Speaker Spotlight: Teemu Haila

• Pocket Gamer Connects Hits Helsinki on October 7th and 8th 2025.
• Industry-leading conference brings hosts, speakers, round tables, panels and networking

Pocket Gamer Connects hits Helsinki next week, taking place on October 7th and 8th, bringing together over 1,500 delegates from more than 50 countries for two days of sessions, networking, connecting and learning.

Across the event, you can expect a host of talks, panels and seminars covering a variety of timely games industry topics from AI to live ops user acquisition, monetisation and more.

One of the high-profile speakers at the event is Teemu Haila 

Teemu has long been a familiar face in Finland's gaming industry. As a teenager, he built some of the country’s first online gaming communities and established supporting charities. He joined Wooga in 2010 and co-founded Playraven in 2012. After Playraven's 2019 acquisition by Rovio, Teemu co-founded Metaplay to address a common challenge for game developers - scalable and customisable backend tech. His 15+ years advancing the industry were recognised by IGDA with the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award.

We spoke to Haila about his session at PGC Helsinki and his thoughts on the challenges facing the global games sector in 2025 and beyond.

Tell us what you're planning to cover at PGC Helsinki.

I’ll be talking about how to ship world-class live service games without burning through budgets. After six years of building backend tech that powers some of today's top-grossing games, I’ve seen where teams waste money and where smart choices make all the difference.

The panel is about sharing those lessons, how to stay efficient, avoid scaling traps, and focus resources on the parts of the game that players truly care about.

What’s the most common mistake you see being made in the games sector?

Too many teams underestimate how complex live service infrastructure becomes once a game starts to grow. They rely on off-the-shelf solutions that work fine for a prototype, but once the game gains traction, the cracks begin to show.

The team is then forced into the painful process of rebuilding or migrating their backend while trying to keep players happy, burning time, budget, and morale. Starting with solid, scalable foundations used to be out of reach for smaller studios. With our newly released Starter plan, we’re changing that by giving every team affordable access to proven backend tech from day one.

If you could give other mobile games companies one piece of advice, what would it be?

Think about scale from day one. It’s easy to focus only on getting the first version of a game out the door, but if you succeed, you’ll quickly be dealing with challenges around infrastructure, live ops, and global reach.

The studios that thrive are the ones that build with a long-term mindset. They don’t waste energy reinventing systems that others have already solved, and they keep their teams focused on gameplay, content, and community. That discipline is what makes growth sustainable.

What is the single biggest challenge facing the mobile games industry today?

Discovery is the biggest hurdle. The stores are crowded, user acquisition is expensive, and it is harder than ever for a new game to stand out. That pressure forces studios to take risks, try new things, and iterate quickly to find what resonates with players. The problem is that doing this at scale is costly, and most studios do not have Supercell-sized budgets to experiment freely. This is where the right tools matter. At Metaplay, we focus on giving teams the ability to move faster, keep costs under control, and increase the odds that their creative ideas can reach players.

What key trend should we be paying attention to in the next 12 months?

One important trend is the shift toward smarter live operations. Many of our customers are already experimenting with AI to lower the cost of their content pipelines and support live updates. This changes the equation. Older games that were too expensive to maintain with regular events or updates can now get a second life, and smaller teams can deliver the kind of live service experiences that used to be out of reach.

In the next year, I expect we will see more studios using these approaches to extend the lifespan of their games and compete in ways that were not possible before.

What is one way attendees can prepare for your discussion?

The best way to prepare is to think about the challenges your team is facing right now. It could be getting a live service game online affordably, managing infrastructure as your player base grows, or figuring out how to keep costs under control while still meeting player expectations.

The panel is meant to be practical and based on real experience, so the more specific the questions, the more useful the answers will be. Come ready to share what keeps you up at night in development, and we will do our best to offer advice you can take straight back to your project.