“Burnout is essentially design failure”: The Mobile Mavens weigh in on player burnout
- “Long-term retention and higher monetisation go hand in hand.” - Evelin Herrera
- “We intentionally sacrificed our potential revenue in favour of long-term retention.” - Christian Lövstedt
- “Retention ultimately matters more than short-term monetisation.” - Keith Pichelman
- "Burnout happens when games demand too much without offering enough in return.” - Mariia Myronenko
Competition in the mobile games market is fierce, live ops and the free-to-play model have become core pillars of the industry, which all require regular updates, events, and monetisation features to keep players engaged.
However, there is also a fine balance between supplying new content and burning out players, one bad update can see players drift away and earning them back isn't always easy.
We asked the Mavens to share their perspectives on player burnout, its impact on engagement and how studios can manage it.
Alisa Eren
Managing player burnout goes beyond in-game systems - it's about the consistency of the entire player journey. From an organic growth standpoint, our role is not only to retain players, but to create a cohesive and honest experience across all touchpoints.
The industry is highly dynamic, and player fatigue is, to some extent, unavoidable. Our role is not only to retain players, but to create a cohesive and honest experience across all touchpoints. This starts with high-quality marketing creatives that accurately reflect gameplay, continues through aligned store presence (such as CPPs), and is reinforced by ongoing communication of new features and events.
Burnout often stems not just from gameplay itself, but from a mismatch between expectation and experience. When players feel misled or overwhelmed, disengagement accelerates.
“Ultimately, the studios that succeed are those that balance content depth, pacing, and communication.”Alisa Eren
Another underutilised lever is audience segmentation at the store level. Google Play's Promotional Content feature allows studios to target specific audiences when submitting content for featuring - and this is something we actively leverage.
For example, when we have an exclusive offer for existing spenders, we can target precisely that audience, ensuring the message is relevant and the offer feels personalised rather than generic. This kind of segmentation not only improves conversion, but also reduces the noise that contributes to player fatigue - players see content that speaks to where they are in their journey, not just another push to re-engage everyone at once.
Ultimately, the studios that succeed are those that balance content depth, pacing, and communication - ensuring that players stay engaged not just because they are incentivised to return, but because the experience continues to feel fresh and rewarding over time.
Oscar Clark
Whilst the signature characteristics of live ops games include updates, activities and missions. If your players are experiencing burnout you have missed the point. Burnout is essentially design failure and usually points to a deeper misunderstanding of what liveops is actually for.
Live ops should never be treated as a content treadmill. It has to be first and foremost focused on what players care about. A live ops game needs to breathe, have a predictable rhythm, expectation of delight and space for the player to speculate on what is coming next. That's how we build anticipation.
Instead too often Players are set tasks which expect them to return every day, otherwise they miss-out unduly just because they fail to turn up one day. That transforms what should be fun into an obligation that players quickly resent.
“The idea that we have to sacrifice revenue in favour of long-term retention is a complete misunderstanding of the process.”Oscar Clark
Whilst a well designed grind can be relaxing; busy work is not fun. Event design that demands attention, rather than enticing it erodes the relationship the player has with the game.
What actually works is predictable surprise. We want players to be excited about what is coming up, with enough reliability to build habit and trust. They need a reason to want to return, not feel obligated with a high level of FOMO. It doesn't always have to be bigger rewards, it can simply be framing the activity with a meaningful player narrative!
The idea that we have to sacrifice revenue in favour of long-term retention is a complete misunderstanding of the process. Revenue only comes when we have retention, retention only comes when we have engagement. If we deliver what gets players excited to return tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, that's how we build a sustainable, delightful, profitable player experience.
Evelin Herrera
Users have proven they will pay for what they see value in. Netflix has increased its price from $7.99 in 2011 to $19.99 now. PlayStation Plus the same with the Premium tier going from $119.99 to $159.99 per year. Users still pay.
“Long-term retention and higher monetisation go hand in hand.”Evelin Herrera
The barrier to entry the app stores is getting lower every day thanks to AI. New and less experienced developers = lower-quality games and apps camouflaged among high-quality ones, thanks to great distribution and marketing strategies.
Even outside the app stores, software is getting stronger in every aspect. Users will inevitably increase their expectations, demand more and more personalisation, and be less willing to sacrifice their comfort for lower-quality experiences.
