past because it was really difficult to to distribute outside Google and Apple's platforms but nowadays it's opening up and there's exciting opportunities ahead so we also need the commitment of developers if they want to have the freedom of choice in the future being able to pick the stares they like the channels they like their own channels they need to start investing it's not only about the industry on the other side on the on the distribution side that needs to do this effort to to push for the ma to make sure that we have Alternatives that are valid and that are comp competitive with with with the biggest platforms so yeah on the medium run after in 2025 get prepared for your distribution channels uh to relate with the players and in game Payment Systems to

change um but uh what should be the next steps immediately now like as mentioned there is a disruption going on in the industry at the moment because of the dma and regardless of the outcomes as Jill mentioned uh things will be continually changing and of course this a in the beginning we discussed all the obstacles and we are now know all the opportunities that are there so uh Jill when would you recommend uh introducing a third party in game store and uh what are the situations for game Looper when you wouldn't recommend doing it in the current situation so there are obstacles there are opportunities so what about you would recommend doing from our point of view we we work with very like uh upm Market very top tier grossing Studios so platform relations is an issue there there's like two forces that you need to balance one is like you need to you need to endure right if your profit margin is eroded to the point that you have to do

layoffs and your business is at risk you have to explore du to see in some element and aspect and on the other end you cannot uh like uh cut the the branch that you're sitting on you cannot uh um bite the hand that feeds you and you have to balance the two so the more sizable the studio is or as a studio if you're very reliant on platform distribution so if you're often featured if you're often getting like a big amount of organic installs from the platforms all those algorithms that promote you and choose that you are going to be featured are somewhat related to your uh cell volume to your in ingame um IAP um so chunking away from that and migrating some of that Revenue to a third party store or a web store or an APK there there's there's some things you need to balance so you need to maintain good relationships with the platform you sit on on on cont in contrast to that if you're realistically not getting that much distribution from the platform then maybe you are ready to be more lenient

with or more aggressive with how um you'll build those alternative app stores alternative distributions APK web stores and you'll be more aggressive in promoting them to your players because there's less of a risk of something to lose so it's two forces that you need to balance it really depends on your category it really depends on how Reliant you are on organic Discovery distribution and organic inst the platform um so to sum it up yeah if you are doing well there's different considerations than if you are this kind of Challenger in the market and then there is new entrepreneural opportunities for the brave entrepreneurs to explore in the current situation yeah and I would say there's no like just like do or don't there's no like two uh edges to the axess there's a bunch of things you can do with a very uh intermediary or very like first steps so like like alv said and um Shalom uh these are great guys to talk to these are great things to explore and an early version have a closed test group there are things to try out in certain regions

in certain test markets um there are first steps you can take without like going all in like going super aggressive uh this industry is changing this change is happening it's it's probably a good idea to explore different solutions like we offer an in-game payment SDK you can explore there are things you can start to see what fits your text tack uh so once regulation catches up you'll be in a better position to decide what is right for you to take on and what is not absolutely so be ready um Alvaro uh both alternative mobile distribution channels and also this kind of aggregators specialized on Distributing games through these alary stores are now emerging but uh for what kind of game should you be making uh to really explore the opportunities uh uptoid epic Mobile store upcoming Microsoft Mobile store are offering to you so for who the new distributions on us are at a perfect

match sure I I think this alternative distribution benefits everybody all developers in different ways of course this gives gives developers flexibility first of all and there was some examples already here of okay you can do things or you can explore new things that you were able to do with Google and apple and the current distribution because they are more strict and okay so you have this flexibility here try a different campaign to try a different business model this is possible and talking with these Partners in the alternative stores Al alternative distribution this is always possible then you have okay reach more users and that's what all developers want reach more users and bigger audience for their games but also make more money of course in the end of the day so in terms of audience I think even for small developers There's an opportunity there and in the developers because the the the the the current stores are so crowded that it's really difficult to stand out but if you have a nich store

or you have channels that are not so crowded with with titles there's more space for you to to to breathe and to and to stand out so I think this is an opportunity even for small Developers for the top ones I believe it's two things of course acquiring new users that they weren't able to reach with the the standard channels but also to improve their monetization per user because for example if they are doing direct to Consumer they can get a much higher cut than the cut they get currently with the stores with the standard 7030 but or they can get a little better with some of the stores that are provide offering for example 80% to or 75% to the developers so in terms of monetization I also see an angle there and we have several examples of top developers that are willing and are doing this engagement with alternative distribution because by in the end of the day they get more more more users but they also get more money per user than uh than than in the in the

