“These are the new rules of the jungle. After the pandemic-era boom, the market posted its first-ever annual decline in 2022 and is only gradually returning to healthier growth. Players have seen an enormous number of games and become far more selective. The safe path became proven mechanics, predictable monetisation and measurable KPIs – almost as if the motto were "don't make games, make metrics," says Yury Pomortsev CEO and Founder of Game Garden.
The company was established in Cyprus in 2018 and maintains offices in both California and Cyprus. It employs a team of 30 people, with ten based on the island. Among its most successful titles are Fairy Farm, Farmdale, Love Choice, Criminal Stories, Florescence, and Flower Haven. Notably, since 2009, the company’s 15 released games have collectively attracted more than 100 million players worldwide.
In an interview with GOLD magazine, Pomortsev discusses the key challenges currently facing the gaming industry, while outlining Game Garden’s development strategy and its plans for future growth.
How would you describe your company’s core business model and game development strategy?
Since 2009, we have set out to do one thing well: to build warm, accessible and emotionally engaging games for mobile – free to play via Google Play, the Apple App Store and Amazon, so a player needs nothing but a phone to begin. That conviction still guides us. We create cosy, kind and slightly magical worlds where players relax, create and feel a real sense of progress. Our core genres are farm-building, simulation and, more recently, merge games, made primarily for a broad female audience. Across 15 released titles, our games have reached more than 100 million players worldwide. We don't chase every trend at once. We make charming, long-lasting games for the audience we understand best.
What are the key factors currently influencing your company’s operations and strategic decision-making?
The mobile market is changing fast and the bar for success keeps rising. It is not only the growing cost of development – it is the sheer pressure of performance marketing. Privacy changes like Apple's tracking rules made paid user acquisition far more expensive and far less predictable. Independent studios now compete with global players on another scale: one hit, Monopoly GO, spent over $1 billion on marketing – that’s more than the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster! Simply getting noticed has become harder than ever. These are the new rules of the jungle. After the pandemic-era boom, the market posted its first-ever annual decline in 2022 and is only gradually returning to healthier growth. Players have seen an enormous number of games and become far more selective. The safe path became proven mechanics, predictable monetisation and measurable KPIs – almost as if the motto were "don't make games, make metrics."
For an independent studio, that demands real discipline: know your audience, control costs, design for retention. But our boldest answer was to stop facing the giants alone – in 2026 we co-founded Nova Assembly, a developer-led holding where five strong independent studios pool resources to compete on a different footing. These are the studios behind two of this year's most anticipated games: REPLACED and Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era.
What do you consider to be the most significant recent industry trends and growth drivers? Which of these do you expect to shape the sector over the coming years?
The headline trend is the rapid rise of AI. It already opens enormous opportunities and is used everywhere – in marketing, creative testing, analytics and production. But I don't believe the fairy tale that AI can make a good game for you, produce final-quality art or animation, or replace a strong team. That is not how it works.
In our own practice, though, AI has proven to be a remarkably powerful tool for programmers. Used well, it multiplies productivity several times over – occasionally by an order of magnitude – at very modest cost. Code becomes cleaner and more reliable, internal tools take hours instead of weeks, library updates stop being a headache, and a working prototype for designers becomes a quick step rather than a separate production stage. It strengthens our analysis and process organisation too – in the hands of people who know what they are doing. All of this frees the team for what truly matters: creativity, testing ideas, improving the player experience.
A second major trend: studios with strong mobile experience are moving towards PC and console, including Steam – which recently passed 42 million concurrent users. We are no exception. Our next major project, to be announced this autumn, is built from the start for both Steam and mobile.
Finally, mobile has filled with polished but very similar games – the legacy of safe, KPI-driven development. Free-to-play is the dominant model and it will stay that way but, in our view, it carries real costs for players. That leaves genuine room for fresh experiences based on a different logic – and I see particular potential in the return of the premium model, where players get the full game upfront without constant artificial paywalls. For us, this is a very promising direction.
This interview first appeared in the June edition of GOLD magazine. Click here to view it.
