Highlights: The New Reality of Mobile DTC Payments

Rus McLaughlin

Marketing @ Neon

Case Studies

It's a whole new era for mobile devs who want to take their business direct to customer, and we're releasing new numbers to show just how much is changing.

Neon, in collaboration with consulting firm Naavik, has just released a new deep dive that punctuates DTC’s role as a core strategic imperative for mobile developers and publishers. Even as court cases and new regulatory rules continue to shape and re-shape the landscape, Apple and Google's ecosystems are increasingly and consistently becoming more open, and the effects are resonating across the mobile games industry.

This new study highlights several key findings:

Publishers see major gains in margins.

DTC can grow top-line revenue, but the more immediate and drastic impact is on net revenue, gross margin, and profitability. In particular, moving from a 30% commission fee to single digits swings the needle fairly wide in the right direction.

The market is still nascent.

Less than half of the Top-50 highest-grossing mobile games on iOS have overt DTC strategies in place, and only 22% directly link to DTC platforms in-game. Meanwhile, other mobile publishers are actively experimenting with a wide variety of in-game links to webshops and direct-checkout solutions to boost DTC adoption and retention.

The opportunity costs of not going DTC are major.

In one case study alone, we established that if major publishers like Playtika, Stillfront, and Ten Square Games hadn't implemented their direct-to-customer strategies, they would've collectively left $1.2B on the table. And that's easy money to claim with the right partner in your corner.

The current regulatory state is evolving globally.

While Epic Games' successful lawsuits have completely changed the DTC discussion (even before its case against and settlement with Google is completely decided), the rest of the world is also changing. But don't expect the same rules to eventually apply everywhere.