standard channels yeah and what we also seeing at the moment is of course mobile developers going the PC side at the moment uh but also the PC side having a look on the mobile again because before it was well borderl impossible to actually uh make a success there but now with the new distribution chns things might change so Shalom what are the immediate next steps you should take on the user acquisition advert M side after the things are now changing and regard the player communities and so on on the dma after the dma is entering into Force so in general you know developers in in a a tricky situation right now it's most of many developers are a little bit struggling right where you know cpis are increasing due to consolidation privacy issues our pooper user is decreasing there's a gap over there how how do you how do you bridge this Gap few things that can do one is establish proper goals okay what you want to achieve in the next you know several quarters with alternative distribution you have the

way I see it you have three columns for example let's take PC out you have a column of iOS column of Google Play and you CC alternative right your goal is to increase this column because you want to diversify reduce risks so you want to increase the column of alternative apks alternative stores quarter after quarter if you you defined and you understood what you need to do because you have to act quickly number two Act Fast the biggest up developers are already within the alternative stores period they're already there that means that they get the learning curve I think that Gil touched about it you have a learning curve how do you integrate with who you integrate how do you run it h how do you run UA that you know the way that this ecosystem this industry knows how to run user acquisition on Google and Google Play and is completely different from alternative apks what does it mean in regards to your LTV your LTV is increasing by 10% what does it mean from your economy are you decreasing your I AP price by 10% to give a a a cheaper cost I purchase for a user or you keeping it in your PO pocket there are different strategies and developers know

it best so move fast quickly and the third one embed always user acquisition strategy putting your application in the store or I call it vomiting in the store is the one thing that's great you have in the store amazing but that's only partial you need to continue growing why also user acquisition because that's how you can actually create the scale and how you can increase the the third column which is the alternative APK that's the next steps that I would recommend uh thank you so much uh for panelists on their Insight so we have time for one or two questions from the audience are there anyone well there's so go ahead hey thank you for really interesting panel uh I I would like to ask like a let's say that we will have a alternative uh distribution channels and uh maybe there is a store which is not so known and how do you ensure the user the player that the content which they

are downloading there is not harmful containing any viruses or anything like that Alvaro would you like to start sure sure um so security is always a concern and making sure that okay we get the right apps and we don't have any that arms your the user devices this is something that look you build trust with time and we we cannot assume that there's only one or two uh platforms that make sure that we are all safe actually we are not and last week there was an example on Google Play of app being distributed to millions of of devices with issues so we we need diversity there and for example we were working since day one on the security of our platform and we have um we've developed software to make sure that the content is safe and we have several mechanisms and actually we asked third party to evaluate wa what we had and the the the output was really good because

we were comparable with other platforms such as the ones from Apple and Google so it's something that uh needs to be in place you cannot always have 100% sure that this works but you can for sure go for platforms that bring you trust that have some some some time and experience in the market that counts also of course we will see emerging a lot of of newcomers and that's good for the market but you need to look into it and see if and validate if it's credible no one will assure you this by 100% but uh it's it's something that needs to be there since day one in the app stores because app stor is not only uh shelves to distribute content it's much more complex than that and security is one of the big issues for someone that is launching an alternative distribution Channel salom and CH do you have anything short comments to add sure I think that you know there we've been a little a little bit brainwashed in the industry you know but saying that you know in order for you to download an

application you have to go through a through a store and we and as Alvar said you know there are many issues also with the stores there are spy it's not necessarily clean there are issues as well over there I think that there are different aspects that can create a safe environment as well nothing will be 100% And I don't think that we need to you know think that something will be 100% but there are also additional components of checks within dtn what we do we have a One S of QA that we do and then we send it to the carriers and then the carriers does another second of QA round so you have two rounds of QA in order to create an environment that is clean safe and and and you know that that users can use but this notion that it's only with Google and apple I think that this is something that we need to start refuting with the time because as we see it's not clear as well it's a self-serving for those platforms and we have to be a little bit more agile because there are solutions out there that can be not less decent as others yeah one short thing that I'll add is that uh there's this model from Chris S of diffusion of

innovation St and tested early adopters and innovators will be them early majority late majority and lagers at the end users will be what they are and then like innovators and early adapters will flag themselves as being more willing to to take on risks and chance and just to to to reference to the previous talk that we had on this stage if you uh at least for the first couple of months into this trend if you T you need to target the people who are willing to take on the risk you don't need to try to convince the lagard like this is safe they're not going to be convinced they're going to be convinced when 10 of their friends do it so and there are like vast majority like vast not not majorities but like vast percentages of the market that will be will be willing to explore other alternative app stores especially if they're really connected and engage with your game that's the next level of Engagement that's the ones you need to find and that's the ones you need to offer this two thank you so much I think we are running out of time now so let's have a round of applause for the great panelist and uh let's uh

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