Session: D2C Monetisation: A Cost-Saving Shift Or Something More? - Liam Wiltshire, Tebex

Uh so to kick off this wonderful Craig, I'd like to welcome Liam from TEX to the stage uh who's going to be talking about D2C monetization, a cost savings shift or something more. So, please welcome Liam to the stage.
Yeah. Hi. Uh it's great to be here. Um really, really pleased to be kicking off this uh web store wizardry track this afternoon. Now, I don't know about you, but it felt like that in 2025, everywhere I looked, all I saw was news around Apple, Google, and DTOC. It's something that personally I'm very

excited about. There are so many opportunities and so many avenues to explore and ways that studios can take advantage of this. But there's also a hell of a lot of nuance that goes missing in those headlines. So today I'm going to talk a little bit about the real why that we see behind DTOC and how to make the most of those opportunities. You know, before I go on, before I do that, I just want to say, you know, organizing events like this take an incredible amount of work. There is so much from selecting the content to organizing the venue to AV and and everything else besides that. I just want to kind of take a quick second and acknowledge, you know, the efforts of the whole team that put this together. It's a real real pleasure and a real privilege to be here. So, from myself personally, thank you, you know, everyone that is involved. Um, and also if you do get a chance to speak to any of the organizers, just let them know kind of the things that you've you've appreciated, maybe the things that that could be improved next time, I know they

will really really appreciate that. So, as I said, a lot of the time last year, every time I fired up my browser, there was some new headline about such and such a country or this this legal case or, you know, a judge makes an update in Australia or the US or Japan or wherever it might have been. All the focus has been on Apple and Google and to what degree that they are going to have to open up their ecosystems. Now, let's be real, they're not doing this by choice. If they had their way, it would stay completely closed. But they are being forced to open it up. We are already seeing across the world regulators making these changes. Regulators have set rules in Japan, in South Korea, and then in other places such as the Brazil and UK. These investigations are ongoing. And of course we have the wellpublished court cases uh in the states. A lot of the early mentions of DTOC the focused on that reduction in fees. This

is the thing we talked about right you know stop letting platforms take 30% 34 35% more revenue in your pocket. These sorts of things these were the key headlines and I get it. You know that grabs attention when you're you know putting it if you've got a PR company putting it out to to publications. That's the thing that's going to get people excited. Now, this can be true if you go down the I have a web shop. It is not linked to my game in any way, shape, or form. I'm going to drive traffic to it, you know, from a different route. You know, not doing that kind of inapp purchase replacement, that is still a possibility. But for true inapp purchases and driving that traffic from your game, I think we're now recognizing that those level of savings are not going to be the case. You know, it's clear that Google and Apple are still going to take their piece. Uh, and of course there are going to be other costs on top, payment processing fees, you know, fraud detection, all of these sorts of things. So there will definitely still be savings overall, 100%. But it's not going to be necessarily at the scale that was

suggested in the early days. So some of you might sit there and go, well, is there any point then? Should we just carry on doing what we've been doing? It works. Is there any value? And no, it is not for nothing. There is still real real benefits and real real values. It's just that they go far beyond the fees. The solutions for DTOC are going to be different wherever you look. We have web shops. We have in-game links. You know, even full-on in-game stores that directly link to the payments. It's very very clear D2C is here to stay. We are now moving out of that early adopter phase. You know, we are we're no longer talking about DTOC as a nice to have. It is becoming a must-have. And I genuinely believe the 2026 will become will be the year that DTOC becomes a strategic necessity. But what does this all mean? Like this is all fancy words and oh Liam's up there going blah blah blah.

But what does it actually mean? Why does it matter? What are the benefits? What are the risks? You know, everybody is busy. I don't know any studios that have people just sat there twiddling their thumbs. I'm sure some of you wish you had more time to twiddle your thumbs than you actually do. Um, so how do we prioritize DTOC against this backdrop of everything else that we've got going on? Games have changed. You know, you think about games when when I was um young and they still came on tapes and it's a very very different world. Games are no longer one and done and they haven't been for a while. They are longived platforms with evolving economies, evolving content, uh new kind of monetization strategies happening all the time and these tales can be years and years long. We're not measuring games in months and years anymore. We are measuring games in decades. We're talking live service. We're talking crossplatform. We're talking, you know, UGC and creator layers and and whole in-game economies, continuous content

