GamingBrief #006

Poki: The Billion-Play Platform Most Indian Game Developers Have Never Considered

Everyone talks about the App Store and Google Play. Nobody talks about the platform that just hit 1 billion game plays a month — with no upfront cost, no marketing budget required, and a 50/50 revenue split.

by Druhin Mukherjee·May 3, 2026·8 min read

The Platform You're Ignoring

If you're building games in India right now, your default distribution plan probably looks like this:

→ Build for mobile
→ Launch on Google Play
→ Pray for organic discovery
→ Realise you need a marketing budget
→ Panic

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Most developers never look past the app stores. That's a mistake.

There's a platform that just crossed 1 billion game plays in a single month. It has 100 million monthly players. It works with 600+ independent studios. And it charges you nothing to get started.

It's called Poki.

You've probably played games on it. You've probably never considered publishing on it.

That changes today.

What Is Poki?

Poki is a browser-based gaming platform launched in Amsterdam in 2014. It hosts HTML5 games — games that run directly in the browser, no download required, no app store needed.

Think of it as the Netflix of web games. Except the content creators actually get paid fairly.

Visit the Poki Developer Portal

The numbers are not small:

100 million monthly active players
1 billion game plays per month (hit in June 2025)
600+ independent developer studios
1,500+ curated games
One new game released per day — by design

That last number is important. Poki deliberately limits releases to one game per day. Not because they can't handle more. Because they want every game to get a moment in the spotlight.

How the Money Works

This is where it gets interesting.

Poki's revenue model is entirely ad-based. No payment integration. No in-app purchases. No friction for players.

The split:

If a player comes through your own channels (search, social, community, bookmarks): → You keep 100% of the revenue

If a player discovers your game through Poki.com or Poki's marketing: → 50/50 split with Poki

This is fundamentally different from how mobile publishing works.

On mobile:

Google Play takes 15–30% off the top
Publishers take another 30–70% if you sign with one
You still need to spend 25%+ of your budget on marketing
And you're competing with 500 new games a day

On Poki:

No platform fee
No publisher cut unless they bring you the player
No marketing spend required to get initial visibility
One game in the spotlight per day — and it could be yours

The Real Numbers

Studios that were earning $50,000 annually five years ago on Poki are now pulling in up to $1 million per year.

That's not a press release. That's from the Dutch Games Association's 2024 report.

One solo developer's catalog strategy — releasing small, polished games that continue earning revenue while he builds the next one — generates consistent passive income without a publisher, without a marketing team, and without raising a single rupee of funding.

How to Get On Poki

Step 1: Build an HTML5 game

Your game needs to run in the browser. Most common engines:

Step 2: Integrate the Poki SDK

A lightweight JavaScript SDK that handles ad breaks, game loading signals, and performance tracking. Usually a few lines of code. Full docs at sdk.poki.com

Step 3: Submit through the Developer Portal

Go to developers.poki.com and submit your game. All games are hand-curated — if accepted, you're guaranteed a homepage feature.

Step 4: Use the free playtesting tool

Upload a prototype, surface it to real players, no obligation to publish. You get session length data, drop-off points, and screen recordings of actual players in your onboarding.

One developer improved average session from 3m 49s → 7m 5s in four days using this data alone.

This is the kind of player behaviour insight that used to cost studios thousands of dollars to gather.

What Poki Gives You Beyond Revenue

Poki isn't just a distribution channel. When they partner with you, they take on roles that most indie developers pay publishers for:

QA testing
UI/UX optimisation
Marketing and user acquisition
Multiplayer networking library (free)
Backend data storage (free)
Playtesting infrastructure (free)

In exchange, they ask for web exclusivity — your game only lives on Poki for the open web. You can still publish the same game on Steam or mobile app stores. The exclusivity is web-only.

For most indie developers, that's a very fair trade.

The Catch

Poki is selective. All games are hand-curated. Getting accepted is not guaranteed.

The platform prioritises:

Average play time — how long players actually stay
Conversion to play — what percentage of visitors actually click play
Quality of onboarding — do players understand the game in 60 seconds?

This is exactly the retention thinking I wrote about in Brief #002 — Retention Is a Game Design Problem.

Poki's algorithm rewards games that do what great games have always done — pull players in fast and keep them there.

The developers who fail on Poki fail for the same reason most apps fail on mobile: the first 10 minutes are broken.

Is This the Right Platform for Indian Developers?

Here's my honest take.

India has thousands of game developers. Most are chasing the mobile market because that's what they know. The mobile market is brutal — dominated by global budgets, performance marketing spend, and app store politics.

Poki is a different game entirely.

Web games require:

Faster builds (1–3 months typical)
Lower costs (under $10,000 for a solid web game)
No marketing budget to get initial visibility
No gatekeeping by a platform algorithm weighted toward spend

For a solo developer or small studio in India, this is a legitimate path to global revenue without global resources.

The meta in Indian game development is still overwhelmingly mobile-first. As I wrote in Brief #001 — The Meta Is Everything, the best founders find the meta nobody else is playing yet.

Web gaming is that meta right now.

The Comparison You Need

	Mobile (Google Play)	Poki
Platform fee	15–30%	0%
Marketing needed	Yes (25%+ of budget)	No
Time to first player	Weeks / months	Days
Publisher cut	Up to 70%	50% only if they bring the player
Exclusivity	None	Web-only
Discoverability	Budget-dependent	Quality-dependent

Watch

For a quick visual overview of what's possible on Poki as an indie developer:

🎥 How Indie Developers Are Making Money on Poki

🎥 HTML5 Game Development for Beginners — Getting Started

What I'd Do

If I were starting a new game studio today with a small team and limited budget, here's my distribution strategy:

1. Build for web first Use Construct or GDevelop. Fast to build, fast to iterate, HTML5 native.

2. Playtest on Poki before committing Use their free playtesting tool. Fix the first 10 minutes based on real data.

3. Submit to Poki and CrazyGames simultaneously CrazyGames is Poki's closest competitor — similar model, similar audience. More options, more chances.

4. Build your own community in parallel Every player who comes through your own channels (WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube) earns you 100% of the revenue, not 50%. Build that audience from day one.

5. Port to mobile only after you have proof Let the web version validate your game. Then port. You'll have real retention data, real session length numbers, and a much stronger pitch to mobile publishers if you need one.

The Bigger Picture

The app store model is extractive by design. Platforms take the most, give developers the least, and make discoverability a function of marketing spend.

Poki is built on a different philosophy — if your game is good, players will find it.

That's not naive. It's a deliberate bet on quality over budget.

For Indian developers who are good at making games but don't have the capital to compete in mobile acquisition markets, this bet is worth taking.

References

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— Druhin

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