AI, LiveOps, and a Hard Reset: What Marketers Can Steal from Beresnev Games' 2025
"Fully integrated AI into marketing and survived our own 'Larisa Dolina.'" That's how Oleg Beresnev summed up the year - a shorthand for withstanding heavy operational and legal pressure while pushing the work forward.
If you work in marketing, the signal is clear: depth beats breadth. Scale came from retention, process speed, and disciplined testing - not from adding more channels.
Depth over breadth: product first, lifecycle first
The team doubled down on lifecycle management: event economy, retention, and LTV. Instead of tinkering with isolated mechanics, they focused on the full user experience and the core loop - readability, depth, sustainability.
The lesson for marketers: treat the product like a funnel you can influence daily. Plan event and offer cadence months out. Tie every campaign to a retention goal, not just CPI.
Marketing and AI: shorter cycles, better bets
They restructured the creative function, shortened production cycles, and fully integrated AI into marketing. In Q4, they tested more diverse hypotheses and saw efficiency gains across key metrics.
What that looks like in practice:
- Weekly creative sprints with AI for concepting, versioning, and editing.
- 3-5 core ad narratives at all times; rapid variant testing and kill rules.
- Daily KPI checks (by segment) and a single source of truth for results.
Team maturity beats headcount
Ineffective decisions and misfit roles were phased out. The bar moved to operating like a mature product studio.
For marketing orgs, that means fewer generalists multitasking across everything - more true owners across creative, analytics, media, and lifecycle.
What didn't ship (and why that's fine)
Some internal tools and product hypotheses were paused due to overload and shifting priorities. That restraint is a strength. Shipping the vital 20% is better than launching a half-baked stack that slows you down later.
The hard-won wins
They handled serious pressure - "our own Larisa Dolina" - and came out more mature. Partnerships, risk assessment, and long-term decisions improved because they were stress-tested.
Three conclusions marketers should adopt
- Expertise is the foundation. Product, marketing, analytics, technology, LiveOps. Weakness in any leg collapses the table.
- Processes and data decide outcomes. Clean data, clear definitions, and decisions tied to what you actually measure.
- No slack for amateur moves. Bad partner picks, sloppy hiring, and fuzzy risk math are very expensive now.
Partnership dynamics have shifted
The market leans toward teams that own development, economics, LiveOps, marketing, and long-term growth. Those teams speak a different language with publishers and investors - aligned incentives, clear accountability, and durable plans.
Marketers can mirror this with agencies and platforms: bring your P&L, lifecycle plan, and growth model to the table. You'll negotiate from strength.
2025 genre reset: High CPI punished slow iteration
Acquisition costs stayed high. Mistakes got pricey. There was less room for weak analysis and long cycles.
- Retention became the moat, not a report.
- Teams needed LTV clarity by segment, not a blended average.
- Post-launch management (LiveOps, content, economy) decided who grew.
Trends to expect in 2026
- LiveOps as the foundation. Content, events, and economy planned months ahead.
- Personalization and segmentation. Broad messages underperform; adaptive experiences win.
- Careful evolution of what works. Small, precise improvements beat wild swings.
- Consolidation. Prepared teams take more share; others exit.
What's next for the team
Expand LiveOps as a system. Strengthen retention, the core loop, and the economy. Invest in expertise and process quality.
Action checklist for marketing leaders
- Run weekly hypothesis pipelines for creative and landing pages. Fewer, faster bets.
- Integrate AI across the workflow: ideation, briefs, editing, QA, versioning.
- Build retention dashboards (D1/D7/D30, churn by cohort) and review them like spend.
- Track LTV:CAC by segment and country; set go/no-go rules before launching.
- Plan a LiveOps-style calendar for offers, events, and content drops three months out.
- Adopt segmentation-first personalization: pricing, bundles, and messaging that adapt.
- Set partnership criteria: shared metrics, shared risk, clear decision rights.
- Enforce data hygiene: tracking plan, QA, definitions, and a single source of truth.
- Keep a risk register and run pre-mortems on big campaigns.
Helpful resources
The through line from 2025: get serious about retention, build a creative engine with AI, and tighten the loop between data and decisions. That's how you buy room for bigger bets in 2026.
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