How KIXEYE Survived the Rise and Fall of Facebook Strategy Games

Long before modern live-service trends became standard across the games industry, KIXEYE was already building persistent online strategy games around weekly updates, evolving events, and highly engaged long-term communities. Emerging during the Facebook gaming boom of the late 2000s and early 2010s, the studio established itself through mid-core free-to-play strategy titles like Backyard Monsters, Battle Pirates, and War Commander.

And now, War Commander is even coming to Steam.

While much of the browser and social gaming landscape has dramatically shifted over the past decade, KIXEYE’s core strategy has remained unusually consistent: deep real-time combat systems, long-term player retention, and live operations focused on evolving gameplay rather than purely linear monetization loops.

In this interview, Co-Studio Heads, Peter Henry & Alan Freemantle discuss how their approach to free-to-play game design has evolved alongside changing player expectations, the realities of maintaining decade-long live-service communities, and why the company is now focusing heavily on expanding its flagship games onto platforms like Steam.

Can you introduce KIXEYE to our readers? Tell us about the company's history, how it was founded, and what the studio has been known for over the years.

Kixeye was founded as the Casual Collective by David Scott and Paul Preece, focusing on web games, before they recruited Will Harbin as CEO and launched the incredibly successful MMORTS Facebook game Backyard Monsters in 2009.

This was rapidly followed in 2011 by Battle Pirates and War Commander, titles that are still active to this day. Kixeye has always had a strong focus on strategy-free-to-play titles, with real-time, intense strategy battles a strong distinguishing feature of our games compared to other games in the free-to-play strategy space.

KIXEYE has been in the free-to-play strategy space for a long time with titles like Battle Pirates and War Commander. How has your approach to game design and monetization evolved as the market and player expectations have changed?

Kixeye has always held true to our distinguishing element of meaningful strategic gameplay. Our legacy titles have dedicated communities that have been with us for a long time, some over a decade, so it's important to us to keep things both consistent and fresh for them.

Our designers are always looking for ways to create fun new content for our players, whether that’s new monthly events, interesting new enemies or innovative units for players to earn. We pride ourselves on offering new experiences beyond linear power gain.

What does your current game portfolio look like, and what are you actively working on? Are you continuing to support legacy titles while developing new projects, or has the strategy shifted?

It's no secret that the game industry is in a challenging place right now. Games are competing with other media for player’s attention which makes new titles an extremely risky endeavor.

While Kixeye has had a few new initiatives in development over the last several years, we’re currently focused on our core titles, Battle Pirates and War Commander, and we’re hoping to broaden their audience by expanding to other platforms such as Steam.

The browser-based and Facebook gaming era that helped establish KIXEYE looks very different today. How have you adapted to the shift toward mobile-first gaming and different platform dynamics?

Mobile has certainly been an explosive area of growth for free to play gaming. However, that has been something of a benefit to us as we occupy a bit of a niche mid-core market, well suited to mouse control and the larger view provided on PC, and see less competition for our player’s time.

That said, while we host our titles on our own site, Kixeye.com, Facebook has historically been an important platform and it’s not the central social site it used to be, as newer generations are simply no longer creating accounts there. Steam however, is showing no signs of slowing down and we’re targeting releases there later this year where we hope to open up our titles to a whole new community.

Strategy and combat games have become increasingly competitive with major studios and well-funded mobile titles dominating the space. How does KIXEYE differentiate itself and compete for players' attention in 2026?

Mobile gaming and PC gaming operate in a similar space it's true, but differing session time, screen size and input capabilities make for a significantly different experience. This allows us to create larger events with broader objectives, more granular control of units and a deeper combat experience that traditional RTS players have come to expect.

We combine both the nuanced and engaging realtime battles of traditional strategy games with the ever evolving live-ops service found in many mobile free to play titles. Few games offer both fresh units and unique encounters for their players with the frequency Kixeye games do.

Your games have traditionally had dedicated, long-term player communities. How do you balance serving veteran players who've been with you for years while also making your games accessible to new audiences?

This has actually been a challenge for us. Up until this year we’ve chosen the former, however we’re now in the process of creating entirely new onboarding experiences for new players ahead of our Steam launches later this year.

Live operations and continuous content updates are critical for free-to-play success. What does your approach to live ops look like? How do you structure your teams and development cycles to keep games fresh and engaging over years?

Our title’s release focuses on weekly activities to ensure players always have something new and interesting to do, and our browser-based delivery allows us to release new updates weekly.

We have separate teams whose primary focus is a particular title, and within those teams we divide and rotate responsibilities to allow us to focus simultaneously on developing new features and content as well as monitoring and supporting the live player experience.

Player acquisition costs have skyrocketed across the industry. How are you approaching marketing and UA in today's environment? What channels and strategies are actually delivering returns for you?

Advertising and UA is an ever evolving facet of our industry. Our primary focus is re-engaging and retaining past players.

The free-to-play monetization landscape has matured significantly with established best practices but also increased scrutiny around player spending. How do you think about designing ethical, sustainable monetization that keeps players engaged without burning them out?

A key focus for us is ensuring we are providing players value, through a unique and evolving experience and not just obsolescence.

We avoid the simple linear escalation of power or gacha favoured in many free-to-play experiences and offer new seasons of handcrafted content as well as a diverse range of activities that enable players to invest at a level that suits them. 

Looking through the rest of 2026 and beyond, what's KIXEYE's vision for the future? Are you doubling down on what's worked historically, exploring new genres or platforms, or taking the company in a different direction entirely?

Our current focus is on our core titles, Battle Pirates and War Commander.  We believe they have a lot to offer both new and existing players, and we’re looking to broaden our audience by expanding to new platforms such as Steam, where we are launching later this year.

KIXEYE, Game Development Studio