Live operations, commonly known as live ops, is the ongoing management and optimization of mobile games after their initial launch. Similar to DLC on console and desktop, mobile live ops is a way to develop and release new features and content like quests, missions, expansions, player skins, and more. Events and special promotions are also important aspects of live game operations. The goal of all these different types of live ops is to provide more value to players, which increases retention and revenue.
The history of live ops in gaming
Live operations haven't always been a core element to game development. When game distribution was mostly physical with the likes of cartridges, CD-ROMs, etc., developers couldn't push updates to their existing games - they needed to release entirely new versions as expansions.
“It was a different time and place. There was no internet, you had no direct data feeds. Live services weren't a thing. You literally put the cartridge in a box and it went - and maybe you would do a postmortem where you do some qualitative testing.” - Frank Gibeau, CEO of Zynga, in Secret Stash ep.8
Think Street Fighter II from Capcom, whose first installment was launched in 1991 for arcade, Gameboy, and Super NES. When new versions like Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting came out the following year, they were standalone games rather than expansions users could easily download into their existing versions.
Now, with the internet widely accessible worldwide and mobile gaming having grown so popular, games have a much longer lifecycle. Game studios can push changes and updates to player devices post-launch on a regular basis - either automatically when players load the game or through forced updates.
3 types of live ops in games
There are many ways that you can integrate live ops into your game, like:
- Competitions/tournaments
- Special offers
- Rewards
- Missions
- Expansions
- Mini-games
- Characters
- Quests
- Seasons
- Leaderboards
- Cosmetics
- Clubs
- Bonuses
- Accelerators
Let’s dive deeper into three of the most popular types of live operations.
In-game events and tournaments
These refer to additional in-game activities, like live events in Fortnite and Royal Match's Sky Race. This type of live ops can be used to boost player engagement and opens up new ways to monetize - and they often require some level of implementation at the game level, such as adding new areas to explore or displaying leaderboards.
For example, in November 2024 Fortnite ran two live events - Remix: The Finale and Reboot Rally - that coincided with the holiday season in the US (Remix: The Finale was held on November 30th following Thanksgiving). The two strategically timed events led to a traffic spike of over 14 million players that month.
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Special offers
This is a broad live ops category that includes seasonal sales, discounts, promotions, and pricing strategies like skimming. These offers can help you monetize players, including converting non-spenders into paying players and encouraging more purchases from spenders - so it’s best to segment your players to show them the most relevant special offers.
A common example is temporary price reductions on certain items, bundles, and resources. For example, in Jurassic World Alive from Ludia, the in-game shop has bundles with slashed out prices - the limited-time availability of these offers creates a sense of urgency in players so they convert ASAP.
Game passes and reward systems
These live ops are set reward tracks that players progress through while playing. Games often have paid and free tracks, with the paid track offering higher-value and/or more rewards than the free version. As players progress, they unlock cosmetics, items, and earn in-game currency and resources.
Check out the Reward Pass for Candy Crush Soda Saga from King, for example, which acts like a reward system similar to a battle pass. Reward Passes are available in Free and Deluxe versions, and as players progress through the game, they earn rewards and unlock new tiers. Reward systems like this can motivate loyal users to keep playing and re-engage players that haven’t played in a while - plus they can be an additional monetization tool for driving revenue.
How do live ops in games drive revenue?
For game studios, live game operations can be major revenue drivers, especially in the face of rising costs of new user acquisition in a post-IDFA environment. Now, it’s more profitable to increase the LTV of your existing users, rather than attract and monetize new players - and live ops is a critical way to give players a better gameplay experience so they retain for longer and increase their spend. SensorTower's State of Mobile Gaming 2025 report backs this up, indicating that mobile in-app purchase revenue grew by 4% YoY even as overall downloads decreased by 7%.
“The mobile gaming ecosystem has matured, with developers now doubling down on retention, engagement, and monetization. With user acquisition costs rising, studios have embraced strategies such as Live Ops and hybrid monetization to maximize long-term revenue." - Oliver Yeh, CEO & Cofounder of Sensor Tower
Ahead are three key ways that live operations contribute to higher game revenue.
