The AI-Powered Publishing Engine – Insights from Supercent

Source: Lucio Im, Head of Publishing at Supercent, Pocket Gamer Connects (PGC) Korea Summit 2025.

At PGC Korea 2025, Supercent unveiled a new paradigm in mobile game publishing, shifting from a data-driven to an AI-driven operational model. This approach systemizes game development and scaling, achieving a documented 5% hit rate (10x the industry average of 0.5%) by leveraging AI across the entire lifecycle from core loop validation to global user acquisition. This represents a fundamental evolution in capital efficiency and de-risking for game investments.

Market Problem & Performance Data

Lucio Im highlighted that the mobile gaming market is notoriously winner-take-all, with only 0.5% of games achieving over 10 million downloads. This high failure rate is driven by gut-driven development, inefficient UA spend, and an inability to predict player retention and LTV pre-launch.

Supercent’s AI-driven system demonstrably shatters this norm:

• Hit Rate: A 5% success rate for games discovered and scaled under their direction, a 10x improvement over the industry standard.
• Performance Metrics: Proven ability to drastically improve key game health indicators:

The AI-Driven System: A Scalable Framework for Success

According to the presentation, Supercent’s competitive edge is a structured, five-stage publishing system (PSL) that is now fully integrated with AI. This system moves beyond simple A/B testing to predictive optimization.

Core Pillars of the AI Integration:

1. Market Potential & Gamification: AI analyzes global trends and uses Supercent’s vast repository of internal test data to predict market opportunities and validate core game loops before full production.
2. Profitability & Meta-Loop Optimization: The system is fundamentally data-first. AI continuously refines meta-progression systems (e.g., talent trees, skins, boss fights) and runs automated A/B tests to maximize player engagement and LTV.
3. Scalability & UA Automation: The model leverages ROAS-based global UA expertise. AI is used to automate campaign management and optimize creative-to-game matching, dramatically improving UA efficiency and allowing human strategists to focus on high-level planning.

Direct Impact on User Acquisition & Monetization

• Lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): By using AI to identify and target players who exhibit behaviors associated with high LTV, Supercent acquires higher-quality users at a lower cost.
• Higher Lifetime Value (LTV): The documented 5-10x LTV increase is a direct result of AI-optimized meta-systems and retention mechanics. This creates a powerful virtuous cycle where higher LTV allows for more aggressive and profitable UA spending.
• Fully Automated Scaling: Lucio Im’s vision for 2026-2028 is a “hands-off” UA engine where AI manages campaign execution. This shifts human capital from operational tasks to strategic innovation, creating a scalable and defensible moat.

Conclusion & Strategic Imperative

As presented by Lucio Im at PGC Korea, Supercent is not merely a game publisher; it is a technology company that has productized game success. Their AI-driven publishing system represents a fundamental de-risking of game development and scaling.

For VCs, this presents a dual opportunity:

1. Direct Investment: Backing the platform itself offers exposure to a high-margin, scalable tech business that can be applied to a vast portfolio of games.
2. Portfolio Strategy: Investing in game studios that partner with or emulate this AI-driven, metrics-first approach is a bet on the future of capital-efficient game development.

The demonstrated 10x improvement in hit rate and the systematic amplification of LTV prove that the future of gaming growth is not just data-informed, but AI-optimized.