Candy Crush learned this early on by focusing on optimising for long-term retention and IAP monetisation throughout. With only a single-digit percentage of players being spenders, the game generated over $20B in lifetime revenue by prioritising value over session-time squeeze.
At the same time, worldwide adoption of subscriptions and IAPs is increasing. Markets previously considered difficult to monetise across Southeast Asia and South America are now growing faster than anyone expected in IAP revenue, giving developers strong motivation to bet on it even more.
Long-term retention and higher monetisation go hand in hand.
Christian Lövstedt
Managing player burnout is a challenge as more games are competing for space. While adding new content is the most effective way to re-engage lapsed players, it requires a delicate balance; new features and modes must fit the game's existing design while being careful not to oversell.
For example, we introduced weekly challenges in The Battle of Polytopia, which leveraged the existing gameplay mechanics and content while adding new, recurring content to the game.
“Burnout is not an unavoidable consequence of live service design.”Christian Lövstedt
Burnout is not an unavoidable consequence of live service design. If you offer players a serious non-predatory monetisation model, while adding good content and game modes they feel comfortable to keep playing, they will stick around. We intentionally sacrificed our potential revenue in favour of long-term retention.
Once aggressive monetisation starts to negatively impact the gameplay experience, you risk losing the very players who love the game most. If your payment model is fair, the community feels engaged with and there is a competitive part to your game, it can maintain deep engagement without exhausting the audience.
Lexi Sydow
We’ve seen a shift in strategy in reaction to the realities of the attention economy: attention is the most valuable currency and in a mature mobile gaming market where growth has flatlined, competition for user attention is steeper than ever.
“Attention is the most valuable currency and in a mature mobile gaming market where growth has flatlined, competition for user attention is steeper than ever.”Lexi Sydow
Sensor Tower data shows that games are focusing on events and mechanics that drive progress (deepening engagement) and social connection (like tournaments) to cultivate long term retention, instead of as much emphasis on flash sales. Specifically, Milestone Rewards have grown from 30% of progression events in 2024 to 40% in 2025.
While straight monetisation events (like offers, sales and gachas) still made up 35% of all live opps events in 2025, progress and social events combined surpassed this at 38%. This shows the industry shift towards a longer-term play to optimise for retention and loyalty spending over time.
Keith Pichelman
Player burnout is definitely something we actively watch for and try to address as early as possible. In a live ops and F2P environment, it’s easy for the cadence of events, updates, and monetisation beats to become overwhelming if you’re not careful, so maintaining that balance is a constant focus.
A big part of how we manage this is by staying very close to our communities. We lean heavily on Discord and Facebook, where our community manager is in regular, direct conversations with players.
“We’re very comfortable sacrificing some immediate revenue if it means building a healthier, longer-lasting player base.”Keith Pichelman
That feedback loop is invaluable for understanding not just if players are feeling fatigue, but why - and what kinds of content would actually re-engage them in a meaningful way rather than just adding more noise. We also use in-game surveys to validate those signals at scale and ensure we’re prioritising updates that genuinely improve the player experience and help reduce burnout.
From a business perspective, retention ultimately matters more than short-term monetisation. We’re very comfortable sacrificing some immediate revenue if it means building a healthier, longer-lasting player base. Players who stay engaged longer don’t just monetise over time, they also bring in new players and strengthen the overall community.
Louise Wooldridge
long-term, loyal player bases are naturally more scarce in mobile games than PC or console. The whole structure of mobile - basically frictionless discovery and play - favours short sessions and high churn. And so I think for many titles, burnout is built into the business model: acquisition and re-acquisition strategies work overdrive to ensure a steady flow of players, and monetisation loops are snappy.
Often there is no attempt to build a loyal player-base because it is simply too difficult in the mobile environment.
The target is more typically rapid scale - something we've seen with the likes of Kingshot through an aggressive (and partially AI-driven) advertising strategy. Player attention is captured in the short term, but ultimately the lack of trust leads to churn.
“Acquisition and re-acquisition strategies work overdrive to ensure a steady flow of players, and monetisation loops are snappy.”Louise Wooldridge
Switching to a new game is so easy that titles often just need to be slightly more interesting or engaging than the next one on the list. And this is how we've ended up with these layers and layers of live service, events, social systems, and more - essentially mimicking PC or console retention strategies.
