Background
US-based developer RV AppStudios has over 200 million downloads to date across their portfolio of casual games, educational kids apps, and utility apps. As an early tester of Google Play Asset Delivery with their app Puzzle Kids - Animals Shapes and Jigsaw Puzzles, the team looked to optimize the size of their app, save money, and improve the user experience by removing any friction when new asset packs would be required to be downloaded.
What they did
When a user installs the Puzzle Kids app, a base level of content is included in the initial install. As the user progresses through the in-app content, in order to access new levels and content, the user is required to download additional game files. In order to deliver these additional content bundles, RV AppStudios pays a third-party CDN to host the content and manage the delivery.
Play Asset Delivery was an appealing solution to help save CDN costs and improve user performance. The integration process was very simple, taking the team less than a day of development time to integrate the plugin into their existing projects and to do the basic settings for the plugin. "Google Play Asset Delivery met our expectations in a manner of cost, time, and effort to implement the plugin" said Vivek Dave, President at RV AppStudios.
Three custom delivery options are available with Play Asset Delivery: Install-Time, Fast-Follow, and On-Demand. Install-Time allows game developers to package up to 1GB of assets with their initial game download, while On-Demand and Fast-Follow allow developers to dynamically download assets post-launch (the latter of which will be automatically triggered after installation). For Puzzle Kids, the team utilizes the On-Demand delivery mode for their 17 asset packs.
Results
Just over 23MB of assets are delivered as players progress through the levels in Puzzle Kids. Using Play Asset Delivery's On-Demand mode, they saw a 4.7% increase in 15-day retention and 21% reduction in crashes & ANRs. Overall, these changes helped improve the user experience by offering more stable, transparent, and secure downloads, while also saving costs for RV AppStudios.
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