3543: From App Stores to Ownership, Xsolla on Gaming's D2C Turning Point

[00:00:04] Welcome back to another episode. Today, I want to look at the video game industry and how it's been through another year of structural change. And the pace is no longer being set by new consoles or blockbuster launchers alone. In fact, if you take a look behind the curtain, we're going to see regulation, pricing pressure, platform control and player expectations are now shaping how games are built, distribute and monetized.

[00:00:33] So in today's episode, I'm proud to be welcoming back Chris Hewish, president at Xsolla, a company that sits at the intersection of gaming payments and global commerce. And he's someone that spent decades across publishing, development and platform strategy. And he's bringing with him today a long term view of how the industry keeps reinventing itself when old models stop working.

[00:01:00] So today we're going to look back at the major forces that shaped gaming in 2025 from Epic versus Apple and the Digital Markets Act, and also rising subscription prices, the continued shift towards direct to consumer models.

[00:01:17] And talk about why studios are increasingly bypassing those traditional gatekeepers and what this means for player relationships and how tools like web shops, expanded payment options and unity integrations are actually changing the economics of game development.

[00:01:35] So if you care about where monetization, regulation and player trusts are heading in games, I hope this episode will give you a much clearer view of why the industry feels very different as we move into 2026. Now, before we begin today's interview, and there's some great insights in that, I just want to give a special mention to my friends at Denodo, who are passionate about the future and logical data management and agentic AI.

[00:02:04] Because everywhere you look, agentic AI is undoubtedly the next big shift. But here's the truth. It can't operate on messy, inconsistent or siloed information. So if you want AI that doesn't just automate, but operates, start with logical data management at denodo.com. But enough from me. It's time to welcome Chris back onto the podcast. So a massive warm welcome back to the show.

[00:02:31] We last spoke in April, but for anyone that missed our last conversation, can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Absolutely, Neil. My name is Chris Hewish, and I am the president at Ixola, which is the leading video game commerce company that does all the things you need to run a video game business.

[00:02:51] And there, I've been there for about six years now and, you know, really help guide strategy and innovation and partnerships, things like that at the intersection of gaming and fintech.

[00:03:02] But, you know, I've spent my entire career, actually, which is going on three decades working in the games industry across all aspects of gaming, developing and publishing small games, big games, games on all platforms at companies like Activision and DreamWorks and Skydance. And it really has given me a good appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes, both for creators and for technology, you know, developers.

[00:03:32] And, you know, it's been a little unconventional. I think last time when we spoke about this, my career started, it began at a company called Games Workshop, where I landed my first job due to a fictional letter of recommendation that I wrote from an orc war boss that I made up and they loved it. And it's gone on since there. So I love games. I love making games. I love talking about games and really appreciate the opportunity to be here today, Neil. Well, it's a pleasure to have you back on.

[00:04:03] I mean, so much happened in 2025. Big year in the gaming industry. Of course, we've still got no GTA game yet, but that's turned into a meme on its own. But when we look back throughout 2025, I'm curious, what events or storylines have the deepest impact, do you think, on the games industry? And how are things like the Epic versus Apple, the Online Safety Act, the EU Digital Marketers Act, shape the way studios now think about distribution and revenue?

[00:04:31] And just to throw another few big stories out there, we had the Steam Box, the PS Portal, so much going on. But what did you make of it all when you look back at that year now? So really, when I look back on 2025, it has been a great year. There have been a number of major shifts in the industry, which are all to the benefit of the players at the end of the day, I believe. And these shifts, as you mentioned, there have been regulations.

[00:04:57] There's been additional consoles and platforms coming out. And all of this really comes together to highlight the increasing trend. It's not even a trend now. It really is the primary way of conducting business, which is going direct to consumer and meeting the players wherever they are. Right.

[00:05:19] So, you know, we've for a long time, the industry went through when you wanted to sell a game or distribute a game, you would go through different gatekeepers, whether it was a retail store or a third party platform like an app store. And you were locked into a few, you know, sort of choices of how you could play that game and where you could play it. And really, we've seen this trend building over the past few years.