If retention is truly the goal, I think leaning more into PC or console elements can help. Not just the live service elements, but also the quality of the game - such as a better, deeper story, and more fleshed out characters. It's also important to build trust with the player base. Be transparent. Have dialogue with them.
But also mixing longer progression arcs into the daily and weekly rewards, giving the players the sense that they are constantly almost at the next milestone.
Chris Han
Growing revenue or retention is not an either-or proposition. With the right data insights, both can be supported through live ops strategies. With AI, agents can now be deployed to find these insights autonomously, freeing developers to focus on creating in-game content that excites players.
Mariia Myronenko
From a product perspective, burnout is not inevitable - but it quickly becomes the default if it isn’t intentionally designed against.
A common mistake in liveops-driven games is relying on linear difficulty scaling as the main way to keep players engaged. When progression is reduced to making each next level simply harder than the previous one, the experience can start to feel repetitive and exhausting. In our Colorwood portfolio, we focus on meaningful progression instead.
In Associations - Colorwood Game, the core mechanic evolves with the player, introducing new cognitive layers over time. A player at level 500 is not just facing a harder version of earlier levels - they are engaging with a richer, more varied experience. That sense of discovery is key to long-term engagement.
Burnout is also often driven by unnecessary friction - moments where the experience feels unclear, restrictive, or interrupts player flow - rather than by challenge itself. Systems like adaptive, non-punitive hints help support players without taking away their sense of agency, while low-pressure features such as Daily Goals or calendars create engagement loops that feel supportive rather than demanding.
“The key is to continuously evolve the experience in a way that feels meaningful, not exhausting.”Mariia Myronenko
In Colorwood Words - Cryptogram, we use a layered approach to retention. Daily challenges provide low-commitment touchpoints, while story-driven and seasonal events give players a sense of continuity. This makes it easier for players to return and re-engage without feeling like they have to catch up.
Ultimately, burnout happens when games demand too much without offering enough in return. The key is to continuously evolve the experience in a way that feels meaningful, not exhausting.
Will Luton
For me retention vs monetisation is a false dichotomy. I can’t think of many, if any, examples where I’ve seen a feature lift monetisation but damage retention. There are probably exceptions in dark patterns (please don’t do it) and hypercasual interstitial rates. But generally they trend positively and negatively together based on game quality.
What instead I think happens often is that developers get so caught up in focusing on the minutiae of the metrics that they forget that the main purpose is to entertain. If you run an event and monetisation lifts, that’s because players liked that event and felt compelled to spend. If you keep repeating it but see players drop off it is easy to blame some sort of monetisation burnout rather than derivative creative decisions.
“If a F2P game continues to be surprising and interesting then any competent product manager will find the monetisation part easy.”Will Luton
There is a lot data will never tell you, especially when a player is gone. So you run into unprovable hypotheses like these that are comforting. I think the vast majority of F2P studios would do well to get out of the analytics dashboard, look at their game and ask “what would make this more fun to play”?
Look at how Nintendo are always remixing, rebooting and experimenting with their IPs. They take a base concept and seek out the design space to reinvent it. Nintendo doesn't expect any single game to keep a player forever, but they keep you coming back to Pokémon, Zelda and Mario for your entire life. All because they’re finding new ways for them to be interesting.
We don’t think of that as live ops, but Nintendo are better at it than anyone. If a F2P game continues to be surprising and interesting then any competent product manager will find the monetisation part easy.
Igor Melniks
Player burnout is often treated as a content or pacing issue, but at its core it’s a value exchange problem. In many live ops systems, users are asked to invest more time, attention and spend, without a meaningful shift in what they get back. Over time, that imbalance creates fatigue.
“Player burnout is often treated as a content or pacing issue, but at its core it’s a value exchange problem.”Igor Melniks
Developers who are navigating this well are rethinking how that two-way value exchange works. Rather than pushing harder on content cadence, ads, or monetisation loops, they focus on making engagement itself more rewarding.
When that balance is right, improved monetisation becomes a natural outcome of sustained engagement, rather than something that comes at the expense of it. Users retain better, engage more deeply, and the system becomes more sustainable without relying on constant pressure on the player.
People