Session: D2C In 2026: Global Growth In Web Stores - Chip Thurston, FastSpring.

This particular section is the monetization section and we are delighted to be joined by the sponsor FastSpring and Chip here. Chip is going to to kick off talking to us about D2C in 2026. Chip, over to you.
Thank you, Oscar. Always good. We can

just jump into the content. So, yeah, I'm here to talk to you about global growth in web stores, global trends in web stores, some of the latest in regulations, um and ultimately best practices for how you can grow in web stores uh today. So, if we can get the the slides up here, we'll get underway. Uh first slide is just about me. So, I'm the head of gaming at FastSpring. I bring over a decade of gaming industry experience uh from studios like Scopely and SciPlay where I worked in a variety of fields across monetization, live ops, uh user acquisition, community management, and ultimately direct-to-consumer strategy. And so, my focus now is taking that experience and helping our customers to market and monetize direct-to-consumer. Um at FastSpring, we're an all-in-one direct-to-consumer payment platform. We power web stores. We do that for some of the biggest names in gaming, everyone from Gameloft and Rovio to many others. Uh I'm based out of Austin, Texas, sovereign states, father of one awesome 8-year-old kiddo, and our honorary D2C captain, which is our boat party series.

We had a great boat party last night. Uh so, if you were not on there, feel free to connect with me, and we'll make sure you get on the next one. Uh so, today I'm just going to take you through a little bit of the current state of play, what's currently going on with direct-to-consumer, some of what the future may hold, and leave you with some actionable takeaways. So, for the current state of play, um let's go through a little bit of data first. Uh this is publicly available data. These are numbers published from earnings reports from some of these customers. This is actually uh aggregated wonderfully in an article on pocketgamer.biz, and so you can go check that out, or you can look up any of these companies individually and see their earnings reports, cuz these are all public companies, and they actually talk about direct-to-consumer strategy. And you can see numbers here from 27 to 44% of revenue being driven through direct-to-consumer channels, which is pretty incredible, and shows just the growth that we've seen in the space over the last year, and a lot of these investments are really starting to pay off. And so, for mature studios investing in this, uh we're seeing a lot

of success. And so, maybe if you're not there yet, you now have a road map of companies. You could say, "Well, what does successful D2C look like?" And you have these companies among more that you can go look at, understand how they're migrating players from the mobile game to the web store, and what they're actually doing in the web store to monetize those players. Uh but, this is something we've been talking about throughout the last year. We talked about how 2025 was reshaping monetization, how uh these core regulations were changing things, and what you needed to do to capitalize on that. And the Q1 results are from studios that were capitalizing on that. So, maybe you're not there yet. Maybe you want to understand what's going on. Well, now is the time. Still, it remains the time to continue to invest and grow in D2C, because we're still on this really strong high-growth opportunity window. Uh and that's because you can steer without fees in the United States today. If you take one thing away from this, let it be that you should be driving your players to web stores inside the United States because right now you don't have to pay a fee to the platforms to do that. There's no fee for

Apple, there's no fee for Google and that's because of these court regulations. But that window is closing and I'll explain a little bit more about that. But just know for now, you can do that. And so what I'm telling our publishers and the industry overall is act with urgency. Push those players into web stores to get as much revenue as you can today because it's as profitable as it's going to get. And that's because of the Epic versus Apple ruling in April of last year, the Epic versus Google ruling in October of last year. And also notable is that in Japan, there was a ruling called the Mobile Software Competition Act that went into effect in December. And this unlocks steering on both platforms, but with fees. And so it's the first time we're seeing these fees roll out. I haven't seen a lot of adoption in Japan for direct to consumer just yet, but I think it's worth noting as a precedent for what we'll see on a more global scale in the near future from both platforms. And of course, we're seeing calls for regulation in other countries, Brazil, the wonderful country of Spain that we're in, the UK, Colombia and many

more. And so this is global movement and so we'll continue to see growth and movement toward this direction. We do have the Epic Google settlement which is pending approval and I'll talk more about that on a future slide. And also the Apple appeals, Apple continues to appeal these rulings and so I do want to call that out. But thus far, these appeals have been unproductive. They have not changed anything, but it's worth noting they continue to battle this. Actually, the next hearing on the Apple appeal will be June 25th. That's when the United States Supreme Court is going to determine whether or not to hear this appeal and let it progress further. So keep an eye on that cuz that's just next week and we'll learn more quickly after that. One last caveat is that for Epic versus Google, to steer on Android, they now require you to be enrolled in what's called the External Content Links program. This is a special program that they've added that says if you link outside of your game to external content, you need to be enrolled in this to do so. So, let's talk a little bit more about that because steering on Android is a

