Last year, our first survey on the state of D2C caught the gaming industry standing right at the edge of a shift in monetization strategy. This year, the shift already happened. D2C is not an experiment or an edge play anymore. Download the 2026 Report: buff.ly/HWL3jeA

Wherever you are today, the path to 50%+ is well marked. Read the full breakdown, starting off with a review of which games are the best fit for D2C: buff.ly/reohfHL

50%+: The fully integrated playbook. A strong steering strategy, creator programs, retargeting, exclusive offers, and live ops all working together to keep players coming back. Simply: D2C success isn’t about the web store alone. It’s about how your GTM engine maturity.

0-20%: The store is live, but barely anyone knows it exists. Web store links are buried in menus, little promotion, no retargeting or email. 20-50%: D2C is a real channel now. Prominent steering, active social and Discord promotion, targeted VIP offers, early creator rewards.

Here’s the part most miss: launching a web store doesn’t get you there on its own. Your web store is only as strong as the engine driving players to it. Let's take a look...

Add in a packed Hivemind mixer on Monday night and a steady stream of great conversations at our booth, and it’s been a fantastic start in Helsinki. We’re here all day today for Day 2. If you want to talk D2C monetization for your game, come find us at the booth!

Day 1 at Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics did not disappoint. Jeremy Waxman took the stage to break down how to prevent D2C from wrecking your in-game economy, and Cédric Maisonnier joined the Webstore Wizardry panel on the business case for reallocating growth toward D2C.

Avid did exactly this. Moving off their previous provider, they plugged FastSpring into their existing stack and went live across more than 60 integration points in under three weeks. You keep the system you built. You hand off the compliance you don’t.

The connection is composable, not a migration. Signed webhooks and a few targeted API calls, so your system still decides when to charge, retry, pause, or change a plan, and FastSpring carries it out.

Your subscription platform stays the source of truth and keeps running your billing logic. FastSpring slots in underneath as merchant of record and handles the parts you don’t want to own: secure card data, global tax and VAT, remittance, and chargebacks.

The reason a lot of teams never switch payment providers isn’t price. It’s the billing stack they’d have to rip out to do it. Switching a payment provider shouldn’t mean rebuilding any of it. FastSpring’s Managed Subscriptions are built so it doesn’t. buff.ly/gueXFFM

If you’re thinking about D2C, or already running it and want to do it better, come talk to our team at the FastSpring booth. We’ll walk you through how going direct can help you reach players in more places and keep more of what your game earns.

Presented by the Wisconsin Games Alliance, MDEV brings together indie and AAA developers, industry pros, students, and players for two full days of sessions, panels, workshops, and developer showcases, all focused on the science, art, and business of making games.

The Midwest’s biggest games event has grown 500% since 2022. We’re excited to be part of it. FastSpring is sponsoring MDEV 2026, November 6-7 at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Links to grab a ticket and book a meeting are on our blog: buff.ly/3wPOj71

See which countries spike hardest, and how to maximize international Cyber Weekend sales here: buff.ly/k6oYA5P

Some of these markets don’t just match the US spike — they surpass it. A few countries climb far higher than you might expect, and the gaps between them might change where you point your spend and efforts.

And that isn’t just a U.S. story anymore. The November bump shows up across all 8 of the countries we broke out in our analysis — including the UK, Germany, Canada, Brazil, India, Australia, and China.

Here’s what most people miss: Stretch your plan across the entire quarter, and the measured lift drops to around 7%, because October and December sit closer to average. So the real edge is specifically in November — the month when shopping holidays drive buying.

Whether you focus on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or all of Cyber Weekend, November is a massive driver of sales for digital technology companies, just as it is for physical consumer goods. This one month runs about 18% above an average month's sales. buff.ly/k6oYA5P

If you’ve got questions about going direct, or you just want to see firsthand how straightforward D2C can be, come find us at booth C1112. We’d love to talk through what it could look like for your game.

Our own Jesse Paliotto will be on a panel digging into D2C monetization for games. Keep an eye on the MIGS schedule for the time and stage as details roll out.