As live service games scale, studios must decide which tools to develop in-house and which to source from third parties. Striking the right balance can impact everything from agility to long-term costs, but making the wrong choice can drain resources or limit flexibility. This panel will dive into how these decisions affect budgets, impact development efficiency, and a studio’s ability to keep up with evolving player needs:

• Evaluating the cost-benefit trade-offs of building proprietary tools versus licensing third-party solutions.
• Aligning technology choices with long-term studio goals to maintain efficiency and adaptability.
• Managing budgets effectively by understanding the hidden costs of in-house development and external dependencies.

Kazimierz Łuska

VP Client Engineering
Tripledot Studios

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Lily Zhu

Senior Technology Product Manager
Tencent

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Sergei Solokhin

Principal Animation Engineer
Build A Rocket Boy

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Dive into the complex cloud infrastructure that powers Sea of Thieves, a AAA live service game with over 40 million players served by a web of microservices dealing with hundreds of billions of requests per month. This session will explore the architecture of a large-scale live service stack, focusing on resilient systems design and challenges Rare Ltd have faced along their journey such as:

• Handling large releases and mitigating incidents.
• Identifying the best data management techniques for their studio, including aging out data to cheaper storage while maintaining player progress.
• Migrating large amounts of data in an environment that is almost-always online.

Matt Cavanagh

Lead of Live Services
Rare Ltd

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Knowing your audience and what they want in a game is critical, but once you have a great game, how do you best spread the word and boost revenue? Panellists will discuss how to effectively leverage data to refine monetization strategies, optimise player acquisition and retention, and maintain engagement across multiple platforms by:

• Assessing player data, feedback, and trends to pre-emptively incorporate in-game features that both entice players and boost revenue.
• Leveraging data to create advertising strategies, like hosting in-game events, that attract new players and re-engage former ones.
• Incorporating in-game ads that enhance, rather than disrupt, gameplay and utilising A/B testing to improve and inform those strategies.

Louise Roberts

Monetisation Lead
Rare Ltd

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As more studios explore Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) models, the benefits of deeper player engagement, revenue control, and brand ownership are clear – but so are the challenges. This panel, moderated by the Founder and Director of Tebex, Lee McNeil, will examine the biggest hurdles of launching high-converting D2C platforms, as well as:

• Assessing the key benefits of offering a D2C channel to players.
• Outlining common challenges studios face when building their own infrastructure.
• Future-proofing solutions amid evolving player behaviours, platform shifts, and global regulations.

Lee McNeil

Founder and Director
Tebex

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In this presentation, Wargaming’s Publishing Product Director on World of Tanks Blitz, Natallia Pershyts, will detail how their team have strategically embedded IP partnerships and collaborations across multiple aspects of a game, balanced creative ambition with financial viability, and measured success beyond initial hype. Gain a deeper understanding of:

• Integrating IP collaborations holistically to enhance gameplay, marketing, and monetisation.
• Evaluating partnership potential by aligning brand synergy with long-term player engagement.
• Mitigating costs and risks by assessing real impact versus surface-level appeal.

Natallia Pershyts

Publishing Product Director - World of Tanks Blitz
Wargaming

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This fireside chat will elaborate on how studios can achieve great live ops success in-part by aligning new game seasons and themes, with fresh level design concepts. This conversation will also explore the importance of:

• Level design strategies and methodologies that contribute to the success of live service games.
• Organising and supporting your teams to give them the best chance of success delivering live season content.
• Leveraging analytics to and creating content for a diverse player base.

Michael How

Lead Level Designer
Sledghammer Games

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The role of UX design in live service games has evolved dramatically over the past 5-7 years, shifting from vague and undefined to a critical component of player retention and monetisation. This session discusses how studios may begin the task of quantifiably measuring the success of UX design through key metrics, the tools needed for accurate tracking, and why investing in UX is essential for long-term growth by:

• Understanding how the UX designer role has adapted to the demands of live service gaming, which in turn enables studios to leverage new opportunities.
• Identifying the right metrics and tools necessary to quantify UX success and improve player retention.
• Leveraging UX insights to inform design decisions and create a more personalised player experience.

Roman Bachilo

Director UX Design
Scopely

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In this session, Muhsin Yaramis, will reveal how deploying an efficient operational framework not only boosts cross-functional team collaboration and elevates player experiences, but also ensures launch and operational readiness from pre- and post-launch operations to sunset. We'll dive into strategies for streamlining live operations, advocating for player-centricity, and risk management practices. Attendees will hear about applicable and proven best practices such as:

• LiveOps Excellence: Learn how to deploy efficient frameworks that enhance cross-functional collaboration and ensure seamless launch and operational readiness from pre-launch to sunset.
• Player-Centric Strategies: Discover actionable strategies to elevate player experiences through a dedicated, player-centric approach integrated into live operations.
• Framework for Anticipating and Mitigating Risks to safeguard player experiences, employees, and brand integrity.

Muhsin Yaramis

Director Customer Experience - Global Publishing
Ubisoft

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Not every live service game can run forever, but knowing when and how to transition from active development to sustained support is critical for long-term success. This session will explore how CD PROJEKT RED successfully made such a switch for its popular live service card battler by involving players in the process:

• Identifying the right time to transition a game to a self-sustaining model or phase it out.
• Optimising monetisation for a self-sustaining model while keeping players engaged.
• Aligning development, LiveOps, and business strategy to provide players with game management tools.

Vladimir Tortsov

Director of Live Ops
CD PROJEKT RED

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