Xsolla’s Chris Hewish On Creative Commerce Solutions To Take Control Of Your Game

[Music] hello world welcome back to the pocketgamer.biz podcast with your hosts myself Brian Bago and the Magnificent monetization mistress Miss Peggy an Sals hello Peggy how are you today I have to say I love that one Brian because that's what we're talking about we're also talking about monetization so I don't know if that was planned but it comes together so well brilliant brilliant brain that you have Brian well thank you Peggy I know there's there's a reason to keep asking me back outside the fabulous wardrobes it's always a pleasure to talk to you um and I'm really looking forward to this afternoon session because it's it's something that I'm personally interested in we've got a a fantastic guest lined up and it couldn't literally be better timing and I'm also passionate about this because I'm always in favor of whatever levels the playing field

removes friction democratizes access and that's what we have today because we have Chris Huish he's president and interim CEO of exola which we all know is the game Commerce platform and Company but it's also about working on the side of the gamer because you might not know it but in addition to being at the helm of exola right Chris is also himself he founded um two other companies including games companies he is a gamer he's wanting to build something here for the gaming audience and that's we have him here to tell us about that today hello Chris welcome on board thank you thank you Peggy thank you Brian I am thrilled to be here as you mentioned I'm a lifelong gamer I've been in this business my entire career and really have seen a lot of the different business models that have come and gone uh over the years and truly am a believer in trying to help developers

and Publishers connect directly with their players whether it's around the game play or the community or even in this case from the seat here at exola around the business of games and I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of the trends that we're seeing and you know really espouse why I think this is so important for anybody who's running a games business thank you so much Chris well for for the purposes of today's podcast I'm I'm going to be the uh you know the developer who's maybe not who's seen the name who have come across you at maybe one of the many events that you do but isn't quite sure of Viola and and what it is you do so for the benefit of of uh me as the as the uh young and naive developer can you tell us a little more about the company and what it is that you do absolutely Brian so exola has been around now for over 18 years and simply put what we do our mission is to bring all of the tools and solutions that any game developer or

publisher would need to go direct to their players and that means going direct with their Commerce and selling their games or their inapp purchases or their digital Goods or subscriptions whatever it might be but anything that you would need to run your games business and then through our unique business model we actually function as The Merchant of record so not only do we provide all of this great coverage globally for your Commerce business that means a lot of the payments login systems launchers all of that but because we are Merchant of record we actually are able to handle all of the taxes the vat the compliance customer support all of that back room stuff that you need when you're operating a games business directly with your players and that gives everybody the be lets our partners focus on making great games and it lets their players get great support when they are engaging with those games and as we'll talk about today we're

growing far beyond Commerce as well we really are looking at providing all of those tools that you would need if you have a great game engine that you've built your game on and you want to distribute and connect directly with your players then we're going to help you with that Brian I'm just thinking this is all about the business of games so it has evolved and and and so has EXO over I didn't realize that 18 years do I feel slightly slightly dated here yes we we've been around for a while we are over 800 people globally we have offices all over the world and we help thousands of games reach players everywhere and we truly have Global coverage um not just with the Commerce but we're getting into backend Technologies marketing and user acquisition Technologies as well as some business to Consumer some actual direct to player offerings as well and we work

with companies some of the biggest companies in the world both on PC and mobile but also lots and lots of independent developers so we really are agnostic when it comes to the size of the business we really feel our goal is to help you fulfill your dreams and offload a lot of that backend business kind of uh overhead that you have to deal with when you're trying to run your game business so that our partners can really focus on making great games and making great connections with their players you see that that speaks to me quite a lot Chris I I go back a little more than 18 years and and it's been very clear when we get out to a lot of the events that we go to when we speak to um some of our audience or listeners or readers um so many developers want to concentrate on the fundamentals making a great game you know the design the development the technical um aspects and while there's a lot of discussion around the game engines you know so the tools of creation it seems as though the the

