How We Market Live-Service Game Updates Without Burning Out
Clique Games' guide to marketing live-service updates without exhausting your team or resources.
Managing Live-Service Marketing Without Breaking the Team
If you're a small VR or indie dev team managing a live-service title, then you know the challenge: there’s always another update coming, and somehow you're supposed to build hype, create content, communicate with the community, AND keep building the actual game.
At Clique Games, we work with developers to take the edge off that cycle. We’ve built a system for update marketing that’s repeatable, fast to execute, and low on lift, while still driving real spikes in engagement and revenue.
This isn’t a post about how to make the best update. It’s about what happens once an update exists—and how we make sure players hear about it.
A Framework That Fits on a Calendar
We don’t reinvent the wheel every month. We start with a basic template and structure everything around the update’s drop date.
“Once we nailed the update template, everything changed,” says Ramsey Hoppe, our Social Media Manager. “Each launch stopped feeling like a fire drill and started feeling like a rhythm. We don’t scramble—we execute.”
Each update typically includes:
A new Battle Pass
A cosmetic bundle
A set of themed visuals and assets
A light feature update (Monkey Doo’s the LIV camera in May)
Is it always a lot of content? No. That’s one of the key challenges we’ve seen in live-service games. Community feedback has been clear—players want more than cosmetics and paywalled bundles. But even when the content is thin, we’ve learned how to get it out into the world in a structured way that drives traffic and interest.
What Our Marketing Timeline Looks Like
We keep things simple and staggered. There’s no magic—just organization and consistency. This system gives us breathing room while still hitting every key beat in a live-service cycle.
Our live-service marketing timeline—designed to simplify launch planning and maximize visibility.
2-3 Weeks Out: Lock and Load
This is where we lock down the theme, visuals, and copy. Getting this aligned early gives the marketing team enough runway to prep assets and avoid last-minute scrambles.
Confirm finalized update theme and visual direction from the dev team, then align marketing assets accordingly
Draft social content: announcements, TikTok copy, Discord teasers
Create and stage newsletter content
1 Week Out: Tease and Set the Stage
We start building anticipation and prep the technical rollout. Ambassadors/Influencers get early assets, and our community team begins seeding the vibe.
Share teaser content with Discord and creator ambassadors
Update Meta and Steam store assets and descriptions
Draft blog posts or community messages
Launch Day (typically the 1st of the month): Execute the Push
All systems go. Update drops. Messaging hits all major touchpoints at once to maximize initial engagement.
Launch the update
Publish updated store pages, dev post, and user notification
Send newsletter
Announcement post across Discord, Socials, and blog
Schedule out all of social content surrounding update
Post-Launch: Feedback and Follow-Through
Once the update is live, we shift into listening mode—gauging sentiment, tracking performance, and logging lessons for the next cycle.
Moderate and engage in Discord
Monitor DAU (daily active user) and IAP (In-App Purchase) changes
Document feedback for dev teams
Begin light prep for next update
What We’ve Seen in the Data
Even when updates are lighter or community expectations vary, the first week of each update cycle still sees major lifts in both revenue and daily users.
Here’s how Monkey Doo performed during the last four monthly updates, from February through May:
Revenue spikes during the first week of each update—highlighting the impact of a structured marketing plan.
Revenue (Week 1 vs. Weeks 2–4 Averages):
February: +92.3%
March: +101.5%
April: +139.4%
May: +84.7%
Consistent update marketing leads to steady gains in daily active users across each monthly cycle.
Daily Active Users (Week 1 vs. Weeks 2–4 Averages):
February: +43.1%
March: +52.8%
April: +76.9%
May: +29.6%
That’s not magic. That’s structured release marketing, repeated monthly.
“We wanted Monkey Doo to feel like a game players could rely on,” says Justin La Torre, Games Marketing Manager. “Themed, monthly, and fun to talk about—like a TV show drop. Once players know to expect it, they start planning to come back.”
Not Everything Works—And That’s Fine
We used to do full trailers. We don’t anymore. We felt the ROI wasn’t there for the effort involved. Short-form video continues to be part of our strategy. We regularly publish content across TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and other platforms, using them to tease upcoming updates, highlight new cosmetics, or surface community moments.
We also push regular content on Discord and give early update leaks to ambassadors to help seed conversation ahead of launch. Even when results vary, we keep showing up—because the rhythm is what builds momentum.
“The real shift hasn’t been about doing more—it’s been about doing it smarter,” says Justin. “Once we committed to a consistent process, even the smaller updates started delivering better results with less stress.”
Voice Chat, Feedback, and Community Retention
The updates aren’t always loved—but tools like VoicePatrol have helped us retain more players by improving the social experience.
Between July and November 2024 on Monkey Doo:
Toxic voice incidents dropped 73.8%
Moderation actions dropped 59.6%
Retention in monitored lobbies rose by 17.75%
We also routinely collect feedback:
Quick polls in Discord for theme direction
Cosmetic ideas sourced directly from community memes (see: Croc Hat)
Post-update check-ins to hear what players actually want
The Tool Stack That Keeps It Moving
Asana – project management
VoicePatrol – voice moderation
Mailchimp – newsletters
TikTok / Discord / YouTube / Instagram – social channels
Google Forms / Sheets – internal coordination
Framing It Honestly
This isn’t about showcasing a perfect live-service model—every game and community is a constant work in progress, and there’s always room to improve how content lands with players.
But it is a look behind the curtain at how we’ve built a repeatable update marketing engine that still delivers spikes in revenue and player activity every month—even when the updates vary in scope or reception.
If your team’s staring down the next update and wondering how to share it without burning out, this framework is a solid place to start.
