2024 Was A Breakout Year for DTC – Here Are Our Highlights
I couldn’t be prouder of our team. What we’ve accomplished in 2024 has been remarkable – building the DTC platform trusted by over 1/3 of the top grossing publishers, scaling our platform to $200M in transactions, and having some fun along the way.
As I wrote in our Manifesto, when we launched Appcharge we were sure of one thing: we were going to bring positive change to the mobile games ecosystem by helping publishers own their audience, and by doing it right. Almost two years later, I’m confident in saying we’ve achieved that goal already, and we’re only getting started. Our $26 million series A round is testament to this and will allow us to scale our obsession of launching world class monetization and payment products for leading publishers.
But while we look ahead to the future, with the year coming to a close I wanted to also reflect on our achievements from the past 12 months, highlighting the key product updates on the Appcharge platform.
New web store features launched
We continuously added features over the year to help our partners maximize their web store revenue and retention. These include:
Post purchase offer
This feature enables publishers to show a pop-up with an irresistible offer immediately after a player completes a purchase. This tactic has boosted our publishers’ revenue significantly – up to 12% in some cases.
Time-limited offers
Time-limited deals, accompanied with countdown timers, are a tried and tested method for increasing web store revenue. In addition, this feature allows publishers to batch schedule offers in advance, instead of scheduling offers one by one. This enables them to align their web store offers with their internal calendar and scheduling logic and saves time.
Password-Less Login
We’re obsessed with making web store experiences that delight players. Removing any friction from the login process is a key part of this, which is why we added password-less login. Within 3 seconds and just 2 taps, players can load their profiles and check their in-game currency balance — making this the fastest & easiest way to log into the store.
Daily Bonus
Our daily bonus feature is helping our partners increase both revenue and retention. A customizable interstitial pop-up that players receive upon opening the web store, it rewards them with a game resource such as in-game currency. Right after the player claims their reward, a timer appears on the pop-up showing that the next reward can be unlocked on the next calendar day.
Offer Availability Controls
If a player loves a certain offer, why limit them to a certain amount once they’ve maxed out? This feature, which was requested by one of our partners, lets publishers set the number of times players can redeem an offer [such as twice a day], and then select a time and date for replenishing it. Since releasing this feature, we’ve received great feedback and seen a notable increase in repeat purchases.
These features are just a snapshot of the innovation happening at Appcharge. Every addition comes from deep collaboration with our partners and a shared commitment to growing their businesses.
Strengthening our payments solution
We made numerous improvements to our checkout solution, focused on perfecting the user experience and delivering market-leading conversion rates for our partners. These include:
New Payment Methods
Can your Polish players pay with Blik? How about your Brazilian players with Pix?
We make sure publishers always make players feel seen by providing their preferred payment methods. I’m proud of our payments team who worked tirelessly to add a wide range of APMs to the web store checkout.
For example, we recently added Venmo as a payment method for U.S. users, and it has already processed a significant number of transactions for our partners.
Coupons
Discount coupons have shown themselves to be a powerful tactic for driving web store traffic and conversions for our partners. The most effective way to leverage these is using online communities and VIP account managers to share coupons with players.
New mobile checkout SDK
Several publishers we work with requested a solution to support their sideloading distribution strategies. This is another very interesting layer in the DTC ecosystem, allowing publishers to distribute their games directly to players, outside the iOS or Android ecosystems.
Our development team got to work, and built a first class SDK that allows publishers to integrate a native in-app payments flow in their game for Unity, iOS, Android and Cocos.
What features does it offer?
Fully customizable checkout look & feel
80 currencies, 500 alternative payment methods
Player price & currency localization
Real-time financial data connected to your system, and analytics in your Appcharge dashboard
We’re always looking for new ways to help our current and future partners grow with the expanding DTC economy.
As I reflect on the past year, I’m reminded of the opening words of this article: we set out to bring positive change to the mobile games ecosystem. The journey isn’t over, and 2025 promises to be even more exciting.
With an ambitious product roadmap and a team of mobile gaming veterans that continues to exceed expectations, we’re ready to scale new heights together. Thank you for being a part of our story, and here’s to another successful year for the industry 🦄
Announcing our $26 Million Series A, Led by Creandum With Support From Supercell, Play Ventures & Other Leading VCs
This is a powerful endorsement of the vision we started with in 2022: to give mobile game publishers the tools to connect directly with players on their own terms.
Ultimately, this delivers a net positive impact for everyone: publishers have more control and financial resilience, and players get better value for money and a fun experience. That is what drives us to develop new solutions to push DTC forward.
