Blog

Stories from the field

Notes from the team — what we learn building AI monetization for Unity and Unreal studios.

• Aug 15, 2026 · 5 min read

  Google's New Overlay Shows Friends' Progress Live

  A system-level Android overlay now shows players what their friends are doing in your game, in real time — and you didn't build it

• Aug 12, 2026 · 4 min read

  An economy change review that catches real mistakes

  Code review catches bugs and misses economy errors entirely, because a wrong number is syntactically perfect. A different set of questions is needed.

• Aug 2, 2026 · 4 min read

  Rollout safety for changes to a live game's economy

  A bad economy change is not like a bad UI change. Players keep the currency, and you cannot undo a balance by reverting the config that produced it.

• Jul 30, 2026 · 5 min read

  Economy telemetry worth instrumenting before you need it

  Most economy questions are unanswerable after the fact because the data was never recorded. A short list of events, added early, covers nearly all of them.

• Jul 26, 2026 · 4 min read

  A Kill Switch Is Seconds. A Store Fix Is Days

  A broken price or economy bug spreads across your player base the moment it ships. Feature flags turn that into a switch you flip, not a build you ship.

• Jul 25, 2026 · 4 min read

  Passkeys Secure Login, Not the Recovery Path

  Account takeover is shifting from stolen passwords to hijacked recovery flows. Passkeys don't close that gap, and your game account is exposed either way.

• Jul 20, 2026 · 5 min read

  AI NPC dialogue: the risk nobody shows in the demo

  AI-generated NPC dialogue can now respond to things no writer scripted. It can also go off-brand just as easily. Here's how to bound the risk.

• Jul 18, 2026 · 5 min read

  The install-conversion tax hiding in your SDK stack

  Every SDK you add makes your app bigger, and app size quietly costs you installs. Here's the data and how to keep the running total visible.

• Jul 17, 2026 · 4 min read

  Google Play Games Achievements Now Drive Discovery

  Google's Level Up program ties achievement quality to store promotion. A separate migration deadline applies whether you care or not

• Jul 15, 2026 · 4 min read

  AI QA Testing Replaces the Grind, Not the Judgment

  AI handles nightly regression across every device, freeing testers for the judgment calls automation still can't make in mobile game QA

• Jul 12, 2026 · 4 min read

  In-App Events: the app store feature most studios skip

  Both stores let you submit a structured seasonal event to your listing for search and editorial placement. Most studios running events never file it

• Jul 11, 2026 · 4 min read

  Device attestation stops bots. It's not the whole fix

  Play Integrity and App Attest catch tampered clients and emulators, but a farm of real devices running real accounts slips past both checks