drops, all of these things. We're always looking for new ways to engage with players over a much longer period and therefore we need to come up with new strategies to monetize to retain those players and optimize the payment flow. This is crucial to survival. But at the same time, owning DTC payments adds a lot more to an already very full plate. Payments are not a solved problem. This is something that TEX really really believes in. Payments done right are a growth engine. They're a way to engage with your players, have touch points that a lot a lot of studios just don't have and don't have the internal capacity to do. As your game grows, your audience and their expectations will grow alongside it. And so do the challenges. You know, the more players you have on a global landscape, there are complexities around, you know, compliance and legislation and customer rights and, you know, expected levels of support and and all of this stuff. Um, and global expansion adds to that

friction. So going DTOC, yes, it means adding a new channel, but it means adding a new channel with new best practices, with new partnerships, new ways of forging relationships with your players. And that sudden responsibility for compliance, for fraud, for support, refunds, chargebacks, you know, subscriptions, and all of this stuff never stops. So, I've talked a bit about why D2C is a pain in the ass. Um, but is it worth it? Yes, it is worth it in so so many ways. You know, the big thing for us and the thing that TEX really really focuses on is how it enables direct relationships with players. You know, inapp purchases via Google and Apple are great and they work and and I will be honest now and again, you know, I will still make purchases through Google and Apple particularly if I'm feeling lazy. I get it. But there's this kind of like invisible divide between the game and the studio and the player.

Having that direct connection, that direct relationship, which then kind of can spill out into Discord and forums and and all of these things is something that having a a direct DTOC position with the players enables. It unlocks new mechanisms for retention, trust. It drives LTV. you know, we we there are often conversations about, you know, is DTOC just cannibalizing existing sales? No. The data shows that yes, that first sale, they may have made on inapp purchases, but they're more likely to have those repeat purchases. And you can kind of train and educate players into this mentality of, you know, the web shop's not a place to go because you have to. The web shop is a place to go because it brings additional value. And as you educate and you kind of reset the expectations of players, their long-term value, their lifetime value just grows and grows. There also, you know, there are those cost savings. We've talked about that and they are important. You know, if I go to my board

of directors and go, hey, I found a way to save us 10%. They'll think I walk on water. But that's not the be all and end all. That is one part of it. It is not the only thing. So I guess the message that I've got here is D2C needs to become more than just a cost discussion. It is important. Yeah, I'm never going to say to you, you know, ignore the savings. No, they exist. They are real. They are awesome. But there's so much more. And it needs to be that strategic conversation about growth and about players. Winning studios do this and they do it differently. They own that player relationship. As I talked, that kind of direct touch point and that direct relationship with your players is so valuable. The additional data and the insights that you can you can drive by doing that change the game. They design payment experiences that actually feel like part of the game. It feels like a natural extension. You don't feel jarred in this kind of context switch that conversion and it builds trust and

repeat spending. They optimize locally. They understand that players in in Brazil are going to think and feel and experience payments differently to, you know, the US or France or Thailand or wherever. They understand that it's a different expectation and you have to kind of tailor it for each of those. They measure success beyond fee saves. They're looking at conversion rates, lifetime value, retention. These are the sorts of things that truly truly make a difference. And they see monetization as a product decision. When I jo when I started in this industry more years ago than I dare to admit, payments was still very much just a oh, it's kind of like a finy thing. It's under the CFO. Um, and one of one of the things that I've argued for for a long time is payments is its own specialism. You know, payments experts have levels of knowledge and insight and, you know, experience that you can't get by being an accountant or by being an auditor or

whatever that might be. And it should be seen as this kind of productd driving contributor, not just a line item on a spreadsheet somewhere. So, this is why I think it's important, but that's all well and good. you're like, I can stand up here and I could talk for 10 hours about the wonders of DTOC and you'd all be sat there going, well that's great, but what do I do about it? So, this is what we want to do. Now, we work with a lot of um a lot of partners from studios like Hypixel Studios. So, we were the DTC provider for the highell launch. Um, Rockstar Games, Take Two, Studio Wildcard. Then, we also do kind of mods and scripts. We we deal with Minecraft servers and and modders in, you know, Arcs 5 ascended and and uh The Sims and all these sorts of things. And through all of that stuff, we have identified kind of five key kind of points and key things that you should focus on that really really drive DTOC. Now, it's important to say

