PlayHaven: Don't think about user acquisition in the first place

In early May, PlayHaven announced that the number of its unique users had grown to 523 million. In this regard, the company gave the Pocket Gamer-u resource an interview in which it talked about the main thing in monetization. 

There are two extremes in the perception of the modern mobile market. According to the first, the game has no future if several million dollars have not been spent on its promotion. According to the second, there is nothing to spend on promotion at all, a good game will pop up in the tops itself. 

Andy YoungIn the mentioned interview, PlayHaven executive director Andy Yang did without extremes, but noted that the focus on user acquisition, which is now observed in the industry, is wrong.

“This is not something to think about first,” Young said.

“Retention and monetization is the key. In order for your business to work, you need, first of all, to take care of them. And only after that, spend money on users,” he added.  

Unfortunately, Young himself does not give examples. In our opinion, the head of Playhaven could well have mentioned Puzzle & Dragons. Immediately after the start of the advertising campaign on television, the audience of the project began to grow rapidly. If the game took 146 days for the first million users, then it took only 19 for the third million.

Photo: Venture Beat