Why Now?
The genie is out of the bottle – publishers no longer need to lose 30% on all sales of in-game items.
The ongoing antitrust battles against Apple and Google have amplified the importance of direct-to-consumer (DTC) across the industry, sparking a much-needed conversation about control and autonomy for publishers. Regardless of the legal outcome, DTC has emerged as a powerful strategy for publishers looking to take charge of their revenue and deepen their connection with players. Testament to this is the waves of demand we’ve seen for our platform from top publishers, which has been truly remarkable.
At the same time, many publishers are finding it harder than ever to scale their user acquisition (UA) efforts post-ATT while remaining profitable. With rising costs and a crowded market, even the biggest companies are feeling the squeeze. By significantly lowering costs and increasing revenue through DTC sales, we give publishers a stronger financial foundation—a bigger war chest to fuel future growth and keep their games thriving. We’ve seen the impact of this firsthand—we process $200 million in DTC sales annually and have seen 3x growth in the last quarter.
We know we’re onto something big.
Why Do Top Publishers Choose Appcharge?
The Appcharge team
As I wrote earlier this year in our Manifesto, great products are built by people who truly get the needs of the niche they’re serving.
Our people?
We’re a team of game makers who understand the unique challenges of this space because, well, we’ve lived through them ourselves at companies like Rovio, Huuuge Games, Moon Active, and Playstudios. We understand what it takes to build and scale the world’s highest-grossing games—this informs every feature we build and all strategic monetization advice we offer our publishers.
When our team shares wins in our company’s Slack channel like the one you see below, I’m both filled with pride and pumped for what’s to come.
Mobile Gaming’s New Golden Era
This new funding marks our next step in driving the DTC movement forward. Web stores have become ubiquitous—our recent industry report confirms this trend—but the DTC space still has so much room to grow.
Appcharge Web Stores are already seen by top publishers as a leading solution, equipped with powerful engagement mechanics like Accumulation Bars, Coupons, and Daily Bonuses. And following requests from partners, we recently launched our in-game payment SDK for Unity, Android, and iOS. With sideloading rising as a viable distribution channel, we want to provide publishers the tools they need to succeed and meet players wherever they are.
We’re excited for the year to come—we’ll continue strengthening our platform and innovating in line with our publishers’ needs, for instance, with AI tools to help them get the most out of their web stores and new payment methods to continue delighting players wherever they are.
Final Thoughts
This is a good opportunity to say thank you.
A huge thank you to our world-class team, our investors for helping us get here, and our innovative publishers who continue pushing boundaries and moving the industry forward with us.
We’re just getting started 🦄
We Analyzed Web Store Adoption Across Top Grossing Mobile Games – Here’s What We Learned
The last couple of years has been quite the ride for us game makers.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) monetization has been embraced by publishers everywhere, amidst a tide of antitrust regulatory changes which have shifted the market wide open and paved the way for more choices for publishers and users alike.
From a personal perspective, we’ve grown our partnerships considerably, now counting ⅓ of the top grossing mobile games as partners and building the market’s most robust DTC platform.
But despite our own growth and the general hype surrounding web stores in the mobile games industry, there is little data that gives concrete evidence of this overall trend.
We wanted to change that.
Our team ran a thorough analysis of the top grossing charts and found that on average, 72% of top-grossing games operate a web store.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at web store adoption across top grossing game genres, namely the social casino, action, strategy, and casual categories, and unearth financial data to assess the impact of DTC strategies on games businesses.
Web Store Adoption Rates: Industry Data
A quick note on our analysis: We used data from Sensor Tower’s August 2024 report to identify top-grossing iOS games in the U.S. We then researched and tracked which of these games have web stores – many were not easy to find, as often publishers only invite a select group of VIP players.
We had to pull some strings to get the full list together, but we were able to gather enough data to offer an accurate, albeit conservative, view of adoption rates and trends. Now, let’s dive in.
Social Casino Games
Social casino has long been one of the most lucrative gaming categories. It has high spenders who are smartly nurtured and monetized with tactics including loyalty programs, VIP customer management, and in-person events.
100% adoption rate
With the context above in mind, it comes as no surprise that all of the top 20 grossing social casino games have web stores.Some interesting points:
These games belong to 10 different publishers, showing web store adoption is spread out across the top publishers and not confined to a handful of outliers.
Publishers with multiple web stores include Playtika and Product Madness.
