Taking a look at the value of alternate mobile app stores

gamedeveloper.com:

When you think about free-to-play games in the year 2022, you're generally thinking about games on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. It's a market of players who don't generally engage with the larger video game economy, but are also dedicated to simple, colorful games that help them pass the time.

Apple and Google's first-party stores are obviously titanic revenue drivers for the free-to-play business, but they're not the only stores. Samsung's Android devices can access the Samsung App Store, and Amazon has an app store that also is the primary service for its Android-adjacent Fire tablets.

Players in the free-to-play world are also still downloading games on the Windows Store on their laptops or PCs. At least, that's according Vladimir Romanov, head of App Store Optimization at mobile game publisher ZiMad. ZiMad publishes games like Magic Jigsaw Puzzles, Puzzle Villa, and Domino Online.

In a chat with Game Developer, Romanov was able to share why ZiMad puts in the effort to ship games on alternative game stores. He provided some useful data that might help you look at these stores in a different light—especially if your target audience is already shopping there.

Obviously, any mobile game publisher trying out new stores is doing so because it's hoping there's profit to be had in the effort. It's not surprising that ZiMad targets alternative app stores because it wants to make its app portfolio as successful as possible.

But according to Romanov, the process isn't just as simple as adding a new store to the team's publishing lineup. The company's strategy when considering any new store is to first publish Magic Jigsaw Puzzles to assess performance and get quantitative metrics. "It's quite a mature application that