Session: Seizing The Mobile Market Shift: Why Act Now - Gokce Kozandagi, Xsolla.

[music] Up next, I would like to give a special welcome to Exotic and Gotche, who's going to be our speaker, and she's going to be talking about um seizing the mobile market shift uh why act now when it comes to uh DTOC models. So, please welcome Gotchi to the stage. Okay, let's get it started. Uh we have a short uh presentation. Um if oh clicker here. Okay, here. So the topic I would like to

discuss today is uh the mobile shifts happening in the in the global um nowadays. If you have heard about the recent shifts in the mobile gaming market starting from the May 2025, uh maybe you are confident about the changes. uh maybe you have some questions about what this shift is about. Uh this session is right for you. Uh we'll be discussing uh the global shifts happening in the mobile gaming industry. It's a tremendous it's a fundamental change happening right now. Oops. Can I go back? Okay. Yeah. This is me. Uh let's start with the quick introduction. My name is Gokch. Um I'm working for Exola as a country manager looking after Middle East and North African countries. Uh my job is speaking to the studios and the publishers at all sizes, all genres, all countries in the Middle East and North North Africa and understand more about their monetization strategies and how we

can improve their monetization strategies as Exola. Uh I have um seven eight years on experience in fintech and payments industry. Uh now uh over the two years now I'm with Exola. Uh I'm in charge of the mobile game commerce industry. Before we dive into our heavy topic, let me give you a quick introduction about Exola. Um we are around um with Exola is a video game commerce company. Uh we are helping studios to fund, monetize, market and distribute their games globally. We are around for the last 20 years. We have more than 15 offices globally. We have more than 1,000 employees all around the world. My business is easy. My business is to help studios and the publishers to sell directly to the players. When we speak about the web shop, the number speaks for itself. We currently

have developed more than 700 web shops um to our global partners let's say uh Craftton, Warner Bros. uh Play Studios, UB Ubisoft, Playcot and many others. Uh if I may give you a data point, more than 80% of the firsttime buyers make a repeat purchase on the web. That means if the if the player feels confident, if the player feels trusted and secure, that means we now we know that they always come back to the platform to buy more. Uh they they become more loyal to your game and your uh platform. Um let's speak about the success to the formula. So this was the uh I don't know if you can see on the screen. uh this was the secret formula to the success for the many years. If your lifetime value is higher than the user acquisition cost that means you scaled.

It's easy right like as um no-brainer formula for the success. But uh the thing is this formula is no more valid. Let's see why. Um the user acquisition costs are rising. is currently 20% 40% on a yearly basis. Um and the platform costs Apple and Google costs are remain the same 30%. Uh they earn the payments, they own the data, they own the engagement, they own the player habits and everything. They are like the they are like the friends who come to the party last and they eat the pizza. uh so under these circumstances it's not easy to have revenue margins to the studio this is why we decided to redefine the success formula so here the new formula that we are proposing LTV is there LTV will be always there obviously and should be

higher than the user acquisition cost but this time we need to have any kind of D2C direct to consumer sales channels in your formula this can be web shops, this can be buy button or any other solutions should be added to your formula. Once you have a direct sales channels that means you will own the data, you will own the payments, you will own the player habits and all the data that you can manage effectively. So this is the uh new formula that will bring uh the success to the mobile game studios. Let's talk about a quick history. um back in 2008 and I'm I'm sure you remember uh 2008 to 2012 when the F2P came into the market and change everything in the mobile gaming area. Now we are entering a new era in 20125. This is for the this has happened after the uh US court ruling. Uh now the

studios are legal uh allowed to sell uh uh items to the external parties uh outside of the platform. So they don't need to pay additional platform fees to Apple and Google. They can externally link out the payments um as studios and they're allowed to do that legally. We're going to discuss about this change now. Uh this change has been started back in um uh month of May in US and as you can see on the map the other countries and the regions already started to following this trend. So this uh changes glo happening globally Europe, UK, Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil, um Korea, Japan they are all moving towards more open market as global. Now let's look at the c country by country. So US is our most open market. The studios,

developers, publishers in US now legally sell link out their payments uh and no platform fees to be paid. So US is our most open market. The market is also open in Europe but this 27% fee is still valid. Apple co has to call it um service charge fee and in other countries like Japan uh Brazil India Korea the market is open uh Japan's uh regulations has been approved but the fee is not confirmed yet it should be somewhere between 0% to 1%. So as you see the global market is more open that now and the studios are starting to follow this change. If you are not following this change, that means that you are expecting to lose 20 to 30% of your untapped revenue um each month, which I don't think you would um you would prefer that.

