Introducing the Game Growth program

Game Growth Program is an accelerator program for free-to-play indie games on mobile. By partnering with Unity, select indie developers get access to awesome tools plus a dedicated team of game operations experts. Unity covers the costs of acquiring new players and optimizing your game, and we share the revenue 50/50. 

Let’s face it: small teams with big dreams are in fierce competition to find the right audience. Making an amazing game is the first step, but what happens after you launch? How do you acquire players and keep them engaged? This is where the Game Growth program comes in.

Game Growth is an accelerator program for mobile indie developers, currently in the early-access phase. We partner with select indie game developers to help you quickly and effectively scale your game while you remain 100% independent. 

When you become a partner, you get access to industry-leading tools and experts in player acquisition, engagement, monetization, and more – all while retaining full ownership of your studio and your intellectual property.

The Game Growth program is open to already-published free-to-play indie mobile games. Partnership opportunities are limited, so check out our FAQs for specific requirements.

If you meet the criteria and we accept you into the program, Unity will fund user acquisition for your game and provide the technology and Unity experts to help manage player engagement and monetization. We take care of the process that helps grow your game while you concentrate on development. 

Game Growth is a revenue-sharing program – Unity and the developer team split the revenue from advertising and in-app purchases 50/50 after the user acquisition spend has been recouped. Put simply, Unity covers the cost of bringing in new players while we both share in the reward. 

We want to be clear about the terms up front so you can decide if Game Growth is the right program for you. Let’s break down the revenue sharing with an example:

1. An indie developer has a mobile game that makes $3,000/month. They apply to the Game Growth program. Unity spends $100,000/month to acquire new users to the game, retains those users with dedicated live operations support, and grows the game to $130,000/month in revenue.*
2. Unity would first recoup their $100,000 in monthly user acquisition costs, leaving $30,000 in monthly revenue. So the developer and Unity would share that $30,000 equally, giving $15,000 to the developer and $15,000 to Unity.*

*This model would continue throughout the partnership. We’re using this fictitious example to illustrate the revenue sharing model only. The exact investment/revenue amounts will not always be consistent month over month.

Our mission is to set up independent creators for long-term success. Not only do we help grow your game during the partnership, but our team also works with you directly to integrate tools and best practices that will stay with you for years to come. Our goal is for developers to outgrow the program. They’ve accumulated a player base, extensive knowledge of live game operations, integrated valuable technology, and generated enough revenue to self-fund another game or passion project. When the partnership ends, you maintain complete ownership of your intellectual property and game - with no permanent revenue sharing commitments to Unity going forward.

Here’s what we mean by growing your game:

• We design and run strategic user acquisition campaigns that bring new players into your game.
• Our team analyzes your game economy and works with you to implement optimizations.
• Game Growth experts work with your development team to manage and optimize ad placements and in-app purchases.
• We work with you to implement tools and tactics to increase player engagement.

Game Growth is a true partnership – an ongoing process where we work together to improve and grow your game. You’ll get the benefit of Unity products and industry professionals to optimize your game, as well as funding for user acquisition.

If you’re interested in joining the program, you can apply on the Unity Dashboard. Start by telling us about your project and development team. Then, integrate the Game Growth package via the Unity Editor. This package includes a suite of analytics tools designed to help measure important metrics within your game.

Once the package is installed, we take a close look at your game to determine if it is a suitable candidate for testing. Among other factors, we consider key metrics that help indicate a game’s success, specifically, D1 retention, D7 retention, average session duration, average sessions per user, install conversion rates, and cost per install. If your project meets the criteria, we move into the user acquisition testing phase. This lets us know if your game is a good fit for the program, and we can establish an official partnership. Unity covers all of the costs associated with this phase.

If you become a partner, our team works closely with you to optimize key elements of your game and begin user acquisition campaigns. This includes helping you design new features, integrate critical business services, and optimize player engagement and monetization. 

Game Growth acts as your extended team of experts throughout the partnership. This means you have access to a dedicated group of game operations professionals with experience growing some of the biggest games in the industry.

Application is easy; all you need is a valid Unity ID and a game made with Unity live on iOS or Android. Then head to the Game Growth section on the Unity Dashboard to begin the process.

As part of the application, you will need to submit details about your game, development team, and some general information about your project. You will also need to upload creative assets (images and videos) and integrate the Game Growth package via the Unity Editor.

Just because you’re a small team doesn’t mean you can’t dream big!