A report from GDC Festival of Gaming and Appcharge, a DTC payments platform for mobile games, reveals the state of direct-to-consumer (DTC) monetisation, predicts that there is huge potential for consumer app publishers to achieve major revenue uplift amounting to tens of billions of dollars across the app economy – if they embrace DTC. The research also highlights app publishers’ biggest challenge to maximise DTC value – lack of a clear strategy.
For app publishers, the scale of the DTC opportunity is significant, with the global in-app market across all consumer apps projected to reach $290Bn by 2030. The mobile gaming industry has already embraced the DTC model, with direct-to-consumer (DTC) monetisation a $17bn market and still growing. Consumer app sub-categories such as fitness, education, lifestyle, entertainment, and subscription services are now set for a surge in growth.
However, success could be compromised, as more than half of professional game developers surveyed (52%) admit to not making significant changes to their DTC strategy. Only 25% of respondents say their organisation has increased investment in DTC channels and 58% remain in the exploring or testing stages of their strategy. Just under half (45%) claim that less than 10% of their current revenue comes from DTC.
| The full report, Direct-to-Consumer is a $17 Billion Market for Mobile Gaming, is available here |
Senior-level accountability for DTC strategy and a dedicated team is their greatest challenge. Whilst 83% of companies assign responsibility to an individual at the director level or higher, only 43% have a C-level executive responsible. 50% claim there are no people at their company dedicated to DTC, and only 38% plan to increase the number of dedicated DTC people this year, which is a reflection on their attempt to take DTC strategy seriously.
These figures seem incongruous with the publishers’ commercial aspirations made possible by the Epic vs. Apple 2025 ruling and policy changes from Apple and Google. More than two-thirds (67%) of publishers expect their DTC revenues to grow this year, 41% expecting double-digit growth and 18% predicting growth of 30% or more.
The research shows the value publishers are capturing has expanded well beyond the 30% margin improvement. Median DTC revenue uplift is 15% across the full sample, rising to 35% for leading adopters. More than three-quarters (77%) of publishers say DTC monetisation now performs at least as well as their app store channels, and 63% of leading adopters say it is doing better.
DTC has unleashed potential for app developers to improve app quality, creating offers and experiences that were curbed by app store billing, with direct ownership of player relationships, richer first-party data, and faster experimentation.
Top objectives for investing in DTC include increasing revenue (63%), building direct relationships with players (53%), improving monetisation (45%), and reducing dependency on app stores (40%).
The gap is widening between DTC leaders and the rest of the industry. 62% of publishers describe themselves as behind their peers on DTC, while only 14% consider themselves innovators and 25% say their DTC programmes are scaling or mature. The window to catch up is narrowing as leaders compound their advantage.
Chen Aspler, Director of Payments and Fraud Prevention at Appcharge, says: “Mobile games didn’t just lead on direct-to-consumer payments because studios were bolder. They led because they had the most to lose and the hardest problem to solve: the lowest average order value in consumer commerce, launch-day concurrency spikes, digital goods with no delivery evidence, radically local payment behaviour, and structurally high friendly fraud. Everything that makes payments difficult, in one category, at once. The categories following will move far faster than games did because the hard problems are already solved, the supplier market already exists, and the playbook is written. Games spent three years learning what breaks. The next wave gets a twelve-month adoption curve instead.”
“The shift toward direct-to-consumer payments will not remain limited to mobile games,” adds Eric Liaw, General Partner at IVP, contributing to the report. “Many other consumer apps operate under similar platform fee structures and face similar constraints when attempting to build direct relationships with users. Gaming has been the large-scale proving ground for direct-to-consumer apps. Developers in categories such as AI creation, fitness, education, lifestyle, entertainment, and other subscription services will see the same economic benefits, and the shift could extend across the broader app economy.”
