Article • 3 min read
Supporting mobile gamers where they are, in the apps they love
Unity and Zendesk partner for uninterrupted customer support in mobile games
By Shawna Wolverton, Executive Vice President, Product, Zendesk
Last updated February 23, 2024
Mobile gaming is booming, lucrative, and extremely competitive. In the latter half of 2020 alone, mobile gamers spent more than $20 billion. Gamers are loyal, high-spending customers, and games account for 80% of app store spending. Customer experience is a key differentiator in this space, and agile brands are offering their customers more ways to reach out by adopting new channels, and bringing seamless customer service straight into their own apps.
We’re excited to announce that we are partnering with Unity to bring seamless customer experiences to mobile gaming apps with the Zendesk SDK for Unity. Unity is the leading platform for creating 3D content in some of the world’s most popular games. Zendesk and Unity share the vision that customer service solutions should enhance the mobile gaming experience — not disrupt it. With Zendesk, players can browse help centre articles or message a customer support team without leaving the game. By meeting players where they are, developers can eliminate gameplay interruptions and solve problems smoothly.
Gaming at a glance
53% of the top 1,000 grossing mobile games are powered by Unity
Support requests in gaming have gone up 32% since January
The No.1 way customers prefer to message a company is via the company’s own app
Powering seamless customer conversations
“This year, we’ve seen a significant spike in both new gamers and the amount of time people spent gaming. It is important that we provide our developers, from indie creators to large studios, the ability to build great experiences at scale in this highly competitive environment,” said Stephen Rowell, Vice President, Global Strategic Business Development at Unity. “Our partnership with Zendesk makes embedding customer support incredibly seamless across our platform.”
Unity’s mobile game engine gives creators the tools to make innovative 3D experiences. Globally, 53% of the top 1,000 grossing mobile games are powered by Unity, with over 1.5 million developers active on the platform. The SDK integrates smoothly with minimal coding in minutes. As a Verified Solutions Partner, Zendesk has the only customer experience solution that is certified by Unity to comply with its technical standards and work seamlessly with Unity apps.
"With Zendesk’s new support SDK, we finally have a Unity-native in-game support product as a seamless part of our wider customer care offering. It’s great to have a plug-and-play solution that is easy for developers to use, which in time will also give us the ability to create the kinds of personalised support flows we want for our players."
Ric Thorneycroft, Player Support Director, Rovio
Changing the landscape of service in gaming
According to our latest Benchmark data, support requests have spiked since the beginning of the year in every industry, but especially in gaming. Average weekly tickets are up 32% since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 20% in other industries globally.
When mobile gamers seek customer support, they usually reach out on more traditional channels, such as the phone or social media, interrupting gameplay and adding a layer of friction to the customer experience. Customers in every industry overwhelmingly prefer to contact support in a company’s own mobile app — and now that the Zendesk SDK is available to the thousands of games created with Unity, players won’t have to go far to get the help they need.
In a time when people seek comfort, connection and entertainment, customer support ought to be easy. With the Zendesk SDK for Unity, game creators can count on keeping their players close, happy, and most importantly, let them get back to the game.
