two & a half gamers -🎯 The 2026 D2C Survey: Why 41% of studios still DON’T have a web store (and why they’re wrong)

Summary

FastSpring surveyed 110 senior mobile decision-makers — directors, VPs, C-suite — about direct-to-consumer, and the results premiere right here before Gamescom. The headline: 59% now have a web store, but the 41% who don’t are held back by three fears that are all out of date. And the #1 reason studios adopt D2C isn’t profit anymore.

Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg welcome back Chip Thurston (FastSpring) for the sixth D2C episode — a full breakdown of FastSpring’s 2026 D2C survey (Q2 2026, 110 respondents, all senior manager or above, 92% from 100+ person studios, 91% doing over $10M/year, split across US/Europe and casual/core). They unpack why web-store adoption barely moved year-over-year (57%→59%) despite 60% planning it — game dev is hard and roadmaps slip — and the three “reasons not to adopt,” which Chip reframes as misconceptions: technical complexity (rooted in confusing a merchant of record like FastSpring with a payment service provider like Stripe — the MoR handles all the tax, compliance, and audit exposure for you), damaging Apple/Google relationships (a fear anchored in 2023, when there were real repercussions; in 2026 both platforms have defined, approved D2C compliance paths), and legal uncertainty (the terms are actually solidifying — Epic/Google settling, Apple’s Japan/Brazil compliance as the bellwether). Then a genuinely fun segment: Felix frames a “how many ping-pong balls fit in a 747” Google-interview-style question — of Apple’s $52.5B gaming revenue last year, how much did D2C capture? — and the group triangulates it live using survey data (72% of web-store studios drive over 10% of revenue via D2C, a third over 20%), landing around $4-8B on iOS alone and comfortably $10B+ across platforms. The most surprising finding: profit margins ranked only #4 among reasons to adopt — behind brand visibility & loyalty (#1), customer data & insights (#2), and pricing/promotion control (#3). Plus the new terms: Google’s 20% fee on linked payments with a 24-hour attribution window starting October 1, 2026, and Apple’s likely 7-day window modeled on its Japan/Brazil compliance.

The takeaway: the fears are outdated, the data problem means the industry’s “decline” is partly an illusion, and D2C is now about owning the player relationship — not just dodging the 30%.