ZBD's Igor Melniks on the emerging two-way value exchange system in mobile gaming

• ZBD's Igor Melniks will speak at PGC Barcelona, which will assemble 1,000+ attendees over two days.
• Melniks offers in-depth insights on the returns from rewarding players in your game.

Pocket Gamer Connects returns to Barcelona for the second year running on June 15th and 16th following a stellar debut event last year. 

We’ll assemble 1,000+ games industry professionals to discuss, exchange and connect on all things mobile, PC, console, AI and HTML5. Companies set to join the show include Zynga, Scopely, Gameloft, Rovio, Tetris, FunPlus, Digital Legends and many more.

One of the speakers set to join the conference is ZBD SVP of business development Igor Melniks.

He will be taking part in the panel titled 'Finding the Right Monetisation Balance in Today's Mobile Games'.

We spoke with Melniks before the show to discuss rewarded play and why a real two-way value exchange between developers and players can result in larger returns.

PocketGamer.biz: Please give us a summary of what you’re speaking about and why it’s important.

Igor Melniks: Rewarded play is evolving in 2026 to keep pace with the monetisation needs of game publishers while ensuring a smooth user experience.

Studios can now engage their entire user base with real-money rewards, not just a fraction of new installs. The result is a native in-game experience, customisable for any user segment, that drives retention, monetisation and ultimately boosts LTV.

Where are the next big opportunities in the mobile games market?

The mobile gaming market has become quite saturated, with new titles finding it difficult to break through. So when a game does build up a player base, it is vitally important to keep that player base engaged. 

Previously, we saw many mobile developers be so focused on getting new players, putting their budget towards UA initiatives, yet at the same time poor user retention was acting as a leaky bucket that stifled growth efforts.

Recent industry trends are certainly a wake-up call and there is so much opportunity to leverage from a game's existing player base. Through loyalty schemes, embedded rewards and community initiatives we’ve seen that giving back to the existing players often results in those same players giving back to the game itself, usually through in-app purchases and increased engagement.

Another opportunity lies in unifying your games growth levers across the full money lifecycle. Studios are being pushed to make tougher decisions around build versus buy, while also trying to avoid fragmented growth stacks where UA, monetisation and live ops solutions all operate in silos.

Developers should instead work to unify these various fronts - from rewards and payments to how value ultimately moves through webshops, payout tooling and platform constraints.

What’s the most important key performance indicator (KPI) for you - and why?

Definitely lifetime value (LTV). According to Sensor Tower’s State of Gaming 2026 Report, installs of mobile games decreased 7% year-over-year, yet IAP revenue grew to $82 billion, showing that revenue is becoming more dependent from existing users rather than new ones. 

Players are becoming increasingly loyal to the games they play, but this shouldn’t be taken as a given. If players get bored or yield less value from a game, they will move on, whether to other games or even other attention grabbing apps.

Ultimately, studios need to find growth through increasing LTV of their existing user base, as that has a direct correlation with sustainable revenue over time.

What do you think the next big disruptor in mobile games will be?

We believe the next big disruptor will come in the form of embedded rewards, especially with how it will impact average revenue per user (ARPU), when compared to existing external reward platforms.

Bringing rewards directly into the game is one of the more effective growth levers starting to trend in 2026. Rewards can be natively integrated into core gameplay from day one and they can impact the entire active user base.

It can also change how studios re-think their retention and marketing budgets, partially re-allocating towards in-game rewards to ultimately strengthen the experience for the active user base and maximise ROI.

To put it into perspective with an example, if rewarded UA lifts ARPU by 35%, but only applies to 15% of new users, the aggregate business impact is around +5% ARPU.

If you apply the same uplift across a majority of the user base, say for example 90%, with embedded rewards, the impact becomes +32% ARPU. Achieving this is simply a matter of some budget reallocation, but the difference in the return is large.

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

There’s always been a level of value exchange between both parties, developers provide content and players respond through purchasing, but this is largely one-way: users pay, the game extracts value. A new trend we are now seeing develop is that of the two-way value exchange system that can increase time in game, retention and monetisation efficiency.

By sharing some revenue with users or reallocating a portion of a game’s operational budget into player rewards, it drastically increases retention, engagement, ARPU and LTV.

While developers might naturally raise an eyebrow at paying players to play, rather than the other way around, we’ve seen that the LTV gains outsize the reward cost.

According to some of ZBD’s developer partners, sharing 10% to 20% of ad revenue with users can grow overall monetisation by 80% to 200%.

This has been noticed in the industry as top studios start to experiment with build or buy solutions, and we expect to see more two-way exchange systems integrated into mobile games over the next 24 months.

Can people get in touch with you at the event? What sort of people would you like to connect with?

Of course. If you’re a decision maker at a mobile game studio, especially if your role involves player retention, monetisation or engagement, I’d love to chat and discuss the future of mobile gaming with you. Let’s connect.