I Built The First Ad-Free Mobile Gaming System

Evgeny Unegovsky

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Published: May 22nd, 2024

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About
Business

Evgeny Unegovsky

Founder, Subscrible

$85K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Subscrible

subscrible.com

from Limassol, Кипр

started January 2023

$85,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

Hi, I’m Evgeny Unegovsky, and together with Igor Diev, former UA manager at Playrix, we created Subscrible.

Subscrible is the first catalog app that offers an ad-free, uninterrupted gaming experience at no cost. We aim to diminish the disruption ads create in the gaming experience, while helping game developers grow their revenue and lower their user acquisition costs.

Today, we make revenue by splitting the user acquisition cost between multiple titles. For gamers, the catalog app is fully free

Our game catalog has already amassed over 15,000 users. We have recruited former employees of WN.Events and DevGamm game conferences to our biz dev team, which helps us to quickly grow clients/partners among game developers, and we use the funds they deposit to attract players to our catalog.

Research shows that players typically explore approximately 5.6 games on average, a figure that our own metrics consistently support. Users can't pay for individual ad-disabling solutions for every game, they need a unified solution.

Moreover, 32% of mobile gamers plan to spend less on in-app purchases in 2024, which aggravates the challenge of user retention. These findings prompted us to launch the first game catalog application that eliminated the need for advertising.

What helps us to eliminate the intrusive ads? It’s a simple solution: spreading the cost of user acquisition across multiple game developers. Here’s how it works.

For gamers, Subscrible is a free game catalog app that aggregates different types of games such as Archero, Asphalt, Fantastic Jewel Lost Kingdom, and more.

But for developers, this is a unique platform that offers access to a wider audience, reduces user acquisition costs, and increases player engagement. By reducing intrusive ads, developers can create a better experience for gamers and have a healthier monetization model.

It's important to note that while gaming companies spend nearly $27 billion on user acquisition, only about 10% of this investment is recouped as revenue from game studios, primarily through non-intrusive advertising formats.

According to the latest report from Liftoff, the average cost per install (CPI) for casual games between March 2023 to March 2024 on iOS was $4.83 per install. Imagine, the user acquiring on iOS costs nearly 8x as much as on Android.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

After graduating from ITMO University, I founded my first company, which provided website hosting services, VDS, dedicated servers, and distributed clusters. In 2006, I moved to Israel where I was coding for the Israel army, and later delved into the MarTech and IT spheres.

I've always been passionate about computer games. Back in school, at 10, I started developing my first games and participated in various international youth coding competitions. When the ATARII didn't have a hard disk, I recorded them on audio cassettes and later used the Delphi language.

Over fifteen years, I co-founded two leading travel tech companies in Israel, including a unique company with more than $13 million per year in turnover, and an “Uber for day trips” with a unique search engine that creates personalized offers for tourists.

The inspiration for Subscrible stemmed from my family and friends. My child was eager to enjoy games, but his limited playtime was often interrupted by video advertisements, turning what should have been moments of fun into periods of anxiety, and the family's relaxation time was disrupted.

I noticed that disabling ads was not a viable solution either, since it forced us to purchase subscriptions for every game, which, in turn, creates animosity against game developers. At the same time, my friends remarked that they do not play games that have cover ads and proceeded to delete them immediately.

In the gaming market, there is a prevalent issue — advertising costs are soaring while advertising revenues are declining. Consequently, game developers keep pouring more resources in this area, but experiencing diminishing returns.

According to an IAB study, titled “Changing the Game: How Games Advertising Powers Performance,” nearly 90% of surveyed companies stated that gaming advertising is increasingly important to their company, and 40% are planning to increase spending in this area in 2024.

This positions gaming as the third most anticipated channel for increased investment, and we’re offering a viable solution.

Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.

Before we started developing the app, we created a landing page that included a brief description of the idea and a subscription option. We then ran Facebook Ads, which yielded unexpectedly high results.

We achieved a Click-Through Rate (CTR) of over 5% and more than 50 users subscribed for the product launch, confirming our hypothesis that there was a strong demand in the current gaming market for what we have to offer.

Our plan involved disabling ads in games for users coming from our app, so it was crucial to determine whether this was technically feasible, especially with the recent Google and Apple updates. Many industry experts doubted it could be done, but for programmers, nothing is impossible.

