Alex Liutsko

From positioning to reality. A few months after entering the market, what assumptions about building a new game studio turned out to be wrong — and which ones were unexpectedly confirmed once Riddec started scaling partnerships and releases?

When Riddec Games was just beginning to develop its first titles, we already understood that expanding our partnership network would be critical. No matter how visually appealing and engaging our slots were, how carefully we selected the music, or how much we invested in design, art, and overall production quality, real success could only come through distribution by placing our games on casino platforms via operators and aggregators. With this in mind, we began negotiations from the very start.

To be honest, many of these conversations were conducted with a long-term perspective. We knew that sooner or later we would need to work with major partners, and our partnership with BetConstruct gave us a powerful boost. It quickly signaled to other market players that we were a company worth doing business with.

At the same time, we often negotiate ahead of our current scale. Today, our portfolio includes 15 titles, mostly slots, with crash and casual games representing a smaller share. We are currently developing one to two games per month and intend to maintain this pace in order to consistently release one or two new titles every month.

Some operators may only be ready to onboard us once our portfolio grows two or three times larger, but we are already in discussions with them now. Increasing and strengthening our brand visibility among partners has therefore been a constant priority from day one — and it remains so today. As for hypotheses and strategic decisions, everything we do as a company is data-driven.

Our team includes professionals with many years of experience in the iGaming industry, and no strategic direction we choose is accidental. We begin with research — both market and marketing analysis — and only then move forward with execution.

Identity vs commercial pressure. Riddec has been very clear about choosing identity and quality over mass production. As sales conversations become more commercially driven, how do you protect that identity without slowing down growth or losing operator interest?

The most important lesson we learned over the past year — a year that was successful for us, with many goals achieved — is that for a small game provider, simply creating a good product is not enough to be featured in large, well-known casinos. That is the first realization. The second is that there are no shortcuts in this industry.

As much as we might want to move faster, it’s impossible to skip stages or leap beyond our current scale. Even with great effort, we cannot jump over the natural steps of growth. What this means in practice is that we must build the number of partnerships required for scaling step by step.

Sustainable growth in our industry is gradual, and success comes from consistently strengthening distribution, trust, and visibility over time.

Learning curve for new studios. Looking back at your first year, what would you say is the hardest lesson new studios usually underestimate — something that doesn’t show up in pitch decks, but defines survival in practice?

Yes, you are absolutely right to note that we have chosen a direction focused on establishing our own identity and creating original products for players within popular genres — but by rethinking mechanics, art, and game design. In our view, the market today is saturated with very similar products. As a small studio and a young game provider, it would be difficult for us to compete with industry giants in terms of producing the same volume of games per month or per week.

Our team operates more like a boutique studio rather than a mass-production pipeline.