With the DMA in Europe and hard-fought court cases being won in the US, many developers are looking beyond traditional markets for their games. They no longer need to feel trapped by Google and Apple and many are tempted by a multi-channel approach to marketing.
But while some are looking at their options for the first time in a long time, others have already been experimenting in alternative markets and most are reporting positive results.
For example, Chinese developer ONEMT added Amazon to the market channels for its game Rise of the Kings way back in 2018. It did so with help from Flexion.
As a matter of course, ONEMT collects and analyses a lot of user data to see how different games perform in various markets.
“We’ve found that the users brought in by the alternative stores give us a significant advantage in terms of activation and average revenue per paying user (ARPPU),” says ONEMT’s Marketing Director Dicky Wang. “There are many dimensions that we use to evaluate the success of a store, but the most important ones are user growth and store revenue. The main reason we went to the alternative stores was because we wanted to have access to users outside of the regular Google Play store, and we wanted to generate incremental revenue from those users.”
“Users brought in by alternative markets give us a significant advantage in terms of activation and average revenue”
Top Games, a global multi-million-dollar games developer that’s focused on the US market, found that expert help was decisive when it decided to add Amazon to its market portfolio for its game Evony: The King’s Return. The developer is quite capable of doing everything for itself but found it made more economic sense to use Flexion. That gave it access to additional revenue without eating up resource, leaving its own people free to concentrate on developing the game itself.
“The alternative app stores add to the game’s overall success,” says Kevin Lee, marketing director at Top Games. “We’re delighted to partner with Flexion because it helps us reach a wider audience, allowing players on other devices to experience our amazing game.”
Broader markets are becoming an important strategic plank for many. For FunPlus, its strategy with perennially popular game Guns of Glory has been to offer users access through a wide range of markets. Since 2019, the game has been available on Huawei’s App Gallery, the Samsung Galaxy Store, and the ONE store, thanks to Flexion.
“User preferences shift rapidly,” a FunPlus spokesperson tells us. “We need to keep up with them to remain popular and relevant. Although Guns of Glory has been around for over six years, we have always treated it as a new game in operation. We update the content frequently, and continuously optimise features, bringing exciting gaming experiences to both new and existing players.
The need to constantly reinvent a game is one of the limiting factors preventing some developers from considering a multichannel approach. But with the right partner, this need not be a roadblock.
The risk with multiple platforms is the overhead in maintaining the frequent updates, promotions and pricing that are key to keeping a game popular. It could be a logistic nightmare. This is where Flexion comes into the picture and provides valuable expertise and services.
“Flexion’s excellent technology and services allow us to easily release versions on channels such as Huawei, Samsung and the ONEstore with just one additional build during each update,” FunPlus explains. “In addition, Flexion’s professional marketing team helps us grab many promotional opportunities. On top of that, its support for art assets has saved us a considerable amount of cost.”
“Flexion’s professional marketing team helps us grab many promotional opportunities”
So, does a multi-channel marketing approach pay off? Well, leading developer DECA Games thinks so. It saw its game’s revenue jump by around 80% when it chose to publish and market its hit game, Gods and Glory, on the Huawei App Gallery and Amazon App Store.
Artem Permyakov, senior producer at DECA tells us that holiday promotions set up by Flexion skyrocketed their game’s revenue. And this wasn’t a temporary boost.
“The audience we got from those events was afterwards sticking with the game,” he says. “It was also around a 50-60% increase from our normal general revenue that we had over those holidays. Working with Flexion helped us expand our presence in Eastern Europe quite a lot. And tapping into some of the audiences that have been unavailable to us previously, for example Western Europe which is generally known for being difficult to get in.”
ONEMT is a globally integrated net technology corporation dedicated to bringing the best in online entertainment to gamers the world over. The games developed and released through the years, now available in 18 languages, have consistently topped the charts.
Top Games Inc. is a global video game developer and publisher, officially founded in 2015. Since its launch, it’s worked hard on bringing fun games to players all over the world. Hard work pays off. Now its serves gamers in more than 150 countries with multi-languages.
FunPlus says its mission is to build a global organisation, powered by the best talent, that provides users worldwide with innovative interactive entertainment experiences.
DECA Games is an indie publisher completely focused on live operations and games as a service. It takes over and reinvigorates games as they age or when their original developer can no longer support them.