Unlocking D2C Growth with Loyalty: How to Turn Link-outs and Webshops into a Revenue Engine

When app store policies shift, so does the opportunity for direct-to-consumer (D2C) growth. At Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki, our Chief Growth Officer, Archie Stonehill, walked through how top studios can use loyalty programs, embedded payments, and regulatory tailwinds to grow D2C wallet share—not just bolt on another webstore.

Watch the full session from PGC Helsinki below:

Why loyalty belongs at the center of your D2C strategy

In this talk, Archie focuses on one of the most underrated retention and revenue drivers in D2C: loyalty.

The goal isn’t just to reward spenders. It’s to:

• shift spend from app stores into higher-margin D2C channels
• make your webshop and link-out flows feel like an upgrade, not a chore
• keep your most valuable players coming back to your owned channels
  
  

To get there, he anchors loyalty in three things:

1. The evolving regulatory landscape
2. A simple framework for the D2C player journey
3. A practical blueprint for building D2C-first loyalty programs

The new regulatory reality: why this moment matters

A few years ago, developers couldn’t even email players about direct payments if that email address was collected in-app. Since then, everything has changed.

At the time of this talk (September 2025), the landscape looks roughly like this:

• United States
  
  • External link-outs from iOS apps are allowed.
  • U.S. Android is following with an even more expansive ruling on anti-steering, alternative distribution, and potentially native app payments—even for Play Store–distributed apps.
    
    
• Europe and the UK
  
  • Governed primarily by the DMA (EU) and DMCC (UK), with new fee structures and evolving rules around steering and alternative payments.
    
    
• Rest of world
  
  • A patchwork of rules, with Brazil, Korea, and Japan as key markets to watch.
    
    

The big takeaway:

Developers now have more ways than ever to direct players to their own payment flows and webstores—and that trend is accelerating. Loyalty becomes the engine that makes those channels worth switching to.

Two frameworks for thinking about D2C

Archie shares two simple ways to frame D2C strategy.

1. Convenience vs. Motivation

D2C will never be as convenient as native store payments. Players already trust and understand platform workflows.

So your job is to:

• reduce friction wherever you can (better link-out flows, saved payment methods, intelligent routing)
• increase motivation so the experience feels clearly better than buying through the store

Loyalty sits squarely in that second bucket—it’s how you make D2C feel like the smart choice.

2. Acquisition, Conversion, Retention

You can also break the D2C journey into three steps:

1. acquisition – getting players into your D2C channel in the first place
2. conversion – driving the first (and second, and third) purchase
3. retention – turning that behavior into a habit

Most features influence more than one step. Loyalty is a good example:

• It acquires players into the webshop by advertising rewards and perks.
• It converts them by offering immediate, tangible benefits at checkout.
• It retains them by making ongoing D2C spend feel progressively more valuable.

Across all three stages, Archie thinks in terms of three touchpoint types:

• in-game (UI, messaging, placements)
• out-of-game (email, push, social, community)
• in the D2C channel (webshop, launcher, payment flows)

Loyalty can (and should) show up in all three.

How D2C-first loyalty differs from in-game VIP programs

Most game-native loyalty or VIP systems were built for one of two outcomes:

• increase long-term retention of high spenders
• increase spend depth among already-engaged players

Stash’s D2C-first loyalty programs have a different primary job:

shift spend into D2C channels and grow wallet share outside the app stores.

Archie frames this using a metric he calls return on generosity:

• Assume that 100% of the rewards you give out in a loyalty program are cannibalizing revenue you would have made anyway (an intentionally conservative assumption).
• Ask: For every dollar of value I give away, what do I get back?

When you’re shifting spend from a 30% fee environment to a much lower-fee D2C environment, you can often afford to “give back” up to ~25% in value and still be more profitable. That’s why D2C loyalty programs can be much more generous than in-app ones, and still make financial sense.

Secondary objectives—like better retention, higher spend depth, or more frequent purchases—can be layered on top. But the backbone of these programs is D2C adoption.

Building blocks of a D2C loyalty program

Archie breaks down loyalty design into three core components.

