The D2C window is open. Here's how mobile studios can walk through it

• Regulatory shifts across Europe are opening up new D2C opportunities for game developers.
• Going direct-to-consumer requires a coordinated approach and a comprehensive tech stack.
• Many studios are missing the benefits D2C offers beyond the initial sale.
• Benefits include: loyalty mechanics, behavioural data, personalised offers and community touchpoints.

Berkley Egenes, the Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Xsolla, outlines the rapidly evolving opportunities for European developers and why the company is taking PGC Barcelona seriously.

The rules of mobile game monetisation are changing, and for studios paying attention, the timing could not be better.

Regulatory shifts across Europe and globally have cracked open something which wasn't possible a few years ago: the ability for mobile game developers to sell directly to their players outside traditional app store channels and keep a meaningfully larger share of every transaction. This isn't a future consideration. It's happening now, and studios moving early are already seeing a difference in their bottom lines.

At Xsolla, we've been building toward this moment for years. Yet our ambition has always been bigger than the transaction itself. When we land in Barcelona for Pocket Gamer Connects this June, we'll be talking about what comes after the storefront and why the studios that win long-term are the ones building direct player relationships that compound over time: loyalty programs, first-party data, lifetime value, and community that keeps players engaged between sessions and across titles.

Why Europe, why now

Barcelona is one of the best places in the world to have this conversation. The city is home to some of the most sophisticated mobile game businesses in the industry. PGC Barcelona has quickly become a destination event for studios that are serious about growth. The regulatory environment in Europe is also further along than most markets when it comes to enabling alternative commerce pathways, which means the opportunity is real and actionable today.

For studios that have been watching from the sidelines, the window is open. The question is whether you have the infrastructure to move through it and the strategy to make the most of it once you do.

What D2C actually requires

Going direct-to-consumer sounds straightforward. In practice, it requires several things working together: a storefront that's built for games and optimised for conversion, a payments layer that can handle the way players actually pay across every market you operate in, the ability to run LiveOps and promotions natively, and tools to drive players from your game into your web shop in the first place.

This is just the foundation. What most studios are leaving on the table is everything that direct commerce makes possible beyond the initial sale, the loyalty mechanics, the behavioural data, the personalised offers, and the community touchpoints that turn a one-time buyer into a high-value player who keeps coming back. Those are the compounding returns that D2C enables. This is what separates studios building a pipeline from studios building a platform.

Most studios don't want to build that stack themselves, and they shouldn't have to. Xsolla's Web Shop ecosystem was designed specifically to solve this. With more than 700+ web shops launched for mobile games, including many of the world's highest-grossing titles, the platform pre-integrates everything a studio needs: storefront, payments, LiveOps tooling, and creator-driven acquisition, all in one connected system. Studios get full control over their player relationships and pricing strategy without the operational lift of building it from scratch.

Payments that match how players actually buy

One of the most underestimated parts of D2C commerce is payments. A checkout experience that works perfectly in Western Europe may completely fail to convert in Southeast Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East, not because of the product, but because the payment method isn't right for that player.

Xsolla's payments infrastructure supports more than 1,000+ payment methods across 200+ geographies. That means players in every market you care about can pay the way they prefer, and your conversion rate reflects that. For mobile studios expanding beyond their home markets or looking to reduce friction in the ones they're already in, this is the layer that makes D2C viable at scale.

A new growth engine: entertainment IP

For studios looking beyond their existing player base, we're also introducing something new to European developers at PGC Barcelona. Xsolla Agency gives studios access to premium entertainment-based IP through a commerce-first model, structuring licensing deals around monetisation outcomes rather than upfront marketing costs. The goal is to help studios drive higher player spend, reduce user acquisition costs, and create LiveOps moments that sustain long-term retention. It's a different way to think about IP, and we think European studios will find it compelling.

Let's talk in Barcelona

The D2C shift represents a genuine structural change in how mobile games make money. But the studios that benefit most won't just be the ones with the best checkout flow; they'll be the ones who use that direct relationship to build something durable: player loyalty, first-party insight, and a community that grows alongside the game.

PGC Barcelona brings together exactly the kind of mobile game businesses we want to be sitting across the table from studios and publishers who are serious about growth and looking for partners who can deliver at scale. The D2C conversation has real urgency in Europe right now, and what we're hearing from studios is that they want more than infrastructure; they want a path to owning their player relationships for the long term. This is the conversation we're coming to Barcelona to have.

We're at PGC Barcelona specifically to help developers understand that opportunity and move on it, whether that means launching a first web shop, expanding payments into new markets, or building the loyalty and data layer that makes direct commerce compound over time. If you're at the event and want to talk, our team will be on-site for the entire conference. We'd love to sit down.

Xsolla is the Diamond Sponsor of Pocket Gamer Connects Barcelona 2026, taking place June 15–16 at the Hyatt Regency Barcelona Tower.