Unlock Real Prizes
At Skillz, our mission is to bring out the best in everyone through competition. You are born to create great games. We exist to realize their full potential. Prize Enablement is a major milestone on your path to monetization on Skillz’s platform. Upon Prize Enablement, your game will be able to host real-prize tournaments and start to monetize.
Skillz highly recommends that your game has all advanced features turned on to maximize retention and engagement. These include Single Sign-On, Push Notifications, and Custom Themes.
Requirements to Become Real Prize Enabled
Games that meet all of the following performance goals will be reviewed for Prize Enablement. These lower requirements updated in June, 2023 will help you unlock monetization sooner on Skillz platform while preserving a decent player experience.
| Previous Thresholds | Current Thresholds |
|---|---|
| 100 Daily Active Users (DAU) | 75 Daily Active Users (DAU) |
| 8 Games per DAU | 6 Games per DAU |
| 8% Day 7 Retention | 4.5% Day 7 Retention |
| 90% Installs to 1z | 70% Installs to 2z |
| Pass Fairness Test | Pass Fairness Test |
All metrics are calculated using 7-day rolling averages and are available on the Analytics page on Developer Console. Once the above requirements are met, our Developer Success team will conduct a final review. Here are the additional conditions we look for: Integrated with the most recent Skillz SDK Free of bugs, crashes, and user experience errors 4-star rating in App Store No 3rd-party ads Adherence to Skillz Marketing Guidelines
If your game meets all the requirements and has not been Prize Enabled, please contact us at integrations@skillz.com. Our Developer Success team will be in touch within five business days.
Please note that in limited cases, we request content and/or best practice changes to your game as a precursor to enabling real-world prizes. Skillz maintains full discretion to withhold real-prize tournaments for any game at any time. Games must remain in compliance with these conditions in order to maintain their real-prize tournaments.
1. Minimum of 75 Daily Active Users (DAU)
The minimum DAU requirement is set to safeguard user experience and ensure sustainable monetization. Any game with under 75 DAU often leads to players not matching and more aborted matches, which ultimately harms paying user retention. 75 DAU is the minimum player volume that justifies offering real prize tournaments.
2. Minimum of 6 Games per DAU
Games per DAU is a key indicator of player engagement. Games on Skillz platform with at least 6 Games per DAU show decent tournament liquidity and healthy monetization.
3. Minimum of 4.5% Day 7 Retention
Day 7 Retention measures the percentage of players that remain active 7 days after installing your game. Based on historical data on Skillz platform, games with Day 7 Retention 4.5% and above have a higher chance of building a healthy paying user base that supports long-term monetization.
4. Minimum of 70% Installs to 2Z
Installs to 2Z (I:2Z) is the percentage of players that participate in two tournaments in your game post-install. Using the Skillz SDK, the First-Time User Experience (FTUE) guides the player through playing in two tournaments. So I:2Z is an easy way to measure the success of player onboarding. If your metric falls below 70%, it could mean two things: first, installs brought to your game are of low quality and do not match your target audience and/or second, on average users are not very satisfied with their first-time experience in your game. To improve your Installs to 2Z conversion, make sure that your game is fully tested for bugs and has a clear and intuitive tutorial for first-time users.
5. Pass Fairness Test
At the heart of any competition is that each participant is offered an equal opportunity to win. Skillz is fully committed to ensuring that all competitive matches are fair, without providing an advantage of one player over another. Skillz’s patented algorithm determines the skill level of a game by measuring a game’s outcome compared to a player’s perceived skill. Please make sure that your game has properly implemented Skillz Random and had at least 1000 games completed in a single type of tournament.
Algorithm scores are a part of the real prize enablement process and are not viewable in the Developer Console. If you would like to see your score, then please contact us. If you would like to learn more about our patented algorithm, then check out our Knowledge Base here and here.
If your game does not pass the Fairness Test, we recommend that you re-examine the game mechanics and see if any changes can be made to increase the skill versus chance probability in your game. Some examples of factors that could be re-examined are reducing random variables or adding mechanics to make scoring more varied between players of different skill levels.
6. Integrated with the most recent Skillz SDK
A game must be on the most up-to-date SDK. With every new SDK version, Skillz is building in features that improve the player experience, decrease negative effects of known bugs, and help drive the overall performance of your game.
If a game does not unlock real prizes due to being on an older SDK, then follow these instructions to upgrade to the newest SDK.
7. Free of bugs, crashes, and user experience errors
Skillz wants to ensure that a game is stable before unlocking real prizes. Unexpected bugs and/or crashes result in a higher amount of aborted matches, which create a negative player experience and hurt the overall brand reputation of both Skillz and the game developer. In addition, aborted matches often result in player refunds, which has the consequence of net revenue losses.
8. Minimum of 4-star rating in App Store
Part of the Skillz quality assurance process is to ensure that players enjoy playing well-functioning, fun and polished games. As a low rating often indicates an issue within a game, Skillz will not enable real prizes in any game that has lower than 4 stars in the appropriate App Store.
9. No 3rd-party ads
3rd-party ads are not allowed for any Skillz game that has unlocked real prizes because they can interfere with the overall gameplay and are disruptive to the player experience. If your game is rejected for this reason, then please remove all 3rd-party ads before re-submitting your game.
10. Adherence to Skillz Marketing Guidelines
While Skillz encourages game developers to market their game with competitive play and real prizes, it is important to ensure that players don't mistake your game, or Skillz games in general, for a game of chance. For the mutual benefit of all the game developers on our platform, please follow the recommendations set in the Skillz Marketing Guidelines.
All marketing materials should not utilize Skillz marketing assets or mention Skillz without explicit approval. Skillz highly encourages game developers to create custom themes within the Developer Console, so that your game stands out from other games on the Skillz platform. If you would like to request permission for utilizing the Skillz name or marketing assets, please contact us at integrations@skillz.com.