tools for Success monetization engagement get an awful lot less attention you know maybe they're not quite as as sexy but um they're absolutely vital and when you look at some of the uh the key challenges facing Studios out there right now it's it is all of the business side of things you know user acquisition monetization lifetime value engagement so it it's great to hear that you're sort of consolidating and pulling things together in a one place that that can be accessed regardless of the size of Studio absolutely and you know that really speaks to some of the trends that we're seeing now in regards to the business around games you know we've gone through these different stages of game distribution where I mean you'll remember this since you've been in the industry a while as well it's good to see a fellow veteran um but you know back in the day it was really all about that retail that sort of packaged Goods model and the a lot of the as a

publisher or sorry as a developer you really had to work with a publisher that had those retail connections who could pay The Upfront fees to get the the discs printed or the cartridges whatever it may have been and then we kind of evolved into digital distribution uh that's where we started to see more of these thirdparty platforms come online like steam or the app stores and those were really great offerings for game developers because they had the audience at scale and it was very easy or is very easy to publish your game through a third party platform and they continue to be great great resources for people to get their games out there but we're kind of entering or we've entered a third stage now uh we had the the retail the third- party platforms well now we're really seeing the opportunity for developers to go directly to their players and sell their games or distribute their games direct to them outside of these third party platforms and and that's kind of

coincided with uh the value proposition from those thirdparty platforms starting to decline as they've become oversaturated at the same time the lifetime value of players has continued to grow as we shift more and more into forever games whether it's a liveops game or it's a premium game with ongoing DLC or it's a sub subscription based offering whatever it might be uh we're finding that players are sticking with games longer and their value is going up well the issue there is if it's more if it's harder to get discovered for your game and then once you are discovered it's costing you more to get that player to discover you um and the value of that player is higher than ever the disconnect is you're you're handing that player over to a thirdparty platform in the current environment and you're giving that third-party platform the longtail of value from that player you've done all the hard work to get him into your game and and now you hand them over to the platform and what we're

seeing a trend of is is Publishers and developers are really looking at their margins now and realizing you know it actually is more costeffective in a lot of cases to acquire those players directly ourselves and keep them within our own ecosystem right and not only do we then maximize the lifetime value of that player but we actually get all of the the data around them uh there's a lot of information lost to you when your your player comes through a third party platform where if you work with companies like ourselves you actually get that data right that's your own data you get a complete picture not only of what they're doing in your game but how they're transacting with your game and and their life within within your own platform you are right they are also getting data I'm curious is that data that developers are understanding it's not only their first party data but it also allows them if they so choose to really start thinking about either

collaborating with other games companies or finding a way to ultimately unlock that for admon because that's what brands want they want to understand that you understand your audience you're absolutely right Peggy and not going to knock on any of the third- party platforms but there's a lot of talk of privacy and we're doing this for the benefit of of the you know our our audience or our consumers well the reality is they're just creating more Walled Garden around the data that they control right which at the end of the day is the data that belongs to the game developers it's your players they're in there you don't know what payment options they're using when you know maybe some of the more detailed information around the Commerce and their behavior and what other things they've purchased what they like to purchase across not only your game but if you have a portfolio of games you know over over many games so there's really an incomplete picture that you're not getting and under the guise of privacy you know some of these third

party platforms are retaining that for themselves which you're absolutely right Peggy they're then flipping around and using that to power to give them an advantage perhaps over their own ad Network right as opposed to something that you could use as a publisher or developer to kind of take advantage of that yourself and get more value for for you you're the ones making the game you kind of deserve that I want to pick up on that in in terms of the data as well because it's it's one of these areas that is relatively new for developers and so does exola offer any kind of route in to data you know the use of data analytics and and and really how you benefit as a as a studio as a developer if you haven't yet started down that Journey it's a great question Brian so we always I mean full caveat we always respect the privacy and the data of our partners and that's our partners data right even though it comes through our system we don't treat it as our own having said that within our publisher

