Apple and Google are “not doing their job” as platform holders, says Ustwo boss

The mobile platforms are “not doing their job” when it comes to fixing discoverability, says Ustwo Games boss Maria Sayans.

Speaking during the Develop Brighton keynote this morning, Sayans said Ustwo is putting a lot of time and effort into discoverability and building a community around its games, partly because mobile platforms are not “doing their job” properly.

“This issue of how you reach an audience in a very crowded market with platforms that honestly are…I would say they’re not doing their job,” said Sayans.

“You know, you pay 30% to a platform for a number of things, and one of them is to help you reach an audience. And right now, that’s not really working.”

Sayans was equally blunt when talking about Ustwo’s recent transition from mobile to PC.

“The games we wanted to make, we just couldn’t make them profitably on mobile on our own without either Apple or Netflix paying us to make them, and Apple and Netflix didn’t want to pay us anymore to make those kinds of games.”

She continued: “They wanted to make games that people came back more regularly, that had more retention, that lasted a longer time. And so as a business model, we kind of faced a fork where we either become a free to play developer [or try something else]…and we’ll never be good at [free to play]. It’s just so against our DNA.”

Elsewhere in the session, Sayans again reiterated her regrets over relying on the Apple and Netflix “honeypot” for too long, and not moving over to PC sooner. She also noted how painful it was to undergo the first round of layoffs after moving away from making games for those subscription platforms.

She also noted that pushing out three new IPs in different genres between Monument Valley 2 and 3 was perhaps too much of a stretch for the team, though it also helped the company make the transition from mobile to PC and console.

Ustwo veteran Danny Gray also talked through the studio’s ‘made by humans’, mantra and how its teams’ personal interests have effectively driven their games’ themes – be it birdwatching in Alba or fixing objects that have sentimental value in Assemble With Care.

Gray was also clear that sometimes the studio’s approach doesn’t work. He drove a lot of the thinking behind Desta: The Memories Between, for example, a strategy game that’s also about personal growth and returning to your hometown and dealing with how people have (or haven’t) changed.

But the Netflix-exclusive game, which later came to PC, has so far failed to find an audience. “Sales show that didn’t necessarily work out, but there’s a lot of stuff I’m proud of with that game,” said Gray.

“I think that we need to continue to take risks, and sometimes it’s going to hit big time, sometimes it’s not going to hit big time…I think in order to make good artistic stuff, you need to be able to put yourself out there a little bit and deal with the vulnerability of getting it wrong every now and again.”