Subscriptions

Subscriptions gives you an additional business model to complement traditional social gaming monetization of one-time purchases. With subscriptions, you can establish a recurring revenue stream and offer updated content or premium experiences for a weekly or monthly fee.

Benefits & Results

Already, many games are offering subscriptions to users and seeing benefits such as:

• Incremental revenue. Subscriptions has increased overall revenue for game developers, increasing user purchases in their games. For some games, subscriptions has boosted overall revenue by 5% to 20%.

• Recurring revenue stream. Buffalo Studios’ Bingo Bash has seen renewal rates of 80% for subscribers each month.

• Increased engagement. Bingo Bash included a daily bonus as part of their subscription offer and, as a result, 85% percent of subscribers come back every day.

How Games Can Use Subscriptions

Games are seeing great success with subscriptions. Here are some best practices and examples of how to think about subscriptions:

Best Practices

• Create exclusivity. Make subscribers feel unique or special compared to other users. One way to do this is to create goods or experiences only for subscribers, such as a custom icon or avatar, VIP access to special rooms or areas of the game, or allow them to preview new game content before it’s available to other players.

• Minimize premium currency. Build additional value with specialty experiences & items instead of currency. Premium currency is effective as an incentive upfront for a subscription purchase; however, a discount on premium currency is not substantially compelling on its own to subscribers and can cannibalize in-game currency purchases. You can offer a much greater perceived value for your subscription by creating unique items, boosts and experiences.

• Strategically unlock subscription benefits. Do not make all items and experiences immediately available when the user signs up for a subscription. Space the benefits out over the course of your subscription period and unlock substantial value towards the renewal date. For example, Bingo Blitz rolls out a new bingo room exclusively for subscribers close to the renewal date.

• Target payers. Start off by targeting people for subscriptions who have already invested in the game and are active users.

These players are likely to understand Subscriptions and highly value the subscription benefits and are already comfortable with purchasing in the game.

Types of Subscription Offers:

• Daily rewards. Subscriptions are a great way to retain and engage users. Games can structure their subscription offer to reward people on a daily basis for coming to the game. For example, Bingo Blitz offers bigger daily bonus awards for every day that subscribers come back to play. As a result, the majority of Bingo Blitz’s subscribers come back every day, which has boosted retention for the game. This is a great way to increase engagement among payers in your game.

• Unlimited play. For games that gate gameplay on lives or energy, you may want to consider an offer for unlimited resources, allowing users to play as much as they want without waiting for replenishment.

• VIP club. These subscription offers give players a more exclusive game experience and usually include items such as limited edition virtual items, special power-ups or boosts to enhance game performance, early content previews, and in-game consumables or virtual currency.

Getting Started with Subscriptions

Find out more about subscriptions by reading our documentation.