account which is kind of the the the portal that if you're working with us you access everything through uh your publisher account we do provide a robust set of data sort of tracking and visualization and analytics options there so that you can really get a good picture uh of that and then our account managers and and our business development team are always available to help you if you have questions to go even deeper um we have done a partnership we announced uh previously with uh company apps flyer which also provides even more right of of an overview and and with them you can connect your game and your Commerce data right to to get a robust picture so this is an area that we're continuing to expand on and as as I mentioned earlier we're looking at ways of growing the the offerings Beyond just the Commerce piece of it um so being able to provide connections either through our publisher account are through strategic Partnerships that allow our partners to

really not only see their data but analyze it and take advantage of it is very important to us that makes sense and what I'm hearing Peggy is that you know it's it's not so much about ownership it's about increasing that engagement across the Spectrum you know from your user acquisition all the way through you know your players and so many of the the the the developers so many of the game creators Publishers would speak to Chris are all about it's the engagement we need to know what people want we need to keep them happy you know we can build a great game but how do we know that the the players are kind of getting what we're putting out there and and you're giving them that opportunity from beginning to end and Peggy is this something because you are our user acquisition or monetization expert on the team is is this something that developers are are kind of recognizing as having real value absolutely because the options are different now now with a privacy first

landscape it makes you look at Alternatives so before Chris you know it was possible to go alternate ways and look at alternate routs but it was a lot of heavy lifting and I get the feeling that the reason you're doing what you're doing is because you're looking at it and saying this time around because we've been talking about alternative app stores and monetization now for yeah a decade um this time around it's for real absolutely and you know the the case in point the the defining moment that really makes this real uh not just you know somebody out there with a vested interest talking about it but next year we have finally something going into effect in Europe called the digital markets Act and the whole point of that is to try to help open up these platforms so that the people creating content can actually truly benefit from the content that they have created so

there's a whole bunch of things that regulations within the uh digital markets act dma uh but the couple of things that really stand out um that apply to the app stores like the Apple App Store and a number of other platforms one is they will be forced to allow side loading of apps and what that means is that if you're a game company uh you can actually put your app up on your website and players could go there and download it directly to their device so that would be sideloading um another thing that it opens up is third-party app stores within the App Store so at least from my understanding it would allow something like the epic game store to go inside of the App Store so this is really a a foundational shift and and a huge no longer is the are the sort of the walled Gardens crumbling this is like a huge crack in the wall right this is a big opening uh where developers and

Publishers can start to take much more direct control of what's happening on the mobile landscape within you know the apps business and this does apply to other platforms but for here we can talk I think more about mobile games because that's I think that's the topic of interest and um we are really excited about this because this if you're a publisher or a developer who wants to side load or do a thirdparty app store that's exactly what we do we provide everything you would need to do that as someone who's watched this from the start Chris you know as someone who's seen it from day one in in your in your business in your passion in your hobby and and in your company uh I can't help but hear a little bit of rooting there that's like yeah it's going to happen and the developers are going to have their day now absolutely and you know that is just incredibly exciting to me because you know of course it benefits the big companies and they you know get to to increase their margins expand

their reach all of that you know that's fantastic love love that but what's really great is for a lot of the independent developers this starts to give them much more power and control uh everything from not having to pay as big of a margin right on on their business uh but most important more importantly and we can talk about this with with what we're seeing with these web shops that we do the ability to actually extend your reach and connect with new players that uh you aren't what a lot of people may be surprised to find out there's a lot of players out there that you actually cannot reach through some of these thirdparty platforms due to the limited options they have around the payment side of things so great way to grow the business and what that means is more independent games more great games will actually be able to find enough of an audience to sustain the developers which brings more fresh ideas into the business which is a win for everybody that's a great Point Chris and a great

