AMSTERDAM, NL / ACCESS Newswire / March 20, 2026 / While the gaming industry spent 2025 bracing for layoffs and consolidation, a self-funded Amsterdam company posted numbers that rivaled some of the biggest platforms in the world.
Poki, the web gaming platform co-founded by Michiel van Amerongen and Sebastian Moeys, welcomed 625 million players across desktop and mobile in 2025.
Last year, the platform recorded 1 billion gameplays in a single month, and now counts 100 million monthly active players, putting it in the same conversation as PlayStation Network, which counts 119 million. All of this built by a 65-person team that has never taken outside investment.
For most of the last decade, the browser sat at the bottom of every serious game developer’s platform priority list. Console and mobile captured the investment, the talent and the marketing budgets, leaving web gaming to accumulate an audience that nobody was paying much attention to.
That perception kept larger, better-funded competitors away long enough for Poki to build a dominant position. That may be about to change, with Bloomberg naming web gaming the industry’s hottest new platform in 2025 as platforms like Poki continue to prove the commercial case.
One of Poki’s most significant structural advantages sits outside the platform entirely. Millions of players arrive each month through organic search alone, with no prior intention of visiting Poki specifically.
Unlike console platforms that require hardware investment, mobile apps that demand downloads and account creation, or subscription services that ask for payment details before a single game loads, Poki sits directly in the path of casual gaming intent and converts visitors instantly.
That kind of organic search acquisition is extraordinarily difficult for competing platforms to replicate, and it means Poki reaches an enormous pool of casual players that the rest of the industry simply cannot convert at the same efficiency. For advertisers, that audience is highly valuable precisely because it is engaged from the very first session.
Central to Poki’s growth has been how it structures relationships with its developer community. Rather than charging upfront fees or taking a flat cut, the platform operates on long-term revenue-share agreements, meaning Poki only wins when developers win. The community now spans over 600 studios, with top performers generating up to €1 million annually on the platform.
What changed in 2025 was not just player numbers but the type of studios showing up. Household gaming franchises began committing to web releases through Poki not as promotional exercises but as genuine revenue lines, treating its rapidly growing player pool as an audience worth building for rather than a secondary market to test.
Monetization runs primarily through Rewarded Video, an opt-in format where players watch a short ad in exchange for in-game benefits.
The structure keeps engagement high and gives advertisers access to an audience that has actively chosen to watch, a meaningful distinction from the interruptive formats that gave web advertising its bad reputation.
Web ad rates have historically trailed mobile, but at a platform of Pokis scale, advertiser demand is catching up fast.
Poki’s 2025 numbers point to something larger than one company’s success story. They are a signal about where the broader gaming market is moving.
As mobile growth plateaus and app store economics become harder to justify, the browser is emerging as a credible third pillar alongside console and mobile, one with lower barriers to entry for developers, lower friction for players, and a monetization model that is still in its early innings.
The fact that a 65-person self-funded company from Amsterdam is leading that shift, rather than a platform backed by billions in venture capital or a console manufacturer, says something about how much opportunity remains untapped. Web gaming is no longer a nostalgia play. For a growing number of developers and players, it is simply where the games are.
Media Info:
Contact Person: poki team
Organization: poki
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://poki.com
SOURCE: Poki
