In the wake of legal rulings compelling mobile app stores to allow alternative app stores and payment systems, Apple and Google have been rolling out new game-focused features in recent months. These updates claim to benefit developers and players, yet primarily defend the existing 30% fees and service, which are facing increasing scrutiny.

Both companies have introduced new features or updates that are worth a closer look. Apple’s push arrived via the new Games app in iOS 26 on September 25th, while Google rolled out its Level Up program and a new “You” tab for Google Play in most countries on October 1st.

Broadly, the changes fall into two buckets: discoverability and engagement. Apple’s effort is channeled through a new Games app that borrows from its Game Center and primarily offers a few new features for developers. Google’s changes live inside the Play Store and require adherence to new user-experience guidelines to get certain benefits.

Let’s dig into whether these features accomplish their goals or are simply late, incremental changes, and how they might impact both small and large developers.

Game Discovery

Apple’s Games app features a new top-played games chart based on actual play time, rather than typical metrics like downloads or revenue. It also adds some social discovery through Play Together, which displays what friends are playing. Game pages now show friends’ memojis (Apple’s custom user emojis)  around the app icon to indicate they have the game, which is part of a general push to have more information on app pages.

Both Apple and Google are enhancing game pages with new features intended to boost playing and reengagement, highlighting achievements, in-app events, and better video previews. Google goes further with Play points coupons (specific discounts on in-game IAP in exchange for Play Points) and YouTube-sourced videos. Google also uses AI to extract key sentiments from reviews, offering quick summaries of what players think. Some apps now include an “Ask Play about this app” prompt with example questions.

Google is also testing “guided search,” letting users search with general phrases such as “police games,” “nail games,” or “robot games,” and get AI-organized results. Search now includes personalized “you might like” suggestions and four trending searches. Personalized nudges such as “because you installed” show “more like this” recommendations, and users can rate how interesting certain sections are to help fine-tune suggestions.

Realistically, neither platform is likely to dramatically improve the odds of discovering games that aren’t already popular. Yes, Google’s AI and personalization can better reveal niche titles, and the upgraded store pages may lift conversion, but the marketing burden still falls on developers to push discovery features.

Engagement and Socialization

At a basic level, both platforms try to remind players to continue playing recent titles. Google Play also includes a new notification style for games installed but not played. Apple’s Games app doubles as a library of past and present installs (including titles no longer available), merging the Game Center’s features with an approach reminiscent of Samsung’s Game Launcher. Exposing in-game events here for played titles can at least potentially nudge relaunches.

Google, through a new streaks system, goes further than Apple at encouraging players to keep playing. This system requires players to simply play five minutes of any game downloaded from the Google Play store each day to maintain a daily streak. Players are then awarded a small number of Play points at streak milestones, which is currently every seven days. These Play points are then redeemable for offers including Play Credits that are usable for in-app purchases. The amounts are very small, usually just cents at a time, but the loop smartly ties engagement to both the Play Store and Google’s payment rails.

Apple adds some social engagement that expands on the Game Center’s leaderboards with the new challenges feature. It lets players create semicustomized short-term competitive challenges in supported games for friends to tackle. Unlike leaderboards, this is tailored with custom settings including desired duration and being invite-only. The idea is for these challenges to feel much more personalized and intimate than a leaderboard, but are ultimately still a micro-leaderboard.

The exact settings available depend on what games show up on the Games app. This can include a deep linking capability allowing players to jump straight into the relevant feature for the challenge — if implemented by the game developer. The time-limited, friends-only format could spur bursts of activity, but mainly in games players already frequent.

Google is lighter on the social features so far. There’s now a friends system that shows what your friends play and for how long, but it’s a few taps deep. Leaning deeper into social with features like Apple’s challenges could help Google drive virality and reengagement through a stronger social graph. As a small potential step in that social direction, Google recently added a generative AI avatar creator for more expressive profiles.

Google is also testing game specific leagues: event-style leaderboards for a game that reward the top X number of players with Play points. Opt-in is required during the league window, and a game-specific metric is tracked during that window. Subway Surfers is the current testbed, tracking coin acquisition for opted-in players. This could foreshadow Google’s take on challenges without depending strictly on friends.