tremendous opportunity that you can do in the United States today, but there's some extra hoops you have to jump through that have been introduced just this year. So, this is a new program. You can go look it up. It's called external content links. And what it is is it's the requirement from Google to steer basically into web stores or really to any website. Um and so if you don't do this, you actually run the risk of getting rejected that your next app update may get disapproved from Google from Android because either you're not enrolled in this program or you're linking out to content without being enrolled in this program. Now, it does only apply to the United States. Currently, I think there's a good chance this expands to a more global scale in the near future. As of today, it's only required in the United States and it's in effect as of January 28th this year. Now, that doesn't mean it was getting enforced as of January 28th, but that's when Google planted their flag in the sand and said we require this moving forward. More recently, though, I have heard of publishers getting rejected for not being enrolled in this program. And so,

had a publisher who was linking to external content looking to a website, and their app update was rejected from Google because Google said either remove that link or enroll in the external content links program. One of these two things, right? And so, uh keep in mind that this program is live, but it's still very important to note that there's no fee attached as of yet. Now, I say as of yet because in the external content links program in the guidelines, they outlined the fee that they will intend to charge through the external content links program once they're able to do so. And this is where we get into the 20% fee that Google will plan to take for linked direct payments. But, for now, there's no fee. So, again, steering the United States, but to do that on Android, you'll have to be enrolled in the external content links program. As far as what you need to do to enroll, I'm not going to go through all the details here. Uh I didn't think that would be the most productive usage of my time, but you can look it up. There's an API involved

that you have to integrate in order to uh be part of the external content links program. So, if that's what we're doing today and we're all about migrating players over to web stores today in the United States, then what's in the future? Well, right now, the thing that is top of mind for me is this settlement between Epic and Google. And this is really significant because it will settle the litigation between the two parties. Now, as a reminder, all of this web store momentum is because of litigation that kicked off in 2020. August of 2020 is when uh Fortnite drove payments off platform on both Android and iOS. And so, in response, Apple and Google pulled Fortnite from both stores. That prompted Epic to start this litigation. Everything we hear about Epic versus Google, Epic versus Apple started in 2020, which is yes, almost 6 years ago now. And so, this is really significant because with this settlement, Epic and Google have said, "We are We are laying down our arms. We will end litigation with this."

But, the settlement is not yet in effect. It was proposed in Q4 of last year. It's not in effect though because the judge has not yet approved it, right? The judge is doing due diligence and saying, "Wait a minute. Why are you two parties who have been at litigation for 6 years now suddenly holding hands and suddenly going forth and saying, 'This is a great agreement,' right?" So, the courts are saying they are doing their due diligence to make sure this resolves any anti-competitive behavior, any monopolistic practices, that it's in the best interest of the industry. So, that's underway. Everything I say from here will be under the current terms of the settlement, which could change based on the court's feedback, but under the current terms, it will permit alternative in-app billing systems, which significant. Up until now, all payments processed inside an Android app or game have been processed by Google Play billing. Under the settlement, you'll be able to use other providers like FastSpring to process payments inside your app. Also, it will introduce what are called platform fees, which will be separate from billing fees. I'll circle back to this one on

the next slide. And then we'll allow alternative app stores. I'm not going to spend too much time on this one, but if you're Epic, the party in this case, you care a lot about that because you have the Epic Games store. You want to have the Epic Games store on mobile alongside the Google Play store, and this settlement will allow that. I've also put the rollout schedule on here, and this is Google's intended rollout schedule, but a giant caveat is that it's pending approval, right? So, they've said by June 30th, they intend to roll this out in Europe and the United States, but that's only about 2 weeks away, and it's still not approved. So, I'm a little dubious of this timeline, but it is worth noting this is the intended timeline from Google's side. So, these new fees are something that I would encourage you to deeply understand because they'll really shape the future of direct-to-consumer and even mobile monetization. So, the 30% fee that we've had for the last couple of decades has been an all-in fee, meaning it includes distribution, monetization,

