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Release Process

At Poki, we work with different game release phases that are based on the needs and status of your game. We do this to optimize your game’s performance before releasing it to our global player base. Once your game has passed our initial QA checks to make sure it properly implements our SDK, requirements, and as many best practices as possible, we offer three potential release phases to help your game be as successful as possible. Based on your goals, your account manager will help you figure out the release plan that makes the most sense for your game. Our three release phases are as follows

🔧 Technical Test

A technical test is a quick live test for your game with a small pool of players. This test is created to look into any technical bottlenecks and make sure your game is (technically) ready to handle thousands or millions of players at scale. The technical complexity of your game helps us determine if this test is necessary for your game.

What does a technical test look like?

Your game will be released globally, but only in the new games category. This should limit the amount of gameplays to a maximum of 5k gameplays a day.

Since the goal of a technical test is to get specific information on a technical aspect of your game, once we have enough data, your game will be removed and the test will be concluded. We do this to ensure we maintain a high quality standard for new content on our platform while giving you some more time to fix whatever might be needed.

These are some of the features and metrics that are important to check in your Poki for Developers dashboard during this phase:

  • Conversion to play
  • Pre-play time
  • Errors reports
  • Bug reports

🏖️ Soft Release

The goal of this phase is to get your game in the best possible shape before a global release. The soft release will give you an indication of the player reception and the overall performance of your game.

What does a soft release look like?

Your game will be released on relevant category pages. This allows the game to be played by a representative subset of our global player base in order to give the best impression of how the game will perform with our audience. There’s also a chance based on the game’s performance that it gets promoted on other game pages as well. This will increase the amount of gameplays during this phase and is usually a good sign for the performance. We’re not promoting the game on any homepages during this phase. The soft release period should take around 2-3 weeks and developers should be ready to ship updates and fixes to their game during this period.

These are some of the features and metrics that are important to check during this phase:

  • Engagement
  • Monetization
  • Player Feedback

🌍 Global Release

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

What does a global release look like?

A global release means your game is ready for the millions of players on Poki and is eligible to be picked up by our promotion system. The game could then show up on any of our localized homepages, relevant category pages, and game pages. The performance of your game will automatically determine the amount of promotions your game gets and on what pages the games will be visible. As a new game, it will also get a significant push in our systems to increase the chances of it finding relevant positions to be promoted on. Next to that, the game will get a fire icon on your thumbnail, indicating to players that your game is new.

📣 Ad Hoc Updates

Once your game has been globally released, we encourage you to keep an eye on its performance as well as any player feedback. This might lead you to update the game for two main reasons:

Updating a game to address bugs and/or game performance

With a bigger audience, it’s always possible you’ll encounter additional bugs or performance issues in your game. As soon as you notice an issue that might be affecting performance, we encourage you to address the issue(s) as soon as possible and submit a new version for the team to review and set live. Additionally, if you feel your game can be better optimized from a tech, engagement, or monetization perspective, we also encourage you to make those optimizations as better metrics across the board can make your game eligible for more promotions.

Updating a game to re-engage players with additional content

Substantial content updates can be a great way to increase engagement amongst new and returning players alike. Would these players be enticed to play more if there were new characters, levels, worlds, etc.? Your Poki contact is happy to discuss if updating your game’s content is the right strategy for your game.

❓ Questions?

The Poki team is always happy to help you understand your game’s performance and opportunities for improvement throughout any of the release phases!