Appcharge is proud to be the preferred partner of many of the games in this list, powering their web stores and helping them scale their DTC strategy.
Understanding the data
Why do we think web store adoption has taken off in this genre? Here’s a few factors:
Big spenders: Social casino games have very high ARPU. This means a publisher can still see a meaningful boost to their margins by shifting just 10% of paying users to a web store – making the effort of launching a store worthwhile.
Strong foundations: The top social casino games have strong direct-to-consumer foundations already, namely via VIP account management, rewards programs, and social media community management. This makes it easier to promote web stores and encourage high LTV users to do their shopping on them.
Culture of innovation: The top social casino publishers are renowned for their sophistication and data-centric approach. They pounced on the web store opportunity early and have had more time to gather data and optimize their strategies across their portfolios.
What results are social casino games seeing?
While web store data is scarce at the moment, we can look at two public companies for useful guidance: Playtika and Huuuge Games.
Playtika
In their Q2 2024 earnings report, Playtika reported generating DTC revenue of $173.7M, up 1.3% sequentially and 5.1% year over year.
In their 2023 Annual Report, Playtika reported generating $639.4M in DTC revenue, up 5.4% compared to 2022.
DTC revenue accounted for 24.9% of Playtika’s total revenue in 2023
Slotomania and Bingo Blitz – both of which have DTC web stores and feature on the top grossing casino games list – generated approximately 46% of Playtika’s revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023.
Playtika decreased their cost of revenue by $17.2M in 2023, which includes an approximate $16.8M decrease in platform fees and a greater percentage of revenue generated from their DTC platforms
Payment processing fees and other related expenses for in-app purchases made through Playtika’s DTC platforms are typically 3-4%, compared to the typical 30% platform fee.
Huuuge Games
In their latest earnings report, Huuuge reported generating $72M in DTC revenue in Q3 2023
In H1 2024 DTC revenues accounted for 10.1% of total revenue (up from 4.2% in H1 2023), “exceeding their expectations”
They added that they are investing further in DTC channels and expect more long-term upside
Casual Games
Casual games are one of the highest grossing categories in the whole industry. Puzzle games – a single subcategory of the casual genre, for example – saw $2.89 billion in consumer spending in Q2 2024, ahead of social casino’s $2.886 billion.
30% adoption rate
On the surface, we might be surprised then that just 6 out of 20 of the top grossing casual games have web stores. These 20 games are a medley of subcategories: puzzle (the Candy Crush series), match-3 (Empires & Puzzles), solitaire/simulation (Solitaire Grand Harvest), Board Game/Simulation (Phase 10: World Tour), and casual casino (Coin Master).
Understanding the data
If casual games as a category generate so much in consumer spending, why aren’t more publishers launching web stores?
Low ARPU: Casual games have a high number of paying users, with relatively low ARPU and average transactions. This represents a challenge: to set up and scale a web store, casual studios need to migrate a large number of users from the in-game shop to the web store.
By contrast, we have partners in the social casino category who saw massive transaction volume on their web store, having migrated just 10% of their top paying players.
In other words, it’s much easier to achieve meaningful ROI on your web store when you have high ARPU. The majority of casual game publishers are therefore on the fence about investing in DTC web stores.
Impulsive buying behavior: Many IAPs in casual games are impulsive – players run out of moves mid session and want to immediately purchase extra resources in order to continue playing. Speed and frictionless UX are key to these transactions.
Web stores, by contrast, require users to exit the game, log in, browse items, and make a purchase, which is less appealing to many casual gamers.
Despite these challenges, casual game publishers can still win with web stores – we’ve seen some of our casual gaming partners migrate 10% and more of their total revenue to web stores.
Strategy games
In Q2 2024, the strategy genre was 1st place in consumer spending, reaching $4.149 billion – up 12% year-on-year. Let’s see how this correlates to web store adoption.
80% adoption rate
Understanding the data
16 of the top 20 grossing strategy games have web stores. A few interesting points:
Established games: Many of the games that launched web stores have been around for 5+ years, such as PUBG MOBILE, Rise of Kingdoms, and Game of Thrones: Conquest™.
High ARPU: Aside from being well established games, they also have high ARPU. PUBG Mobile, for example, had the highest ARPU of all mobile games worldwide in 2022, with other strategy games Pokemon GO and Clash of Clans ranking third and fifth respectively.
Global adoption: Adoption among strategy games is evenly distributed between western and Asian publishers.
What results are strategy games seeing?
According to Ed Wu, SVP of Pokemon GO, their users have “they’ve taken it up quite a bit”, referring to their web store.
