prabhu
Leamington Spa-based gaming company Kwalee increased its revenues during the latest financial year despite facing challenges from other sectors of the market.
Launched in 2011 by David Darling, who previously co-founded Codemasters, the firm posted revenues of £32.2 million for the year to June 31, 2024, up from £31.4m in the previous year.
Gross profits climbed one percent to £9.9m, but the business made pre-tax losses of £11m due to challenging market conditions in the video game market.
These include competition from associated sectors such as iGaming, where companies leverage elements from the gaming sector to make their games more appealing.
Reputable platforms such as Betway Casino offer a vast array of games which compete for airtime with other popular titles in the online gaming industry.
Kwalee’s strategic report claims that many companies in the sector are facing difficulties relating to new game discovery, revenue growth and profitability.
“During the year the company transitioned from developing hypercasual games to hybrid-casual games,” the report said. “The change has been challenging and has had a major impact on game releases in the year.
“We have re-engineered our games design, development and testing processes and have created the tools and infrastructure to enable us to make successful hybrid-casual games in an evolving market.
“Revenues from our back catalogue of hypercasual games are still strong and continue to exceed expectations.”
One of the primary elements behind the scenes at Kwalee is the firm’s decision to utilise Balancy’s innovative content management system (CMS).
Andy Russell, the Director of Engineering at Kwalee, is the driving force behind a switch that he believes will fire the company to greater heights.
Speed is of the essence in game development, but time-consuming processes can make it difficult for companies to achieve their performance goals.
Russell says the introduction of a new CMS has been a game-changer for Kwalee and should help the firm stay at the forefront of development for many more years.
“The reliance on spreadsheets, hardcoded solutions and overloaded developer pipelines slows down prototyping, delays time-to-market and complicates feature iterations,” Russell said.
“To overcome these roadblocks, the Kwalee team decided to use Balancy’s content management system (CMS).
“This solution introduces a unified yet flexible admin panel that streamlines collaboration between product and engineering teams, enabling faster delivery and smoother workflows.”
Balanacy’s advanced LiveOps tools allow Kwalee to personalise the monetisation journeys for players on their vast portfolio of games.
The system included an innovative ‘branches’ feature, which allows the Kwalee team to develop new features, test changes or fix bugs without affecting the live game.
Once they are happy with their work, the ‘branch’ can be seamlessly merged back into the main project without impacting its stability.
Balancy has numerous other features which have improved Kwalee’s back-end processes. The results have been immediate, speeding up development by a whopping 50%.
Average conversion and retention rates have also spiked significantly and these elements should have a positive impact on Kwalee’s revenues for the next financial year.
