Xsolla President Chris Hewish Reveals 5 Pillars to Fix the Gaming Industry

Escaping the Hit-Driven Hamster Wheel Through First-Party Ownership

Hewish argues that studios must reevaluate their reliance on third-party digital storefronts and platform gatekeepers. As the president of a fintech company specializing in video game payment software—including PayStation payment-integration tools—and a former executive at Activision and DreamWorks, he urges leaders to examine whether they truly own their operations or merely rent them. According to Hewish, relying entirely on app store platforms fragments essential business connections. He states that companies operating strictly through third-party platforms are completely reliant on them for the relationships with their players, for the commerce, for the business, behavioral intelligence on the players and it can slow down building trust with the players because of all of that. The book proposes five core pillars for long-term operational health: relationships, commerce, intelligence, trust, and time. Studios that achieve stability govern these areas independently rather than outsourcing core infrastructure to external storefronts. This framework addresses the vulnerability of publishers who treat software launches as isolated gambles rather than enduring commercial ecosystems.

Data Gaps and Blind Spots in Modern Game Monetization

The intelligence pillar highlights how incomplete data streams distort executive decision-making during market downturns. Studios regularly monitor high-level dashboards tracking active users, total revenue, and average revenue per user by region. However, Hewish notes that routing all payment and commerce data through a single intermediary leaves critical blind spots. Without proprietary transaction data, studios misinterpret regional sales drops as content failures rather than payment friction. To illustrate this data gap, Hewish points to regional payment shifts where local consumer habits evolve faster than platform integrations. If a new digital wallet or alternative payment provider captures 20 percent of a regional player base and the host platform fails to support it, local revenue will suddenly contract. Hewish explains that without complete transaction data, a publisher may assume, oh my gosh, we need to make more content for that country because it’s just not relevant or we need to localize more in that country, leading to misallocated development resources. By establishing direct commerce channels, studios can capture granular behavioral intelligence, identify localized payment shifts accurately, and maintain direct connections with their player communities.