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Release Process šŸš€

The Poki release process is designed to guide your game from initial testing to a fullā€scale launch through a series of structured, dataā€driven phases. The process usually begins with a Soft Release stage, where we gather performance metrics and player feedback from a specific subset of our audience. Once any necessary optimizations are in place, your game moves to Global Release, unlocking promotional support and access to millions of players worldwide.

Throughout each step, close collaboration with our developer support team and continuous monitoring of key indicatorsā€”such as play conversion rates, error reports, and monetization metricsā€”ensure your game is polished, performant, and primed for success.

šŸ”§ Technical Test

During the Technical Test phase, the Poki team releases your game globally, but only in the new games category, which generally limits the amount of gameplays to about 5k a day. This test aims to identify any technical bottlenecks that would prevent your game from handling thousands or millions of players.

For most games this phase can be skipped, since previous tests will have provided enough data. In some cases, often with online multiplayer games or games using new technologies, we may require this phase.

Once we have enough data, we will review the data for your game and discuss any issues that may need fixing.

What We Measure:

  • Conversion to play;
  • Pre-play time;
  • Error reports;
  • Bug reports;

You can request a Technical Test by contacting your Poki representative directly. They will determine if itā€™s necessary based on your gameā€™s technical complexity.

šŸ–ļø Soft Release

For most games, after passing QA, the developer support team will plan a release date for soft release. It typically takes 1-2 weeks to schedule a soft release slot in our release calendar. Weā€™ll keep you closely updated as soon as a release date becomes available.

During the soft release, your game will be released on relevant category pages. This allows your game to be played by a representative subset of our global player base to get an impression of how the game will perform with our audience. Based on the gameā€™s performance, thereā€™s also a chance that your game gets promoted in additional categories. This will increase the amount of gameplays during this phase and is usually a good sign for the performance. Weā€™re not promoting the game on our homepage or localized homepages during this phase.

The soft release period should take around 2-3 weeks. You should be available to ship updates and fixes as needed during this period. The soft release phase cannot be skipped. It is a crucial phase to test your gameā€™s performance, gather data and feedback, and identify and fix remaining bugs.

While your game is in soft release, we expect you to monitor:

  • Game performance: Conversion to Play Rate and Engagement
  • Errors: Monitor the Error Details section in your Poki for Developers dashboard
  • Monetization: Aiming for at least 1 Ad per DAU (with a nice split between Midroll and Rewarded videos);
  • Player Feedback: Review both positive and negative feedback, as well as bug reports and identify any common patterns that you can act on.

If you identify bugs, want to adjust difficulty levels, or optimize UX/UI, the soft release phase is a great opportunity to make improvements. At this point you can also still add content to address player feedback. This can make sure that players have plenty of content to enjoy once the game reaches a global audience.

To submit an update, simply follow the same process as during QA: upload a new build and request a review. Once approved, the developer support team will publish your updated version.

šŸŒ Global Release

šŸŽ‰ Congrats! Your game is now ready to be introduced to millions of players around the globe! šŸŽ‰

What does a global release look like?

In phase 3, your game will be released to all of our millions of players around the globe. Depending on your gameā€™s performance during the soft release and how quickly you are to work on optimization, it usually takes 2 - 3 weeks to move from soft release to global release.

At this point your game will also be picked up by our promotion system. Depending on performance, the promotion system will automatically show your game on any of our localized homepages, relevant category pages, and game pages. As a new game, it will also get a significant push for around 2 weeks in our systems to increase its discoverability. On top of that, the game will get a fire icon on your thumbnail, indicating to players that your game is new.

šŸ“£ Post-Release Monitoring

We strongly encourage you to continue monitoring your gameā€™s performance and reports of bugs or errors. If you are thinking about potential improvements, feel free to reach out to the Poki team.