Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026: Key Takeaways and What They Signal for the Future of Player Engagement
From the rise of strategic web shops to the proven impact of AI-native engagement, we explore the key signals from PGC London 2026 that are reshaping how studios build value and trust.
Early-year events such as Pocket Gamer Connects London and DICE serve as important conversations for the games industry. They provide space to take stock of sentiment and identify early signals around shifting priorities and the direction of travel for the year ahead. Often, the most valuable insights emerge from informal conversations across studios, where shared challenges, constraints, and emerging thinking begin to surface.
Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026 brought a noticeably positive and substantive energy.
Across panels, meetings, and hallway conversations, the sentiment was clear: the games industry isn’t rebounding blindly, it’s rebalancing.
The industry is now navigating the aftermath of one of its fastest growth cycles ever. Lessons from this cycle are reshaping how studios think about how they will manage the complex balance between controlling costs while continuing to drive growth, improve monetisation, adopt new technology trends, and, most importantly, improve player experience.
A More Disciplined Era: How Studios Are Designing for Sustainable Growth in 2026
The post-COVID journey for the games industry has been dramatic and compressed. During the pandemic, the industry experienced a record-breaking boom.
Much of this growth, however, was behavioral rather than structural. As global habits normalised, studios confronted rising costs, overextended operations, and shifting player behavior. Layoffs, project cancellations, and budget freezes followed.
What emerged was not pessimism, but clarity. At Pocket Gamer Connects London, the prevailing view was not that the industry is “back,” but that it is growing up, re-focusing efforts on embracing sustainable, player-focused experiences.
Player-Centric Growth Strategies - From Installs to Player Lifetime Relationships
One of the strongest themes at the event was a fundamental reframing of growth. Studios are no longer optimising solely for installs, due to rising user-acquisition costs. Instead, the focus is on Lifetime value, Player trust and satisfaction, and Long-term relationships.
User acquisition remains crucial, but with costs continuing to rise, budgets are tightly ROI-gated. The era of “spray-and-pray” UA has shifted toward strategies that emphasise:
- LiveOps excellence
- CRM and PRM strategies
- Player support and community engagement and growth
Keeping and growing players has become a core mandate, and lifecycle engagement is now a primary growth engine.
More Than a Monetisation Play, Web shops as an extension of the game experience.
Direct-to-consumer remained the most prominent theme at PGC London 2026. While last year’s conversations focused on why web shops matter and how to get started, this year’s discussion shifted decisively to what comes next: optimisation, experience design, and long-term value creation beyond margin improvement or reduced app store dependency. Web shops are rapidly becoming a strategic pillar, and leading studios are designing web shops to create player value:
- Branded, immersive extensions of the game world
- Personalised experiences tied to player behavior and progression
- Spaces for exclusivity, loyalty rewards, and VIP treatment
Web shops allow studios to reward long-term or highly engaged players, run invite-only or segment-based offers, test premium items without impacting in-game balance, and experiment rapidly outside app store constraints.
Crucially, the web is a channel where studios fully own the player relationship data, communication, experience, and brand. This ownership is becoming foundational to sustainable growth.
Pictured (right): Rob Schoeppe, Head of Global Sales & Business Development - Player Engagement at Keywords Studios
AI's Maturity: From Hype to Proven Impact
AI was everywhere at PGC London, but the tone has clearly matured. The industry has moved beyond speculative promises to real-world applications:
- AI-native player engagement platforms designed to maximise Player Lifetime Value (LTV)
- LiveOps optimisation and content operations
- AI tools and automation systems to deliver creative content at scale for UA
As Rakesh Mistry showed in his session, 'Beat the Uninstall Button,' AI is no longer a question of if, but how to use it to win. AI is increasingly seen not as a disruption but as infrastructure that enables studios to scale personalised, high-quality player experiences efficiently. This is precisely the vision behind Helpshift’s four specialised AI agents: Care, Engage, Community, and Guard AI. For instance, the Care AI agent is already driving strong beta results, including high CSAT (4.2 average CSAT with rich and personalised responses) and improved automation rates (+17% OOTB improvement to traditional automation). This strategy is a fundamental shift: evolving player support from a reactive cost center to a proactive driver of player engagement and revenue. To understand how these changes impact your strategy for 2026, get your copy of the State of AI in Video Gaming Support Report today.
Cross-Industry Insights: Non-Gaming Apps Borrowing the Video Gaming Playbook
One of the most notable shifts and energising signals from PGC London 2026 was seeing non-gaming apps learning from gaming’s technology-driven ecosystem.
The launch of the Apps Business Summit highlighted how game-honed disciplines: LiveOps, retention science, monetisation design, UA optimisation, gamification, and AI-powered personalisation, are shaping the future of mobile apps across fitness, education, entertainment, and productivity.
Video gaming’s expertise in engagement and lifecycle value is increasingly serving as a blueprint for the wider app economy, fostering cross-industry knowledge sharing and innovation.
What This Means for the Industry and for Player Experience
PGC London 2026 confirmed that the future of video gaming is disciplined, player-centric, and technologically sophisticated.
As the industry rebalances, player support has evolved from a cost center into a strategic engagement capability contributing directly to top line revenue goals.
AI-powered player engagement platforms enable in-game conversations that do more than resolve tickets: they strengthen relationships, boost retention, and enhance lifetime value.
In a world where lifetime value matters more than installs, every player interaction counts. Studios that succeed will be those that treat players as relationships, not transactions, and build systems to scale those relationships effectively.
Growth will be driven by:
- Respect for player time, trust, and value
- Intelligent lifecycle engagement
- Scalable personalisation powered by AI
- Direct, first-party relationships with players
The studios that win won’t be those that acquire the most players, they’ll be the ones who understand their players best and build experiences worth returning to.
