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Curated Panel: The Game Development Renaissance – What Will Be The Foundations Of Gaming's Next....
The global gaming industry is currently undergoing a transformative renaissance characterized by a shift away from monolithic, high-budget development toward agile, specialized production models.
- The industry is shifting from monolithic, high-budget production toward agile, specialized models that utilize AI and machine learning to improve efficiency and reduce development overhead.
- Studios are increasingly offloading long-term live operations to third-party providers, allowing internal teams to prioritize creative innovation and emotionally resonant gameplay over content volume.
- To combat market saturation and AI-driven content bloat, developers must adopt platform-agnostic distribution strategies that bypass traditional app stores in favor of messaging apps and community-centric platforms.
Fireside Chat: Paradigm Shifts – The Evolving Mobile Market And 3P Marketplaces.
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a fundamental transition as developers increasingly prioritize direct-to-consumer distribution models to circumvent traditional platform constraints.
- Developers are actively shifting toward direct-to-consumer distribution models to bypass the industry-standard 30% commission fees imposed by incumbent mobile storefronts.
- Adopting alternative revenue-sharing models, such as the 88/12 split, is becoming a primary strategy for studios to improve financial sustainability amid rising production costs and market saturation.
- The industry is developing engine-agnostic, unified toolsets to reduce the technical complexity of multi-platform publishing and decrease reliance on legacy mobile ecosystems.
Session: Unlocking The iOS Platform For User Growth – Key Updates On DMA, DMCC & Emerging....
The mobile application landscape is undergoing a significant shift as regulatory interventions and court decisions challenge the long-standing duopoly of Apple and Google.
- Customer acquisition costs (CAC) on iOS have risen by 60% since 2021, driven primarily by Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, increased market competition, and ad platform consolidation.
- The European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) now allows developers in Europe to utilize alternative app stores (such as Aptoide, Epic, and AltStore) and alternative billing systems to reduce platform fees from 30% to approximately 10–20%.
- Apple imposes a 'Core Technology Fee' (CTF) of €0.50 per user per year for apps distributed outside the official App Store, a policy currently under formal investigation by the European Commission for potentially creating excessive friction.
Session: App Store Optimization For Games With PressPlay's Autonomous Agents. Moritz Daan, Phiture.
App Store Optimization (ASO) for mobile games is undergoing a paradigm shift through the integration of autonomous AI agents.
- Autonomous AI agents are replacing manual ASO testing by continuously iterating on store assets like icons, screenshots, and descriptions to maximize conversion rates.
- Pilot programs using this automated framework have successfully launched hundreds of experiments within weeks, resulting in measurable increases in projected installs and conversion rates.
- To ensure statistically significant results, the current industry standard for implementing these autonomous systems is a minimum of 100,000 monthly installs per game title.
Session: Podcast Marketing – Insights & Strategies For Success - Sara Guerola, Media Bodies.
Podcast marketing has emerged as a vital, high-growth channel for user acquisition within the gaming industry, serving as a strategic bridge between traditional performance marketing and long-form engagement platforms.
- Podcast ad spend in the gaming industry is growing rapidly, with investment increasing 3.6 times quarter-over-quarter and overall market spend rising at an average annual rate of 22%.
- Gen Z listeners show high conversion potential, with 61% expressing interest in products after hearing an ad and 44% actively using promotional codes.
- Attribution for podcast campaigns is primarily probabilistic, requiring the integration of promo codes, unique URLs, and 30-day attribution windows to account for the medium's extended shelf life.
Session: The Perfect Player – Research Results & Characteristics Of High Value Users In Rewarded....
The mobile gaming industry is experiencing a significant shift toward rewarded user acquisition, a strategy where players receive incentives—ranging from in-game currency to real-world cash equivalents—for completing specific actions like downloading, testing, or making purchases within a game.
- Rewarded user acquisition (UA) market share more than doubled in the last year, establishing it as a significant channel for mobile game growth.
- High-value players (those spending over $500 monthly) prioritize reward-based platforms as their primary method for game discovery, whereas low-value players typically rely on standard app store recommendations or in-game ads.
- Campaigns utilizing rewarded UA can generate an average revenue per user (ARPU) nearly three times higher than traditional UA sources, as evidenced by comparative data between Almedia's Freecash and Google.
Session: Accelerating Decision Making From Ideation To Live Ops – A Data-Driven Approach With Game..
