UA isn’t broken. Your approach probably is.

User acquisition isn’t complicated, but it’s often made so. The hype, the metrics, the jargon, the endless abbreviations. Somewhere along the way, clarity got buried under dashboards.

To cut through that noise, we spoke with Batu Oğultürk, co-founder of Perk Game Studio and a veteran of studios ranging from Epic Games to Netmarble, about what actually works in user acquisition today and what still doesn’t.

The channel debate misses the point

When asked which acquisition channel delivers the most reliable results, Oğultürk shares that usual platforms are great to start with. Meta and Google, he says, still provide the most stable performance but the channel itself isn’t what separates winning studios from struggling ones.

“It’s the team,” he explains. “Teams that don’t take creative production seriously or move too slowly on testing struggle no matter which channel they use.”

The distinction is critical. High-performing teams don’t treat creatives as just ads. They see them as extensions of the product: signals that inform both acquisition strategy and product decisions. This mindset shift, according to Oğultürk, consistently produces stronger results even with the same budgets.

Why organic-only strategies rarely work anymore

For studios hoping to grow purely through organic channels, Oğultürk is blunt: it’s no longer realistic. That said, genuinely strong products do generate organic momentum, just not in isolation.

Paid user acquisition plays a crucial role as a testing mechanism. It reveals who plays, who returns, and who spends. Without that structured feedback loop, organic traffic often gets wasted because teams lack the data needed to improve the experience.

Once retention is solid, organic levers like store featuring, community effects, and social sharing begin to kick in naturally. But they rarely appear without the foundation paid UA provides.

D1 retention comes first, always

When evaluating acquisition performance, Oğultürk looks at day-one retention before anything else. A low CPI means very little if players don’t return the next day.

Only after D1, he examines CPI and always in relation to expected lifetime value. “I never make decisions based on a single metric,” he says. “I focus on the balance between metrics.”

Metrics, he explains, function as a chain. Weakness in one area needs to be corrected through others. Sometimes the product is strong but metrics look weak; other times metrics look promising while long-term growth potential is limited. Context matters more than any single number.

The evaluation window also varies by genre. Some games show their true potential within 7 days, while others require 180 to 360 days before their viability becomes clear.

Growth problems disguised as UA problems

One pattern Oğultürk sees repeatedly is misdiagnosis. Teams assume they have a user acquisition problem when the real issue is growth, rooted in the product itself.

Weak onboarding, unclear core loops, or a lack of early player goals create friction that no amount of UA optimization can fix. Yet teams still focus on lowering CPI. Short-term gains may appear, but they inevitably plateau.

“Growth almost always starts with the product,” Oğultürk says. The challenge is knowing which product signals to evaluate and over what timeframe, depending on the genre.

One improvement to prioritize this quarter

If a studio can focus on only one UA improvement in the next three months, Oğultürk’s advice is clear: improve creative quality and testing speed.

Not more creatives, better ones.

Creatives should show real gameplay and clearly answer a simple question: What will I actually do in this game? Misleading creatives may temporarily reduce CPI, but they don’t deliver sustainable users.

The right creatives attract the right audience and that improves both acquisition efficiency and product direction. The insights from creative tests feed directly back into product decisions, creating a feedback loop that strengthens both sides.

What he’d do differently

Looking back at Perk Game Studio’s journey, Oğultürk points to a hard-earned lesson: the product you believe in isn’t always ready for the market.

Avoiding emotional attachment and testing at the right moment has proven essential. Perk has discontinued multiple mid-scale projects for this reason, products the team valued, but that market conditions didn’t support.

Building the product is only part of the equation. Understanding the market, the player base, the timing, and whether the opportunity still exists at launch is just as decisive.

“What the product is matters,” Oğultürk says, “but when it launches and under what conditions is just as important.”

For studios navigating today’s competitive mobile landscape, that perspective is a useful corrective to the endless search for UA silver bullets. Channels, creatives, and timing all matter but only when they align with a product that delivers on its promise from day one.

About Batu Oğultürk

Batu Oğultürk’s career spans the full spectrum of mobile and live games.

With experience at studios like Epic Games and Pearl Abyss, as well as smaller teams such as Lokum Games and Sir Studios, he’s seen both large-scale live-service operations and the survival mindset of indie studios.

At Perk Game Studio, he focuses on aligning gameplay, economy, and growth into a single, cohesive strategy.

User Acquisition Lessons from Batu Oğultürk of Perk Game Studio

Rashmita Behera