In this webinar, we closed out 2025 with a practical reflection on how LiveOps evolved over the year and what teams should realistically expect and prepare for in 2026.
The session was hosted by Antonina Belova and featured Anton Slashchev (Studio Director & Producer at PlayHero, founder of LOOT) and Michael Khripin (Product Owner at Balancy). Together, we discussed how LiveOps systems scaled across genres, where standardization accelerated execution, and which operational challenges continued to shape team workflows.
We examined LiveOps through the lens of real production experience—looking at event cadence, monetization patterns, personalization, AI adoption, and collaboration dynamics—without framing the discussion as prescriptive or “best practices.”
In this session, we covered:
✨ How LiveOps systems converged around proven patterns and templates in 2025
✨ Why hybrid-casual titles adopted deeper, casual-grade LiveOps structures
✨ Event cadence trends, including shorter loops and layered LiveOps calendars
✨ Personalization and fairness: where it works, where it creates risk
✨ Practical uses of AI in LiveOps production and where limitations remain
✨ The main operational bottlenecks teams faced at scale, from content volume to analytics discipline
✨ Burnout risks in LiveOps teams and strategies to maintain velocity without sacrificing quality
✨ What LiveOps managers should prepare for in 2026, including social systems and faster iteration cycles