[00:05:42] And really, I think we've had a shift this past year, 2025, of that trend becoming mainstream, where developers are connecting directly with their players outside of the platforms. They're building direct relationships. There's more places to play games than ever. We'll probably talk about this a little bit later, but how that is impacting the way developers are actually building their backends and handling things like their player account and progression and all of these things.

[00:06:11] So it's been a huge year, opened up the industry and just better relationships between developers and players. Yeah, and of course, I suppose if we're looking back at the year, we've got to mention the Xbox Game Pass thing, because there's a lot of excitement around subscriptions and a Netflix of gaming. But they introduced almost a 50% increase in prices last year as well. So a few changes there as regards memberships and subscriptions too, right? Well, I think you're right.

[00:06:40] That is one of the, I would say, one of the things that we are watching is the consolidation of the market. And that has had an impact as well. To your point, when you consolidate, prices tend to go up, right? You limit choice for the consumer. That's why going direct to consumer is so important.

[00:07:00] And you're seeing more and more studios doing that outside of these ones, like the Activision acquisition by Microsoft, which certainly has had an impact on their business. Conversely, EA with Battlefield has had a great year. And they do have a very strong direct to consumer platform of their own.

[00:07:21] And so, you know, I think we're going to see more and more of this as you do encounter things like subscription services going up, losing their value propositions, which is very much what we saw in mobile over the past few years where the app stores became overcrowded. The discovery became an issue. The value proposition no longer made sense. And what I mean by that is it no longer made sense to pay 30% of your revenue to the app store for the privilege of being on the app store.

[00:07:49] It made no sense to have no control of your data, no relationship with your players because that all went through the app store. So developers have now broken free and are using web shops to go direct to consumer. So we could see a similar path on the subscription side where, yeah, the prices get too high. The game, you know, there's not really enough game choice on there. And developers decide, you know what, we're just going to go direct. Yeah, completely agree with you.

[00:08:17] And there's been a lot of exciting developments on the indie scene as well, which maybe we'll talk about a little bit later. As the Call of Duties and the FIFAs have struggled this holiday season, there's a huge draw for more artistic games and original games, which is a great thing. But before we talk about that, I think regulation is becoming a big part of the gaming conversation. So how are these new rules influencing that relationship between developers, platforms and players?

[00:08:43] And where do you see the biggest long-term consequences here? So you're right. Regulation has become big all around the world. And when we say regulation, let's define that. It's both regulatory bodies putting in rules, but also courts putting in legal precedents. So we can collectively call that regulation, right? Regardless of whether it comes from a government body or a court, it still has the same effect at the end of the day.

[00:09:11] And we see that this is kind of becoming a new player in the space, almost the fourth force in the industry alongside developers, platforms and players. And it truly is fundamentally shifting how the three interact. So you have things like requirements around transparency, data handling, payments, user safety. These are all coming.

[00:09:35] There have been changes that have happened from regulations that are forcing platforms such as the app stores and the gatekeepers to open up and open up once what were once closed systems or ecosystems and open them to other competitors to come in and provide services. Open them up to the players to have more transparency into what's happening. The developers to have more control.

[00:10:00] And this really gives developers more leverage and choice, which is great in how they distribute and monetize their games. And when you think about compliance, you're going to hear a lot of gatekeepers are like, oh, we took care of all this stuff. We kept everybody safe and everyone compliant and all of this, which is true. They did a lot of and they still do a lot of work. But developers, when they're going direct now and they have more control, right, they also have more responsibility.

[00:10:28] And that responsibility is around things like verification of pay, you know, verification flows for payments, reporting tools, parental controls, alternative billing. All of these things, which may sound heavy, but they're really not. There's a lot of companies like ours that handle that for you. It just means you have to think about it as a developer early on in your development cycle and not at the tail end when you launch a game.