Point Peggy and I think for developers it seems as though the the the options are opening up you know it it's your business model your Revenue um is becoming a design choice in the same way that the genre you know the art style um and that's putting so much more power back into the hands of the creators I've talked about this for a long time as well that one of the best ways to sort of succeed with your games business as a as a smaller developer or an independent developer I mean really any size but is for the Indies it's really that ability to build a community right and connect directly with players and through the ability now to transact or do Commerce directly with them that allows you to maximize you know the value there because maybe your your audience is you know maybe it's it's in the in tens of thousands of players right as opposed to the millions or whatever but if you can if you can add a few more players to that or a few more percentage points on your margin through a better more

favorable business model that can mean the difference between succeeding or failing and you know I love that right who doesn't want to help people succeed with their dreams what does that mean for developers in Emerging Markets then Chris you know if if you have a lot of areas where uh the banking system is different or people don't have access to to credit cards charge cards you know is this going to you know take gaming into places that it it's not yet established is that what you're saying yeah absolutely absolutely it it really does and we've seen that firsthand we are integrated with hundreds of different payment methods worldwide there are markets where 30 40% of the players do not have you know what we would consider a traditional payment method one of the big three credit cards or PayPal and these players are quite literally unable to transact within your game uh we see that in places like India Brazil you know people are wondering what's going on in these markets well they're huge markets but the the players there just

use different forms of payment that really are not connected in to these these you know platforms um so it's very easy to just think oh okay there's no no players in these markets the reality is they're they're huge markets and you're just not able to transact with them through through these platforms so that's another example of the power of okay and by the way I always always encourage people to be on a platform because they have amazing reach right huge audiences but there's no reason to not also do your own direct you know proposition uh either in your current market or to expand into some of these markets where maybe the coverage is a bit more limited also like that analogy with with retail because it's the same as if you have a shop you have a shop you have a shop on the corner you have you don't mind being in the mall because maybe they have more footfall but the whole point is that you have control over what you're doing and that's a great way to talk about how you're

facilitating this right now Chris because you have I have to say a slew of releases when I looked at like boy you've been busy you don't just release one thing we've got five and counting in a very short period of time maybe you want to start by walking us through we'll start with the web shop because that was the way of reaching totally new players incremental value is always good what does that enable so our web shop is something that we launched about a almost two years ago now and it has been a huge success for our partners what it does is it allows mobile games to create an online presence a web presence and really engage directly with their players and it's much more than just simply moving your store over to the web which is which is part of it right so the way it works is a player can go to your web shop and they can actually purchase things within that shop whether it's your in-game currency or special items or whatever it might be and then

that is fulfilled or shows up within your app you know there's a couple of big benefits of that one from a revenue standpoint uh there's a difference in the margins where a platform might charge 15 to 30% of your of each transaction we actually charge 5% and uh plus the credit card fee or whatever the payment fee is so maybe another one or two perc and so right there there's a benefit where you're getting a a margin lift just on the on the charge but it's much much more than that if it was just that it would probably fail right um what we're actually seeing happen is these web shops are becoming online hubs and destinations for players and our partners are doing you know video updates developer Diaries getting a sense of community going around these web shops and the name of the game there is it creates a better value proposition for your players where they can go somewhere get a additional information they can get special offers

uh one thing people don't realize with with the app stores is the amount of sort of cool e-commerce things you can do is also very limited so it's not just the payment options which are limited uh but it's the things you can do around bundles and promotions and special offers and behavioral pricing and all of the things really treating your shop like a liveops uh you know element in of itself a lot of things that are difficult to do within the app stores you can actually do on your web shop um so you're able to connect more directly with players you can user acquisition is much easier because you now have the power of the whole web and social media and all of that to go acquire users so there's less restrictions there uh you can use redirects to get people back uh there's a whole host of things you can do and what we're seeing is because of all of this we're seeing in some we have over 150 web shops now that are up and

