Montserrat, Stelzer: Discovery and Payment
Industry experts Eduard Montserrat and David Stelzer argue that discovery and monetization are converging, with TikTok Live dominating viewership and web
Mobile game discovery and payment are converging into a single strategy in 2026. Industry figures Eduard Montserrat of Stream Hatchet and David Stelzer of Appcharge argue that treating them separately is now a mistake.
For fifteen years, app stores handled both finding and paying for games. That changed in about eighteen months. Discovery shifted to live video and creators. Payment moved to web stores and links.
These look like different trends. Different teams manage them. But they represent the same fundamental shift. The app store's bundled product has been unbundled.
TikTok Live dominates game viewership
Live-streaming viewership reached 17.5 billion hours in Q2 2026, as shown in our stats. TikTok Live accounted for 50.9% of that total, or 8.9 billion hours. This makes it larger than every other platform combined.
Eduard Montserrat states that discovery is no longer just about first hearing of a game. "It is about where audiences choose to spend their time afterwards," he said.
This changes how publishers should view TikTok. It is not just for viral launch moments. It is becoming a platform for building sustained audiences and communities over time.
Montserrat expects that by the end of 2026, more mobile publishers will treat TikTok as a core distribution and community channel. They will adopt an always-on creator strategy instead of isolated campaigns. The goal is building persistent audiences, not just buying moments of attention.
Web stores drive player loyalty and repeat purchases
When a player finds a game through a stream, they open the app the same way as anyone else. The contested moment comes next. It is the decision to spend and what handles the transaction.
Native app store billing gives the transaction, the fee, the customer record, and future communication rights to the platform. A payment link keeps all three with the publisher.
Payment Links aim to make this the default. Adoption data suggests it is working. David Stelzer notes that 56% of US players using them are completely new to direct-to-consumer purchasing.
They recruit new buyers rather than redistributing existing ones. The real impact is seen after the first purchase. Across Appcharge-powered stores, 97% of revenue comes from repeat buyers, and once a player has made three web store purchases, their repeat rate passes 84%.
Stelzer provided these figures. He claims the owned storefront is becoming a discovery surface itself. A store with such high repeat rates behaves like a destination. Players return for offers, events, and news, much like they check fixtures or standings.
Identity and loyalty attach to the publisher's store. No platform holder can intervene. Stelzer expects better publishers to plan a web store content calendar as seriously as a live ops calendar by year's end. The retention numbers demand it.
Designing the unified player journey
The two trends now must be designed together. The failure mode is clear. A player acquired through a creator and handed to a generic checkout is a player acquired for the platform, not the publisher.
The expectation is that by the close of 2026, leading publishers will not have the best creator campaign or the best web store alone. They will be the ones who stopped scoring these separately. They will measure the whole journey from the initial clip to the third purchase that secures loyalty.
