2025: Our Year in Review

As the gaming and content creator landscapes continue to evolve, 2025 became a year marked by record-breaking creator-driven revenue, creator earnings, and major advancements in how publishers activate creators to drive real, measurable impact in their games.

From launching new creator programs to introducing platform features and uncovering deeper insights into how creators impact player behavior, this year set a new standard for what creator programs can achieve.

Let’s dive into the record milestones that shaped Nexus in 2025.

Creators Turn Players Into Power Users

In July, we ran a player survey to examine how content creators impact their behavior. The report reaffirmed that players who support creators don’t just engage more; they become more valuable. Some of the key learnings include:

• Player monthly spending increased by 17% after using a creator code

• A player’s weekly playtime increased by 19% after using a creator code

• 82% of players reported that creators boost their awareness of in-game events and updates 

Our Biggest Year Ever

Creator-driven revenue isn’t just incremental, it’s transformative. Creators fuel game growth, shape player behavior, increase retention, and build thriving businesses of their own. 2025 proved just how powerful the creator growth flywheel has become. 

That’s also why we introduced ROCS (Return on Creator Spend), a ROAS-style metric designed for creator programs. It measures how much incremental revenue is generated for every dollar paid out to creators, giving marketing teams and leadership a clear read on performance. This year, ROCS has proven the power of Nexus Creator programs as one of the most efficient marketing channels in gaming.  

Across all Nexus-powered programs in 2025:

• Total revenue driven by creators grew by more than 6X

• Average creator earnings increased by 83%

• The number of creators paid out by Nexus rose by 45%

• We launched 16 New Creator Programs

These numbers reflect more than growth; they represent thousands of creators building sustainable businesses, deepening their connection to the games they love, and proving that creator programs are among the most impactful levers for building a successful game.

More Creator Programs Launched Than Ever Before

This year marked Nexus’s biggest year yet. We launched new creator programs across a wide mix of titles across genres and platforms; including global franchises like Dead by Daylight, Marvel Contest of Champions, Gorilla Tag, and Angry Birds 2, idle games including The Tower and Idle Slayer, action and combat packed mobile games like Sonic Rumble, Critical Ops, and Combat Master, plus community-driven favorites including Super Auto Pets, Marbles on Stream, Tumble Troopers, and the highly anticipated fighter Rivals of Aether II.

And we didn’t just launch programs, we had fun doing it: for Angry Birds 2, we literally sent creator codes to outer space as part of their Angry Birds 2 Space update.

These program launches brought thousands of new creators into the Nexus ecosystem and reinforced their essential role in driving discovery, engagement, and long-term growth for the games they love.

New Features That Make Programs Run Smoother

We’ve been busy leveling up Nexus so publishers can run more efficient creator programs. We rolled out Content Insights to make it way easier to see what creators are actually posting and how it’s performing in terms of viewer engagement, sentiment, and the number of sales driven.

We also launched webstores, giving publishers a polished way to sell directly to players with built-in Support-a-Creator mechanics and seamless fulfillment. 

On the community side, our Discord Bot helps automate role assignment and keeps server management simple, while a wave of dashboard improvements made program setup and creator management faster and more flexible.

We also added cooldown periods so publishers can control when creators can reapply after being denied or removed, whether for a set period or indefinitely.

Looking Ahead

To our publisher partners, developers, and the thousands of creators who bring games to life every day: thank you. Your passion fuels our innovation, and together we’re building a future where creator programs are a foundational pillar of every successful live-service game.

Here’s to an even bigger 2026.