Ten billion installs later: Why publishing isn’t just publishing anymore

• Azur Games has hit 10 billion installs with a shift in focus back to midcore.
• Studios now need solid metrics not just cool ideas to land a deal.
• Publishers want to see tested hypotheses, real retention data and strong teams.

Dmitry Yaminsky is co-founder and CEO at Azur Games.

I got into gamedev sometime in the mid-2010s. Back then, I didn’t really understand how the market worked. I came from an offline business background, so this new world felt like a mix of confusion and excitement.

I had no idea how to break into development from scratch, so my partners and I started where we could - investing in teams. Funny how things come full circle: now even big studios are more interested in “publishing plus investment” rather than just publishing.

Azur Games recently crossed 10 billion installs. That number means a lot, but what matters more is everything we’ve seen on the way there, all the changes in the market we’ve had to grow through. So now feels like the right time to talk about what’s next for publishing and for studios.

Our first real step into gamedev was nearly a decade ago, backing a team that made a midcore shooter. Feels kind of ironic that we’re doubling down on midcore again now, even though most people know Azur Games from our hypercasual hits.

Back then, picking a studio to invest in was easy: I liked the project, the idea behind it, the way the team worked, and how they treated the games they were making. That’s it. It was almost entirely instinct - no spreadsheets, no metrics. Just the need to figure things out on the go. 

These days, that won’t cut it. Publishers aren’t handing out deals based on gut feelings anymore. If you’re looking for investment, you’ve got to come in with solid numbers and real expertise. Not because publishers suddenly got greedy; it’s just that the market doesn’t forgive trial and error like it used to.

Was it all smooth? Of course not. Even now, things don’t always go smoothly. People come and go, goals shift, some things work, some things don’t. That’s normal.

And no, there’s no fairytale story here about how we launched and immediately skyrocketed. Game development is messy. Back then it was like the Wild West - no rules, lots of chaos.

Now it’s a different world. The industry’s grown up. There are rules. And that’s something devs really need to understand, because a lot of teams are still holding onto this idea that you can just throw something together over the weekend and shoot to the top of the charts. That kind of magic isn’t around anymore. Sure, it used to happen. But every year, the bar gets higher, and the market gets stricter.

That might sound harsh, but here’s the upside: if you’re willing to grow and adapt, you’re already ahead. That’s your edge now.

Two types of studios

Back when hypercasual was booming, there was a moment when everyone thought publishers were becoming obsolete. The thinking was simple: just come up with a flashy core mechanic, hit the charts, and ride the profit wave for the rest of your life. Scaling? UA? Building up hard skills in dev, effects, VFX? Why bother.

But then there were teams that did bother. They spent months polishing their games while others were rushing half-baked prototypes to market. 

Now those are the teams that everyone wants because they know how to build something with real staying power. Meanwhile, the folks who once hit it big on a lucky prototype can’t even clone those games. It takes real, advanced expertise to even match someone else’s quality, let alone top it.

This still catches some people off guard, unfortunately. But we’ve been through the full cycle ourselves. We didn’t just watch the market grow, we lived through every market and company phase, and every bump in the road. It’s like watching a football game when you’ve got money on the line: suddenly, every tiny detail matters. It’s nothing like reading about success stories from the sidelines.

From the outside, it always looks easy: slap together something raw, toss it out, people love it, you win. But after the hypercasual hype wore off, the reality flipped. Now you can do everything right - put in the hours, build something great - and still not get a guaranteed hit.

A few years ago, being above average at one thing could carry you far. Today? You need every piece of the puzzle, and they all have to be sharp.

When we were starting out, we didn’t know what kind of games to make, where to head, what metrics to track. We had to figure it all out at once. And that trial-and-error phase, which lasted about three years, gave us the foundation we still build on. It’s one of the reasons we’ve stayed at the top in terms of installs globally.

So yeah, I get how tough it is for studios trying to break in now, especially without the resources to run endless experiments. That’s why publisher expertise matters more than ever.

There was a time when everyone dreamed of getting into one of the big publishers. These days, the smarter move is often finding a partner who knows your genre and gets your metrics - assuming your product’s solid. Nobody’s looking to take on raw, weak games just to be polite. Wasted time helps no one, including the studio.

In fact, it’s often more profitable now to grow something that’s already working than to launch a new game. Even if you copy a top hit and make it better in every way, chances are the metrics will still fall short. Longevity is key now, and that depth has to be built in from day one.

At the beginning, when we were still funnelling all profits back into mainly midcore projects, we didn’t even have the word “iteration” in our vocabulary. We just made games, launched them, and observed. Nothing really worked until we started experimenting with hypercasual.

Monster Evolution was our first internal hit. It started making money, and that’s when we started putting the word out that we were serious about publishing. Then the Stack Ball folks came along. That first month brought in $6 million - about five times more than what the game used to make.

At that point, everyone rejected by the big and popular publisher was knocking on our door. We learned how to work with less-than-perfect projects, how to shape them into something better. That trial-by-fire gave us the experience we needed. And now that the market is tougher, more mature, lower margin, that experience is paying off.

