PlayDeck

Some thoughts and results from 2025 for Telegram games. The platform matured fast — and this is just the beginning. 2026 will be faster, deeper, and far more insightful.

We're wrapping up the year and will share detailed results soon. For now, we want to highlight the two main shifts that defined 2025 for Playdeck. 1. From a portfolio to a managed pipeline. We moved away from the "catalog + studio + publishing" model and focused on what consistently works on Telegram: product iterations, analytics, and traffic management. We now evaluate each game individually, rapidly test hypotheses, and scale successful solutions—from mechanics to marketing. 2. From hoping for a hit to managing success. We stopped waiting for a random "breakout hit" and started engineering it. This has not only made results more predictable but also allowed us to treat our audience as an asset for the entire ecosystem, strengthening cross-promotion and making key metrics more resilient. We'll be back in early January with news and fresh results. P.S. Please leave a reaction to this post if the topic interests you and you'd like to have an AMA session with the Playdeck team at the start of the year. We'll gather questions and go live.

We know what you’ll be doing over the holidays: reading a first-hand story about game production at PlayDeck. Take a look at our insider perspective Bring your questions and share your co-launch experience in the comments below https://lnkd.in/gmHKnjbQ

Which types of games actually have a better chance to get strong marketing support inside PlayDeck? Our latest data review points to a simple pattern: titles with R14 above 7% and clear competitive + social mechanics consistently look safer for scaling budgets. Not that hard, right? Along the way we also saw this effect: - games that people play for a long time, - games that they willingly return to at least within a week, - and games that they pay in are three different line-ups. The overlap exists, but it is much smaller than intuition suggests. From the player side, the strongest, most stable love right now clusters around: - strategy titles, - fast, snackable puzzle games, - match-3, - and hybrids where a strategic layer is wrapped around match-3 mechanics. For marketing, this translates into a clear bias: - R14 > 7% beats “nice R1 only”; - competitive loops (PvP, ladders, events, async rivalry) make it easier to justify extra spend; - social structures (clans, alliances, co-op, chat) help keep that R14 alive once you start pushing paid traffic. Genre labels still matter, but they no longer buy you budget by default. Retention on day 14+ and robust social/competitive loops are what move a title into the “this is safe to support and scale” bucket. What trends do you currently see on other gaming platforms?

We’d like to remind you that this autumn we were actively involved in game conferences: speaking, joining panel discussions, meeting and talking with colleagues. Below is a selection of events where we might have crossed paths in person. Let us know if you spot yourself in the photos, and share which events you’ve already attended this year and which conferences you plan to add to your calendar next year. WN Conference Cyprus'24 Game Industry Conference GP CONF 2025 TOKYO GAME SHOW 2025 Mobidictum Conference 2025

How PlayDeck connects studios and indie developers with 8M+ players inside Telegram. Over eight million users have interacted with PlayDeck, giving rise to a real entertainment-driven community inside Telegram. They enter games for immediate fun, and PlayDeck links developers directly to this active audience. The entry phase is reduced to essentials: focused hypothesis checks, soft launches, baseline traffic, core analytics. When metrics hold, scaling begins through increased inflow, events, content updates, retention and monetisation tuning. The final stage is stable growth built on systematic strategies, precise attribution, a unified technical stack, and internal traffic sources. Three operational models are available now: Self-publishing (catalog soft launch - baseline traffic - analytics) Full publishing with traffic expansion (traffic scaling - events - content support) Co-development with joint production and full publishing stack. PlayDeck connects studios and indie developers to a community that plays for entertainment and can transform early tests into sustained product growth. Partner results show registration increases up to 91%, DAU growth up from 17% to 94%. Let’s see how it might work with your game.

PlayDeck's new strategy: We are not the marketplace, we are publisher building gaming in telegram If we've met at conferences, you've heard it straight from us: PlayDeck has shifted its strategic focus from the familiar marketplace model to becoming a developer and publisher. Playing it safe within the "catalog" was comfortable. But comfort is the enemy of growth in a nascent market that's being built right before our eyes. Our experience has shown one simple truth: to win here, it's not enough to be just a platform. You must be a pioneer, a creator, and a publisher who truly understands the audience and is ready to run countless experiments. That's why we've made a fundamental strategic shift and want to reiterate this step: PlayDeck is now a developer and publisher. We are betting on ourselves: on our expertise and courage to create and publish the most in-demand gaming experiences inside Telegram and share our expertise with the market. So, what happens to the catalog? It's evolving into our "Friends, Family & Feedback" Lab, where you can launch your games on Telegram with maximum comfort and minimal effort. Here’s the street-smart magic of our catalog: - Soft-launch your game. - Get live, unfiltered feedback from real users. - Stress-test your economy and pricing. - Receive actionable analytics, producer insights, and game design review. If the data shows potential, we take the game beyond the catalog and publish it under the PlayDeck brand, fuelling it with paid advertising both inside and outside Telegram. To be perfectly clear: This is not a step back from partnership, it's doubling down on the most effective path to success. We are looking for studios ready to play by the new rules. To those already on this publishing journey with us, we're waiting for you in the comments. Do you see the results? All comments and questions are welcome!

Are there real opportunities to make money with Telegram games? How to get started? What does the messenger’s audience expect? - These are the questions developers often ask before publishing. We’re sharing insights from a developer already releasing their games on Telegram and working with us. Share your thoughts, let’s discuss.

We keep hearing the same strategic challenge from game developers: "We see the potential in Telegram, but we lack the specific expertise to discover it effectively." After years of focused work, we've published a definitive guide that answers: • Is building a real audience on Telegram achievable? • What does it actually take to succeed? We break down: • Key advantages: virality, community, gamification • Critical challenges: payments, blocking risks, retention • A clear launch plan with working strategies The guide is live. Read it, use it and bring us your questions: https://lnkd.in/getzVp8R

What if chatting with friends felt more like hanging out? That's the question driving us. We're on a mission to blend gaming seamlessly into Telegram, adding a spark of fun and shared experience to communication. To make this happen, we're building and publishing games ourselves. This hands-on experience is our greatest teacher. We learn what works, iterate quickly and are committed to sharing those insights to help other developers succeed on this platform. This journey is just beginning. Want to see what we're learning about building games for a messaging ecosystem? Read our latest article where we share our progress and vision: https://lnkd.in/gvATJi5h