This is corroborated by Semrush data, according to which the Pokemon GO web store draws in approximately 2.6 million monthly visitors.
Action games
According to Sensor Tower’s Digital Market Index report, action games were the fastest-growing genre for consumer spend in Q2 2024, up by 50% to $843.6 million and ranking seventh overall. Let’s see whether web store adoption mirrors this growth.
75% adoption rate
Understanding the data
With 15 out of the top 20 action games offering online web stores, this category has a 75% adoption rate. A few interesting points:
Diverse Game Types: The adoption spans various subcategories, including sandbox, strategy, MOBA, FPS, and RPG. This diversity indicates that the decision to implement web stores is not limited to a particular subgenre but is a strategic choice across different types of action games.
High ARPU: These games have high ARPU, making web stores an effective monetization channel. PUBG Mobile, Roblox, and Clash of Clans ranked first, second and fifth respectively in the ARPU charts from 2022, while Call of Duty Mobile already passed $3 billion in revenue.
Competitive and Social Games: Many of these games are multiplayer or competitive, where frequent transactions for cosmetic items, battle passes, or power-ups are common, making web stores and the extra value they provide an attractive option for paying users.
The Road Ahead for DTC in Mobile Games
Web stores are no longer the “next big thing” – they’re already the norm, especially in high-ARPU genres like social casino and strategy games, where a small percentage of players can drive substantial revenue.
As someone who’s worked closely with top mobile game publishers, I’ve seen firsthand how web stores can transform revenue models and give publishers greater control over their sales channels.
That said, not every genre is set to adopt web stores at the same pace. Casual games, with their lower ARPU and reliance on impulse-driven IAPs, face unique challenges.
But I’m optimistic that as the complexity of execution and friction in the UX is reduced through solutions like Appcharge, more casual game publishers will see the potential to shift players to DTC sales.
And the genres that are already widely adopting web stores, including strategy, social casino, and action games, will go from strength to strength as they optimize their DTC strategies and solidify new player habits.
The road ahead won’t be the same for every publisher, but for those ready to innovate, web stores offer a path to higher margins and a closer connection to their players. At Appcharge, we’re here to make that transition as seamless as possible.
The Appcharge Manifesto
When we launched Appcharge in 2022, we knew we wanted to not only bring positive change to the mobile games industry, but also do things differently.
Taking publishers into the direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecosystem is a big responsibility, one that can achieve an elusive win-win combination for players and publishers alike.
A win for players, who get more value for their money plus a fun experience to complement their gameplay; and a win for publishers, who increase their financial resilience, their autonomy, and their game’s retention rates and user LTVs.
Recognizing the sheer value of the DTC opportunity we could unlock for the industry, and the shortcomings of existing solutions in the market, myself and my co-founders sat down and, over many brainstorming sessions, refined Appcharge’s core manifesto.
Our non-negotiables, our principles, and the value we knew we had to unwaveringly provide our customers with. Here they are.
The days of being totally at the mercy of the traditional gatekeepers are over.
It’s not only a right, but also a strategic imperative for mobile game publishers to truly own their audience, to sell to players on their terms, to not lose 30 per cent on every transaction, and to take back what’s theirs.
It feels quite revolutionary in spirit, but it shouldn’t be.
We’re just facilitating what should have already been possible: the right to sell directly to players.
The strategic advantage publishers gain by going direct-to-consumer with web stores is clear.
The biggest publishers like Rovio, Supercell, Moon Active and Scopely have all built web stores in-house, pouncing on the DTC opportunity early.
But here’s the thing: most other publishers can’t afford to build a web store internally. It simply takes too much time and costs too much money, when their manpower needs to be razor focused on existing development and game design tasks.
With the gap already widening between the biggest publishers and the rest – a quick look at the top grossing charts shows the domination of legacy games and studios – it’s clear that the industry needs a more level playing field in the realm of web stores.
That’s why we created a white label web store platform, to enable mobile game publishers of all sizes to access the DTC opportunities that the largest companies are already capitalizing on.
Our team’s background at mobile gaming titans such as Moon Active, one of the most sophisticated publishers in terms of their data centric culture and use of segmentation, helped us crystalize our product strategy and vision:
For a web store to be fun, it must provide a personalized, relevant experience to every user.
And so we set off to build a robust segmentation tool that lets publishers serve their players the most relevant offers and web store UI, in real time.
