How We Transformed Ravenswatch’s Digital Launch into a Profitable Success
Mastering Game Distribution in a Competitive Market
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital gaming, it’s crucial for companies to maintain stable prices to ensure profitability. However, many publishers struggle with price control due to unauthorized sellers driving prices down. When preparing for the Ravenswatch launch, we identified both a challenge and an opportunity: the risk of price dumping and revenue loss, where unauthorized sellers drop their prices below the agreed minimum, devaluing the product and destabilizing the market, and the potential to implement a structured, strategic approach to ensure sustainable growth.
The Challenge: Combatting Price Undercutting
Upon release, Ravenswatch faced a potential 60% revenue loss due to aggressive price undercutting. Unauthorized sellers were exploiting regional pricing differences, offering keys at drastically reduced rates and disrupting the publisher’s pricing strategy. With market prices dropping as low as €9.78 in August 2024 (with an SRP of €24.99), immediate intervention was necessary to restore value integrity.
Our Strategic Approach: Control, Optimization, and Expansion
To counteract these risks and maximize Ravenswatch’s launch success, we implemented a comprehensive strategy:
Price Optimization: Using our Recommended Price service, we advised the publisher on optimal pricing adjustments across key regions to close loopholes. As a result, the New Zealand price increased from NZ$ 28.99 to NZ$ 40.99, and the Australian price from A$ 36.50 to A$ 37.50, ensuring fair market value and revenue protection.
Proactive Market Monitoring:Through regular test purchases and market analysis, we identified instances of unauthorized price undercutting by non-approved sellers. Based on these findings, we collaborated with the publisher to block keys that were being sold significantly below market value, ensuring pricing integrity and protecting revenue.
Targeted Marketplace Launch: We introduced Ravenswatch on Gamivo, Kinguin, Eneba, and Driffle, enhancing its presence in controlled sales channels and reducing reliance on unauthorized resellers. This led to a to market price increase of 24%.
Marketing Campaigns for Maximum Visibility: Our promotional efforts reached over 3 million potential buyers, strengthening brand recognition and driving sustained demand.
The Results: From Price Erosion to Market Stability
The impact of our strategic measures was clear:
Market Price Recovery: The price of Ravenswatch rebounded from €9.78 in August to €13.29 in December, marking a 36% increasesince working with Rokky, reinforcing value stability and discouraging unauthorized undercutting.
Profitability Growth: The publisher’s profitability surged by 50% upon partnering with us, significantly exceeding the initial 20% growth target, driven by an increase in publisher's revenue share, ensuring greater financial returns from each sale.
Long-Term Market Control: Our structured approach provided a foundation for sustained revenue growth and pricing control by pre-approving discounts with publishers to ensure controlled price reductions, monitoring marketplaces for unauthorized drops, tracing leaked or misused keys through control purchases, and restricting problematic distributors while blacklisting unauthorized sellers.
Why This Matters: Redefining Digital Sales Strategies
The success of Ravenswatch showcases our ability to not only introduce a product to new platforms but also to optimize its entire commercial lifecycle. Our proactive price management, strategic market interventions, and data-driven marketing initiatives reshaped the game’s marketplace performance, securing higher revenues and greater control for the publisher.
@Claire Gelin, Digital Software Account Manager at Nacon, highlighted the impact of our collaboration:
"Rokky played a key role in the successful launch of Ravenswatch, helping us expand to new platforms, increase revenue through sales control, and run targeted marketing campaigns. Their expertise in price protection and marketplace monitoring also helped us combat unauthorized seller dumping, ensuring stable and profitable growth. We look forward to continuing our partnership for future releases."
Nacon’s commitment to structured sales strategies and coordinated launches made it possible to navigate challenges effectively. We are grateful for Nacon's trust and excited to build on this foundation for future projects.
Looking Ahead: Scaling Success Beyond Ravenswatch
Building on this success, we are ready to implement and refine these strategies for upcoming game releases. With our expertise, publishers can confidently expand their reach, safeguard price integrity, and maximize profitability in an increasingly dynamic digital marketplace. At Rokky, we offer powerful tools to help publishers combat unauthorized price dumping and maintain strong revenue streams:
Real-Time Sales Data Platform – Gain full transparency on sales performance across our partner marketplaces, enabling data-driven decisions and quick reactions to market fluctuations.
Recommended Price Service – We analyze regional pricing trends and provide strategic pricing recommendations to optimize margins and enhance profitability.
KMS (Key Management System) – A secure key storage solution that eliminates manual key handling, allowing publishers to monitor distribution in real time and swiftly address unauthorized resales.
If you're looking to unlock your game’s true market potential, Rokky has the tools, expertise, and track record to make it happen.