Top Games Inc. has seen revenue on the Amazon Appstore for Evony: The King’s Return increase by more than 12 times since the company handed over distribution in the alternative app stores to Flexion, the games marketing company.
Like many other game developers Top Games Inc. first published the game on its own but decided to relaunch it on the Amazon Appstore in October 2021, outsourcing operations, promotions, and user acquisition to Flexion. Since then, revenue has grown by an impressive 12x. In parallel, Flexion has also launched the game in other alternative stores and boosted the revenue further.
Top Games Inc. is a global multi-million-dollar games developer that focuses on the US market. In January, Evony: The King’s Return generated approximately USD 14m in Google Play for Top Games Inc.
“Top Games can do everything we do for themselves, it’s just that it doesn’t make economic sense,” says Jens Lauritzson, Flexion CEO. “We have around 100 people working on the success of each game and have spent years developing services and platform relations. That gives us a huge advantage when it comes to generating revenue.”
Updates drive revenue
“Continual updates and new content are vital to a game’s success,” he continues. “It builds user loyalty and that’s reflected in retention numbers. Good retention is a major factor in triggering in-app purchases and building revenue across all platforms. That is rightly where Top Games has its focus.”
Flexion specialises in taking games to the alternative app stores, including the Amazon Appstore, handling all the technical requirements, updates, user acquisition, platform relations and promotions. The developer gets an additional revenue stream with no upfront costs and very little effort. Flexion takes a game distribution and marketing on as a turn-key project.
“The extra revenue is adding to the game’s overall success,” says David Guo CEO at Top Games Inc. “When we handed over managing the alternative distribution to Flexion, we freed our people up. But we have also been delighted to see the scale of audiences that Flexion has reached for us and the boost in revenue they have achieved”.
Audiences for the game have increased by almost 4 times on Amazon alone since Flexion took over the reins.
The key to success
“Typically, developers prioritise Google Play and The App Store where they get the best return,” says Jens. “That means updates on other platforms are often delayed or sometimes skipped. At Flexion, we work hard with both the developer and the app stores to get every update online within 24 hours of its hitting Google. Often, we can do it within minutes.”
But that is only part of the Flexion service package. Flexion has made inroads in Europe (especially the UK) and Japan.
“Growing those markets has paid off,” says Jens, “because each user in those regions is likely to spend more in a game. That has meant our audience-building has given us a greater multiplier in revenue.”
Other success factors have been Evony: The King’s Return being one of the first Android games on Windows 11 thanks to Amazon’s deal with Microsoft on the Windows Subsystem for Android™. Flexion has also been relentlessly promoting the game on Amazon Fire devices and with Amazon and Top Games, it developed special features for Prime Day promotions.