and ultimately the payment processing. And that's just what we've all become accustomed to, but moving forward, they're going to break that 30% fee into two different fees. There's going to be a fee for the billing and a fee for everything else, right? We'll call that distribution, updates, and all the other services that you get from this platform. So, the billing fee is currently listed at 5%, meaning if you use Google Play billing in mobile to process a payment, you'll pay 5% of that revenue to Google. Right? And that's only in the United In the United States, they've said that may vary for other countries, but we'll say 5% for now. The platform fee is the rest of the fee. And this is where it will get complicated, but stay with me. So, for in-app purchases, it will be between either 20 or 25%. And that will be based on the date of install. So, if it's an older install, it'll be 25%. If it's an install after this goes into effect, it'll be 20%. And so, let's say you have an old install, they make a purchase inside your game, use Google Play to

process the billing for that. Well, you're paying 25% plus 5%, which is 30%, which is the same as it was before. So, it's a lot more complexity for something that may ultimately not be that different. But, it is worth noting for future installs, that would be 20% plus 5%, so 25% total. This is also there are some carve-outs, right? For subscriptions or your first million dollars each year, it's only 10%. So, 10% plus 5%, much lower rate for those specific areas. And this is also when we start to see this fee for direct-to-consumer getting introduced. It's when Google will start taking a cut of your direct-to-consumer revenue specifically for linked payments. Uh I'll explain more about that on the next slide and what the scope of that looks like, but again, the point I've mentioned multiple times and we'll circle back to is that right now, the fee is 0% for linked payments for direct-to-consumer in the United States. So again, these fees are coming pending approval of this settlement. And so, now is the time to act and now is the time to drive revenue to your web

store. Uh I should also note there's a 5% discount available for what's called the Games Level Up program or the App Experiences program. I've heard these programs are kind of unappealing because of how many Google services they require you to integrate, but if you want a lower rate, if you want to consider a discount inside your game, you can look up those programs and see what is required for them. So, I threw a lot of numbers out there. This is a visualization to try to bring it all together. Today, you either pay 30% inside your game or you pay your merchant of record like FastSpring 5% for all direct-to-consumer payments. If in the future the settlement gets approved, let's say it would be 25% and that's with the assumption it's a new install that has that 20% base rate plus 5% for Google Play billing, right? So, 25% inside the app or if you link them to your web store, well, now you're paying 20% to Google and say 5% to FastSpring. So, that's 25% and all in that's the same. That's not very appealing, but what's really important is there's still that bottom uh segment

for non-linked direct-to-consumer payments where you only pay your merchant of record their their fee, so 5% ish from FastSpring as opposed to the 25% you may pay in the other verticals. And so, I'll talk about how you can focus on that bucket under these new fees. Um but to do that we need to understand how these platform fees work, right? This 20% unlinked payments, like how is that actually applied and what payments does that apply to? And it's important to know it's only unlinked payments. And so, part of the external content links program is that API and that API will track links to your web store and then purchases made with a 24-hour attribution window. Meaning, if someone clicks a link inside your game, takes them to the web store, any purchases they make on that web store over the next 24 hours will have this 20% fee applied to them. And so, uh that is that's basically the way that they plan to apply these fees, but what's really critical to know is that it doesn't

apply beyond that. It doesn't apply unless there's a link, unless there's that tracking and that callback to the API. And so, it brought me back to when I was managing web stores and we were promoting something new outside our store, a new feature, new offer, something like that. Whenever that would come up, I would map out all of the different marketing vehicles that we had for the store. Social media, community pages, our blog, email campaign, maybe Twitch or Discord. And I would think about where we wanted to promote that. Maybe we want to send an email, maybe we don't. Maybe we want to post a blog post on the blog about it, maybe we don't. Map out all of these vehicles and think about which ones we'd leverage for a given feature. And when I think about these fees, they only apply to the in-app communication that we're doing, right? Only to The only time you'll have to pay that fee to Google is if someone goes directly from the game into the web store and makes a purchase. If someone goes from your blog page into the web store, well, there's no tracking link back to Google, so there's no fee attached to that. If someone goes from an email campaign, from social media,

from Reddit, from Twitch, any of those growth vectors into your store, well, that will not have this 20% fee. And most importantly, direct load traffic, right? If someone's made a purchase on your web store, they are aware of your web store, they know they get more value from purchasing on your web store, they trust your web store with their payment information and that it's the right place to go for the game they're playing. And all of that creates a stickiness for the web store that will bring users back, right? So, and if they come back organically, of course, there's no 20% fee attached to that. Um so, when I think about why these platform fees are actually good for D2C, it's because they have that limited scope and because they introduce certainty. Again, this will end the litigation between uh Epic and Google if it's approved, and that's really significant because so much of what I've heard from publishers talking about direct-to-consumer is apprehension, apprehension about making an investment in D2C that could change with the future regulation, depending on which way the courts go. Well, with this settlement, the courts will say, "This

