Mobile game growth is getting harder to buy. Studios still need effective user acquisition, but rising costs and a crowded market have made post-install user performance far more important to sustainable growth. The key question today is whether a game can keep users engaged, convert that engagement into long-term value and do so without weakening the player experience.

To understand how studios and publishers are responding, ZBD commissioned Atomik Research to survey hundreds of senior mobile game developers in the US and UK working across retention, engagement and monetization.

The resulting report, Developer Insights: The Retention & Engagement Challenge, examines the strategies studios rely on today, where those approaches are falling short and which engagement models developers believe could drive the next phase of mobile game growth.

Here are four of the findings that stood out.

1. Retention is attracting more budget

Half of the studios surveyed increased their retention and re-engagement budgets over the past year. A further 42% kept their investment at the same level. That leaves very few studios cutting back.

The numbers reflect the growing importance of player lifetime value as user acquisition becomes harder to scale efficiently. Lifecycle marketing and community and social features were each identified by 74% of respondents as having a strong impact on retention, followed closely by LiveOps features, promotions and events at 71%.

These are not experimental tactics. They are established parts of the mobile game growth stack, and studios continue to invest in them because they work.

But widespread adoption creates another problem: once the same retention strategies appear across most games, they become harder to use as a source of differentiation and their impact can begin to fatigue.

As Turborilla CEO John Wright puts it:

“Mobile games can’t rely on buying growth forever. CPIs continue to rise, making retention the new UA and the fastest path to scale, and increasingly about creating more value from players you’ve already acquired.”

For studios, the opportunity now lies in making post-install engagement more distinctive, not merely doing more of the same.

2. The established retention playbook is losing differentiation

Eighty percent of developers agreed that retention and engagement strategies across mobile games have become repetitive rather than innovative.

LiveOps, lifecycle marketing and community-building still deliver value, but widespread adoption has made them standard practice. There are also signs that their impact can begin to fatigue: 38% of developers working on IAP-centric games reported greater fatigue around their LiveOps. Players regularly encounter similar event calendars, offers, progression systems and messaging across multiple titles, often within the same genre.

Adding another event or push notification may lift a metric, but marginal optimization does not necessarily create a stronger relationship with the player.

Oxana Fomina, Founder and LiveOps Monetization Expert at Gradient Universe, described the issue in direct terms:

“The industry has become good at acquiring and converting users, but after the first purchase or the first ad view, most games stop engaging with them as individuals. Everyone receives the same content, the same events, and the same push notifications — regardless of how long they’ve been playing, how much they’ve spent, or why they stopped showing up.”

Her point is that many games still struggle to adapt engagement to where an individual player actually is in the lifecycle.

A new player, a long-term spender and a lapsed user should not receive the same experience. Yet building genuinely personalized player journeys requires more than segmentation tools. It requires product, marketing, monetization and LiveOps teams to coordinate around player behavior.

This helps explain why stronger player personalization was the most selected future retention driver in the survey.

The full report explores where personalization challenges are most visible and how they vary across IAP, IAA and hybrid monetization models.

3. Monetization and player experience remain difficult to balance

The most common retention pain point was balancing monetization friction with a fun player experience, selected by 51% of respondents.

This tension sits at the heart of free-to-play game design. Studios need to generate revenue, but monetization mechanics that interrupt gameplay, create excessive pressure or feel disconnected from progression can weaken the experience they are meant to support.

Another 45% of developers reported difficulty retaining and engaging spending players, while 39% struggled to tailor experiences to different user segments.

These findings suggest that monetization performance cannot be separated from engagement design. Revenue is more sustainable when players see a clear and fair exchange of value—not when monetization is layered onto the game without regard for the wider player journey.

Vincent Février, Senior Advisor at TapNation, connects this directly to changing player expectations:

“Players are becoming more conscious of the value of their time and attention.”

For publishers, that creates a practical design question: how can monetization support progression and engagement rather than compete with them?

4. Loyalty and in-game rewards are entering studio roadmaps

Nine in ten developers surveyed have considered implementing real-money rewards or loyalty systems to improve retention and engagement.

These in-game reward and loyalty programs ranked as the second biggest expected driver of player engagement over the next 12-24 months, cited by 43% of responders. Interest is already translating into action, with many developers planning, testing or operating these systems today.

The important distinction is where and how those rewards are delivered, with the data skewing towards interest in native, in-game mechanics.

External rewarded acquisition platforms can be effective marketing channels, but they typically reach a limited cohort and sit outside the game experience. Embedded rewards give studios more control over placement, pacing, audience targeting and the relationship between rewards and gameplay.

A reward can be tied to a progression milestone, a LiveOps event, a re-engagement moment or another meaningful action within the player journey. Done well, the system feels native to the game rather than attached to it.

That does not make rewards a shortcut. Poorly designed incentives can create economic pressure, attract the wrong behavior or become another repetitive mechanic. Their value depends on thoughtful integration with the game economy and the experience players already enjoy.

The report examines where studios currently sit in the implementation process, the barriers holding others back and how attitudes differ across monetization models.

The retention challenge is also an innovation challenge

Mobile game developers are not abandoning the established retention playbook. They are investing more heavily in it while searching for ways to move beyond its limitations.

The survey shows an industry that remains optimistic, but recognizes that standardization has made differentiation harder. The next competitive advantage may come from deeper personalization, stronger player relationships, new loyalty structures or engagement systems that offer players a clearer exchange of value.

The full Retention & Engagement Challenge report includes:

• Detailed survey results from 195 senior mobile game developers
• Breakdowns across IAP, IAA and hybrid monetization models
• The leading barriers to retention innovation
• Adoption stages for in-game reward and loyalty programs
• Commentary from mobile game operators and industry experts
• A performance case study showing how embedded rewards affected retention and ARPDAU

Download the full report to explore the complete findings.