UA Financing, Big IPs, and a Changing Industry
We sat down with Asi Burak, Chief Business Officer at Tilting Point and former President & Chairman of Games for Change, to understand how one career can hold two completely different missions, and why the person who pioneered UA financing also believes video games are one of the most underestimated mediums in entertainment.
This episode covers the tension between commercial success and social impact, the evolution of mobile publishing from premium to UA financing, and how Tilting Point scaled a five-person Turkish studio from $500K to $8M a month. It gets into why launching new games keeps getting harder, the strategic power of IP and AI's role in breaking old assumptions about monetization and retention.
Two Hats, One Career
Asi introduces himself with two hats, because the worlds are so different. Tilting Point is commercial, laser-focused on entertainment, revenue, and profit. Games for Change is the opposite: an NGO he led for years, building the biggest global platform for people who want to take games beyond entertainment.
He started in the nonprofit world. Left Israel in 2004, studied at Carnegie Mellon in one of the earliest master's programs for entertainment technology, built a game about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then grew Games for Change into a global community with events in New York, Turkey, India, Australia, South Africa, and Israel.
The thread connecting both worlds: helping others succeed. At Games for Change, he built the community. At Tilting Point, even in the most commercial deals, the same instinct shows up.
"Many, many times at Tilting Point, I really felt that we took someone, and we helped them to succeed. And that's a big deal."
The Publishing Evolution
Tilting Point has gone through six evolutions. Kevin Sagala started the company in 2012 with premium games. When free-to-play arrived, the model shifted. Traditional publishing followed: evaluate a game before launch, decide whether to fund it. The same approach PC and console still use today.
Then came the insight that changed their trajectory. Mobile has more data than any other platform. Samir and Kevin, the co-CEOs, saw the obvious question no one was
asking: why bet on a game before it launches when you can wait, see the data, and make a smarter move? Tilting Point started going to games when they were already live. That was the shift.
By working with live games, the data speaks first, alignment gets easier, revenue shares become fairer. And when developers needed money more than a full publishing stack, Tilting Point became the first company to offer UA financing.
UA Financing: Built by Operators
Tilting Point launched UA financing in 2017. Asi had to educate developers on what it even was.There was nothing like it. Only VC money and loans existed.
By the start of this year, they announced a $150 million fund. And then, a flood of competitors entered the market. VCs pivoted from investing in studios to offering UA financing, chasing lower risk with smaller returns.
Asi is skeptical of the newcomers.
"A lot of them are doing it from a purely financial point of view. It's limited. When everything goes well, it's okay. But when you come to it from a place that you do UA yourself, you know how to run games, you know how to produce games, it's very different."
The difference shows in the post-deal work. Monthly monitoring, weekly consultations, sharing insights from their own portfolio across channels and games. He compares the relationship to sitting in the back seat of a car.
"You're driving the car, but I'm sitting in the back seat. I'm not going to grab your wheel or anything like that. But if I see that you're approaching a cliff, I'm going to tell you."
The Match 3D story captures the model at its best. Five people in a room in Turkey built the first-ever Match 3D game. They came to Tilting Point at half a million a month. Tilting Point scaled them to eight million a month in less than a year. With only five people, the profit margins were enormous. The company sold for $200 million.
Today, the thesis has evolved. The market is more conservative. Asi now prefers larger deals, companies already spending five or ten million a month, including public companies, helping them allocate capital smarter rather than just filling gaps.
"You would be surprised. You would say, 'Wow, this company asking for UA funding? That's crazy.'"
Why Launching New Games Keeps Getting Harder
The market leaders are sucking all the air. That's how Asi puts it. The entrenched players
dominate, and there's very little room left for newcomers to break in.
"If you look at the number of new games successful in recent years in the data, you'll see less and less successful new games, more and more entrenched, eating the pie."
The traditional payback window for a casual or mid-core game is now around sixteen months. Asi sees signs of where new models could emerge: rewarded platforms, skill-based gaming, sweepstakes. Tangible returns for players, faster payback cycles.
"While if you look at a traditional game that will take them today sixteen months to see money back from UA, in those new places, it will take six months, four months. You see that something is penetrating and achieving traction that the old model doesn't have."
