How many times has the number of “Allods Online” registrations increased in recent weeks, how things are going in the store with premium projects, why does he need browser games with advertising monetization – we talked about this and much more with Rodion Kotelnikov, the head of MY.GAMES Store.
Speaker’s profile
Rodion Kotelnikov, head of the MY.GAMES Store platform.
In game development since 2008. Prior to that, he was engaged in industrial automation. During the crisis, I changed my profile and started creating video games.
The first game project, the browser-based “Football Territory“, was developed on the basis of its own concept in IT Territory.
Later, he headed the company’s internal studio, which produced browser and social games.
Since 2012, he has been responsible for operating the Gaming Platform.
Over the past years, he has been engaged in combining the diversified gaming infrastructure of the company into a single whole. The main task that faced him was to make a single entry point for the user.
That’s how MY.GAMES Store appeared.
Now 60 people are working on the gaming platform under the leadership of Rodion.
Alexander Semenov, Editor-in-Chief App2Top.ru : Hello. Let’s start with the numbers right away. How much have the cumulative registrations in MY.GAMES Store increased after the sanctions?
Rodion Kotelnikov, head of the MY.GAMES Store platform: Hi. The number of MY.GAMES Store registrations increased by about 15%.
Are we now talking about the fact that the total store base has grown by 15%?
Rodion: No.
In March, we usually see a seasonal decline. The number of daily registrations is falling.
However, this March, the average number of registrations per day compared to February, on the contrary, increased. Just for this 15%.
Interest in which projects has ensured such growth?
Rodion: The indicators jumped several times in several games.
We see a significant increase in Allods Online. The audience has grown 10 times over the past few weeks, the team had to open four subscription servers and a fifth is on the way.
The number of active online users (CCU) of the MMORPG Perfect World has increased by more than 40% since December 2021.
The growth of users is also noticeable in Archeage. Since March 2021, the CCU of the project has increased by 35%.
What other projects have received a significant increase?
Rodion: Twice as many players came to LOST ARK in the first quarter of 2022 as in the same period in 2021.
Admit it, this is not a completely correct example. After all, the attention to this game is primarily due to its Western release.
Rodion: LOST ARK is a well—recognized MMO, the development of which has been followed for many years. We became the first publisher to bring this product out of Korea, after that Japanese and English versions appeared. In many ways, we were pioneers and took an active part in the development of the game and its promotion. So the growth in the number of players is primarily due to numerous fixes and updates (new classes, locations, bosses) and the experience of the project’s operating team.
No one in the West has launched the same “Allods Online” now.
Touche. Let’s talk then about what happened to the audience at MY.GAMES Store before the sanctions?
Rodion: MY.GAMES Store has always been in the lead in terms of the number of audiences in Russia, not much inferior to Steam.
Suddenly.
Rodion: Look at the SimilarWeb analytics for January 2022. The daily number of visits to Steam from Russia is 9.9 million, and we have 8 million. Our audience is slightly inferior in size to the Steam audience.
SimilarWeb is a controversial tool in terms of accuracy. How correct are his estimates of your store?
Rodion: +-15%
Not so much. Does the graph shown take into account visits through the native application, which is for many the main tool for working with Steam?
Rodion: I think not. This needs to be clarified with SimilarWeb.
It is important to keep in mind here that we also have downloads going through the native application.
I shared the data so that there would be the most visual comparison of sites within the same analytics system.
For example, to say that we have an 8 million monthly audience is also incorrect. Taking into account the native application and our internal data, our active monthly audience is 13 million people.
And how many of them come to the site to launch a game from MY.GAMES?
Rodion: About half of it.
At the same time, do I understand correctly that most of the audience plays free games, although you also have paid titles in the library?
In Russia, the market has been predominantly fritupley for many years, this is due to both the history of development and the preferences of the audience, so we focus on this segment. We are well aware of its specifics and know how to work with it.
And, yes, the vast majority of our audience are players of free-to-play games.
Is it possible in numbers?
Rodion: More than 95% of the audience plays frituplay projects.
Is there any data on the peak of monthly earnings from your platform for a free project?
Rodion: MY.GAMES does not publish financial information on individual projects as part of the reporting, but I can designate a fork. Our projects can earn up to tens of millions of rubles at their peak.
And by downloads?
Rodion: Even on a calm day, we distribute something like a petabyte of data. On releases, this figure can grow many times.
Over the past three years, each of our products has shown significant growth, regardless of its age. Warface, which turns ten years old this year, is very popular on all platforms. Perfect World also continues to grow — 450 thousand people registered there in August 2021.
Now many small domestic teams creating indie games are also looking for an opportunity to sell games in Russia. What can they expect when they leave your place?
Rodion: It’s important to understand the following: in previous years, we didn’t have strong success stories with premium games.
Why?
Rodion: We had the following precedents:
- the publisher of the premium game came;
- the game was hosted both by us and on Steam;
- we made an advertising push for our fritupley audience, push for internal placements on social networks, bought traffic on external sites, in general, we made a good effective campaign;
- all promos led to us.
What did we see after that? The growth of downloads on Steam.
Users tend to buy where they already have a collection of games.
In other words, they watch our ads, they like the game, and then they go to see if it’s on Steam.
It is logical that such a funnel was ineffective for us, and we did not actively rock this direction.
It is obvious that today the market has changed, players and developers have restrictions, and we are reactivating work in this direction to support both the first and the second.
By the way, while we were working on this interview, premium game developers started coming to us. And even success story has already appeared.
So I want to say that we really want to have premium games in the catalog. We have all the necessary equipment for this.
The situation with cloud projects, which you also have, is probably even more complicated?
Rodion: Of course, there are challenges related to the purchase of servers, licenses, and so on, but all cloud players have them.
But here it is important to understand that the cloud is a story that works over a long distance, it is not about the effect “after the 24th”.
A cloud is essentially a replacement of a local computer with a cloud computer. With the growth of the exchange rate, and accordingly with the increase in the cost of the computer, users will begin to look for affordable solutions in order to play cool new games.
And this is where we see one of the growth points for ourselves.
As for the actual figures, today the MAU of the product is 150 thousand users.
Yes, another point of growth is the browser mode for cloud games, which we are going to test soon. We expect that this will help the project grow, open up opportunities for synergy, for example, with social networks.
By the way, since you touched on the topic of browsers. You have browser games. It’s very strange to see them in the store.
Rodion: We are experimenting with browser games without registration and payments, in which monetization is carried out only through advertising.
What have you managed to achieve in this direction?
Rodion: We have collected more than 10 thousand of these games in a single catalog, we are working on improving the user experience.
From a business point of view, we are now building the ROI of an effective cycle of purchasing traffic for such games. We are already seeing a positive effect in terms of attracting traffic through SEO.
For us, this is a new segment with a very casual audience. In the future, we plan to convert it into more “heavy” projects.
Somewhere nearby there is a story about ports from mobile platforms. If you go to MY.GAMES now, there are many similar projects there. Tell me about the initiative.
Rodion: We started it last year. They started porting mobile games to PC.
What was the reason for this?
Rodion: First of all, Apple’s targeting restrictions. Because of him, such a transition has become relevant for many studios.
What about the results?
Rodion: In some games, we manage to bring revenue up to 5-10% of mobile. Sometimes we manage to achieve better results. We are confident that in the future we will be able to increase the share in several projects to 20%.
Sounds optimistic. Good luck with that!