We managed to develop two simple apps that solely performed this function. Without going into technical details, the first app captured certain user information and sent it to our server.

The second app then reads this information from the server to verify the user's transfer from our app. This development was greatly supported by my friends: Eduard—a former server admin at my hosting company 20 years ago, now a platform engineer and DevOps expert at a iGaming company in Cyprus, and Bulat, a Senior iOS developer who had recently moved back to Israel.

After we convinced ourselves that creating such an SDK for games was possible, I suggested simplifying the first version even further. Asking game developers to integrate the SDK was potentially challenging from a marketing perspective and would require their programmers' involvement.

Therefore, we decided to initially include only games that did not use interruptive ads in our catalog or are ready to disable it for our users. Later, we also implemented a feature that allowed us to load all necessary data from Google Play with a single click. Game studios lost nothing, but gained additional traffic from our catalog.

Although we understood that this approach might offer fewer benefits to the user and potentially lower retention rates, it was crucial to demonstrate that we could achieve multiple game installations from our catalog, with an average app installation rate under these conditions.

This is a unique platform that offers access to a paying audience that values their time. We reduce user acquisition costs, and increase player engagement.

Describe the process of launching the business.

The initial tests were discouraging. We attracted some users who visited our app daily, not just to install new games but also to open games they had already installed. Some users installed up to 38 games in total, but the total number of game installations from our app was ten times lower than the number of installs of our app itself.

We identified several losses at different stages, starting from the Google Play market page, which had unclear descriptions for users. We made various changes and tested each one separately using analytics tools like Appsflyer and Amplitude. We modified texts and images on the Google Play page, changed the app sorting, developed a user recommendation system, provided user hints, and many other things.

Ultimately, we reached our target figures. Often, simple changes had a more significant impact than complex ones. For example, simply removing a game's page from our catalog doubled the installation numbers without any impact on the retention rate.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Since launching Subscrible, we’ve employed several effective strategies to attract and retain users.

We’ve participated at gaming conferences like the Israel Mobile Summit, the Nordic Game Conference, the WN Conference in Belgrade, and others. At the WN Conference in Abu Dhabi, we even set up a booth. These events have been crucial for us to network directly with game developers and explain the benefits of our platform in person.

We also use LinkedIn to connect with developers and have hosted webinars that regularly attract over 50 participants. These webinars provide valuable insights into monetization and user retention strategies that do not require intrusive ads.

We not only help game developers attract effective traffic, but also allow them to gain bonuses from our partners, enhancing their monetization potential. We've also started building a community of developers and players.

By spreading the cost of user acquisition across multiple game developers. For gamers, Subscrible is a free game catalog app that aggregates different types of games such as Archero, Asphalt, Fantastic Jewel Lost Kingdom, and more.

But for developers, this is a unique platform that offers access to a paying audience that values their time. We reduce user acquisition costs, and increase player engagement. By reducing intrusive ads, developers can create a better experience for gamers and have a healthier monetization model.

Overall, we keep our approach simple and direct, focusing on bringing benefits to both gamers and game developers. The better the experience we’re able to offer, the more people will keep using our app and recommend it to others.

It’s important to remain adaptable.. Being able to pivot, adjust, and innovate based on market feedback and unexpected challenges can be a game-changer for success.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We're developing our own SDK which is going to be a game changer for us. It will allow us to disable ads for games in our catalog, helping us attract a broader range of games and offer more benefits to players, enhancing game retention and improving the user experience.

We are also planning to launch our own ad network with non-interrupting formats. This will enable game developers to earn more by selling ads at higher rates, due to the ads being less frequent but more valuable.

Another initiative in the works is our crowdfunding platform for game marketing. This will allow gamers to invest in games they believe in, providing developers with a new way to fund their projects.

To personalize game discovery, we are improving our AI-driven game recommendations. This will help gamers find games that match their tastes, enhancing satisfaction. We're enhancing our data analysis capabilities to better understand player behaviors.

A peer-to-peer marketplace for in-game items is also in the plans. This will allow players to buy, sell, or trade items across different games, enriching the gaming ecosystem.

Additionally, we plan to introduce a feature to showcase or exchange in-game achievements. This will encourage players to explore new games and share their accomplishments, making our community more engaging.

We’re also focusing on developing better tools for player interaction and communication, which will help turn our platform into a social hub for gamers.

