8 Billion Game Downloads Later: What We’ve Learned on the Way

Anton Volnykh, Chief Publishing Officer at SayGames

1) Depth has always been our strategy

We never built SayGames around scale for the sake of scale. From the very beginning, the focus was on deep involvement. We work side by side with studios on monetisation, analytics, prediction models, hypothesis testing, marketing strategy, and daily product decisions. 

As our portfolio and partner network expanded, development became more complex. Production cycles grew, analytics deepened, monetisation systems became more sophisticated, and product decision-making required stronger infrastructure.

To keep up with that complexity, we had to grow as well — expanding our team, strengthening expertise, and building more advanced internal processes.

The result? We’ve managed to maintain our growth pace even as product and operational complexity increased — building games that scale sustainably and support healthy in-app economies over time.

2) Sustainable growth starts with product quality and player trust

Sustainable growth doesn’t come from user acquisition alone — it comes from product quality.

In today’s market, players stay and pay only when a game earns their trust. That trust is built through:

• balanced progression,
• consistent systems,
• and a player experience that feels intentional and respectful.

Quality is what allows players to invest time before they invest money. And only after that investment monetisation starts to make sense.

3) Moving to free to play economies required a mindset shift

As the market evolved, monetisation itself had to evolve with it. The biggest change for us — and for many of our partner studios — was the shift from ad-driven models to hybrid monetization.

This wasn’t just about adding in-app purchases. It required rethinking how games are built from the ground up.

Transitioning to hybrid models meant changing product mindset, restructuring teams, and developing much deeper analytical capabilities. Studios had to shift from short-cycle, download-driven thinking to long-term economy design and lifecycle management.

In this new reality, IAP is not an external revenue layer — it’s part of the core gameplay system. It shapes progression, supports long-term engagement, and gives players meaningful ways to interact with the game over time.

The main challenge was helping developer teams make this transition — building the skills, processes, and analytical depth needed to operate complex in-app economies sustainably.

4) Technology makes focus possible at scale

A true product-driven approach isn’t possible without the right tools behind it. 

Relying on intuition or knowledge about the genre isn’t enough — every game is unique and we need to learn in which way. Supporting monetisation without breaking balance requires visibility, predictability, and fast feedback loops — and that’s where technology becomes essential.

Our analytics, marketing tools, and ML models give teams:

• visibility into player behaviour,
• predictability in decision-making,
• and early signals about what’s working — and what isn’t.

This tech stack allows us to move fast without guessing. It’s what turns experimentation into a structured learning process.

5) Soft launch is no longer a verdict — it’s a learning system

For us, soft launch is a structured evaluation process designed to produce an accurate early forecast of a game’s real potential.

It combines early marketing strategy and playable testing, clear hypotheses, fast iteration cycles, and tight collaboration between developers, publishing, analytics, UA, and R&D.

Because decisions are based on dense, high-quality data and input from multiple specialists, we can assess potential earlier and with much higher confidence — helping teams avoid costly scaling mistakes.

6) Data gives direction — but every game still needs its own identity

Over the years, we’ve built a strong knowledge base around hybrid-casual:

• how progression typically behaves,
• where monetisation risks usually appear,
• how different mechanics affect retention and LTV.

That experience gives us a solid starting point, but it never replaces creativity. Each game still needs its own voice, pacing, and feel.
We encourage teams to test new ideas — in mechanics, meta, art, or structure — and validate them quickly through data.

7) Partnerships scale when you work with people, not projects

Our momentum didn’t come from chasing trends. It came from how we approach partnerships. We don’t work with “a game, we work with the team behind it.

That means:

• long-term collaboration instead of quick wins,
• space to experiment and iterate,
• shared responsibility for the result,
• transparency and prioritizing relationships.

8) Global partnerships don’t just add ideas — they improve decisions

In 2025, we significantly expanded the geography of our partnerships. Working with studios from different regions — including South Korea — reshaped how we think about hybrid-casual development.

These teams brought: 

• different design instincts,
• different approaches to polish,
• different production cultures,
• and at the same time, a shared mindset and expectations about partnership.

This diversity doesn’t just expand the pipeline. It strengthens product thinking — helping us question assumptions earlier, see trade-offs more clearly, and make more confident decisions about what to build, refine, or scale.

Eight billion installs feel less like a number and more like the result of years of focus, trust, and real collaboration with great teams. And we’re just at the beginning of the next chapter.