1. Increase player engagement and retention
Live ops can introduce new ways to engage with your game and additional content, which gives players more reasons to return and continue playing. Think about the example we shared earlier about Fortnite’s live events. This type of content expands upon the core gameplay, giving players a way to deepen their engagement. Reboot Rally was even focused on re-engaging “returning players” (those who played less than 2 hours of the game 30 days prior to the event) and attracting new users, which shows the power of live ops to engage all types of players - not just your loyal ones.
2. Improve the overall player experience
Improving the player experience is an ongoing part of live ops. This includes resolving issues quickly and implementing quality of life (QoL) improvements. They might seem like small things, but they can help reduce churn by addressing player friction and broaden the reach of your game. Accessibility options are a common example - games like Pokémon GO and Minecraft have extensive accessibility settings so players of all abilities can participate.
3. Get ahead of the competition
Live ops is also a competitive advantage that can bring more players (and therefore more potential revenue) to your game. Gaming, like many other industries, is flooded with options and it can be difficult to stand out - but live game operations can give your game the refresh and unique hook it needs to attract players.
“Games are becoming even more competitive, with millions of games in the app stores, making it even more expensive to market them and stand out. LiveOps has become a key differentiator for game studios.” - Ada Hang, Applovin
League of Legends: Wild Rift is an example of a live-ops focused game that stands out. LoL helped establish the MOBA genre, but it didn’t take long for there to be competition from other popular mobile MOBA games like Vainglory and Arena of Valor. However, by continuing to engage players with live operations features like new champions and a busy events calendar, League has managed to remain one of the most popular and profitable games in its genre.
4. Adapt quickly
Live ops allows games to be flexible - which means studios can use their performance data to adapt to new audiences and markets as quickly as possible. Introducing a live ops strategy as a part of your initial launch can help ensure you’re gathering plenty of information about your players and their behavior to then make product tweaks and improvements.
“When we’re planning to go to market with a game, live ops is definitely a part of our strategy. Having these plans helps us adapt to these markets and new audiences as quickly as possible once we release our games.” - Mari Yalong, Product Owner at PerBlue Entertainment in MobileGroove with Peggy Anne Salz
How to build a successful live ops strategy
Building a successful live game operations strategy depends a lot on your internal team, game, and players. In general, you can keep these ideas in mind for implementing your live ops.
Collect data
Studios have different methods for collecting player analytics and tracking metrics, from external tools like Amplitude and GameAnalytics to in-house solutions built into the game. Whatever your approach to data collection, you should analyze:
- What features and game changes saw the highest engagement numbers
- Where new players drop off in a signup flow or tutorial
- Revenue across different events, sales, and promotions
It's important to collect and measure this data in real time for live events and offers - and you should keep it around for future reference and live ops planning, too.
Minecraft's use of Databricks highlights how data analysis played a role in their live ops strategy and how they continued referencing it for optimizations:
“Were our players having fun in Minecraft?” Rius asked. “Did they prefer combat or creating and exploring? Which segments of players were more engaged in-game? And how could we better optimize our recommendations in Minecraft Marketplace? These are the kinds of unanswered questions that made us look for a unified data environment.” Francisco Rius, Head of Data Science — Minecraft, Microsoft
Tie it into your webshop
In-game live operations are useful tools for improving retention and engagement. Bringing this content to your D2C channel can be a major revenue-driver, too. During live ops events, your players are highly motivated to get an advantage and feel a sense of achievement during the event - which inspires higher purchase intent, too. Offer high-value live ops bundles and offers on your webshop to drive direct revenue and monetize players more effectively during these events.
With Stash, you can automatically update and sync your in-game live ops offers to your webshop, even during the busiest seasons. Using our unified catalog, you can show all of your in-game offers on the web in real-time, including purchase limits, time limitations, and personalization (e.g. graying out items in a live ops bundle that the player already owns). For example, Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus from Snowprint Studios is a game with a highly active live ops schedule, including running multiple events at once that each have their own offers. As we were designing their webshop, it was critical that we showed the same time-limited, personalized live ops offers on the web that existed in-game so players could complete their purchase from anywhere (in-game and on the web) during this period of high motivation and purchase intent.
Plan ahead
Your game’s live ops should be scheduled ahead of time - and take into consideration internal and external events. Having a schedule also helps you maintain a steady stream of updates, which keeps players engaged.
For example, if your dev team is adding a new feature to the game, you can plan a promotion that coincides with that feature. And externally, many studios plan themed live game operations around seasonal content and holidays. Nightland Season for Stumble Guys is a great example of a live ops event timed for Halloween. During the season, players earned LTC Chickens in-game that they could use to spin the wheel in the shop for Halloween-themed rewards - and they could also earn themed bundles by participating in the special events.
