Development
Xsolla at First Playable Florence 2026: helping indie developers pitch better and grow smarter
June 10, 2026•3 min
Xsolla is heading to Florence, Italy on June 11 as a sponsor of First Playable Florence 2026, Europe's leading event for indie developers pursuing publishing deals, investment, and platform partnerships. The company will host two developer-focused sessions led by Inês Ramalho, Xsolla's specialist in partner-driven growth and publishing strategy.
Making the Most of Five Minutes With a Publisher
Publisher meetings at events like First Playable Florence are brief, competitive, and unforgiving. Ramalho's morning roundtable, “You Have 5 Minutes: How to Hook a Publisher”is designed to fix that. The session gives developers practical frameworks for distilling their game's core appeal into language that lands immediately, avoiding the structural pitch mistakes that sink strong games, and communicating market differentiation and commercial potential with confidence.
It's less a lecture than a working discussion, developers leave with the words and positioning they need for the conversations they came to Florence to have.
The Case Against Paid Acquisition
The afternoon speaking session tackles a bigger strategic question: The End of Paid Acquisition? How PC Games Are Scaling Through Creators & Partnerships.
Steam discoverability through paid channels is getting harder and more expensive. Meanwhile, the players most likely to convert are those who discover a game through a trusted creator, not a served ad. Ramalho's argument is direct: creator and affiliate partnerships aren't a supplement to paid acquisition, for studios that build the right infrastructure, they're a structurally better alternative.
She'll walk through how Xsolla Partner Network connects studios with a global network of creators and affiliates, bundling campaign management, trackable links, performance dashboards, and automated payouts into a repeatable growth engine, built for launches, live games, and international expansion alike.
"The conversation about how PC games grow has fundamentally changed, and most of the developers we talk to are feeling that shift but haven't yet built the systems to take advantage of it," said Berkley Egenes, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Xsolla. "Paid acquisition still works, but the return is declining, and the dependency is dangerous. Creator and affiliate partnerships scale with trust, not spend, and when you build the right infrastructure around them, the economics are structurally better. That's what Inês is going to show developers at FPF: how to build. And before any of that, the roundtable is about making sure they don't leave Florence without having had the publisher conversations they came for. Five minutes is enough time if you know what you're doing."
Why Xsolla Is in Florence Xsolla's sponsorship reflects a straightforward belief: commerce infrastructure matters, but so does the strategic knowledge to use it. First Playable Florence is where studios with something worth showing find the partners to take it further, and Xsolla wants to make sure they're ready for both conversations. Want to learn more about Xsolla?
Schedule a meeting with an Xsolla expert today!
Why Xsolla Is in Florence Xsolla's sponsorship reflects a straightforward belief: commerce infrastructure matters, but so does the strategic knowledge to use it. First Playable Florence is where studios with something worth showing find the partners to take it further, and Xsolla wants to make sure they're ready for both conversations. Want to learn more about Xsolla?
Schedule a meeting with an Xsolla expert today!
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