“Outside of children’s trends, organic reach is diminishing,” says Alexander Shevelev from Maningame and SpyMagic about the outcomes of 2025 on the web

How did the year 2025 turn out for your analytics service? What would you identify as the main results or achievements?

Alexander Shevelev, SpyMagic: The main result: we finally made the service public and available to everyone interested.

For over five years, it was an internal tool of our company. Last year, we understood that if we packaged it into a standalone product, it would be beneficial for all teams developing web games who encounter the same challenges as we do during operations.

How has the web games market changed over the year based on your collected data?

Alexander: The web games market is changing quite rapidly. If we rely on the data we collect yearly, it is expressed in six points.

1. High turnover rate of new games in the top installs. Of course, there's a "golden roster" of evergreen games ("Hedgehogs," "Little Christmas Tree," "Kiss and Date," "Treasure of Pirates," Battle Arena, etc.). They are like an immovable mountain around which all other movements occur. Meanwhile, new games quickly consume significant traffic volumes and pass the baton to the next. This means that the "organic window" for quality mid-level games has noticeably narrowed. It's not because there's less organic reach on the platforms themselves. The issue is that it's now distributed more thoughtfully (both algorithmically at the wizard-level and through platform-purchased predictive models). It seems the era when any reasonably quality game was flooded into a platform is ending.
2. Increased visibility of releases from larger corporate segment companies. We're talking about projects like Pirate Ships from Herocraft, "Domovoy World" by Astrum, Raid & Rush by Overmobile, "Three Heroes" from 1C, and "Cat Simulator" by Take Top Entertainment, etc. If earlier these were isolated stories throughout the year, now it's evident that large studios have taken a noticeable course on cross-platforming their projects.
3. Trend towards quality. This is a continued paradigm shift on the "Yandex Games" platform, initiated in the middle of last year. It is expressed in reducing the number of games released daily and announcements of changes in moderation rules. While 2024 saw over 100 releases daily, today's figure is around 30 games. Mainly reskins, clone-of-clone games, and blatant plagiarism were cut.
4. The fastest-growing segments of 2025 are simulators and roblox-like games. Traffic growth in these genres is about 25% year-over-year. In other genres, everything is more stable.
5. The emergence of new game distribution channels. This became possible thanks to the guys from GamePush. It includes access to unique platforms like "Pikabu Games" (with access to a million-audience) and the ability to publish games on foreign platforms through Game Push's infrastructure, which is especially relevant under sanctions conditions.
6. Possibility to publish a game on "Odnoklassniki" with one click directly from the "VKontakte" console. For game developers previously limited to VK, this is an excellent opportunity to gain additional traffic and save several working days on API integration and administrative matters.

You work with web developers. How have their requests changed over the year?

Alexander: Most developers’ requests have not changed significantly over the year. They're still mainly interested in quickly jumping on trending hypes or getting visibility on competitor games' install dynamics. Essentially, everything revolves in one way or another around organic reach.

Although most developers from the golden zoomer generation (those in their 18-25 who experienced "Yandex Games" from 2020-2023) have already understood that they need to diversify, increase IAP revenue, and attempt purchases — unfortunately, this is only achieved by a few.

Since purchases and IAP are always challenging, painful, and require long-term focus on one product, many young developers choose the path of least resistance, trying to find a new niche without changing their fundamental development approach. Therefore, their eyes are now on everything new — new trends, new hypes, new niches, new platforms.

However, it's encouraging that among the mass demand for tools for quick "hype rollercoaster" detection, some developers still focus on their product and try to find an approach to their audience through internal analytics in their games.

What findings/thoughts/research from 2025 could be useful for teams already working or planning to enter the web games market?

Alexander: Firstly, developing web games still requires acknowledging that trend hypes play a high role. This year, we witnessed three waves:

• Italian animals (April 8, 2025, ~15 million installs);
• Labubu (May 19, ~7 million installs);
• 99 Nights in the Woods (July 21, ~3 million installs).

Developers who caught the first waves (1-4 weeks after hype activation points) managed to ride the hype rollercoaster nicely, gathering a huge amount of organic reach (and subsequently, revenue).

Secondly, it’s essential to understand that outside children’s hypes, organic reach is declining. Given the significant eCPM drop (year-over-year) and increased platform quality requirements during initial moderation, it will become a little harder for newcomers next year (yet again). Not critically yet, but it seems like someone continues to dump barrels of maroon paint into the sea more actively.

Nonetheless, it’s crucial to understand that despite the dynamics, web games, as a niche, remain the best entry point into the games market for budding developers. The development speed, ease of publication, available organic reach, and out-of-the-box analytics currently give creative and motivated individuals a chance for success.

As for those who came to the market for easy money after advice from channels like Roma Sakutin or Zhenya Grishakov, it seems there's no longer a place for them.

What new trends in the web games sector do you expect next year?

Alexander: With the blocking of Roblox in Russia, there's a high probability that children will transition to "Yandex Games." The platform might eventually become a Roblox mirror in Russia, pulling some outgoing traffic to itself. Therefore, I predict that in 2026, developers who can quickly clone/port entire Roblox games to the web in Russia will profit.

Otherwise, the trends remain the same: falling eCPM (the bottom has not been reached yet), a shift towards quality (the era of reskins and makeshift games is ending), a move towards Western stores (Poki, CrazyGames), and increasing IAP monetization in the web space.

The solution to the last point lies more with the platforms themselves: they need to continue working on attracting new paying users through their ecosystems and seamless payment systems.

From the realm of fantasy — a review by "Yandex Games" and "VKontakte" of their policy regarding external ad networks, where eCPM is much higher. I think everyone could benefit from such a decision.

Speaking specifically about the analytical web solutions market, what do you expect from it in 2026?

Alexander: It's encouraging to see growing competition in the analytics systems market (both spy-analytics and in-game) overall. This leads to cheaper services for end-users and improved service quality. Recently, I would highlight Insightrackr for its very reasonable and flexible pricing.

I hope this trend continues, and in the coming years we'll see new niche analytics tools that allow developers to make better decisions during the preproduction phase.

Concerning web analytics specifically, Russian platforms are now at the forefront. The solutions integrated right out of the box by the "Yandex Games" team (without requiring extra steps from the developer) set a very high quality bar. It seems challenging for them to think of something new, but we believe in them.

"VK Games" also updated its dashboard this year. They continue to move towards enhanced analytics right within the console.

What service improvement do you plan to implement in 2026?

Alexander: SpyMagic is like "coffee 2 in 1": both external analytics (ability to monitor the market, competitors, trends) and internal analytics for your own game (basic benchmarks, event system, A/B testing, funnels, etc.).

Therefore, we will continue developing the service in both directions.

Externally, we're currently collecting installation data, player ratings, features from platforms like "Yandex Games," "VKontakte," "Odnoklassniki," RuStore, and CrazyGames. Next year, we plan to add Poki and try to find interesting statistical insights to improve our predictive models' accuracy, predicting game metrics, new niches, or hypes faster. It's a complex task, but that's what makes it more interesting.

In terms of internal analytics, the focus is on traffic work: we can separate incoming traffic from any platform into organic, featuring, and purchases (with the ability to separate by channels if purchases are made through Yandex Advertising Network, "VK Advertising," CPA networks, and similar channels), plus evaluate them with predictions for ROAS and LTV. In 2026, we will continue developing the service in this direction.