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For mobile game studios, scaling once meant finding promising metrics, increasing User Acquisition spend and reaching as many players as possible.
At VGC 2026, the Scale Track showed why that playbook is becoming much more complex.
Across sessions covering UA, Monetization, AI, Creative and Rewarded UA, speakers repeatedly returned to one idea: sustainable growth now depends on connecting the entire player journey rather than optimizing individual metrics in isolation.
The day opened with An Vĩnh from ABI Games, who explored the feedback loop between UA and Product. Acquisition teams understand which creatives and audiences bring users into the game, while Product teams understand what happens after those users arrive. Connecting those insights allows studios to adapt much faster.
Player segmentation expanded that discussion further, highlighting how Monetization, LiveOps and Retention can be adjusted for different types of users instead of treating everyone the same.
AI was another major theme throughout the track.
Sessions from Super Banana Studios, Google, Sensor Tower, Bravestars Games and Moloco examined how AI is entering creative production, campaign optimization, audience targeting, measurement and Monetization.
Rather than appearing simply as a content-generation tool, AI was increasingly positioned as part of the infrastructure behind modern growth teams - helping studios test faster and make decisions using larger amounts of data.
The Monetization conversation followed a similar direction.
Panels examined how studios can balance Ads, IAP and player experience, while other sessions looked at mediation and the increasingly close relationship between Monetization and UA.
Creative remained another critical piece of the puzzle. Playable Labs explored how studios can build repeatable creative testing systems rather than relying on a single winning ad.
Later in the day, Jintao Wang from Almedia introduced Rewarded UA as part of a longer-term growth strategy, while BIGO Ads explored how UA and Monetization can work together to improve return over the full player lifecycle.
Together, the sessions reflected a clear shift in mobile growth.
There is no longer one single lever that studios can pull to scale.
UA, Product, Data, Creative and Monetization increasingly operate as one connected system — each generating information that can improve the others.
For studios competing in an increasingly expensive market, the question is therefore no longer simply how fast can we scale?
It is how intelligently can we build the system behind that growth?
