Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026: Key Takeaways and What They Sign for the Way forward for Player Engagement

Early-year occasions corresponding to Pocket Gamer Connects London and DICE function vital conversations for the video games trade. They present house to take inventory of sentiment and establish early alerts round shifting priorities and the path of journey for the 12 months forward. Often, essentially the most helpful insights emerge from casual conversations throughout studios, the place shared challenges, constraints, and rising considering start to floor.

Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026 introduced a noticeably constructive and substantive vitality.  

Across panels, conferences, and hallway conversations, the sentiment was clear: the video games trade isn’t rebounding blindly, it’s rebalancing.

The trade is now navigating the aftermath of one in every of its quickest progress cycles ever. Lessons from this cycle are reshaping how studios take into consideration how they are going to handle the advanced steadiness between controlling prices whereas persevering with to drive progress, enhance monetisation, undertake new expertise developments, and, most significantly, enhance participant expertise.

A More Disciplined Era: How Studios Are Designing for Sustainable Growth in 2026

The post-COVID journey for the video games trade has been dramatic and compressed. During the pandemic, the trade skilled a record-breaking growth.

Much of this progress, nonetheless, was behavioral relatively than structural. As international habits normalised, studios confronted rising prices, overextended operations, and shifting participant conduct. Layoffs, challenge cancellations, and funds freezes adopted.

What emerged was not pessimism, however readability. At Pocket Gamer Connects London, the prevailing view was not that the trade is “back,” however that it’s rising 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 on the occasion was a basic reframing of progress. Studios are now not optimising solely for installs, attributable to rising user-acquisition prices. Instead, the main target is on Lifetime worth, Player belief and satisfaction, and Long-term relationships.

User acquisition stays essential, however with prices persevering with to rise, budgets are tightly ROI-gated. The period of “spray-and-pray” UA has shifted towards methods that emphasise:

• LiveOps excellence
• CRM and PRM methods
• Player help and neighborhood engagement and progress

Keeping and rising gamers has turn out to be a core mandate, and lifecycle engagement is now a main progress engine.