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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Patrick Moran

Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder
Look North World

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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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This talk by Michael Schade, Co-Founder & CEO of ROCKFISH Games, will provide an in-depth analysis of how free and paid content updates for EVERSPACE 2 have performed from a Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) perspective. He will explore the strategic approaches used to balance these updates and how they’ve impacted player engagement, monetization, and long-term retention. Attendees will learn to balance base game engagement via free updates and creating value through paid content by:

• Implementing effective strategies for balancing free and paid content in a GaaS model.
• Using metrics to track the performance of content updates and their impact on player retention.
• Outlining lessons learned from EVERSPACE 2’s journey that can be applied to other games within the GaaS space.

Michael Schade

CEO & Co-Founder
ROCKFISH Games

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This presentation will introduce a universal framework for designing a monthly Live Ops events calendar for mid-core games. Poiasnyk will refer to their own games as well as similar titles. He will try to create a step-by-step algorithm that synergises unique offers, in-game events, and promotional campaigns into a cohesive meta-layer. The goal is to provide actionable guidelines that boost in-game KPIs, while offering a scalable template that can be adapted across various projects.

Chapters:

• Introduction & Objectives: Overview of the importance of a unified Live Ops strategy and the goals of the presentation.
• Live Ops Fundamentals & Meta-Loops: Explanation of key Live Ops elements and the concept of meta-loops in Live Ops.
• Example and Best Practices: What the games have in common in terms of patterns and successful tactics.
• Developing the Universal Events Calendar Algorithm: Step-by-step guide on constructing the framework and why it works.
• Conclusion & Key Recommendations: Summary and recommendations.

Poiasnyk Pavlo

Director of LiveOps Department
Plarium

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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

Founder & CEO
Potaco Games

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Elisa Olmedo - Associate Production Director, led a strategic shift in ways of working within the Core Gameplay area of Farm Heroes Saga by re-organising the team into smaller, agile 'pods'. This presentation will explore not only how this model helps the team manage limited resources and increases visibility across all roles, but also how building a great team culture is an essential first step in an organisational change by:

• Enabling team members to gain a better understanding of cross-team strategies, goals, and approaches.
• Maximising efficiency and resource management through a structured, cohort-based approach.
• Drawing a connection between their shift to a pod-model and success of the team.

Elisa Olmedo

Former Associate Production Director
Ex-King

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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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