Skillz, Beamable and The LiveOps Shift

Recorded live on-site at GDC, hosts Peggy Anne Salz and Craig Chapple sit down with Robert Burnett, Head of New Content at Skillz, and Jon Radoff, CPO of Beamable, to unpack what just changed for developers building competitive mobile games.With the acquisition of Beamable, Skillz is pushing into a bigger role: giving developers more control over progression, LiveOps and monetisation inside the game, while still handling the infrastructure that is hardest to build well. As Jon puts it, the goal is to build “a business operating system for a game studio” so developers can focus on gameplay instead of racking up debt. “If you’re spending any of your effort building the tech instead of the fun, you’re accumulating debt that doesn’t do you any good.”Skillz also unveiled the Pro SDK at GDC, opening up more control inside Unity for developers who want to build competitive games with richer progression, more flexible monetisation and a stronger live-service layer. In this episode, Peggy and Craig get into:Puzzle Blockz, the first live proof point for the combined platformWhat this shift means for smaller teams that want to move faster without building every part of the stack themselvesHow advertising, IAP and competition can start to work together instead of sitting in separate silos If you are serious about building competitive mobile games that can keep players and grow revenue, start here.Chapters00:00 New Ways for Developers to Monetize01:34 The Acquisition of Beamable by Skillz01:59 Solving Pain Points with the Pro SDK04:46 A Business Operating System for Game Studios06:27 The Role of AI in Rapid Prototyping10:14 Economies of Scale in Game Development11:51 From Vibe Coding to Agentic Systems16:01 Case Study: The Puzzle Blocks Proof of Concept22:50 Iterating Based on Real-Time Player Feedback34:31 The Future Roadmap: Intelligence and AutomationLet's Connect👉🏻 X - https://x.com/pgbiz 👉🏻 LinkedIn Group - https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/pocketgamer-biz/?originalSubdomain=uk 👉🏻 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PGbiz👉🏻 Website - https://www.pocketgamer.biz Check out more world-class speakers sharing their insights and expertise at one of our events. You can find details of our next event here - https://www.pgconnects.com/next-event