1. Tiers (ranks)

Tiers are what players keep. Think of them like any other progression system:

• 3–10 ranks, each with its own threshold
• clear labels and visual identity
• a sense of long-term status and achievement
  

2. Milestones

Within each tier, you have milestones:

• short-term goals that are always within reach
• small rewards based on spend or progression
• reasons to keep coming back “just one more time”

Milestones keep the journey active, but on their own they’re limited—they’re one-time payouts.

3. Benefits

This is where the real value sits.

Ranks need benefits that feel meaningful and not purely transactional. Archie calls out a few types:

• Benefit multipliers
  
  • The higher the rank, the more generous the D2C rewards (extra currency, bonus items, etc.).
  • High-value players become deeply invested in your D2C ecosystem.
  • You can model cumulative value precisely to keep your return on generosity positive.
    
    
• Economic and non-economic perks
  
  • Exclusive communities
  • Early or exclusive access to content
  • VIP customer service
  • Merch, cosmetics, gifts
    
    
• The more visible and varied these are, the stronger the sense of intrinsic value.
  
  
• Visual identity
  
  • A clear look and feel for each rank
  • D2C experiences that “level up” alongside the player
  • Color-coding and UI shifts that make progress feel tangible even outside the game

Most programs stop at milestones. Stash’s approach layers persistent benefits, multipliers, and identity on top, so the value of D2C participation keeps compounding.

Example: Tactician’s Club for Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus

To make it concrete, Archie walks through a program Stash built for Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus, called the Tactician’s Club.

Core principles:

• Designed for D2C adoption first
  
  • Built specifically to grow webshop and link-out behavior.
  • All loyalty elements are compliant with app store policies by linking to non-purchase-based web mechanics.
    
    
• Three primary spend-based incentives
  
  • Core in-game currency (e.g., Blackstone)
  • Loyalty currency
  • Loyalty XP
    
    
• Layered progression and missions
  
  • Players see their loyalty rank and milestone rewards.
  • Missions allow progression through free-to-play engagement.
  • These missions can be linked from within the game to reinforce the D2C habit.
    
    
• Compliance-aware UX
  
  • The loyalty interface sits two clicks away from the store, with no direct purchase option.
  • That makes it linkable from any app store build while staying compliant.
  • Each visit to the webshop becomes an opportunity to surface loyalty value.
    
    
• Web-exclusive currency and shop
  
  • Additional currency and catalog available only on the web.
  • Extra reasons to visit and spend in D2C channels.

The result: loyalty sits at the center of the D2C experience, not bolted on at the edges.

Why link-outs and webshops grow together

A common fear is that adding link-out flows will cannibalize webshop revenue. In practice, Stash has seen the opposite when loyalty is integrated across both.

By weaving loyalty into:

• link-out payment flows, and
• the webshop experience,

link-outs become an onboarding path into the broader D2C loyalty ecosystem.

In live programs, Stash has seen that for roughly every 1% adoption via link-out purchases through Stash Pay, there is an additional ~0.5–0.75% adoption in the webshop. The channels grow together instead of competing with each other.

How to make D2C worth it for your players

Archie closes with three practical principles.

1. Focus on your most engaged users: These programs are primarily for existing spenders. You can use them to onboard new spenders, but the biggest lift comes from shifting existing spend from app stores into D2C.
   
   
2. Tailor rewards to your game’s meta
   
   • In some games, cosmetics and status are incredibly powerful.
   • In single-player games, cosmetics may not matter as much, so you need other levers.
   • The best loyalty programs feel native to the game’s fantasy and systems.
     
     
3. Respect the medium you’re in: If you’re on the web, don’t just recreate your in-game UI:
   
   • Use web-native strengths like deep linking to YouTube, communities, and support.
   • Build richer browsing and discovery experiences.
   • Treat your webshop as a complementary surface, not a compromised port.

Ultimately, you’ll never beat native store payments purely on convenience. But with the right loyalty design, you don’t have to. You just need to make D2C feel like the smarter, more rewarding path for your best players.

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