Why SayGames Believes Hybrid Games Need a Different Publishing Model

Kate Dekalenkova, Business Development Manager at SayGames

At the same time, the industry has shifted toward hybrid games, where sustainable revenue increasingly comes from in-app purchases rather than advertising alone. These games require deeper product work: progression systems, gameplay balance, monetization strategy, which must evolve together across the entire player lifecycle.

For publishers, this shift changes the role they play.

Instead of simply testing and filtering prototypes, publishers increasingly need to help teams develop products capable of generating long-term revenue.

At SayGames, focus on partner studios has become a central part of our strategy. As we expanded deeper into hybrid casual and development, our in-app purchase revenue has grown steadily.

According to Sensor Tower:

May 2024: $3.53M

May 2025: $6.19M (+75.4% YoY)

May 2026: $8.49M (+37.2% YoY)

In just two years, our IAP revenue has more than doubled — driven by improvements in product quality, deeper analytics, and long-term collaboration with development teams.

In this article, we explain how we work with partner studios at SayGames.

High test volume vs focus on few quality projects: why the role of a publisher is changing

Traditionally, many mobile publishing models across the industry have been built around fast prototype pipelines and strict KPI benchmarks. In these approaches, projects are tested quickly and evaluated against fixed metrics such as CPI targets, retention benchmarks and early playtime metrics.

If these numbers are not strong enough within a short testing window, development typically stops. This approach works well for large prototype pipelines. But it also means many games are evaluated before their full potential has been thoroughly explored.

At SayGames, we follow a different model.

Instead of focusing on whether a project passes a fixed KPI threshold at a specific moment, we look at the structure of the data and its growth potential. And we do not rely on CPI during early evaluation. In hybrid projects, we believe these signals can be misleading.

For example, if a prototype shows strong retention, it may indicate a compelling core gameplay loop that can later be strengthened through progression design, economy balancing, and monetization systems.

In other cases, retention may be modest but players actively engage with rewarded ads. This can signal strong monetization potential — but that potential often remains hidden if the prototype is tested without basic monetization systems in place.

In situations like this, our goal is not to stop development but to work with the team to unlock that potential.

This process typically includes:

• identifying performance bottlenecks through analytics
• forming hypotheses
• running structured iteration cycles
• learning as much as possible about game’s audience and content use

If a project enters testing with SayGames, it means we already believe in both the product and the team — and our goal is to help the game reach global launch.

We test significantly fewer games than many publishers — but we test them more thoroughly. Instead of a very short campaign, we often run longer testing cycles, experiment with different marketing strategies, and invest in higher-quality creative production to better understand the product’s real potential.

Because of this, the pre-test review process is extremely detailed. Before a project enters testing, it is reviewed not only by game producers but also by the company’s founders. The team plays the game and evaluates whether it aligns with our long-term publishing strategy and market realities.

For us, publishing is therefore not about being a factory of testing prototypes and killing most of them until a lucky outlier emerges. It is about helping promising teams with good games grow into sustainable businesses.

Working with teams, not just projects

Another key difference lies in how we define partnerships.

We do not approach publishing as a project-by-project relationship. Instead, we focus on long-term collaboration with teams.

In practice, this means building a shared product process that includes:

• aligned product roadmaps
• joint decision-making based on data
• continuous knowledge transfer
• and accumulated expertise across multiple projects

Over time, teams working with us typically become faster and more predictable in both product development and monetization design. The partnership gradually evolves from supporting a single title to building a repeatable product capability.

Our internal structure reflects this philosophy. Around 50% of the SayGames employees are engineers, working on analytics infrastructure, marketing tools, and product systems that support partner studios. At the same time, we intentionally keep the business development function small — today we have only one dedicated business development manager. 

This reflects a deliberate strategic choice: instead of signing as many projects as possible, we focus on working deeply with a smaller number of teams whose products align with our portfolio and vision.

Analytics as a core product tool that help us design better hybrid games

Every game is unique. Even with experience in specific genres, many product decisions cannot be predicted in advance. Hybrid games are complex systems that require continuous testing and learning.

This is why analytics plays a central role in how we work with partner studios. Each SayGames analyst typically works with several projects or studios, becoming responsible for the analytical side of those games — helping interpret data, answering questions from developers, and supporting product decisions together with producers.

At the same time, analysts also conduct cross-portfolio research. By studying mechanics, monetization systems, and player behavior across multiple projects, they identify patterns that can be applied to future games.

For partner studios, the entry level is simple. After integrating our SDK, developers gain access to more than 100 ready-to-use dashboards covering:

• player behavior
• retention and session patterns
• level progression
• monetization funnels
• rewarded ad engagement
• and more

For projects that require deeper analysis, our analysts build custom dashboards and work closely with the studio, sometimes becoming a regular part of the development communication.

If a team joins us without a strong analytics culture, we help them build one. If they already have strong data expertise, our tools simply extend their capabilities.

The goal is not to replace the studio’s product vision — but to ensure that every important decision can be validated through data and experimentation.

Building games for the long run

Hybrid games require time, iteration, and close collaboration between developers and publishers.

As the market becomes more competitive, the ability to build sustainable product systems becomes increasingly important.

At SayGames, we believe publishing should focus on helping strong teams unlock the full potential of their games.

And when that happens, the result is not just a successful launch — but a portfolio of games capable of growing for years.