"We have allocated $2 million to finance the development of third-party projects": Pride Games Studio
A new mobile publisher has appeared on the Russian market – Pride Games Studio, whose total downloads for the year since its foundation have reached 17 million. How much the company is ready to invest in the development of third-party projects and on what terms it works with teams, we talked with its founder Sergey Ivanenko.
Pride Games Studio was founded in August 2016. She has developed and published three games: “Survival on the island: ARK“, “Survival on the island: Evolution” and “Battle racing tanks“. Their total number of installations is 17 million. The monthly audience of the projects is 2.5 million people. The company is registered in Cyprus, its headquarters is located in St. Petersburg.
Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru Q: You started last year, and what did you do before that?
Sergey IvanenkoSergey Ivanenko, Founder and CEO of Pride Games Studio:
We started assembling a team 2 months after the successful launch of Survival island: Evolve, it was developed together with a friend. Before that, I was engaged in business in several areas of the gaming industry. A friend studied at a university.
How big is the team now? Which part in % is occupied only by development, which by publication?
Sergei: At the moment there are only 25 of us. At the moment, 10 employees have been allocated for the publication. Now we are actively increasing the staff.
If it’s not a secret, what is the company’s source of funding today?
Sergei: Income from our projects and income from a group of private investors.
You have released three projects, achieved millions of downloads, why did you decide to become a publisher?
Sergei: There are many developers on the market who have very good products, but for various reasons they cannot succeed. Our goal is to help make their games popular.
Just a year ago, we were in the place of those developers that we now want to publish, and we perfectly remember all the difficulties that indie developers face on the way to success.
What projects are you looking for in terms of genre, mechanics, target audience?
Sergei: Thanks to the released projects, we have acquired a large number of connections and agreements in various areas of the industry, so we do not have a link to a specific genre or target audience. We are ready to consider interesting projects of any genre.
At what stage of development should the game be in order for you to take it?
Sergei: Alpha version.
If we are talking about a project launched as part of a softlonch, what metrics should the product have in order for you to take it?
Sergei: Minimum: Returns D1 – 25%; D – 7-8%; D30 – 2%, and ARPU should be around $ 0.3.
I want to clarify: everything depends on the project, it may be interesting and have a future, but the developers for a number of reasons did not pay attention to where the outflow of users is going.
How much are you willing to invest in each project at the development stage?
Sergei: At the moment, we have allocated $2 million to support the development of projects.
How many downloads are you ready to provide at the launch stage?
Sergei: For projects, we can provide about 1.5 million installations worldwide monthly.
Is it for all projects or for one?
Sergei: At the moment, for the starting project in the first month, and then – according to the results.
On what terms will you take projects? Are we talking about regional rights, rights to a certain platform, for how long?
Sergei: We work in 2 directions.
- The game is published on the developer’s account, we help them with analytics, promotion and promotional materials. In this case, the rights remain with the developer and we take from 50 to 80%.
- The game is published on our account, the rights to the game are transferred to us for the duration of the contract. In this case, we provide developers with all possible support and take from 30 to 70%, depending on the project.
What determines how much money you take for yourself?
Sergei: On the quality of the project and on profitability.
How much, for example, should the project bring so that you take only 30%?
Sergei: ARPU from $1.5.
If the project does not go ahead, under what conditions will you be ready to give the rights back to the team?
Sergei: We are not going to close the projects. If the game does not have the metrics we expected, then we will analyze what the problem is and fix it. We can terminate cooperation with the team that developed the project if it refuses to support the project. In this case, we keep the game and continue to support it.
Will a separate team of specialists (PR, SMM, marketer, producer) be allocated for each project, leading only it, or will the entire division be responsible for managing all projects?
Sergei: The entire division will be engaged in publishing each project.
It is written on your website that as a publisher you will be responsible for “organizing promos on the store’s pages”. Do I understand correctly that you guarantee a feature in mobile stores?
Sergei: I won’t promise, because not everything depends on us, first of all, it depends on the project itself and the developers. Apple never gives an exact guarantee that they will give a feature.
How many projects will you be willing to take on at a time?
Sergei: At the moment we are already conducting 4 projects, now we are selecting projects with which we can start working in the fall.
If you have additional questions to the speaker, feel free to leave them in the comments.