Once the D2C uh started to uh be more widely used in the market, uh it's obvious that the web shop became the new industry. It's not a theory anymore. It became the new industry standard. Currently the web shop market the web shop name I'm I'm sure you can see it on your uh lanyards uh $16 billion dollar right now. Uh it's quite big right and uh with 40% conversion rate from first visit to the purchase. So the numbers are also speaking for itself. Let's double click on the web shop. So the web shop is the must-h have tool for the open market. Uh when I say web shop, I'm meaning that you can think like an extension of your game. It's it's an external website completely customized and um fully branded for your plat for your game and the studio. Uh it's a

model solution uh which you can set it up in a few minutes actually through Excel solutions or you can if you are too ambitious about the design and everything you can uh do a fully customized storefront storefront too and then it comes with some advanced live ops features uh of course with some Exola expert support and with no integration cost. So setting up in a web shop is coming with no cost for the studios. You can think that a web shop uh like a live game system always up and running, always engaging, always evolving. Uh you can enable some live ops features on your platform. What are those? You can set up some campaigns. You can retarget your paying customers. Uh you can do some AB test. You can test the pricing points. Uh so you can do bunch of things and the real beauty is you can measure

the performance immediately because now you own the data. You don't need to get any data from any other parties the traditional platforms. So this is the beauty and also on the web shop you will notice notice how when you keep the web shop fresh and updated you will notice and you will be surprised how players will react to the relevance. you will see how this makes the biggest change in your life. Similarly, um once you have a web shop, the platform will give you um uh actionable analytics and AIdriven recommendations so that you can change, you can evolve, you can update your web shop uh according to the market needs and the daily basis uh daily basis topics. Um, of course, Excel is known with the payment uh payment solutions. Uh, you can always add payment solutions on top

of of uh your web shop which gives you more than 1,000 payment methods to your players. They are no longer limited with the uh 10 15 payment solutions that is offered by the PL uh traditional platforms but now they can use many other uh alternative monetization solutions. It can be e-wallets direct to carrier billing systems. It can be over-the-counter solutions are now a available on your platform. So you are not going to miss any single player in your market. Uh, of course the platform is backed by uh 25 languages, more than 130 currencies and it comes with end user support in the local languages. So when when the players are enjoying to pay with the uh favorite uh payments solutions, Exola is the one who is taking care of the fraud, tax management, uh legal and compliance

stuff. Uh the boring stuff I I want to say. Uh so we are the taking the burden of the entire financial and the uh legal compliance um uh burden. Um let's feel a few let's spend a few seconds on the buy button. So if if the web shop is your foundation, your base, uh you can think the buy button is your booster. The beauty of the buy button is you can have your players to complete the purchase right in your mobile game. So the players do not need to go any external platform to complete the purchase. They can stay in the game. They can complete the purchase. It feels fast. It feels secure and native. Um currently the buy button market is a little bit smaller than um than the web shop but it's ga gaining the traction gaining the momentum there. Uh of course

things has started in US but the other countries are also start following some countries are slower than the others. Uh but the web shop is also very important and of course you can keep up to 95% of the AP each month. uh some numbers from US since uh since since this shift has started in US uh we are sharing the numbers from US market because this is the only uh market that we can get the results from right now. We observe that um 65% revenue uplift in the games who is using the web shop. Uh and this number doubles when they add web shop plus buy button. Actually this is the power of meeting with the players where they are. So it's in the game. Uh that's the magic of uh of buy button. Um maybe you are thinking like okay goji

that's great in the numbers uh the fees and everything but are the players ready? So here's the number for the players. We noticed that almost the 50% of the uh players who are completing the purchase on the web shop um the conversion rate is more than 50 almost 50% now compared to 18% without any web shop. Um those who adapt first win first or with my own words first comes first serve. uh if you are still don't have any D2C uh strategy I'm sorry but you are already late so you have to uh pull up a strategy you have to get some consultation you have to speak to the professional companies who is guiding you on this uh because if you don't follow the trend you will be stay behind uh when you are opening up yourself for the D2C strategy that means you will have new revenue streams that means uh

you will have new regions and then the countries that you are going to sell and finally it's going to bring you uh some more complexity more paperwork for for fraud work um of course more financial and illegal work so that's why you need to work with a M merchant of record company uh who can support you on that so Excel is one of the uh biggest merchant of record companies that you can work uh while you are focusing on your game development, we are handling the um uh the financial taxes uh comp compliance, regulatory changes, uh complex markets like in Japan or the some markets keep changing the regulatory and the studios cannot pick keep up with those changes because uh studio might be small, it might have limited resources for it. So we are working on it for you. Um so Excel is not only the payment

processing company but also a payment uh merchant of record company handling the tax management uh global and regional compliance, dispute management, end user support, refund management, everything. Um I'm going to be around here to today and tomorrow to discuss about your monetization strategy. I'll be happy to work with you. Uh if you have any questions, if you have any concerns about the new shifts, I'll be here. Thank you so much for your time. [applause]