4. D2C / Webshops in Mobile Games: The 2024 Trend That's Redefining the Industry and What's Next For It
Discussion, trends and predictions about D2C / Webshops in the mobile games industry.
2024 has been the year where D2C webshops in F2P mobile games truly peaked as a transformative trend. This article focuses on giving a short status on what’s the current state of D2C, after which the weighting moves for predicting 2025 and future developments on this front.
D2C / Webshops in 2024
If you’re a developer or publisher and don't have D2C strategy — it’s time to catch up fast! The numbers and patterns show it clearly: webshops are no longer an experiment; they’re a critical layer for revenue and engagement, where developers and publishers are finally able to tackle platform fees for boosting up their margins.
In 2024, it’s been fascinating to see how e-commerce elements have enhanced D2C.
Compared to the static storefronts, we’ve seen a step in creating seamless experiences, as developers and publishers have been managed to get required talent to work on them in their studios. Yes, indeed, many have been hiring, and many are currently searching for, people with e-commerce and platform experience into their teams — to support them on this front more.
What else there’s been? Infusion of best of F2P mechanisms to Webshops, and how these Webshops are interconnected to LiveOps — from basic offer logics to A/B-testing to segmentation. It’s fascinating what types of solutions there is, as I think even e-commerce businesses could potentially benefit from some of these things.
While the progress has been incremental, it’s a step in the right direction — but also a sign of how much potential still remains untapped.
What’s Next for 2025 and Beyond?
If the goal is better adoption and deeper monetization, the next evolution must come from developers and publishers thinking smarter.
Here’s where the next frontier lies potentially:
🔹 Adding an e-Economy Layer with Gamification: Webshops could integrate gamified experiences — mini-games, social casino, iGaming, Skill Gaming mechanics, and/or casual game features — to drive engagement and boost conversion rates.
🔹 Interconnected e-Economy and Game Economy Layers: Imagine a fully integrated experience where players earn e-Tickets or similar items in-game and redeem them in the webshop (and vice versa). Certain games and genre types could even notify players of in-game activity directly through the web interface, creating a dynamic feedback loop — and allow even some playable elements of meta or social systems being played on the web front. To dive deeper with some of these ideas, you can also take inspiration from here (my post about future of web games: https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/the-future-of-web-games-beyond-what):
🔹 Loyalty Programs That Matter: Reward players in ways that connect their in-game and webshop behaviors, reinforcing long-term engagement. Rewards systems can be anything from collectibles to items and rewards usable in-game.
🔹 Group Monetization and Referral Programs: Features like group purchases, collaborative discounts, and referral bonuses can amplify reach and revenues while fostering community engagement. Group monetization could be also tied over interconnected systems where some web-based/-only social or meta systems could have tie-ins to the game, with separate (/same) monetization elements on web and mobile sides. Going ever further, gamification and gamified features, found just on the web front, could enhance the aforementioned interconnections even more, where our imagination is only thing limiting us over how these could have monetization tie-ins.
🔹 Sweepstakes and Beyond: Elements like sweepstakes, which have worked well in-game, could find even greater traction on web platforms, offering additional ways to excite and reward players. What else there could be? eInstants and Crash Games (taking more inspiration from iGaming) types of games and rewards systems, which could be played on the web front.
🔹 Not Just About Web — Chat and AI Agents: We’ll see instant and messaging apps getting foothold on the D2C front, where e.g., AI agents are boosting sales and engagement (on top of them potentially also taking care of some further engagement layers and customer service).
🔹 Intrinsic Motivation as a Driver: Beyond extrinsic rewards, above innovations could tap into intrinsic motivations, aligning with players’ personal goals, achievements, autonomy, competences, and desires to keep engagement / social levels high. More about Intrinsic Strategies for monetization here (https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/intrinsic-monetization-alternative):
🔹 Player-made/-led and UGC Economies: From UGC and player-made content to things like mods, servers, etc., which could be consumed free as well as monetized. For some types of games, auction mechanisms could be also brought to the web front, allowing new layers for monetization and game economies (of course, should be planned with caution as when executed wrong way, you are at risk of getting coordinated RMT, bot, etc. attacks — or decrease over time prestige value of items, etc., which will hurt your game's economy and player engagement).
Final Thoughts
The industry has seen D2C move from being a niche add-on to a core component of strategy.
But to truly unlock the potential, it’s time to think beyond static solutions: 2025, and beyond, will be (or should be) about inter-connectivity, innovation, and creating a fully immersive ecosystem that bridges the gap between in-game and out-of-game experiences.
Developers and publishers: the opportunity is right in front of you, and there is so much more to innovate on this front! It would be nice to build something like these myself as well, as/if an opportunity for that comes (I’m currently open for work opportunities).