Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, PM Director, Games on Google Play
Last September, we shared our vision for the future of Google Play Games grounded in a core belief: the best way to drive your game’s success is to deliver a world-class player experience. We launched the Google Play Games Level Up program to recognize and reward great gaming experiences, while providing you with a powerful toolkit and new promotional opportunities to grow your games.
The momentum since our announcement has been incredibly positive, with more than 600 million gamers now using Play Games Services every month. Developers are also finding success, with one-third of all game installs on the Play Store now coming from editorially-driven organic discovery. In fact, in 2025, Level Up features have driven over 2.5 billion incremental acquisitions for featured games, in addition to an average uplift of 25% in installs during the featuring windows.
Today, we're inviting you to start testing Play Games Sidekick to keep your players in the action, sharing new Play Console updates to optimize your reach, and helping you prepare for our upcoming program milestones.
Boost retention and immersion with Play Games Sidekick
Play Games Sidekick is a helpful in-game overlay that gives players instant access to relevant gaming information—like rewards, offers, achievements, and quest progress— keeping them immersed while driving higher engagement for developers. It serves as a seamless bridge to the highly visible "You" tab, connecting your game to 160 million monthly active users already engaging there and doubles as an active gaming companion that enhances the player experience with helpful, AI-generated Game Tips.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor keeps players in the action with Play Games Sidekick
Today, Sidekick officially debuts in over 90 games, with the experience expanding to all Level Up titles later this year. But you don’t need to wait for the broader rollout to get your game ready. You can now enable Sidekick through Play Console to preview and test how your players will interact with features like Achievements, Streaks, Play Points Coupons, and Game Tips. Upon completing your testing, be sure to push Sidekick for production to ensure your game meets the Level Up user experience guidelines.
Enable Play Games Sidekick in Play Console to begin testing
Optimize reach and operations with new Play Console updates
We are also rolling out two new Play Console updates to help you optimize your reach and streamline operations:
- Pre-reg device breakdowns: To aid launch decisions, you can now analyze the device distribution of your pre-registered audience by key device attributes including Android version, RAM and SoC. This enables you to optimize game performance, minimum specs, and marketing spend for the players already waiting for your game.
Identify launch-day risks and optimize performance for your players
with new pre-registration device breakdowns
- Real-time feedback: With Level Up+, our tier for high-performing games, qualifying titles can unlock promotional content featuring and tools like deep-links and audience targeting. While submissions must meet Play’s quality guidelines, you no longer have to wait 24 hours to learn about issues. You can now get immediate feedback on quality whenever possible.
Your 2026 checklist: Securing your Level Up benefits
Today, all games on Google Play qualify for Google Play Games Level Up. However, in order to maintain access to Level Up benefits like Play Points offers, expanded APK size limits, Play Store collections and campaigns consideration, or access to high-visibility surfaces like You tab and Sidekick, you’ll need to ensure your game meets user experience guidelines by their upcoming milestones:
By July 2026:
- Integrate Play Games Sidekick to offer a quick and easy entry point to access rewards, offers, and achievements through an in-game overlay.
- Implement achievements with Play Games Services, to support authentication with the modern Gamer Profile, and to keep players engaged across the lifespan of your game.
By November 2026:
- Implement cloud save to enable progress sync across devices.
Last week, we announced that we’re working on an expanded Level Up program that builds on our successful foundation to further improve gaming experiences. The update will introduce new requirements that will unlock additional benefits like lower service fees. Engaging with the program now ensures your work is strategically aligned with these future updates. We’ll share more details in the coming months.
In the meantime, the path to your first program milestone begins today. By prioritizing these user experience guidelines now, you’re investing in the long-term value of your game and ensuring it’s built to thrive for every player. Head over to Play Console to start testing Sidekick and take the next step in your Level Up journey.
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