Community ecosystems build durable player relationships

In his Gamescom Dev opening keynote, Amir Satvat (formerly business development manager at Tencent, now general partner at 1Up Ventures) laid out the data behind the ongoing games industry reset: revised layoff projections of 14,666 for 2026, revenue concentrated among a shrinking number of titles, and a geographic shift of headcount out of North America toward APAC and Europe.

His diagnosis is blunt: discoverability pressure and AI uncertainty are the two problems "to the best of my knowledge, no person has some master plan" to solve, and not solving them "could be a sinker that invalidates everything else."

But Satvat also named where the bets should go. Two of his five recommendations speak directly to community: "large, engaged ecosystems where creation, participation, and social connection can build durable player relationships," and "a focus on community through Discord, streams, and group chats, even for single-player games."

An ecosystem is more than a Discord or a subreddit. It is the combined surface where players create (mods, guides, fan art, clips), participate (events, tournaments, beta tests, feedback loops) and connect (group chats, streams, shared rituals). Each reinforces the others, and the more people create and connect inside them, the more value each new member finds on arrival — which is exactly why these ecosystems cannot be assembled in the final weeks before launch.

Satvat also argues that studios need to start engaging players at the very start of development. "Let's get rid of this idea, which is a little bit antiquated, that you have to keep this game behind the curtain," he said. "Community access, engagement and feedback is becoming much more important than ever before."