The Creative Distribution and Marketing Agency Bastion recently released the Bastion 2025 Game Marketing Survey, which revealed questions about its corporate structure, games, current marketing strategies and anticipated future challenges through a global survey of 75 developers and distributors. The report states that “discoverability” is the greatest challenge that distributors and developers are expected to face this year.
“The rules for the marketing of games are rapidly evolving,” said Clare Hawkins, Director General of the Bastion Game, in his report. “… Over the past 12 months, marketing staff have been asked to `do more with less’, budgets have become increasingly tight and teams have become smaller, yet markets have become overcrowded. Agility is no longer about adding flowers, but about success.”
The survey found that 63.9 per cent of respondents had more than 10 years of game distribution experience, but the same percentage of companies had only one to five members of their marketing team. “…It’s a big, big, big business.“Claire Hawkins pointed out.
Overall, the size of the marketing team remained relatively stable: 44.4 per cent of companies indicated that the size of the team was “still unchanged”, 33.3 per cent of companies were downsized and 22.2 per cent were expanding. According to the report, this year the proportion of expanded teams has decreased significantly compared to nearly 40 per cent in 2024.
Most companies (44.4 per cent) remain “undecided” as to whether to recruit their marketing teams for the next 12 months, with 40 per cent clearly indicating “no”.
However, the outsourcing agencies noted an increase. The majority of respondents (38.9 per cent) indicated that their companies had increased the expenditures of outsourced institutions over the past year. At the same time, the proportion of marketing staff who have reduced outsourced expenditure has also been “significantly reduced”, with 27.8 per cent of respondents indicating a decrease in expenditure, which is 14.2 percentage points lower than last year. 33.3 per cent of respondents indicated that their outsourcing expenditures remained unchanged, 13 percentage points higher than in 2024.
When asked if “the current budget is sufficient to meet marketing goals”, only 36.1 per cent of respondents confirmed, a significant decrease from 60 per cent in 2024. The report also found that 81 per cent of respondents indicated that their main game marketing budget was less than £500,000 (approximately £4.87 million), an increase of 17.7 percentage points over last year.
This year’s sample of interviewees included more companies developing AA and AAA-class games (28.8 per cent and 15.1 per cent, respectively), but only 5.4 per cent had a typical marketing budget of Pound500,000 to Pound75.5 million, compared to 13.5 per cent of companies with a budget of over Pound1 million. The report states that this indicates that “more of these types of games have experienced budgetary constraints in the past 12 months”.
The survey also found that 31 per cent of companies considered discovery to be the biggest challenge in the past year, while 94.4 considered it to be the biggest challenge in the next 12 months. Hawkins described it as “the Achilles’ troupe of industry”.
“Recoverability is still at the top of the list, but it is not just a perceived problem”, said Ravi Vijh, Managing Director of Bastion. “It is the seizure of spotlights in overcrowded markets.”
In terms of marketing channels, more than 25 per cent of respondents considered that the marketing of natural influenceers (i.e., Internet red owners, etc.) was most effective. In 2024, the paid media (now considered to be the least effective) and the pay-impacters were the most popular channels.
The report states: “The data indicate thatOver the past 12 months, marketing strategies have shifted to more natural and community-driven contentI don’t know.
“The game industry is changing at a rapid pace — a tighter budget, more competitive, and never so difficult a fight for attention”, said Ravi Vijay. “Our latest marketing survey reveals a clear picture: the challenges are universal and the strategies that work well.”
“All-powerful marketing templates? It’s over, Ravi Vijay continues to stress. “From influencers working together to Steam’s activities, to studios showing themselves on the British. The rule is simple: honesty is a necessity. In the face of pressure from the team, marketing staff are turning to trusted outsourcing partners to deliver bold, results-oriented ideas on a scale.”