[00:10:55] But on the player side, I mentioned this earlier that I really feel this year has been a win for the players. And why that is, is because they're getting because of all these regulations and things opening up, they are gaining more rights. They're getting greater control of their own data, clearer safety expectations, more payment options, which means more players are able to engage and interact with their games around the world.

[00:11:23] You know, safer, moderated environments and spaces. You know, there's all these benefits to the players. There's better value in what they're purchasing, you know, all of these things. But, you know, it does mean that developers have to take on a little more, not necessarily work, but thought more upstream into development. And look, it's a business at the end of the day. And if you want great flexibility and control over your business, then you have to be responsible early on.

[00:11:52] But fortunately, plenty of people are out there to help with that. And looking back at 2025, Exala, also you announced several updates this year. And for anyone that missed some of the news, can you just walk me through? I think it was the Unity SDK launch. And why things like this matter for teams that want to build those direct-to-consumer models that we're talking about here without waiting on those traditional platform gatekeepers? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:19] So, we, you know, we are always trying to meet our partners wherever they are, whatever. And that includes whatever game engines they are building on or whatever platforms they are building on. So, we did this year as part of our ongoing, you know, efforts to reach our partners everywhere. We launched something called the Exala SDK for Unity.

[00:12:41] And that means that if you build your game with the Unity game engine, you can now use an SDK that's in the Unity marketplace that handles monetization, direct-to-consumer revenue, you know, options for mobile, PC, and web. You can just plug this into your game and you get all of the power of what we bring.

[00:13:03] So, it means you can integrate payments, enable in-game purchases, create custom storefronts, all without relying on a platform. And this is in service of going direct to your players. And it really allows you to do this quickly. So, it just underscores our commitment to how we want developers to have all the options, all the things to be flexible and scale their businesses.

[00:13:27] And I think I'm right in saying, on behalf of developers listening, they often want more control over their entire checkout experience and, indeed, revenue. So, how does that new Unity SDK change what they can do in practice, especially across mobile, PC, and the web, for example? Yeah, this is great. It's one single integration, right, an SDK, but it's cross-platform.

[00:13:51] So, you get, when you integrate it, mobile, PC, wherever you're launching your game, which aligns with, you know, people who build in Unity. It's a great cross-platform engine. And what it does is it enables direct-to-consumer sales, allowing you to bypass app store fees by going direct to your players. So, it supports over 1,000 different payment methods in 200 regions. So, you truly, truly have full global coverage. And I know this sounds boring.

[00:14:19] Like, who cares about payment methods, right, and numbers of regions? You should care because it means you can really reach every – it maximizes your player base, right? And if you look at your options with other platforms, you'll notice they maybe only have a few hundred payment methods in there, which means that you're missing a significant percentage of your players.

[00:14:41] There are certain regions where 40%, 50%, 60% of your players are not going to be able to transact or engage with your game because they don't have a payment method that aligns with the platform in that region. Whereas we do. We truly are global. It also allows developers with the XODA SDK for Unity to retain ownership and control around pricing, what kind of special offers, live operations offers you're making, player data, in-app purchases, bundles, subscriptions, which we mentioned earlier.

[00:15:10] You can do your own subscriptions as a developer. And integrates with web shops. And it's all fast. It takes care of all the back-end complexity. And because we are a merchant of record, it also means that if you use this, we can take care of your taxes, your fraud management, your chargeback disputes, ensure global compliance, which we talked about earlier.

[00:15:32] So really, it just empowers Unity Studios to monetize anywhere, keep more revenue, build direct lasting relationships with their players. I just want to give a big thank you to my sponsor, who is supporting every show, every episode across the Tech Talks network this month because their backing helps me bring you conversations with leaders from every corner of the tech world day after day. And this month, I'm proud to be partnering with Alcor.

[00:16:00] And anyone who's tried to scale an engineering team across borders, they will know firsthand how messy it can get. Because they deal with endless providers, then there's confusing rules to deal with in each and every region, and fees that always seem to surface at the last minute. Now, Alcor, they solve that by acting as a partner rather than just an intermediary.