No one knows yet if these models become mainstream. But they're breaking through where traditional free-to-play can't.
The Israel-Turkey Gaming Scene
Both countries punch far above their weight in mobile gaming, and the reasons are similar. A virtuous circle where founders exit, become investors, and fund the next generation. Government subsidies that lower the barrier to entry. Mother companies like Playtika, Moon Active, Dream, and Peak that spawn experienced operators who go on to build their own studios.
"It's almost like a virtuous circle of success. Someone made an exit, becomes an investor, invests in more, mentors, shares."
The networking culture matters just as much. People introduce each other and collaborate across companies.
"People want to help each other because it's karma. They understand they will get back."
Finland follows the same pattern. Tight communities, organic networking, a culture of
introductions and collaboration.
Asi would like to see both ecosystems push beyond their comfort zones. Israel dominates social casino and mechanics like Coin Master. Turkey owns hyper-casual and puzzle. The know-how is deep and the ambition should be broader.
"I would love to see how companies in Israel and in Turkey are taking the know-how and bring it to another genre."
IP: A High-Quality Strategic Play
Tilting Point has built a reputation working with major IPs, from 007 to SpongeBob. Asi sees IP as a high-quality play, not a commodity, but the process demands more than most studios expect.
"You're given by the brand something very precious. Very expensive, something they invested in. Not only that you cannot hurt it, you need to do something that adds value to it."
The SpongeBob cooking game is his example of a brilliant IP-to-genre match. Taking a brand most would associate with kids and placing it in the cooking genre opened a different audience while staying true to the brand's values. Getting the match wrong means the game is doomed before it launches.
Getting access to major IPs is hard for newcomers. Licensors don't just evaluate whether you can pay. They evaluate whether you're worth their time. Two people in a division might be responsible for all game licensing and and even deciding where to put their time is a critical choice for them.
For studios with live games already running, Asi suggests IP integration as a first step. Run a time-limited event with a brand, measure how players respond, and if it works, build the full game from there. A test before a commitment.
What AI Actually Changes
Asi is on the optimistic side. In business, he sees AI optimizing production, UA, advertising, and monetization across the industry.
The example that excites him most: breaking the old assumption that retention and monetization are conflicting forces.
"Suddenly, when you become more sophisticated, and with AI, you understand that this equation is not necessarily right. You can actually be much more successful with communities that are much deeper, and you can monetize much better if you do it right."
The convergence of apps and games is another theme Asi keeps returning to. For the first time, app revenue has surpassed game revenue. Niche apps with small, deeply loyal subscriber bases are thriving. Apps are borrowing monetization models from games. Games are adopting subscription logic from apps.
AI plays a role here too, making it easier and cheaper to create niche products and personalize experiences for smaller audiences. The boundaries between the two worlds keep dissolving.
Games as a Medium
This is what Asi has spent 20 years on. He sees games as a medium like books, film, and theater. The difference is interactivity.
"With a game, you change the plot, you make decisions, you fail. You can succeed after that. You can understand what you did wrong. There's cause and effect. There is exploration. There's failure in a safe environment."
He's seen games help kids with cancer understand and comply with their treatment. He led the creation of a mobile game called Nine Minutes that helped pregnant women in India understand the cycle of pregnancy. Games for Change now runs events globally, building a community of creators who believe this medium can do more.
Even commercially, it's proven. Plague Inc, Papers Please, and This War of Mine all made serious money. Like documentaries, it took decades for the format to prove it could be both meaningful and profitable. Games are on that same trajectory.
Wrap Up
The defining moment Asi shares is a response to a sixty-seven-second video. When the US administration curated sixty-seven seconds of gaming's worst moments to argue the medium was harmful, Games for Change made a counter-video. Sixty-seven seconds of gaming's best. People hugging, real adventure, masterpiece moments. It went viral.
"You had to see the comments of gamers and people that play games of, 'You made me proud of my medium.'"
Asi has lived in both worlds for his entire career. He pioneered UA financing, scaled studios to eight-figure monthly revenue, and spent two decades proving video games can educate, heal, and change minds. The commercial work feeds the mission work. The mission work sharpens the commercial instincts.
One principle runs through all of it: understand the data, understand the people, and show them what the medium can actually do.