From a traditional investor’s point of view, it might seem smarter to go into offline business now. At least you get predictability. We had none of that. We learned everything from scratch - how to monetise, how to push metrics - because no one took us seriously when we were just a no-name team.

That’s why we’ve always been open with studios, offering better terms, sharing everything we know and have.

But let’s be honest: publishing isn’t what it used to be, and those early-days teams of 2-3 people building games in the evenings? They’re almost out of chances now.

Why “publishing” doesn’t mean what it used to

These days, if a team has a product that really needs backing - something serious, something with scale - they’re rarely just looking for a publisher. What they want is publishing plus investment. And that second part? It’s a whole different business. Together, it’s no longer traditional publishing, it’s something else entirely.

The days of showing up with a half-finished build and just needing a bit of UA or product feedback? Those are almost gone.

Publishing today is way more involved. The amount of resources needed to hit success is on a whole other level now, and small studios simply don’t have the firepower to make competitive games anymore. And bigger studios? They need real partnership, and there aren’t that many of them.

So the biggest challenge in publishing now is proving you’re more than just a launchpad, that you can really help a game evolve in a lot more ways than just marketing. That you’ve got the internal teams to support growth, and the track record to back it up.

A competitive studio today? That’s usually a team of at least 10-15 people. And they’re dramatically outnumbered by smaller studios. Which is why one of the smartest moves for publishers right now is to grow those teams from within.

There’s a quote from a well-known businessman I like: “I’m not here because of the decisions I made today - I’m here because of the decisions I made 2-3 years ago.” That hits home.

When COVID hit, we didn’t hope the hype train would go on forever. We didn’t change our strategy or chase short-term wins. We kept iterating, building expertise, focusing on the kind of long-term progress that would pay off after the bubble popped. And that’s exactly what happened - the market cooled off, and a lot of teams realised they hadn’t built enough to keep up. We were ready. That’s the mindset you need now.

Sure, it’s important to forecast where the market’s going, especially in marketing. But product-wise? Focus on making great games. On improving what you’ve already got. On investing smart and doing the work. That’s what’s going to matter in two years - not the market cycles you can’t control anyway.

Ideas are cheap. Hypotheses are what really cost

We still get pitch decks from teams saying, “we’ve got a great idea” - like that alone is enough to get things moving. But here’s the truth: ideas are the easy part. They’re free. Without testing and real takeaways, they don’t hold any actual value. If you already have metrics, that’s when a publisher can really step in - not just to create a short-term revenue spike, but to help you iterate, fine-tune the game, and scale it long-term. That ability to operate and improve a product step by step? That’s gold right now - and still surprisingly rare, even among teams who’ve had hits in the past.

What actually makes a studio stand out today is its stack of tested hypotheses. What have you already tried? What did you learn? What did you change? Did you tweak onboarding and see retention go up? A/B test a mechanic and increase session length? Kill a feature you personally loved because the data said it wasn’t working? That’s what matters.

There’s a big difference between a team saying “we think this is fun,” and a team saying “we thought it would be fun, tested it, saw the impact on retention, and we’ve already got a few more hypotheses lined up to improve our core metrics.”

The shift might seem small, but it’s critical: publishers aren’t chasing passion - they’re looking for proof, and for teams who understand that copying trends without knowing how the mechanics fit your specific gameplay won’t get you far. 

Not because publishers stopped caring about creativity, but because the market’s just too tight to bet on guesswork. Every hypothesis is a cost. The more of that cost you’ve already paid - with your time, effort, and iterations - the more seriously we’ll take you.

And the best case? You show up not just with what you’ve tested already, but with a clear plan for the next five tests. Because in today’s market, your real edge isn’t the idea itself - it’s how fast you learn, and how honestly you can dissect your own mistakes.

What studios need to bring to the table now

If you want to get a publisher’s attention today, you need more than just an idea you need a game that already shows solid metrics. Showing up for the first time and asking for funding to build a prototype? That almost never works anymore. Publishers are going to look closely at everything: the team, the concept, the numbers - all of it.

And size matters, not just in terms of ambition, but in what your team can realistically deliver. If five people come in saying they’re making a smart little puzzle game, that might check out. But if five people tell you they’re building the next Clash of Clans? A publisher’s not going to buy it. Not because of a lack of passion, but because it just doesn’t add up. The scale’s wrong for the team size.

So it’s not about the genre, it’s about whether the team has the firepower to build what they’re pitching. There are some genres we wouldn’t usually go for, but if a strong team walks in with a solid concept? Any good publisher’s going to be interested. Because strong execution always matters more than a trendy idea.

And publishers are looking at everything now. How tight is the game design? Is the meta built to last? How flexible is the architecture, will it support future updates? What’s the monetisation plan? Are the visuals and polish there?

Personally, I think the worst of the storm is behind us. From here on out, we’ll probably see fewer publishers in the market. You can already feel it happening, the space is consolidating around those who’ve built real expertise and can actually help teams scale. And that’s not a bad thing.