How adjoe fixes early game engagement for hardcore games

• Hardcore games have evolved from a UA source to an 'engagement engine'.
• Playtime helps users survive the gap between install and live ops.
• Hardcore campaigns need much more event intelligence. 
• For hardcore mobile games, the strongest growth markets are not always the most obvious.

Eric Jangor, the managing director at adjoe, discusses how Playtime is becoming an external live ops layer for hardcore games: connecting players from large consumer apps to in-game milestones, rewarding their progress and helping studios turn the first few sessions into habit-forming experiences. 

PocketGamer.biz: Rewarded UA has historically been strongest in hypercasual and midcore. Why move deeper into hardcore now? 

Eric Jangor: Because the channel is ready. It’s evolved from a UA source to an engagement engine that works for apps and games across categories, including hardcore.  

Over the years, our models have become extremely good at spotting every kind of player. If we’re talking about hardcore players, these are the most loyal. When they find the game, they stay. They commit. They spend time, attention and money. Our supply is big enough, and our targeting is precise enough to find these high-value players and engage them with the game systematically.  

It’s been exciting to scale in another uncharted territory. 

Looking at it from the hardcore developer perspective, what’s the appeal? 

For hardcore games, the appeal is in creating a stable early engagement layer that helps users survive the gap between install and internal live ops.  

When you acquire users for a hardcore title, there’s a higher risk of early churn because the user may feel overwhelmed with complex mechanics before the game has had a real chance to click. 

In this scenario, Playtime can become a real external live ops layer. It does not replace it - that’s not the goal - it helps users get far enough into the experience to get engaged with live ops. 

So rewarded milestones become extra guardrails for retention. They help move the user through important gameplay moments one by one: tutorials, upgrades, PvE, guild actions, live ops events… you name it. 

What has working with the first partners in this expansion taught you? 

That hardcore campaigns need much more event intelligence. 

Progression in these games can branch very early and can take different directions depending on the player’s gaming style. So the reward map has to be robust enough to support this kind of non-linear behaviour.

The more relevant milestones we can map, the better. Hardcore games already ask a lot from new users and the reward path should feel like support. It should give users a reason to return before intrinsic motivation fully kicks in.

What had to change inside adjoe to make that possible? 

Nothing had to change in the product itself. And the event progression is developed for each advertiser, case by case. 

Yes - hardcore games need patience in measurement, but we’ve already been optimising for deeper-funnel behaviour for a while. Even in hypercasual, D90 is not new for us. Now we are building reward maps for deeper engagement: D180 and beyond. In some cases, even D365 revenue goals. 

And another thing: hardcore studios are whale-hunters, right? The tools we already had became our whale radars, like User Model Targeting. It builds and targets narrow user groups valuable for a specific game, genre and market - a more behavioural take on targeting. For hardcore games, it looks for dedicated players who commit, both in terms of time and spending. 

Speaking of, hardcore games are largely IAP-monetised. Where do purchases fit into the rewarded gameplay? 

We aim to align rewarded events with purchasing opportunities so the user directly feels that the reward increases their purchasing power. The purchase becomes more affordable, more rewarding or better timed. 

Since these users are investing so much time into these games and are in it until the end, they are more likely to resonate with rewards.  

For hardcore games largely dependent on purchases, this synergy can influence ROAS in a very meaningful way.  

Does the live ops strategy need changing? 

Best practice is to align rewarded campaign launches with live ops whenever possible. 

If a season, leaderboard or battle pass is starting, new users should enter at that moment. Then they can participate on equal footing, complete missions on time, climb leaderboards and feel part of the current game rhythm. 

Other than that, Playtime doesn’t require any changes to live ops. It’s there to support live ops’ earlier stages where habits are still forming. Whether indirectly through keeping users engaged or directly when live ops events are integrated as milestones in the reward ladder. 

Hardcore is not mass-market in the same way hypercasual or midcore is. How do you solve for audience scale? 

By aligning supply and demand much more carefully. 

For hardcore mobile games, the strongest growth markets are not always the most obvious premium markets. The better opportunity is often where the game’s genre and play style match local user behaviour. For example, we are already seeing that the audiences of webtoon or manga, short-form video and entertainment apps are better aligned with hardcore gaming behaviour and drive some of the best UA results. 

So, global supply and advanced targeting do the trick. 

Hardcore advertisers are also under huge creative pressure right now. Does moving into rewarded UA mean hardcore advertisers need to produce even more creatives? 

Great question! And the answer is no. 

To launch on Playtime or Arcade, advertisers only need minimal creative work for the campaign page. It does not require the constant stream of new images and videos that other UA channels depend on. 

What makes you confident that rewarded UA can become a serious channel for hardcore games? 

Because the channel is ready: the right supply, advanced targeting and deeper event funnels and measurement. 

So, there’s nothing standing in between. Yes, hardcore games are complex, but the setup doesn’t have to be more complex for these advertisers. We already know how to identify the right players and map the progression events. We’ve cracked the formula for midcore, and now we are building that future across Playtime and Arcade. 

Catch Eric Jangor’s “How to Stop 86% of Early Mobile Game Churn with "No-Code" Live Ops” presentation on stage of Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Shanghai, July 29 2026.