Whether the user is entering the web store for the first time or they’re a long-time spender, whether they’re entering the store for the fifth day in a row or returning after a month away, we give publishers the tech they need to serve a personalized experience that delights players and maximizes their LTV.
We saw how existing game web stores looked and felt, and we wanted to help publishers do things better.
Too many web stores focused too much on selling, while forgetting a crucial part of the puzzle: fun. No publisher would launch a game that isn’t fun, and we firmly believe that this ethos extends to web stores too.
Players should enjoy spending time in web stores – it should feel like an extension of the game experience. That’s why gamification mechanics are a core feature of Appcharge’s web store builder.
Breaking out of the walled gardens maintained by the gatekeepers is all about retaking control of your games business.
A web store platform that is secretive, vague, or misleading with its fee structure goes against the very ethos of leading publishers into the direct-to-consumer ecosystem.
That’s why Appcharge will always be clear and reasonable with our fee structure.
We’re here to help publishers win, not to empty their pockets.
Great products are built by people who truly get the needs of the niche they’re serving.
Appcharge’s platform was built by product and monetization veterans from leading companies like Moon Active and Rovio, where they had hands-on experience building a web store internally.
And we believe that for a web store platform to truly meet the needs of games publishers, it must be built by experts who’ve been in the trenches of mobile gaming.
This ethos permeates our customer success strategy: we work as an extension of our customers’ monetization team, consulting them in order to push their DTC strategies forward.
Those who try to justify the 30 percent tax taken by Apple and Google point to the payment complexities they take care of.
It’s true: managing payments is a complex, intimidating task.
However, publishers shouldn’t have to sacrifice such a significant chunk of their hard-earned profits just for payment technology and Merchant of Record services.
We believe there is a fairer way, a way that leaves publishers with a feeling that they have a partner to grow with, not a giant to shake them down.
Mobile Game Web Stores: Should You Build or Buy Your Tech?
In 2023, nearly every major mobile games publisher launched a web store. There’s a reason for this: by carving out a direct-to-consumer sales platform, publishers bypass the traditional 30% fees on all transactions. In doing so, they can provide users with exclusive and generous offers while significantly increasing profit margins.
It’s a much-needed win for publishers, who are feeling the squeeze due to challenging industry trends, and it’s also a win for players, who receive far more value for their money in the offers presented to them in web stores.
With these tailwinds, we expect to see a surge in web store adoption in 2024 from both medium and large sized publishers. Which begs the question: how do you actually create a web store?
There are two key components: creating a functional store, and handling the payment operations to enable global sales.
To do this, you can either build out your web store and its payment operations in-house, use a white label, out-of-the-box web store platform to do everything, or use a combination of both (for example, developing your own store but outsourcing your payment needs to a web store platform).
By the end of this guide, you’ll understand the pros and cons of these approaches and be a step closer to executing your game’s web store.
Let’s dive in.
What’s behind a successful mobile game web store?
The list shown above demonstrates just some of the key components of a mobile game web store.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of building a web store in-house from scratch, before looking at the alternative approach – leveraging a white-label platform where the tech is already taken care of.
Building your own game web store from scratch
The pros of building your own web store
Full autonomy
Building a web store in-house means your tech and tools belong solely to your company. You’ll always be in full control, eliminating any risks posed by the reliance on a third-party vendor, and keeping communication internal – especially useful if you have a big team.
In addition, your web store will become part of your studio’s core technology stack, adding value to your company.
Complete customization
When you have a team of in-house engineers and product designers building your web store from scratch, you’re able to mold your store whatever way you’d like to meet the specific needs of your game.
That’s an attractive proposition for many developers, but it comes with a cost. Dedicating a team to not only take a web store from 0 to 1 but then maintain and customize it constantly once it’s live is a major commitment, both in time and money.
Higher margins on sales
White label web store solutions take anywhere from 5% to 15% per transaction. While still a far cry from the traditional platforms’ 30% cut, some developers may deem it worth the investment to avoid fees altogether by building their web store in-house.
This means they can pocket the highest possible margins per transaction. However, that must be weighed against the considerable cost of hiring a dedicated team of engineers and product designers to build and manage the store.
The cons of building your own web store
It’s expensive and time-consuming
Some studios with enough manpower can put together a team from their existing workforce to at least build an MVP of a web store.
But to build a robust web store, equipped with all the functionality and features that keep players coming back and making repeat purchases, you’ll need to hire a team of specialist engineers and product designers.
We’ve seen large publishers dedicate 10 to 15 people to building a web store. Not only is it a lengthy process to hire the right people, but once you have them it also takes considerable time to build and launch the store. That’s expensive – both in time and in money.
