Xsolla, a global commerce company, today announced the launch of Game Biz Institute (GBI), an editorial platform where named industry practitioners and researchers examine the commercial layer of games: direct-to-player distribution, payments, monetization, user acquisition, and retention.
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Graphic: Xsolla
Game design has a curriculum. The business of games does not. Engines, pipelines, production, and narrative are taught at hundreds of universities, while the commercial machinery that determines whether good work becomes a durable company is still learned through expensive trial and error, usually after the decisions that mattered have already been made. GBI was built to close that gap by publishing what practitioners have actually learned running these businesses.
"Game developers have never had more data and less clarity," said Chris Hewish, President of Xsolla. "The industry produces endless benchmarks, but benchmarks don't tell a studio what to do on Monday morning. GBI exists to close that gap. We asked the people who actually run these businesses, design these economies, and study these players to explain what works and why. Xsolla builds the infrastructure behind game commerce, so we see what succeeds across 1,500+ game teams. GBI is where that knowledge, combined with the expertise of the industry professionals around us, becomes something every developer can use."
The launch collection spans indie publishing, virtual economies, discovery, regional growth, partnership management, and long-term live service operations. Contributors include a veteran indie publishing lead on why the "ship faster, market louder" playbook fails in a market absorbing more than 21,000 new releases a year; one of the original architects of the virtual world on the player-developer contract across free-to-play, pay-to-win, and Web3; a market analyst mapping the widening gap between how much players have to watch, play, and scroll and how little time they have to give any of it; an industry association director on what 550 million young Indian gamers and a development scene ready to build its own IP mean for that market's next phase; a business development chief on what 15 years and 170 million downloads of a single title taught her about protecting player trust; the founder of a lean studio behind one of the world's biggest social deduction games; and an operations lead on how distribution became democratized while discoverability became concentrated.
GBI also serves as the home for original research, including a joint Xsolla and Newzoo study on direct-to-player distribution in PC gaming and dedicated research into the trust, motivations, and spending behavior of gamers across Asia.
Alongside the launch, Xsolla opened GBI to external contributors through a program that compensates practitioners for published work, with revenue tied to the contribution's impact. The platform is actively recruiting studio operators, researchers, and commercial leads with firsthand experience to write for it.
"This only works if we stay out of the way," said Berkley Egenes, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Xsolla. "We are funding a room where the people who run these businesses argue openly, under their own names. Some of those arguments will land against our own position, and that is the point."
Early GBI content debuted through an editorial collaboration with 80.lv, with the full platform now live on xsolla.com. New articles will be published on a rolling basis through 2026.
Game Biz Institute is available at: https://xsolla.com/game-biz-institute
To learn more about Game Biz Institute, you can also visit: https://xsolla.pro/GameBizInstitute
About Xsolla
Xsolla is a global commerce company that builds and provides all the things developers need to launch, grow, and monetize video games. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, the company supports studios of every size, from indie to AAA, with solutions across direct-to-consumer commerce, intelligent payments, entertainment-based IP, and player engagement products. Xsolla helps developers fund, distribute, market, and monetize their games at scale. Trusted by more than 70% of the top 100 highest-grossing games, Xsolla operates as the merchant of record across 200+ geographies with access to 1,000+ local payment methods worldwide. Grounded in a deep belief in the future of gaming, Xsolla is resolute in bringing opportunities together and unlocking growth for creators everywhere.
For more information, visit xsolla.com
© 2026 Xsolla. All rights reserved.
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