[00:16:23] And they focus on tech teams that expand in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and they bring employer of record services together with recruiting. So essentially, they help you pick the right country, source the right engineers, and assess them properly, and then get them active for you and your company within days. And one of the things that stands out for me is the financial transparency. Around 85% of what you pay goes directly to your engineers.

[00:16:52] Their fee goes down as your team grows. And if you ever wanted to bring your team in-house, you do so with no exit costs. That kind of clarity is why Silicon Valley startups, including several unicorns, have chosen Alcor. And you can find out more by simply going to alcor.com slash podcast or follow the link in the show notes below. And before you join me today, I was also reading that you announced integrations with, I think it was Webshop.

[00:17:21] And offer wall expanded payments in key markets and upgrades to the LiveOps management suite, too. Of course, if we look at all those announcements, what problems were you trying to solve with some of those updates? And how are studios already beginning to use them? Anything you can share around that? Absolutely, Neil. So we were the originators of webshops, which have become a core piece of any mobile game studios business model these days.

[00:17:49] And they allow mobile games to engage and transact direct. They allow you to build a direct relationship with your players outside of the app store. And some of the things we were trying to solve with this and then also offer wall now, which allows you to offer wall. What is old is new again. Offer walls used to be really big back in the day in the early days of mobile, where you could put offers up for players to engage with to go download games or complete quests and games.

[00:18:17] And they would get rewards for those. It's that type of thing, which is back and very strong now because it helps with discovery. So together, what we're trying to do is a few things. We're trying to help studios monetize non-paying players. As we all know, well, for your audience who may not know, especially in mobile games, these games are free. You can download them for free. You can buy things within the games.

[00:18:42] But on average, only 3% to 5% of players are actually spending money. So 95% or more of the people playing a game never spend any money on it. So developers are always looking at how can they monetize those non-paying players. One traditional way has been by serving them ads, but there are more ways now. So that's one of the things we're trying to solve.

[00:19:07] So the offer wall turns engagement itself into a value by rewarding players for completing quests and special actions, keeps the users in flow, increases retention. And by increasing retention, this is also a known sort of phenomenon, not phenomenon, but a known behavior in games. And I guess anywhere, really.

[00:19:31] The longer you can keep someone engaged, the more you increase the chances that they're going to finally make that first purchase, right? So that helps to monetize those non-paying players. Player retention and data privacy, we have adjustable daily rewards, privacy-compliant segmentation. So you can segment your audiences, but still in a privacy-compliant way to give them personalized offers. That helps with retention, avoiding churn.

[00:20:02] We also have platform and regional limitations. Developers are often losing revenue due to limited local payment support. We provide, with all of this, these updates, expanded coverage with region-specific wallets that are compliant with local or regional regulations and pay-by-bank flows across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America. So it ensures players can pay with what they're used to.

[00:20:30] But as a developer, you know that all of this is happening in a safe, compliant way. And then there's operational complexity. These games rely heavily, increasingly games are incorporating something called live ops. And that means that you launch a game, but then that game stays live and it becomes a living engagement with your players. And you're introducing new events, new updates, new content.

[00:20:54] So when you do that, you want to run different campaigns and offers and just let people know about what's happening, what you're releasing, and get them engaged with it. And that can be pretty complicated to do. So with our live ops management suite, we made it much simpler with a no-code visual canvas so that you can create campaigns. You can automate campaigns, marketing campaigns, retention campaigns, discovery campaigns.

[00:21:21] Centralizes all that segmentation so you can look at your different player cohorts by segments, analytics, scheduling. So it makes all of this just simpler to be able to reach your studios, your partners. And then, you know, everyone likes data and stats.

[00:21:37] So a couple of our partners who were early adopters of this offer wall product, Viva Games and Tilting Point Concrete Games, they reported 25% to 35% increases in their webshop revenue and 40% more payment transactions after integrating these updates. So, you know, this really does work. It's not just me saying a bunch of fancy words about how it works. We have, you know, actual case studies.