The primary objective of this analysis is to demonstrate how a data-driven framework can accelerate decision-making throughout the game development lifecycle, from initial ideation to long-term live operations.
- Data-driven market validation during the ideation phase helps identify underserved niches by analyzing competitor revenue, download volume, and advertising spend before writing code.
- High-performing titles like 'Words With Friends' and 'Scrabble Go' demonstrate that even in saturated markets, high advertising volume relative to download rates may indicate a reliance on retargeting, suggesting potential opportunities for new entrants.
- Iterative game design requires balancing acquisition, engagement, and monetization metrics while avoiding analysis paralysis; significant A/B tests should be approached with caution due to their potential to fundamentally alter game performance.
Session: The Science Of Success – Driving Growth With Prediction, Incrementality, And Scalable....
The gaming industry is currently navigating a period of heightened competition, characterized by market saturation, rising user acquisition costs, and the erosion of traditional data tracking due to evolving privacy regulations.
- Gaming companies must transition from simple attribution to a tripartite framework combining predictive analytics, incrementality testing, and marketing mix modeling (MMM) to combat rising user acquisition costs and privacy-driven data loss.
- Predictive analytics, such as modeling day-30 lifetime value, allows marketers to optimize campaigns and segment high-value users immediately, bypassing the granular data restrictions imposed by iOS SKAdNetwork.
- Incrementality testing identifies organic cannibalization by using synthetic control groups to determine if paid campaigns are generating incremental installs or merely capturing users who would have installed the game organically.
Session: Conquering The Multichannel Battlefield With Wargaming & SplitMetrics.
The gaming industry is increasingly defined by a multichannel and multiplatform landscape, where success requires a unified brand strategy that bridges the gap between mobile, PC, and console environments.
- Nearly 50% of gamers now play across at least two platforms, making cross-progression and cross-play essential for maintaining long-term engagement.
- Wargaming increased user engagement by 30% for World of Tanks Blitz by implementing a cross-platform strategy that balances mobile volume with the higher monetization rates of PC and console.
- Restructuring campaign architectures from broad global models to segmented geographic groupings reduced cost-per-install (CPI) by 22% and improved predicted ROI by 27%.
Session: Cutting Through The Noise – How To Get Your Game Noticed In A Challenging Market. Markus...
In a saturated gaming market where nearly 200,000 titles were released across major platforms last year, achieving visibility requires a shift from traditional, high-budget marketing toward creative, strategic, and audience-focused engagement.
- With nearly 200,000 titles released across major platforms last year, developers must abandon traditional, high-budget advertising in favor of creative, audience-focused engagement strategies.
- Marketing success is driven by platform-specific content, such as the technical community-building on Reddit seen with Kerbal Space Program or the viral, quirky short-form content used by Cult of the Lamb on TikTok.
- Creative, low-budget campaigns—such as the puppet-themed marketing for Resident Evil Village—often outperform high-production-value trailers by prioritizing emotional resonance and humor.
Curated Panel: How First-Party Data Creates More Valuable Players In-Game.
The mobile gaming industry is currently navigating a fundamental transition as privacy regulations evolve from mere legal compliance requirements into essential pillars of performance marketing.
- Failure to implement proper consent signals, such as Google Consent Mode, can result in revenue losses of up to 50% due to poor ad attribution and inability to run campaigns in the EEA and Switzerland.
- Proper implementation of consent signals and TCF strings can drive significant financial performance, with some large publishers reporting up to a 400% increase in ROAS and others seeing ARPU uplifts ranging from 10% to 200%.
- Privacy compliance has shifted from a legal-only concern to a critical Performance Marketing requirement, necessitating collaboration between legal, product, and marketing teams to ensure data-driven growth.
Session: Investor’s Perspective – What Matters While Considering An Investment Within Mobile...
Acquinox Capital, a Luxembourg-based private equity firm, evaluates investment opportunities in the mobile gaming sector through a dual-fund strategy.
- Acquinox Capital employs a dual-fund strategy, utilizing a deal-by-deal co-investment model alongside the Quantum Tech Growth Fund to target vertical integration across the gaming value chain.
- The firm targets a broad investment scope ranging from early-stage growth ventures to mature buyouts, with initial ticket sizes starting at 250,000 Euro.
- Investment evaluation is driven by a six-pillar framework that assesses leadership, business model viability, intellectual property, financial health, historical capital usage, and cap table structure.
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