Segment your players
Live ops lets you push new content dynamically to your game, which means you can offer different experiences for players depending on their progress in your game, how long they’ve been playing, purchasing behavior, etc. Personalizing these various aspects can improve monetization, retention, and engagement.
For example, SciPlay uses player data to segment users based on their stage in the player journey and offer them different experiences through live ops: new players run through onboarding events that set them up for success, mid-stage players are served challenges that promote deeper engagement, and their most loyal players get exclusive access to events that feel valuable, fun, and rewarding.
“By understanding what players need at each stage, we ensure our LiveOps feel relevant and engaging.” - Dafna Ben Onn, Director of Monetization at SciPlay
Keep testing
Just like any other aspect of your game, A/B testing your live ops that lets you identify which live operations (e.g. tournaments) improve player engagement and drive revenue.
For example, Activision Blizzard regularly tests their matchmaking system and what players define as “fun”. In 2024, they ran a test that shut off their skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) in Call of Duty (CoD). The report defines skill, how it’s calculated, and how it impacts the player experience. In short, turning off SBMM generally had negative effects:
- The returning player rate went down for 90% of players
- The quit rate increased across 80% of players
- The blowout rate (wins with a score delta greater than 30) increased for all players
- Blowout rate has a negative correlation to fun so this is seen as a negative result
Collect and act on player feedback
Another important part of live ops is listening to your players. You should create open channels (social platforms, forums, Discord) for players to share their feedback - and you should also collect their feedback directly through surveys, in-game CTAs, dev talks, etc.
Acting on player feedback makes your playerbase feel heard and valued - and you can then use this information to improve the player experience, which leads to higher retention, engagement, and revenue. According to McKinsey, companies that are leaders in improving the customer experience enjoy over 2x greater revenue growth than their competitors.
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Communicate with your players
Reaching players through in-game messages, push notifications, emails, and social media can have a big impact on how effective your live ops strategy is - especially when you use multiple channels at once. These communication channels can tap into your most loyal players (who are often high spenders) to spread the word about your live ops events so you kick off events with a bang and drive more revenue. Some channels even act as places to launch your live operations - like Twitch Drops, which let studios reward players for their Twitch engagement (e.g. watching X minutes of a stream).
For example, Clash Royale from Supercell ran a Twitch Drop campaign that gave players in-game rewards the longer they watched the stream - the more minutes watched, the higher-value the rewards. The idea is that as players continue watching the stream to earn rewards, they become more motivated to return to the game and play on their own, making it useful for driving engagement and retention.
What are the challenges with live ops?
We’ve gone over the benefits of live ops in games, but what are the common challenges?
Resource allocation
Building and maintaining a live ops strategy requires you to invest time and resources. Every game studio is different, but the teams involved can include engineering, design, marketing, data science, and community management. If you’re a smaller studio where you need to wear many hats at once, you might need to run fewer events or space out your updates to allocate your resources efficiently and prevent burnout. For larger studios, you may be able to build an entire team around live game operations. Scopely, for example, has a dedicated live ops team for their game, Stumble Guys, that includes over 5 LiveOps managers.
Balancing monetization with player satisfaction
Live ops and monetization are closely linked, and you need to find the right balance without compromising player satisfaction. Just like your overall monetization strategy, you need to be wary of creating pay-to-win scenarios in your live ops - instead you should offer value-based monetization, whether that’s offering skins and cosmetic items during live ops events, or a premium battle pass for a tournament that gives additional boosters. Base your offers on player motivations to ensure they feel valuable but don’t compromise the core competitive or achievement aspect of your gameplay.
Scaling your stack
Depending on your infrastructure, you might need to scale your stack to support live ops and peak traffic. If you have a large playerbase, high-value events and campaigns often bring a lot of traffic to your game and website. Ideally, your tech stack (servers, DBs, etc.) scales with the traffic, but you might want to back this up by having team members on call to address any issues.
Live ops with Stash
Live game operations can be a major revenue-driver for your game, especially when tied into a D2C channel. Check out this case study to see how we did it for Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus from Snowprint Studios - and if you’re ready to start maximizing your own live ops revenue, talk to us about building a fully custom webshop.