[00:22:05] We see developers deploying adjustable rewards. And they've seen an average retention boosts by rewarding players for engaging of 20% and subsequent revenue gains of 15% or more. So remember, I said if you retain players, you can convert them to paying over time. And this is all coming from data through over 700 webshops that we have. It's a lot.

[00:22:29] So, you know, we're trying to help everyone engage, monetize, and, you know, have better data about their players. And I must admit, as a man of a certain age, I grew up with games from bedroom developers like Jeff the Yak Minter. And fast forward to present day, I enjoy games like Expedition 33, the originality, innovation, and artistic nature of some of the games that we see now. And it does feel that there's a movement that even mainstream gamers have a love for indie games now.

[00:22:59] So with direct-to-customer strategies, they feel like they've moved from niche to mainstream this year. Would you agree with that? And what's driving that shift? And how ready do you think some of those developers are to take ownership of their player relationships? It feels like a big opportunity and almost a full circle moment. Yes, it is a tremendous opportunity. Direct-to-consumer truly has jumped from a fringe strategy to mainstream this year.

[00:23:27] And, you know, we mentioned earlier some of the pressures. Regulatory shifts like the Digital Markets Act, Fallout from Epic versus Apple, and now Epic versus Google have weakened, you know, the closed sort of walled garden ecosystems that the gatekeepers have. And really made studios reevaluate, you know, paying high fees, not having control of their data or players.

[00:23:48] And this is all natural in, you know, you can look at this stage that we're in in gaming as kind of more of a mature market where it's harder to discover games and find them. You know, companies are looking more and more at maximizing their margins as growth, you know, for a lot of games. You know, you've kind of figured out how to get the most out of your games. So now you need to look at, you know, where can you improve on the margins? You know, but that kind of applies to a lot of the bigger studios.

[00:24:17] But for everybody, user acquisition costs have gone up. And, you know, this is all really pushing publishers to look for a way to get their games noticed, to have those relationships with their players and make more money from that. And then live service models, you know, are heavily dependent on those player relationships and knowing your customer, knowing what they like, you know, what they where they are, how they transact, how they engage with your game.

[00:24:45] So taken all together, you know, this has made the value proposition around direct to consumer, you know, sort of the main driver of a game business now versus, you know, a platform, which is kind of more of a, you know, an analogous to you put it on the shelf and hope people buy it. Right. Now you can get out there and you can actually, you know, market the game yourself. You can, you know, connect directly with the players yourself, you know, kind of like a successful, you know, restaurant.

[00:25:11] The restaurant owner is out there talking with the clients and visiting each table and understanding what they like and is able to generate a better business from that and a better experience for the users versus just, you know, maybe a fast food, you know, put them through the line as fast as you can, which would be a platform. But, you know, the, this is this having said all of that, this direct to consumer push has had different rates of adoption.

[00:25:39] You know, large publishers are really well prepared to capitalize on this. And, you know, they really already have been behaving more like, you know, building towards more of their own ecosystems and networks. And, you know, they, they have the staff and the resources to really lean into this midsize and indie are starting to catch up because you have companies like ours that are providing these capabilities. So there's not really a tech cost to developing it. It's more of a knowledge cost.

[00:26:08] And because this is becoming more mainstream, that knowledge is becoming more accessible to people. And what I mean by that is how do you succeed going direct to consumer used to be a bit of a mystery, you know, but now there's plenty of examples out there of how you do that, which is great. And then, you know, I think the smaller studios are the ones that are going to be the last to catch up. But as you mentioned, 2025 was a banner year for indie developers and smaller studios.

[00:26:35] In fact, just at the Game Awards the other night, I think we had a big chunk of the awards went to indie studios. And this just kind of proves my point that the technology and not just for making games, but for running game businesses has become robust and accessible for everybody, regardless of size. So and the knowledge is out there on how to do it.

