Buyer Support
Seller Support
Once again, FastSpring partnered with Omdia to ask the people building and monetizing games one central question: What is your direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategy and where is it going? Last year’s inaugural survey captured an industry standing at the edge of a shift. This year’s data show that the industry has taken the leap and is now pulling the last holdouts along with it.
D2C game monetization is no longer an experiment or an edge play. It is fast becoming a necessary vector for optimal monetization for the industry, and the reasons studios give for adopting it aren’t the ones you’d expect — which matters for every publisher weighing the move.
What’s in the Report
In April through June 2026, Omdia and FastSpring surveyed gaming industry leaders about their approaches to — and perceptions of — direct-to-consumer monetization.
Here are some of the things we learned from them:
- How new regulatory laws are influencing changes to game monetization, such as accelerating D2C investment.
- How many game publishers are using a D2C web store in 2026.
- The reasons why studios and publishers are adopting D2C.
- How much revenue is actually driven by D2C monetization and how that has changed in the last year.
- What’s stopping those that haven’t yet adopted D2C, and whether those concerns are valid or misconceptions — plus how you can easily overcome some of them.
We also gleaned three takeaways that show a clear playbook for setting up a D2C web store that can help you get started strategizing now.
FastSpring is how gaming studios sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell games or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your game with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great games! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.