Lastly, we plan to organize player tournaments, adding a competitive layer to the gaming experience and building a sense of camaraderie among players.

All these planned initiatives are aimed at not just enhancing the player experience but also providing innovative ways for developers to monetize their games. We're looking forward to transforming Subscrible into a comprehensive community for both gamers and developers. The future looks exciting, and these developments will significantly shape our platform’s growth.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

One of the most advantageous lessons from launching a startup is the importance of adaptability. Being able to pivot, adjust, and innovate based on market feedback and unexpected challenges can be a game-changer for success.

Another valuable lesson is the significance of resilience. Building a startup involves facing numerous obstacles and setbacks, and the ability to bounce back and persevere through tough times is essential.

Additionally, effective networking plays a crucial role in the success of a startup. Building connections with mentors, advisors, and potential customers can provide valuable support, guidance, and growth opportunities, and open doors we didn’t even know existed.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

At Subscrible, we use a variety of tools and methods to streamline our operations and enhance our adaptability to the fast-changing gaming market. Our use of Agile and SCRUM across both development and marketing greatly enhances our flexibility and responsiveness.

Our projects are managed in weekly sprints, which help us make quick and efficient progress, allowing for timely adjustments. For customer relationship management, we use Pipedrive. This platform helps us manage our interactions effectively and keep up our engagement with game studios.

We use Notion for centralized task management, which clarifies and organizes our operations, and Discord serves as our virtual office, facilitating cost-free, real-time communication and collaboration within our decentralized team. Calendly helps us schedule meetings and webinars effortlessly.

For development, we use Flutter and Dart, which allows us to build high-quality, natively compiled applications for mobile from a single codebase—this speeds up development and reduces costs significantly. For our backend services, we use PHP with the Yii framework, which provides a powerful platform for developing scalable web applications.

We also employ a hybrid infrastructure that combines cloud solutions and dedicated servers, providing both cost-effectiveness and scalability. This setup ensures we have the reliability and agility needed to quickly adapt to market changes.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Several influential books have shaped my approach to innovation and leadership. Here’s a quick rundown:

For instance, like "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who dedicated himself to removing baobabs from his planet before they grow too large and overwhelm it, we’re on a mission to clear the mobile gaming world of intrusive ads that can overwhelm and degrade the user experience. Just as he clears his planet, we aim to clear the way for cleaner, more enjoyable mobile gaming experiences.

Yuval Noah Harari's "Homo Deus" challenges me to look towards the future and anticipate the evolution of technology and human interests. Additionally, he illustrates what real power is, something confusing, as he says, "In a world deluged by irrelevant information." Similarly, we strive to offer a clean, uncluttered environment for gamers, free from the usual noise of disruptive ads.

Eric Berne’s "Games People Play" explores how people switch between different roles, or "hats," depending on the situation. This concept helps us understand which "hat" a person is wearing at any time, and by identifying that, I’ve been able to have better communication with those around me.

Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" deeply influenced me, because it advocates for groundbreaking innovation over mere incremental improvements. He says that replicating what others do may expand the existing market from 1 to n, simply adding more of what we already know. However, inventing something unique propels you from 0 to 1, establishing a completely new market.

Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design" helped deepen my understanding of game mechanics and monetization. Even though I started creating games in school, this book taught me the importance of balancing monetization with player satisfaction, ensuring that games are not only fun but also engaging and profitable without being intrusive.

"CEO 2.0" by Dr. Tatiana Indina, which was a gift to me from the author herself, consolidates insights from many business books I’ve read, providing a comprehensive guide on modern leadership and the use of technology in business.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Starting as an entrepreneur can be both exhilarating and daunting. Here are some pieces of advice that, from my experience, can help you navigate the journey:

Passion-Driven Purpose: Start your venture fueled by a passion that aligns with a deeper purpose. Build not just a business, but a movement that resonates with your soul.
Strategic Storytelling: Craft a compelling narrative that goes beyond a traditional business plan. Tell the story of your venture, weaving in your objectives, target market, and revenue model to captivate stakeholders.
Customer-Centric Agility: Embrace a dynamic approach that revolves around continuous customer feedback. Stay agile, iterate quickly, and adapt to evolving market needs to stay ahead of the curve.

Remember, every successful entrepreneur started somewhere. Stay focused, stay determined, and keep pushing forward, even when the journey gets tough.