Being your own Merchant of Record is a headache
When you start selling to players outside of the traditional App Stores, which take care of all Merchant of Record services as part of their 30% cut, you take on this responsibility for facilitating global payments.
Becoming your own Merchant of Record means hiring experts to handle local taxes, currencies, exchange rates, invoicing, billing and fraud prevention. This newfound responsibility also introduces the risk of exceeding chargeback limits, potentially resulting in penalties or even the blocking of your game by payment providers.
If you want to build your web store in-house but feel overwhelmed by the idea of managing these financial intricacies, opting for a gaming-focused MOR provider can make a lot of sense [holistic web store platforms like Appcharge offer both an MOR solution and a web store builder].
Maintenance and management is an ongoing burden
A successful web store isn’t completed once it’s been launched. Just like a mobile game, it is a living, breathing entity that requires constant iteration and optimization.
If you build your web store internally, every change to your web store – from new artwork to new gamification mechanics – will require development work. Ultimately, this slows down your time-to-market for every iteration and creates operational overheads.
Building your own web store: a brief summary
Building your D2C web store in-house gives you the ownership, control, customization, and margins per transaction to make top-grossing games.
Whether this is the best route for your company really depends on your team size, expertise, financial resources, and capacity to execute with speed and quality.
The challenge?
Well, you’re looking at a minimum of five highly-skilled (and very expensive) software engineers just to get you started.
Once you’ve found them, they need to become closely intertwined with the game development, LiveOps, and game monetization teams, ensuring that as new features, events, and offers are added to the game and product roadmap, the web store is able to support these initiatives simultaneously.
All the while, you need to ensure all of this effort is supported by robust Merchant of Record services to handle the complex world of payments.
Using a white-label web store for your mobile game
Using a white-label platform, instead of developing your own technology, is a more efficient way to build out your mobile game web store. But is more efficient actually better? Let’s see.
The pros of using web store tech for your game
When chosen smartly, ready-made and purpose-built web store technology can supercharge your mobile game’s bottom line profit. Let’s take a look at four of the top reasons why.
Maximize your profits
Hiring a team of specialist engineers and product designers to develop just a ‘vanilla’ or MVP version of your web store can take around 4 months and is expensive.
Fortunately, in the same way you can bypass the traditional app stores’ 30% fees by launching a web store, you can also bypass the aforementioned development costs by leveraging an out-of-the-box platform, which has done all the heavy-lifting for you.
Not only does this save you significant development costs, but it expedites your time to market so you can start selling items faster. More on that below.
Faster time-to-market
With a seamless API integration using a white label platform, you can get a web store to market in a matter of weeks. One based on battle-tested technology and with all the features you need to succeed. Compare that to the time it takes to actually begin earning from an internally built web store – remember you need to assemble a team of specialists, develop a platform, and ship it – you’re saving a huge amount of time. And time is money.
Payments taken care of
Payment infrastructure is one of the biggest headaches faced by publishers who opt to build web stores in-house. A white-label web store platform like Appcharge handles all of your Merchant of Record needs, which is a game-changer for any company facing down the prospect of hiring experts to handle local taxes, currencies, exchange rates, invoicing, billing, chargebacks, and fraud prevention.
Easy updates and optimization
The right white-label web store platform makes it easy to update your store with new designs, art work, gamification mechanics, special offers, and more.
Given that most games these days operate as live services with dynamic LiveOps and frequent optimization, it’s crucial that you can update your web store frequently and without unnecessary hassle to keep up with this cadence.
Build or buy: A big decision for your mobile game monetization
The allure of ownership and control, customization, and higher margins per transaction may tempt some publishers to build a web store in-house. Some might opt for developing the store only and outsourcing the MOR part, to alleviate some of the burden. Others might decide to keep the whole thing in-house, from payments to store development. Either way, the required investment in time, effort, and resources is considerable.
On the other side of the spectrum, a holistic white-label web store platform allows game developers to build a robust web store with all its payments and MOR needs taken care of in a matter of weeks. This speed-to-market, both for launching and for adding new features in the future, is invaluable.
Equally crucial, outsourcing helps to maximize profits by avoiding hefty development costs, with platforms like Appcharge charging just a 5% fee per transaction.
Another important advantage of working with a web store platform is leveraging their expertise, so you can always stay at the forefront of D2C innovation and ensure your strategy is guided by specialists.
If you’re curious what to look for when choosing the right web store platform, this article should be helpful.