What Publishers Actually Look For

Every independent game studio dream about that email:

"We'd love to discuss publishing your game."

Many developers imagine publishers spending weeks analyzing mechanics, appreciating beautiful art, or recognizing technical excellence.

The reality is far less romantic.

Publishers make investment decisions. Every game competes against dozens—sometimes hundreds—of other games for the same marketing budget. They are not asking, "Is this game good?" They are asking something much simpler:

"Can this game return significantly more money than we invest into it?"

Everything else is secondary.

After talking with publishers, participating in accelerator programs, receiving rejections, and running our own live tests at Raviosoft, we've learned that publishing decisions are surprisingly data-driven—and often brutally unemotional.

Let's look at what publishers actually care about.

Your Game Is Not Competing Against Other Indie Games

One of the biggest misconceptions among new studios is believing they compete against other small developers.

They don't.

If a publisher has $1 million to invest, they don't care whether your game is better than another indie project.

They're comparing your game against:

• Royal Match

• Royal Kingdom

• Gossip Harbor

• Block Blast

• Hexa Sort

• Screw Jam

• Hundreds of internal prototypes

• Every game already in their portfolio

  
  

Your game must be the best investment available today—not simply a good game.

This changes everything.

KPI First, Everything Else Later

The order of evaluation is usually very different from what developers expect.

Many teams spend months polishing menus, adding dozens of levels, implementing cosmetics, or writing lore.

Publishers usually don't care—at least not initially.

Their evaluation often looks more like this:

1. Can we acquire users cheaply?

2. Do those users come back?

3. Do they play long enough?

4. Can the game eventually monetize?

5. Can we scale this?

   
   

If the answer to Question #2 is "No," the rest of the discussion often ends there.

Every Genre Has Different Expectations

A common mistake is comparing KPIs across completely different genres. A 40% Day-1 retention may be outstanding for one genre and disastrous for another.

Publishers always compare your game against the best-performing games in your category, not against mobile games in general.

Let's break down the major genres.

Word Games

Word games are often underestimated. Because the mechanics appear simple, many assume success depends mostly on vocabulary.

In reality, publishers know the category is incredibly mature. Players have thousands of alternatives.

Successful word games usually demonstrate:

• High Day-1 retention

• Strong Day-7 retention

• Long-term engagement

• Low CPI through broad audiences

• Excellent ad monetization

  
  

Publishers also ask:

• Is the gameplay actually different?

• Is there a fresh puzzle mechanic?

• Does progression feel rewarding?

• Will players finish hundreds of levels?

  
  

Simply being "another crossword" isn't enough anymore. Games need a clear identity.

For example, at Raviosoft we designed Reveal It! around cognitive associations rather than traditional word searching. Instead of asking players to simply locate hidden words, we wanted them to connect clues, eliminate possibilities, and activate parts of the brain that classic word games rarely engage. That differentiation becomes much easier to communicate to publishers.

Although each game is unique you can consider that the below KPI targets are valid for most competitive publishers in word game genre.

Metric	Kill	Improve	Scale Carefully	Scale Aggressively
D1	<35%	35–42%	42–48%	48%+
D3	<18%	18–22%	22–27%	27%+
D7	<10%	10–13%	13–17%	17%+
D30	<3%	3–5%	5–8%	8%+

Match-3 Games

Match-3 is probably the most competitive genre in mobile gaming. Publishers know exactly what great performance looks like.

Unfortunately, they also know how difficult it is to achieve.

They evaluate things like:

• First-session completion

• Tutorial completion

• Difficulty spikes

• Booster usage

• Session length

• Day-1 retention

• Day-3 retention

• Level completion funnels

• Economy health

  
  

One poorly designed early level can destroy an otherwise excellent game. We experienced something very similar ourselves.

During Game Academy by Voodoo, an early version of Rubi Blast suffered from a sharp drop-off on one of its first levels.

The feedback wasn't about graphics. It wasn't about monetization. It wasn't about polish. Players simply left.

Although we later redesigned those levels and significantly improved the experience, the opportunity with that publishing program was already gone.

Publishing decisions often happen only once. Publishers rarely wait six months for improvements. They are swift, and for most Match-3 games the elimination is even harsher.

Metric	Kill	Improve	Scale Carefully	Scale Aggressively
D1	<42%	42–48%	48–55%	55%+
D3	<25%	25–30%	30–35%	35%+
D7	<15%	15–20%	20–25%	25%+
D30	<6%	6–10%	10–15%	15%+

Hybrid Casual

Hybrid casual has become one of the most competitive opportunities in the industry.

Unlike classic hypercasual games, hybrid casual products must satisfy two very different goals:

Acquire users cheaply...

