Poki

Where to Publish a Web Game in 2026

This guide compares three distribution channels for browser games in 2026: game portals, indie storefronts, and self-hosting. Portals (e.g., CrazyGames, Poki, GameDistribution, Newgrounds) provide immediate audience and ad-based monetization but own the player relationship. Self-hosting (object storage + CDN or platforms like Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages) gives ownership of URL, design, analytics, and payment flows but requires audience acquisition. Technical delivery matters for retention: use content-hashed filenames for long caching, Brotli compression over gzip, and progressive loading to reduce initial download times. The recommended approach for most developers is a hybrid: publish on portals for reach while keeping a polished version on your own domain as the primary home.

Hot Five: Mobile gaming roundup — Roblox AI, Play Store changes

This PocketGamer 'Hot Five' roundup (published 2026-07-20) summarizes five mobile gaming stories: HoYoverse's Zenless Zone Zero surpassed $600M in mobile revenue over two years but saw a 51% fall in player spending in year two; Poki grew to 100 million monthly players over five years, per COO Stein Janssen; Google and Epic Games withdrew a settlement as Google prepares to list rival app stores on the Play Store in the US starting July 22; Roblox unveiled Build, a mobile-first AI game-creation feature that generates playable starting points from text prompts using the same back end and AI models as Roblox Studio; and H1 2026 saw $40 billion in mobile gross player spending, with strategy leading while puzzle rose to second and RPGs declined year-over-year.

Poki's vision for browser gaming future

Poki, an Amsterdam-based browser gaming platform, describes its growth and strategy as web gaming resurges. The company says its monthly active players expanded from 10 million to 100 million between 2020 and 2025, now reaching users in more than 190 countries and working with over 600 developer partners. Poki pioneered a revenue-share advertising model on the open web, which it says helps some studios earn up to $1 million annually from ads. The platform emphasizes technical optimisation for instant play (progressive loading, small file sizes), manual curation and brand safety, and publisher tools (PokiSDK, ad mediation, player insights). Poki’s leadership expects browsers to become a default publishing channel and flags AI-generated content as both an opportunity and a curation challenge. The article is based on an interview with Poki COO Stein Janssen and was published 2026-07-15.