[00:26:58] So, you know, I think over the next few years, we're going to see a shift in the conversation from studio size to studio mindset.

[00:27:07] And what I mean by that is regardless of your size, if you're a studio, a game developer that invests early and when I say invest, I don't necessarily mean financial investment, just commits early to ownership of lifetime value player relationships and makes that a core part of how you run your business. Then you're going to have much more success than those that just focus on just, OK, we're going to make a great game. And of course, we want you to make a great game.

[00:27:37] But if you don't think about how that game reaches players, how it monetizes with players, you're going to be, you know, in that other bucket. So you want to be in the first bucket, you know, treat it like a business early on. I remember early, you know, years ago in my career, I started embedding our marketing teams with our development teams at the studios. And I did that because I had for too long seen that marketing was treated as an after the fact kind of thing.

[00:28:06] Like, oh, we're three months from launching the game. What's our marketing campaign? Now let's go buy some retail shelf space, whatever. But things were changing with digital distribution. And it was much more important to have marketing have literally a seat at the table alongside the designer, you know, the programmer, the artist when we were building the game so that they could represent the player voice and make sure that this was part of the as far upstream as you could go. How are we going to how's this game going to engage with players, appeal to players?

[00:28:36] Same type of thing now, except now it's a business person you want at the table who's helping with that as well. And with 2025 disappearing in the rearview mirror, it's time to focus on all things 2026. So are there any monetization trends that you expect to gain momentum? And how do you see the unity and cross-platform ecosystems further evolving as developers push for greater flexibility?

[00:29:02] Again, it feels like quite a moment here that could unfold this year. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think there will be a few different trends. Direct-to-consumer will continue. That's not going anywhere. I'm actually really excited to see how direct-to-consumer evolves into this next stage, which, you know, for me is like, okay, it's no longer a niche idea. It's no longer a niche technology. It's a core piece of a business.

[00:29:32] It's no longer a niche. Oh, my goodness. What can we do with direct relationships with our players, both in-game and outside of a game? And I often think of when you look at different hobbies that have been around a long time that are big, that people engage with, whether it's golf or, you know, whatever it might be, right? Camping or anything, a big hobby that people have. If you equate that to games, I look at games as a hobby. And I think we're entering a time where developers can really treat their games like a hobby.

[00:30:02] And the game itself is one touch point, right? In your player's hobbyist experience. But what else can you do around that? How can you help them with community? How can you have a relationship directly with them? You know, so I think that's really exciting. I think we're going to see things like account-centric economies, cross-platform wallets. What I mean by that, you mentioned earlier on, oh, there's, what about Steam Deck? What about all these new platforms, right, that are coming out?

[00:30:28] So when that happens, we have had a history of you create a player ID on one account and all your progression, what you do in a game. You know, you're on PlayStation playing the game, but then you want to hop over to PC, right, to play as well. Often, those are two different accounts. I think we're going to, and we've started to see a trend of that all coming together where you have one player login. Roblox is a great example. You have one login regardless of the device you play on. Fortnite, similar.

[00:30:59] I think we'll see an increasing trend of that for all games as games continue to go more cross-platform, meeting players everywhere they are because the technology is getting much more capable at delivering that for when you develop. Hybrid monetization, of course, as this continues to become a more and more mature business, companies are going to get more and more mature in how they monetize players.

[00:31:25] And, you know, that may sound ominous, but it's not. It's actually a good thing because for a very long time, games were kind of sold as there's one single business model. And it's going to be a premium game that you buy and download, or it's going to be a free-to-play game with microtransactions. But whatever it was, it all targeted just one player segment, essentially, right?

[00:31:49] And it's like, okay, if it's a premium, you know, $50 game, you're only targeting people that can pay $50 for that game. But the reality is there's plenty of people that would love to play your game. And we've seen a little hybrid in the past where you would launch it at premium and then maybe a year later it goes, you know, or six months later it's discounted. Then it goes on to a subscription service. Well, I think you're going to see, and that's a form of hybrid, but it's a linear hybrid over time.

