Hello everybody,
Thanks for making 2025 one other superb 12 months for Google Play.
Collectively, we’ve constructed Play into one thing far more than a retailer—it’s a dynamic ecosystem powered by your creativity. This 12 months, our focus was making certain Play continues to be one of the best vacation spot for folks to uncover unbelievable content material and take pleasure in rewarding gaming experiences.
We’re extremely pleased with the progress we have made alongside you, and we’re excited to have a good time those that pushed the boundaries of what’s attainable—just like the winners of our Better of 2025 awards. Watch our recap video to see how we’ve made Play much more rewarding for your small business, or learn on for a extra in-depth look again on the 12 months.
Evolving Play to be greater than a retailer
This 12 months, we targeted on evolving Play into a real vacation spot for discovery the place billions of individuals world wide can discover and luxuriate in experiences that make life extra productive and pleasant.
Making Play one of the best vacation spot on your video games enterprise
Just some months in the past, we shared our imaginative and prescient for a extra unified expertise that brings extra enjoyable to gaming. Right now, gamers usually soar between totally different platforms to find, play, and get rewarded. Our objective is to attach these journeys to create one of the best expertise for gamers and, consequently, develop your small business. Our first steps embrace these key updates:
A brand new Gamer Profile that tracks cross-game stats, streaks, and achievements, customizable with a Gen AI Avatar.
Built-in Rewards throughout cellular and PC that give gamers entry to VIP experiences like our 4 Days of Implausible Rewards at San Diego Comedian-Con, Diamond District expertise on Roblox, and Play’s personal treasure-hunt mini-game Diamond Valley alongside new Play Video games Leagues the place gamers can compete of their favourite video games, climb leaderboards, and win Play Factors rewards.
The new Play Video games Sidekick, a useful in-game overlay that curates and organizes related gaming information, and gives direct entry to Gemini Reside for real-time AI-powered steerage within the recreation. We lately rolled out the open beta to builders, and we encourage you to begin testing the sidekick in your video games and share your suggestions.
Built-in gameplay throughout gadgets is now totally realized as Google Play Video games on PC has graduated from beta to normal availability, solidifying our dedication to cross-platform play and making our catalog of over 200,000 titles accessible throughout cellular and PC.
Play Video games Sidekick is a brand new in-game overlay that provides gamers immediate entry to their rewards, gives, and achievements, driving increased engagement on your recreation.
That will help you get probably the most out of this unified gaming expertise, we launched the Google Play Video games Degree Up program, a brand new option to unlock higher success for your small business. For titles that meet core person expertise pointers, you may unlock a strong suite of advantages together with the flexibility to:
Re-engage gamers on the brand new You tab, a brand new personalised vacation spot on the Play Retailer that’s designed that can assist you re-engage and retain gamers by showcasing content material and rewards from lately performed video games in a single devoted area. You possibly can make the most of engagement instruments in Play Console to function your newest occasions, gives, and updates.
Maximize your recreation’s attain with distinguished boosts throughout the shop, together with that includes alternatives, Play Factors boosters and quests, and enhanced visibility on editorial surfaces just like the Video games Dwelling and Play Factors Dwelling.
You tab is a customized vacation spot designed that can assist you re-engage and
retain gamers by showcasing your newest occasions, gives, and updates.
Unlocking extra discovery and engagement on your apps and its content material
Final 12 months, we shared our imaginative and prescient for a content-rich Google Play that has already delivered sturdy outcomes. Yr-over-year, Apps Dwelling has seen over an 18% improve in common month-to-month guests with apps seeing a 9% progress in acquisitions and double-digit progress* in app spend for these monetizing on Google Play. We launched much more updates to raise discovery and engagement on and off the shop.
Curated areas, launched final 12 months, have been successful, fostering routine engagement by delivering each day, domestically related content material (reminiscent of soccer highlights in Brazil, cricket in India, and comics in Japan) on to the Apps Dwelling. Constructing on this, we expanded to new classes and areas, together with a new entertainment-focused area in Korea.
Curated areas make it simpler to seek out and interact with native pursuits.
We considerably elevated well timed, related content material on Google Play by way of Highlight and new subject browse pages. Highlight, positioned on the high of Apps Dwelling, gives seasonal content material feeds—like Taylor Swift’s latest album launch or vacation film guides—in a brand new, immersive option to join customers with present cultural moments. Concurrently, new subject browse pages have been built-in throughout the shop within the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, permitting content material deep dives into over 100,000 reveals and flicks.
Highlight gives an immersive expertise connecting customers
with related apps throughout present cultural moments.
Final 12 months, we launched Interact SDK that can assist you ship personalised content material to customers throughout surfaces and seamlessly information them into the related in-app experiences. Integrating it unlocks surfaces like Collections, our immersive full-screen expertise bringing content material on to the person’s residence display. This 12 months, we rolled out updates to increase your content material’s attain even additional:
Interact SDK content material expanded to the Play Retailer this summer season, enabling seamless re-engagement throughout Apps Dwelling and the brand new You tab.
Rolled out to extra markets, together with Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, and Korea.
