Yodo1’s Ioannis Lefkaditis Highlights Emerging DTC Trends at PGC Helsinki 2025

In October 2025, Ioannis Lefkaditis, Lead of Games Business Unit at Yodo1, joined industry leaders on stage at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki. He participated in the panel “How to Encourage Players to Utilise Your Web Stores”, sharing Yodo1’s experience managing live-service games and scaling web-store adoption across global markets.

About Pocket Gamer Connects

Pocket Gamer Connects (PGC) is one of the biggest international conferences for the games industry, bringing together developers, publishers, and technology partners to discuss trends, tools, and strategies shaping the market.

Panel Focus: The Rapid Evolution of DTC Strategies

The session focused on the rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategies and the impact of newly enabled link-outs from mobile games. Speakers discussed:

• Why DTC adoption accelerated in 2025
• How iOS policy changes expanded link-out opportunities
• Common barriers for studios (resourcing, uncertainty, compliance fears)
• Cost models and the difference between fixed vs. cost-plus approaches
• Best practices for driving traffic and trust in web stores
• How DTC revenue is shifting the way analysts read game performance

Key Insights Shared by Ioannis Lefkaditis

Drawing on his multi-year experience of leading live-service games and pioneering in the implementation and growth of Web Stores and DTC methods, Ioannis highlighted several practical takeaways for studios considering or scaling their web-store and DTC efforts:

• Clear link-out policies transformed web-store adoption. Recent platform changes finally allow developers to communicate about web stores directly inside their games. This shift removed the main obstacle to DTC adoption—uncertainty around compliance—and led to a significant rise in web-store conversions.
• Web-store share can reach 40–50% with the right approach. Based on year-over-year performance, once clear in-game messaging and link-outs are activated, web-store share can grow from ~20% to 40–50% of total payments, even for midcore titles without massive infrastructure.
• Start with a lightweight MVP. Teams often overestimate the work required. A functional link-out prototype can often be implemented within a week, allowing studios to validate player behaviour before investing in deeper catalog integrations or automation.
• Trust and habit are essential to sustaining DTC growth. Building consistent players routines is very important: daily or weekly gifts, loyalty rewards, promo codes, and a store interface that reflects the game’s aesthetic. These elements make players comfortable completing their first purchase and encourage long-term engagement.
• DTC revenue is not reflected in third-party analytics platforms. Platforms like AppMagic and Sensor Tower capture only in-app purchases reported by Google Play and the App Store. When part of a game’s revenue shifts to DTC, these tools may show a year-over-year decline. However, once web-store revenue is added to IAP figures, the true performance becomes clear. Understanding this distinction is increasingly important when evaluating a title’s overall growth.

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