[00:32:15] I think we'll see more hybrid models in real time where developers are like, hey, you know, because I have these great tools that can segment my player bases, I can understand. Okay, I can provide a version of the game to this player base over here that's willing to pay up front for a premium. I'm going to have another version of the game, same game, but different unlocks or different elements within it that maybe is appealing to somebody that can only pay a few dollars a month in a subscription, right?

[00:32:42] Or, you know, you can layer all these different models together at the same time, bundles, memberships, seasonal value. So that's really cool. And then, of course, community-driven commerce, user-generated content. And I've said for years that there's a convergence of the creator and the consumer becoming one and the same, and we really are seeing that for real now. So I think that'll be exciting to see what happens with, like, Fortnite and Fortnite Creative and Roblox and all of that. So a lot of great things coming.

[00:33:12] Yeah, exciting times ahead. I'm curious, though, when you're speaking with studios, big and small, what are they most hopeful about in 2026? And what are they also maybe a little bit uneasy about as business models, regulations, and player expectations continue to shift? You don't have to mention any names, but are there any trends that you're seeing now in those conversations? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[00:33:36] You know, developers are absolutely optimistic and excited for the continued loosening of control of these platforms, right? The ability to take more control of their own businesses. And, you know, there's optimism around, you know, how that gives them more data and insights to their players and how that can help them add more value.

[00:34:01] But at the same time, it is a little, you know, this is new territory for a lot of developers. They don't understand exactly like, okay, Chris, you said there's a thousand different payment methods. What the heck does that mean, right? How do I, what do I need to do to deal with all of that? And how do I handle all of this different types of billing and storefronts and make this a sustainable long-term business?

[00:34:23] So, you know, I would say there's more of a trend of developers not just coming in and wanting to make great fun games, but actually treating this like a business, which is fantastic. But that does lead to anxiety around operational complexity, you know. So I think that's something that it's important for companies like ours to get out there and continue providing that guidance and that knowledge so that the developers don't get sidetracked by this.

[00:34:50] They can just embrace it and still make great games and have, you know, the greatest success that they could ever want. Well, we've covered so much in 30 minutes today, but for anyone listening wanting to dig a little bit deeper on anything we covered, we did cover a large amount of topics there. Anyway, in particular, you'd like everyone listening to check out? Yes, you can find out more at our website, xsola.com, and that is spelt xsola.com.

[00:35:19] Where we show you all the things that you need to run a successful games business, and we are always here to help. Well, I, for one, applaud you on this continued mission to unlock direct-to-consumer revenue opportunities across all platforms there, but without the need for a complex back-end work. And I think it must be music to the ears of developers and anyone in the industry. I'd love to hear how this continues to evolve throughout the year, but more than anything, thank you for coming back on.

[00:35:48] I'll hopefully get you back on later in the year to complete your hat-trick of appearances, but thanks for joining me today. Thank you, Neil. My pleasure. What really comes through in this episode for me is how direct-to-consumer has moved from experiment to a core operating model for studios of all sizes. And developers want more control over revenue, data, and player relationships.

[00:36:11] But that control also brings new responsibilities around compliance, payments, and long-term engagement. But today's discussion, I think, highlighted a broader shift in mindset. Because success is becoming less about the size of your studio and more about how early teams think about business fundamentals alongside creativity. So indie and mid-sized studios are no longer locked out of global reach.

[00:36:39] And players are benefiting from greater choice, transparency, and flexibility in how they engage with their favourite games. But if this conversation sparked any ideas about how you see the game industry is changing, or where the next pressure points may appear, or anything we missed, I'd love to hear your thoughts. That's techtalksnetwork.com. You'll find out how you can work with me, find eight, nine different podcasts, and over 4,000 interviews. Hopefully, I will see you there. If not, I'll speak with you again bright and early tomorrow.

[00:37:10] Bye for now.