Supporting you all through your app lifecycle
Along with evolving the shop, we’ve continued to construct on our highly effective toolset to help you at each stage, from testing and launch to progress and monetization.
Serving to you ship high-quality, trusted person experiences
We launched key updates in Android Studio and Play Console that can assist you construct extra secure and compliant apps.
New Android vitals metrics help you resolve stability issues and tackle battery drain.
Boosting your productiveness and workflow
We refined the Play Console expertise to make managing your app and your advertising and marketing content material extra environment friendly.
We put your most important insights entrance and middle with a redesigned app dashboard and overview pages.
To repurpose inventive content material throughout Play Console extra simply, we launched an asset library that allows you to add from Google Drive, set up with tags, and crop present visuals.
Now you can routinely translate app strings with Gemini without charge. This function eliminates guide translation work for brand new releases, making updates seamless. You stay in full management with the flexibility to preview translations utilizing a built-in emulator, and might simply edit or disable the service.
Translate app strings routinely with Gemini, whereas sustaining full management for previewing and modifying.
Maximizing your income with safe, frictionless funds
We launched new options targeted on driving purchases and maximizing subscription income globally.
We’re enhancing buy conversion globally with over 800 million customers now prepared to purchase. We launched options that encourage customers to arrange cost strategies early, present AI-powered cost methodology suggestions, and expanded our cost library to help extra native cost strategies globally.
To maximise recurring income from over 400 million paid subscriptions, we launched multi-product checkout, permitting you to promote base subscriptions and add-ons below a easy, single transaction.
To fight churn, we started showcasing subscription advantages in additional locations and supplied you with extra versatile choices like prolonged grace durations and account holds for declined funds, which has confirmed efficient in decreasing involuntary churn by a median of 10%*.
To assist scale back voluntary churn, we’re showcasing your subscriptions advantages throughout Play.
Investing in our app and recreation neighborhood with developer packages
We’re proud to spend money on packages for app and recreation corporations world wide that can assist you develop and succeed on Play.
Google Play Apps Accelerator: We’ve opened submissions for our program that may assist early-stage app corporations scale their enterprise. Chosen corporations from over 80 eligible international locations will be a part of a 12-week accelerator beginning in March 2026, the place they will study extra about creating high-quality apps, go-to-market methods, person acquisition, and extra.
Submissions are nonetheless open for our 12-week accelerator, which begins in March 2026.
Apply by January 7, 2026 for consideration.
Indie Video games Fund (Latin America): Now in its fourth 12 months, this fund gives help to 10 promising recreation studios in Latin America with funding and hands-on help from Google Play. In October, we introduced the 2025 recipients.
ChangGoo Program (South Korea): Now in its seventh 12 months, this program works with over 100 Korean cellular app and recreation startups to foster their progress and enlargement in collaboration with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korean Institute of Startup and Entrepreneurship Growth (KISED).
Google Play x Unity Sport Developer Coaching Program (Indonesia): The third version launched in April, providing a 6-month on-line curriculum, meetups, and mentorship for Indonesian recreation builders in partnership with Indonesia’s Ministry of Artistic Financial system and the Indonesian Gaming Affiliation.
Google Play x Unity Sport Developer Coaching Program (India): The primary India cohort kicked off in November with 500 aspiring {and professional} recreation builders. The 6-month journey gives on-line curriculum and meetups in partnership with GDAI and the govt. of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
Defending your small business and our ecosystem
On the coronary heart of all of the progress we’ve made this 12 months is a basis of belief and safety. We’re all the time innovating to make Play safer for everybody—so customers can belief each app they obtain and so you may hold constructing a thriving enterprise.
To supply stronger safety for your small business and customers, we continued to reinforce the Play Integrity API and our anti-fraud techniques. On common, apps utilizing Play Integrity options see 80% decrease unauthorized utilization, and our efforts have safeguarded high apps utilizing Play Billing from $2.9 billion in fraud and abuse within the final 12 months.
Mechanically repair person points: New Play in-app remediation prompts in Play Integrity API routinely information customers to repair frequent issues like community points, outdated Google Play Companies, or gadget integrity flags, decreasing integration complexity and getting customers again to state quicker.
Fight repeat unhealthy actors: System recall is a strong new instrument that allows you to retailer and recall restricted information related to a tool, even when the gadget is reset, serving to defend your small business mannequin from repeat unhealthy actors.
Strengthen income safety: We have launched stronger protections in opposition to abuse, together with refining pricing arbitrage detection and enhancing safety in opposition to free trial and intro pricing abuse for subscriptions, serving to your small business fashions stay worthwhile.
With in-app remediation prompts, Play routinely handles
a variety of points to information your customers again to state.
For a full breakdown of latest methods we’re maintaining the ecosystem protected, take a look at our deep-dive weblog submit right here.
Thanks on your partnership
That is an unbelievable time for Google Play. We’ve made large strides collectively – your ardour, creativity, and suggestions all through 2025 has made Play that a lot stronger. We’re grateful to work alongside one of the best developer neighborhood on this planet, and we stay up for unlocking even higher success collectively within the new 12 months.
Completely happy holidays!
Sam Shiny
VP & GM, Google Play + Developer Ecosystem
* Supply: Inside Google information