running we work with 40 out of the top 100 mobile companies out there uh we're helping them with their web shops and we're seeing that these these web shops are generating in some cases 45 cents for in a web shop for every dollar generated within the app store because you can really personalize the offerings you can use e-commerce you have a better relationship with the players um you can put things up quicker and and it's just fantastic the data I mentioned you can actually leverage your data to to improve the web the the web shop experience the purchase experience so it's fantastic this is really a strong area of growth we've seen for midcore titles the average sort of Revenue per paying user increase by four times and with core games up to eight times uh the Val the revenue praying user um the number of users converting to payers you know from players to payers has increased dramatically Within These web shops because of all of the alternative

payments right that are now available so it's just a great way to grow your mobile business and one of the other things that you are also seeing is the player Journey UPF front so I'm assuming that has some input into what you've just launched which is about the checkout Whoever thought that that was going to be important but that also needs to be customized that's what you're doing it really does Peggy and we've just released an update to our paystation uh product uh which allows you to do something called headless checkout and it really is the culmination of providing the most customizable experience to our partners who then can pass that on to their players so the checkout point is critical and it's something we all take for granted again we want our partners to focus on making a great game um but from a player's perspective the checkout is a really important piece of their their experience and too often what

happens is we all just use whatever UI or ux comes with the plug whatever payment system we've plugged into our game right and usually that creates some sort of ugly popup that appears it really takes the players out of the experience it breaks the fantasy right that they're engaged in with the game so we felt it was really important to create what we call the Headless checkout and that allows our partners to fully custom I this checkout experience with their own UI uh from their game so that the players to a player this just feels like another natural piece of the game the interface isn't broken they're not taking out of taken out of the game they're kept within that experience so if you have a beautiful style Unique Style to your game to your UI and ux within your game you can now apply that to your checkout and why like like you said piggy who would have thought this is even important well I'll give you some data points around why it is we find that 70% on average 70% of

e-commerce carts are abandoned and what does that mean that means somebody has said hey click I want to buy something and then it goes to a cart and then you check out well somewhere in there the flow just is disrupted for the player and they just abandon the cart right and that's a lot of lost opportunity and often that's because they just they're they're disconnected from the game itself and you know now you can personalize that you can put you know game UI and game characters in there that can help you know encourage people to move along through that flow um 77% of consumers believe that a customized experience within their checkout is important that they're more inclined to transact and complete these transactions if it feels like a natural part of their experience 65% of of consumers trust a good ux more than advertising so you know you can spend all this money

trying to force people into the top of the funnel but if the ux is not good you're going to just be they're going to be you know just leaking out right flowing out and you can really close that off by by using headless checkout to create a customized experience the list of new additions keeps on coming Chris so so can you tell us a little more about accelerator this sounds incredibly interesting absolutely so accelerate XR is a new acquisition uh it's a great team that recently has joined us and uh they're coming on board to help us build out a whole new section of what we offer so we've talked about Commerce well we now also are building out backend services so crossplay uh you know leaderboards all kinds of backend you know whatever you would need to really do a games business across multiple platforms uh we're building that out and accelerate exr joined us um just recently and they bring a team that has a whole host of different um systems including uh live Cloud scripting and

it's a feature-packed platform that really helps you expand your business uh through through crossplay and crossay solutions and we didn't stop there we also have acquired another company called light Stream So when where accelerate XR is helping us going in crossplatform crossplay some backend Technologies with light stream that's helping us with uh streaming for uh cont cont creators to basically quickly get up and running and stream their games through a light light uh light stream integration um it's also part of rain maker and API stream and these really re revolutionize the landscape for Content creation and distribution and plug into our overall offering and then because we have something already called partner Network that this plugs into we now really easily allow game companies to work with influencers and cont content creators at scale posting campaigns the