While these additions represent progress, these engagement tools remain a light touch. Surfacing in-game events can occasionally revive dormant installs, but live-ops event spam risks numbing players over time. Streaks are promising, but risk being easily forgotten without some kind of reminder before the 24-hour window closes to trigger loss aversion. Social features like challenges and playing together help, but they need notifications, such as alerts when a friend overtakes your score, to avoid becoming one-and-done novelties.

Pushing Subscriptions

Both Apple and Google are also trying to use these new apps/updates to promote Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass. The amount of promotional space given to these subscription services can give the impression Apple and Google are actually far more interested in pushing a continued dependency on these ecosystems rather than supporting games as a whole. Games participating in these programs can of course benefit from this promotion, but with more upside to Apple and Google than the individual games.

Apple is especially aggressive about pushing the service in the Games app. There are sections in the app for top arcade games, new games on Apple Arcade, and coming soon to Apple Arcade taking up nearly half the Home tab. This does provide a chance for additional exposure for apps temporarily falling within one of those categories at least. Realistically, neither service is very successful, with Apple Arcade struggling to find any real traction, and many subscribers simply coming in through bundles. 

This overall push toward more gaming within the app store ecosystems could drive some increased interest in these subscriptions if it encourages gamers to continue hunting for new games to play. Google provides a clearer benefit here, assuming the streaks system still works with Play Pass games, by rewarding regular play.

Alternative App Stores

The timing for these changes isn’t subtle. Ongoing legal pressure from Epic Games and the EU threatens app store gatekeeping and payment control. Apple and Google must now allow alternative app store installs in the EU, yet they purposely make it difficult with many steps and alarming security language. 

Epic claimed that iOS initially required 15 steps (12 on Android) to install Epic’s store. Afterpressure from the EU, Apple cut it down to six steps and removed many“scare screens,” dropping Epic Games Store install abandonment from 65% to 25%. Google hasn’t adjusted its process yet, maintaining a 55%–60% drop-off. Epic hasn’t shared active-user numbers, but in June, it said it reached 40M installs and is aiming for 70M by year end.

In other words, Apple and Google’s duopoly isn’t as ironclad as it once was. Yes, the Epic Games Store on mobile isn’t highly competitive yet, but the existence of competition is leading to user improvements across both app stores’ gaming services.

Overall Impact

These cumulative feature additions mostly favor games that are already successful. Editorial recommendations persist, but mostly mirror the status quo and inherit the same discovery constraints. Promotional real estate for events and offers remains scarce and tends to go to established studios or those buying sponsorships. 

The benefit of the changes then seems much clearer in terms of driving deeper or more frequent engagement with games users already have. This is where it makes sense to see Apple’s Games app as a game launcher or Google’s Streaks system as a play driver for a user’s existing game library.

Apple’s social discovery ideas are decent, but are currently only incremental improvements to the Game Center after years of neglect. Hopefully, this indicates a renewed interest in Game Center’s potential and that of mobile social gaming in general. It remains to be seen if the new challenges feature resonates with the way modern mobile gamers play, but it could certainly drive engagement for game leveraging if it’s successful. The idea of deep linking to a specific activity or event also seems like a useful feature for social and viral play if it can be used well by game developers. 

Google’s AI-driven personalization and surfacing of specific niche genres is a great improvement over generalized charts and is reminiscent of Netflix’s efforts to do the same with movie and TV microgenres. Google’s roots in search mean it’s always been a company with discovery in its DNA, so we look forward to continued iterations in this area with more personalization leading to both increased diversity of games and engagement time. The integration of YouTube videos and articles into game details pages should also help source even better information that helps players decide if a game is for them. 

While the efforts from both Apple and Google have a bit of overlap and divergence, they do nudge things in the right direction for mobile gaming. Games themselves can only push into players’ lives as far as the surrounding platforms let them, making these small first steps important for continued growth in mobile gaming. 

Both platforms could benefit from looking at the best features to take from Xbox/Playstation on console, and Steam on PC, to build on this push at a time when the game industry is struggling in places. The social side of things seems especially key to continue building on, given the general social nature of mobile to begin with. Google hasn’t yet built its equivalent to Apple’s Game Center, making now a good time to keep leveling up and give Apple some additional competition there.

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