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.