Direct-to-consumer: building the infrastructure that makes it real

Welcome to The Business of Games Podcast, powered by Xsolla.In this episode, hosts Chris Hewish and Lia Ballentine go a layer deeper into direct-to-consumer — past the strategy, past the economics, and into the infrastructure that determines whether a studio's direct-to-player ambitions actually hold up at scale.Most direct-to-consumer conversations start with intent and end with outcomes. But between the two sits a layer most studios underestimate: the technology stack. Identity systems, payments infrastructure, data pipelines, commerce backends, and emerging Web3 tooling aren't supporting characters in the direct-to-player story. They're the plot. And the studios getting it right aren't necessarily the biggest or most technically sophisticated. They're the ones who made the right architectural decisions early.To explore what those decisions look like in practice, Chris and Lia draw on conversations with two leaders building at the frontier of games technology and infrastructure: Arron Goolsbey, Chief Operating Officer at Mythical Games, who has spent years building direct-to-consumer ecosystems at scale, and Jan Roessner, co-founder and CEO of One Earth Rising, whose work connecting ownable game assets across platforms offers a fresh lens on what player ownership can actually mean.Together, they unpack how identity, data, and commerce infrastructure either enable the player relationship or quietly undermine it. You'll hear why the stack isn't one decision but a sequence of interconnected ones, and why the order matters enormously. Why Web3, stripped of the hype, is best understood as an infrastructure capability rather than a platform unto itself. Why data-informed decision systems are fundamentally different from data-driven dashboards. And why trust infrastructure — payments reliability, fraud prevention, support — isn't a back-office cost center but a direct investment in the player relationship.The through-line is clear: the player relationship you're promising is only as real as the systems you've built to support it.What you'll learn:Why direct-to-consumer is an architectural commitment, not just a business model decisionHow to think about the stack as a sequence and why the order of decisions mattersWhat Web3 tooling actually adds to a direct-to-player infrastructure and where it doesn'tWhy first-party data architecture must be built before you need itHow trust infrastructure becomes a player relationship investmentLet's get into it.For more insights and resources, visit xsolla.com/podcast. Want to join the conversation? Follow and comment on our LinkedIn page at The Business of Games Podcast. That’s where we’ll be sharing updates, highlights, and continuing the discussion. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share the podcast with friends who want to learn more about the business of games.