...and keep them for months.

Publishers usually evaluate:

• CPI

• Tutorial completion

• Session depth

• Multiple daily sessions

• Day-7 retention

• Day-30 retention

• Ad revenue

• Early IAP conversion

• Meta progression

• Long-term content potential

  
  

A fun core mechanic isn't enough. Publishers want evidence that players have reasons to return tomorrow, next week, and next month.

This is why hybrid casual games often invest heavily in:

• progression systems

• currencies

• collections

• events

• unlockables

• social features

• long-term goals

  
  

The core mechanic gets players in. The meta game keeps them there. For hybrid casual games, publishers are a just a tiny bit more flexible as this genre tends to attract

Metric	Kill	Improve	Scale Carefully	Scale Aggressively
D1	<35%	35–42%	42–50%	50%+
D3	<18%	18–24%	24–30%	30%+
D7	<10%	10–15%	15–20%	20%+
D30	<3%	3–6%	6–10%	10%+

The First 10 Minutes Matter More Than Your Last 500 Levels

Many developers spend months building hundreds of levels. Publishers spend far more time analyzing the first ten minutes.

Why?

Because that's where most players leave.

Publishers closely monitor:

• Tutorial completion

• First failure

• First reward

• First difficulty spike

• First advertisement

• First purchase opportunity

• First reason to quit

  
  

If your onboarding isn't working, nobody will ever reach level 500.

Publishers Think in Funnels

Developers often look at individual mechanics. Publishers look at funnels. A typical publishing review might resemble something like this:

Every percentage matters. Improving just one step can dramatically change projected profitability.

Beautiful Art Doesn't Fix Bad Retention

This can be painful to hear. Amazing art is valuable. It certainly affects CPI.

High production quality is valuable. Polished animations are valuable. But none of those compensate for weak retention.

Publishers have repeatedly seen games with average visuals outperform gorgeous productions simply because players kept coming back.

Gameplay always wins in the long run.

Publishers Don't Fall in Love

Developers often do. That's understandable. You may spend years building a game.

Publishers evaluate dozens every month. They don't have emotional attachment.

If another prototype delivers:

• lower CPI

• higher retention

• better monetization

• stronger scalability

  
  

they move on. It's not personal. It's portfolio management.

Iteration Speed Is a Competitive Advantage

One of the strongest signals you can send isn't perfect KPIs. It's rapid improvement.

Imagine two studios.

Studio A says:

"We'll fix those retention issues next year."

Studio B says:

"We identified the problem on Monday, shipped an update on Wednesday, and the new cohort improved Day-1 retention by eight percentage points."

Which studio would you trust with millions in marketing budget?

Publishers invest in teams as much as games. Fast iteration demonstrates that your studio can respond to data instead of defending old decisions.

However, there is a catch! Sometimes your reactions may turn into over-reactions. You have to know when to watch and when to act. Sometimes publishers deliberately wait to see some other signals, sometimes the campaign should optimizer itself first. If you blindly react to all signals you see, you may fail even quicker.

There Is No Universal KPI

Many developers ask:

• "What Day-1 retention should I target?"

• "What CPI is good?"

• "What Day-7 is acceptable?"

The honest answer is: It depends.

Different publishers have different portfolios. Different countries produce different acquisition costs. Different monetization strategies require different retention targets.

A publisher focused on advertising may tolerate lower retention if CPI is extremely low. A publisher focused on in-app purchases may require much stronger long-term engagement.

There isn't one magic number. There is only a combination of metrics that produces sustainable profitability.

What We Learned

Working on multiple mobile games has taught us that publishers aren't looking for perfection.

They're looking for evidence.

• Evidence that players enjoy the game.

• Evidence that they come back.

• Evidence that acquisition can scale.

• Evidence that the team can iterate quickly.

  
  

The best developers aren't necessarily the ones with the most beautiful games. They're the ones who continuously test, learn, improve, and let data challenge their assumptions.

Sometimes that means throwing away months of work. Sometimes it means rebuilding your tutorial. Sometimes it means redesigning your economy.

And sometimes it means accepting that a feature you loved simply isn't helping players enjoy the game. Those are difficult decisions

.

But they are exactly the kinds of decisions publishers make every day.

The earlier a studio learns to think the same way, the better its chances of building not just a good game—but a successful business.

Lastly, and certainly, that you remain in business over years provides the best signal to those who watch you. And believe it or not; people watch you even before you make the first contact. They do watch you even more closely after you contact them first. It doesn't matter how many more games a publisher tests, mobile game publishers have one of the deepest corporate memories that you can find among different industries.