content creators can go online pick a campaign and then use light stream to get up and running and streaming quickly and then we handle all of the attribution of how successful that is the payouts for you know paying the content creators for driving users so you know I talked early on about web shop and commerce I talked about sort of the payment side of it accelerate XR with the backend services and the crossplay and all that uh light stream is and partner Network and Rain Maker is all part of our helping uh companies with the marketing and the user acquisition and then I think we'll talk about probably the the last thing uh on the agenda today which is our exola Mall helping us go direct to direct to Consumer business to Consumer as opposed to business to business yeah well you brought it up Chris so please the flute is yours thank you so the the final thing is exola mall and all the other stuff I've talked about is great if you're running a game company

and you're a game developer or publisher uh well exola mall is something that speaks directly to the players it's a new mall a new Marketplace that you can it's not a Marketplace it's much more than that it's a mall that offers all these things you can get games directly you can get uh additional bonus content uh there's all kinds of special offers um influencers have their own unique pages to promote campaigns up there there's Cloud games you can play so you know it's really a mall Everything Under One Roof and allows us to build up a direct player community um which is really exciting you connect the dots and all of this and you building quite a Powerhouse is what I'm thinking here Chris because there's nothing like social shopping we saw that that works we've seen that work in Eastern countries it's coming to the west and now you've got it here as well AB you're absolutely right Peggy and I'm I'm really glad you mentioned that it is something a trend that we've seen really working well in the East uh this whole idea of

social shopping and being able to you know you have your super apps you have all these other things but a place a destination for players where they can get everything under one roof and it's it's a huge Trend and we really you know our goal is to provide this for our partners but also to start building up a community there that our partners can leverage and it's a win for them and it's a win for the players and you know that makes us happy so well this is all about happiness Chris isn't it it's you want Happy developers the developers want Happy players and the players want you know fast easy convenient access to the games they love when and where they you know they they're choose to engage so um that's incredible I mean that isn't that's not a platform it's not an engine that's an ecosystem in its own right so that's quite some undertaking thank you thank you well we've got a great team and our our team like I said is dedicated purely to games we are all

game players as well and many game developers are within the company we eat you know eat and breathe games and just want this whole uh this whole sort of Industry to keep succeeding and growing so Chris nobody gets off this podcast without answering a couple of questions and given that you are a self-confessed gamer and have been doing this for a little while now um we have we have two questions one is what's the game that you're playing right now what's you what's obsessing you at the moment and then the one that requires a bit more pondering is is what's your favorite game of all time oo okay so the game that I'm playing now which has turned into my forever game I've been playing it consistently almost every day for a few years now is Apex Legends so I've been on that emotional roller coaster as this game has evolved and developed and you know I've become more of that sort of older cohort player uh but I still love it and I play that game every day or almost every day for probably too

much time a few hours each each evening so my favorite game of all time and I'm going to say a favorite franchise because I love all the game I am a sucker for any game that comes out as part of this franchise but it is uh Warhammer 40,000 so uh my first job in the industry was with Games Workshop grew up playing the games hardcore fan any Warhammer for 4,000 game that comes out I I am in so uh currently I'm I'm ready to play uh the Rogue Trader game I've got that pre-ordered and and uh I'm ready to dive into that I just have to peel myself away from Apex a little bit to be able to do that it's always it's always a problem where you've got something that you're playing but you there's a new game coming out and you're like but I have to put this one down see nobody appreciates how hard Gamers have it they really don't it's that that's a great answer if if I had put had to put money on

something I don't think I would have gone with Warhammer but uh huge respect that Chris thank you so much it's been an absolute Joy thank you Brian thank you Peggy I appreciate the opportunity I have to say I appreciate the opportunity because now I have a different understanding of what you're doing and connecting those dots so I have to watch this we have to watch this Prime we know that our audience includes a lot of developers and we know there are a lot of developers out there that are looking for the edge their next thing and how they sort of take their games and their their passion forward into the future so yeah I wouldn't be a all surprised if you get uh if we get a lot of requests from people going can can you get that guy back on and get him to talk about Warhammer more often so just be prepared Chris absolutely you know anytime anytime this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone

we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market and all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast at pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter @ PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the gamer. Biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near

future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy and salts and that's a wrap until next [Music] week