Platform risk: when free traffic ends overnight

By 2016 our studio’s business rested on one publisher, and the publisher’s business rested on one thing: free traffic from Google Play recommendations. Many small casual games, each picked up by the store’s algorithms, added up to a healthy revenue.

In January 2017 Google Play changed how it recommended games. The free traffic dried up, the publisher’s revenue fell, and with it the money for our contract.

What I took from it:

• One client is not a business. If one customer pays most of your bills, their risks are your risks — including the risks of their platform.
• When things wobble, switch to prepayment. We continued only on prepaid monthly work. It bought us time to plan, and since then “contract and prepayment” has been my rule even with friends.
• Look for the next wave early. The same year we built a CryptoKitties-style game in a week; it became the seed of Blockchain Cuties.

Today I tell founders the same thing: list every platform you depend on — app store, ad network, API, model provider — and ask what happens if it changes its rules tomorrow.