is it. This is the future of D2C." We may see some variants from one country to the next, but we'll know generally what the landscape looks like and how to comply with that. And it legitimizes steering. Steering meaning driving players from the mobile game into the web store. Up until now, migrating players to a web store has been kind of uh cloak and dagger tactic, right? You wanted to steer players into your web store without Apple finding out, without Google finding out, without upsetting your relationship with them. Well, this is Google signing off on it. It's saying it's okay to do that because we're getting a cut of the revenue now. And so, you can do that without being afraid of upsetting a relationship with the platforms. And that's the last point is that it's including Apple and Google in this, right? It's not making it as adversarial as it was perceived to be before, but saying this is the future and this is how Apple and Google are accommodating for that. So, we'll close with some actionable takeaways. What are the things you should do now? I'll state the obvious at the top, but I'm going to say invest in a web store. And I want to specifically say a web

store versus direct checkout. So, you may have heard of direct checkout as something that really emerged in 2025, meaning linking from a mobile game directly to a checkout page, skipping the web store entirely, right? That's great and frictionless and something you can do today because there are no fees today. But in the future, once these platform fees get introduced, all of those direct checkout links are inherently linked payments. And therefore, they will all have that 20% fee attached, right? So, I think direct checkout is a great thing today, but ultimately, you want to invest in a web store and habituate players to visiting that web store, purchasing on that web store because that is something that will continue to pay dividends in the future regardless of where these regulations go. Also, you want to strategize when to incur these fees versus when to avoid them to maximize your growth opportunity, and then continue to monitor regulatory updates. Like I said, these will introduce certainty about web stores, but uh there are still minor changes possible. Maybe the attribution window gets regulated

from one country to the next. Maybe the exact fee percentage changes from one to the next. Um so, continue to monitor. I want to close with one just example of how I would manage this, how I consider navigating this if I were still managing web stores today. And so, these are meant to represent two different segments of players, right? You have your non-direct-to-consumer customers, or people who have never purchased on a web store before. And then you have your direct-to-consumer customers, people who do purchase on your web store. And so, you start with the non-direct-to-consumer customer, right? Someone who's never purchased there. For that, I say market your web store at every opportunity. You're promoting it inside the game, they open the game, there's giant pop-up that's talking about web stores and D2C. They open the mobile store on their mobile game, and they see a big banner for the web store. Everywhere they go, they see web store branding because there's no cost to marketing that. There's no fee you have to pay to market it inside your game. But eventually, they tap one of those, and they go make a purchase on the web store. And so, at that point, you pay 20% to Google. You have to incur that fee. And then you pay your merchant of

record like FastSpring. But very importantly, at that point, they migrate into the other segment. And then when they migrate to that other segment, you stop all promotion. You stop all marketing inside the game for your web store, and rely on those other growth vectors that I talked about. You know about the stickiness of them as a web store purchaser. You have other channels like email and uh blog posts and other places, community, to to get them back. And so, you're trying to keep them purchasing on direct-to-consumer without the in-app promotion. And then at some point, there could be a churn, right? At some point, they could stop purchasing on the web store for a few months. And eventually, you say, "Okay, I'm comfortable marketing to them in mobile again." And so, you start promoting again until you push them back to the web store. So, I could see customers bouncing back and forth. But at the end of the day, it's thinking of this platform fee as a one-time cost that you're incurring to create a recurring revenue stream of web store revenue. So, I'll wrap up there. Uh this is a brief recap of what I talked about. Reminder, you can steer without fees

today. Uh you should enroll in the external content links program if you're linking on Android in the United States. The Epic Google settlement is very likely coming soon. And if it does, that will introduce platform fees, which will mean growth, but also increased complexity for D2C. Uh and lastly, three things to do. Invest in a web store, strategize your growth, and monitor regulations. That is all I have. Thank you for your time. Uh if you want to find us, you can find me on LinkedIn there, or we're on the show floor up there. Have a great BGC.
Thank you very much, Chip. Um I would ask questions, but we are a little uh behind time already. Uh I'm going to move swiftly on. By the way, I took so many notes on that, particularly kind of the way the timings of the Google, and particularly with the European uh mobile uh you know, they're kind of additional markets act uh is incredibly interesting. And And there's a thing called the Digital Fairness Act, which is also coming out. It's not the same issue, but it's going to compound on the same issue.

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