not every studio or every game is going to have all five of these, but even if you've got one or two of them that you're doing really, really well, that is going to take you, you know, far head and shoulders above someone who's just seeing it as a line item on a spreadsheet. First of all, uh routing optimization, you know, automating your decision- making. So, TEX, one of the things that we do is we have multiple partners for cards, for wallets, for local payment methods. We don't just, you know, white label, you know, a provider and call it a day. We built our own orchestration system because nothing out there did what we wanted and we were fussy. Um, and by having that optimization, you can really maximize, you know, every single possible purchase and you're not leaving money on the table. Local payment methods, not having the right methods means that your players cannot purchase. In some regions, up to 70% of all transactions won't be with cards and PayPal. They'll be with local wallets, account to account, buy now, pay later, all of these things. Uh method framing, it's

fine having all those methods, but if a customer doesn't know, if a player doesn't know up front that they have that option, there's going to be uncertainty. Should I make this purchase? Am I even going to, you know, am I going to pick these items and build this bundle and then not be able to pay for it? So, showing up front the these are your options. We understand where you are from. we understand, you know, what's important to you and we're giving you that information and so that they have the confidence to buy the way they want. Uh understanding the customer life cycle, what makes them abandon a purchase, what might might make them purchase again. All of these things are really important. Issuing gift cards, they create a sense of urgency and a locked in spend. Building muscle memory and habits. We talked earlier about the fact that um you we kind of need to retrain players to use these web shops and see them as a destination, not a necessity. Uh, and part of that is, you know, providing kind of life cycles that incentivize them to maybe go and claim a free reward each day. And the first day they'll probably just claim the reward. The second day they'll probably just claim the reward, but by the third, fourth, fifth, they will start to take

notice and go, "Oh, that looks interesting. Oh, you know, I I I was I was looking for something like that." And it builds that muscle memory that they just visit the web shop as part of their habit. And finally, store design, personalizing offers, going further than segmentation and looking at true per player shopping experiences. Simplifying the spending decision. There's if even if you've got 20 options of things they could buy, that's just going to cause like, oh my god, there's too much here. I don't know what to do. And they'll freeze and more often not'll just give up. If you give them one or two perfectly created items that are perfect for them, that are going to make the difference for them, that is going to cause a lot higher conversion. And it shows, you know, we see it cause higher conversion rates than showing them 10. Maybe I'll buy that. If you go down the off route, build that confidence by making the store feel like an extension to the game. All of these things unlock such opportunities, higher conversion rates, higher average transaction

values, you know, better retention uh and repeat spending and ultimately stronger relationships and player trust. And it works at scale. Now, every game and every gamer is different. But by optimizing the journey, by showing relevant payment methods, by presenting the right information and the right options to the right player at the right moment in time, we see significantly higher purchases. You know, an increase um by, you know, things that we can do like 21% increase in successful payments with Moonworth. um H Highixel when they started offering buy now pay later and uh crypto options the average transaction value for those transactions doubled uh and Hightail during their launch um nearly 9% of all their transactions were by LPMS. Now if you've got a game that's doing you know even 5 million but five 10 whatever million dollars losing you know 9 to 10% of your volume would be massive.

So, I've talked about all this stuff and there are a lot of pieces to D2C. Having your in-game store, having your web store, having global payment processing, tax compliance, fraud, chargebacks, all of these things. There's a lot to do. Um, who here feels they have the time to manage all this stuff? No one. And that's fair. You know, you 100% can do this stuff. If you're at a studio and you're going, you know, we can do this. You probably can. But what are you sacrificing in order to do so? And this is why someone like TEX exists. We are an extension to your studio. We are not here to be the hero. We are here to be the Luigi to your Mario. We are here to support you and enable DTOC at high scale and for longterm growth. So, you know, please feel free to talk to any of the TEX team that are here. You know, we would love to help and give you that advice and those suggestions. And thank you.

We don't have any time for questions. I'm literally the blinky lights going off. So, thank you so much everybody. Feel free. We've got a booth um just over the stairs. Feel free to grab me and ask any questions later.
Thank you so much, Liam. Can we give him another round of applause, PLEASE?