In this LevelUp episode, Melissa Zeloof sits down with Yi Gong, VP of Growth at Tilting Point. They get into how Tilting Point is leveraging D2C webstores to drive new revenue streams, why Tilting Point decided to use a third-party platform for theirs, and how Yi sees the market's future.
Tune in here or read the highlights below:
Tilting Point has decided to operate their own D2C store, how did you decide this was the correct course of action?
We’ve been working with a D2C webstore for the last 2 years. We made this decision based on the payment ecosystem in the mobile industry, and we saw competitors use them to great success. So, we decided to test it on one of our titles that is driven by highvalue paying users.
This was our first test, more of a kind of soft launch. It took us a couple of months to do the first integration, talking with D2C partners, and testing in different geos and with different offers. We saw that it was definitely a win-win for us so we decided to apply our learnings to our other titles. We now have it for 4-5 of our games. Mostly for our mid-core strategy games.
D2C webstores are not the only option available to publishers, with other channels available like alternative app stores and ecommerce marketplaces. Why did Tilting Point choose to pursue a D2C webstore?
We have been working with several alternative app stores for a while. However, over the years when we tested porting titles to alternative app stores, we found the growth to be very limited. There are a couple of reasons behind that, for example, it could be that the alternative app store’s major market is not our games' major market - like Asia or Africa, since most of our audience is based in the US. With webstores there’s no limitation for the audience or market, we can do it globally.
What kind of risks did you assess before deciding to go forward with a D2C web store?
The first challenge we had to consider was how to tell our audience about the webstore. We started by reaching out to our online communities and then allowed community members to share this information with other players.
Interstitials and pop ups can be confusing for users who've never heard of webstores. One user offering a testimonial is a much stronger message than anything else.
We relied on the players to share the information through word of mouth. Then we started doing it through interstitial notifications for D7 players, so we were targeting highly engaged users since these were the users that we wanted to engage with the webstore. We found community-driven awareness to be the best solution. Interstitials and pop ups can be confusing for users who've never heard of webstores. One user offering a testimonial is a much stronger message than anything else.
As this new channel for revenue has expanded, several SaaS companies have sprung up offering white label platforms for publishers to take advantage of. Why did Tilting Point opt to outsource to one of these white label platforms?
We evaluated a few different options, testing with two different partners, but after examining pricing and the technical documentation we find one partner we liked. We chose to use a 3rd party since they had the resources to support the implementation, offering technical support when needed.
There was also the challenge of legal compliance which would have been a significant investment on our part, but with a third party partner, they were already on top of legal compliance so we didn’t have to worry about it. Thirdly, the partner we chose already had the templates and infrastructure ready for the webstore, something we would have otherwise needed to dedicate a team member to work on.
How onerous was the creation of the store? What kind of timeline and costs should other publishers looking to follow suit expect?
While working with a 3rd party makes things easier and faster, initial planning should still take about a month. In the first month, you’re talking with the partner and getting the documentation. Ideally, your internal developer is cool with everything and you can start with the SDK implementation. But you should allow for some time in case there are issues that the developer finds, then you need to set up meetings between the developer and third party to resolve them.
Once the SDK implementation is done, the actual design process is quite simple because you can always start with a template. If you want to design your own thing, then that can take some time. If you do you should still have the assets ready to go from the game just with better values. I would say you would need another 1-2 weeks to get the design going.
How has Tilting Point structured its D2C operations team? Is there a dedicated team assigned to the channel? If so, what kind of roles have you created to support it? How are you thinking about web store management?
We don’t have a webshop team, unfortunately. For us, we don’t have the webstore available for all our games. We have a dedicated person who started the conversation around the webstore, who got to know the technology and handles our partnership with the 3rd party. But for daily operations, it’s mostly the game managers, who handle the bundles. We run it more like liveops.
How do you see the future of D2C stores changing the industry?
The D2C webstore market will continue to grow, and more companies will start to offer a platform for these storefronts which means more competition. I expect for mid-core strategy games it will become common practice to have a webstore. This has also opened a conversation about new monetization streams for games. Increased competition will make the commission fee more competitive, offering new ways to maximize margins in different geos for example.
