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.