The technical and managerial decisions of Level 26 Games’ CPO helped the project survive a funding crisis
In 2023, investment activity in the game development market declined sharply. According to an analytical report by InvestGame, venture funding for gaming companies fell fourfold in the first three quarters compared to the 2021–2022 average. That was not the only challenge facing the mobile development industry: alongside the capital shortage, studios were grappling with rising user acquisition costs and the hardware limitations of mobile devices. Roman Makeev, CPO of Level 26 Games, successfully guided his team through the crisis. He helped the ALT CITY: Online project survive the loss of its anchor investor, rebuilt the product’s technical foundation, and raised approximately $500 000 in alternative financing, putting the company on stable footing. We spoke with Roman Makeev to learn how mobile development leaders navigate periods of instability while not merely preserving their projects, but actively advancing them.
Overcoming the Architectural Constraints of Open-World Design
In the gaming industry, securing investment hinges on product metrics: retention, LTV, and user acquisition cost. With an open-world multiplayer game, these figures are directly tied to technical resilience. Standard game engines frequently struggle under the load of rendering a seamless city, maintaining high frame rates, and synchronizing large numbers of players in real time. The result is device overheating, performance degradation, and significant user churn. Roman Makeev addressed this challenge in the development of ALT CITY: Online, a project for which he served as the author of the game’s vision, architect of its core systems, and the principal ideologist of its open-world concept.
ALT CITY: Online is a multiplayer open-world sandbox with Action RPG elements, operating on a free-to-play model with a hybrid monetization system that combines in-app purchases and advertising. The game features a contemporary urban setting with complete freedom of action: players can explore a seamless city, complete missions, and interact with both NPCs and real players. At the time of its development, most mobile competitors offered either limited interaction scenarios or failed to deliver a combination of a seamless open world and a complex multiplayer ecosystem. The game design principles and architectural solutions developed by Roman Makeev demonstrated the viability of a new format for mobile open-world games and set a benchmark that informed similar projects that followed.
Roman Makeev, who began as game director and later became CPO of Level 26 Games, defined the gameplay direction, progression systems, and core user experience of ALT CITY: Online. He was also the first to recognize the risks posed by Unity, the engine the project originally used. For a large-scale multiplayer project with full freedom of movement, complex vehicle physics, and active NPC interactions, the engine’s base toolset proved insufficient. The project required deep rendering optimization and stable network code for multiplayer sessions.
Makeev initiated and led the migration to Unreal Engine. In the industry, this engine is often associated with resource-intensive PC and console releases, but its toolset provided the capabilities needed to dramatically improve visual quality and expand the complexity of core mechanics. Under the CPO’s leadership, the team adapted the engine’s demanding architecture to run on smartphones without sacrificing the original level of optimization.
“The computational complexity of vehicle physics and the density of player interactions required a more robust foundation. Switching engines gave us the technical capacity for high-quality open-world rendering, while hardware stability on mobile devices was handled by our engineering team. Without that decision, the infrastructure simply would not have scaled with audience growth,” Makeev explains.
This decision made ALT CITY: Online one of the first mobile free-to-play projects to prove that a large-scale multiplayer open world was achievable at a graphical and technical level previously associated almost exclusively with PC and console games.
Rebuilding Operations After Losing Funding
Cutting-edge architecture does not always protect a studio from macroeconomic shocks. Independent game studios are frequently vulnerable due to their critical dependence on a single venture partner or major publisher. When corporations shift strategies and scale back investment, the studios they fund are left without a budget and at risk of insolvency. Roman Makeev managed to keep Level 26 Games’ flagship project alive by rapidly restructuring the studio’s financing model in the midst of the crisis.
In 2022, the studio found itself in a difficult position. A major company that had served as the anchor investor shut down its investment division amid broader economic uncertainty. The studio lost its source of funding, part of the team departed, and development faced the threat of being frozen. Roman Makeev stepped in to take charge of crisis management and business strategy, moving into the Chief Product Officer role and leading the search for alternative capital.
Having a polished, functional build on the new engine allowed him to move quickly in a declining market. Rather than winding down production, Makeev focused on demonstrating the quality of what had already been built and the product’s growth potential, showing prospective investors the technical advantages of the Unreal Engine version. His negotiation strategy centered on proving the existence of an underserved market niche: the scarcity of high-quality mobile action RPGs with an open world for a free-to-play audience.
“During an investment downturn, private capital does not buy abstract ideas. It requires transparent retention figures and a proven technological foundation that can hold up to market scrutiny,” Makeev notes.
Direct negotiations with private funds and angel investors delivered results. Makeev successfully raised new funding rounds totaling approximately $1 million. The capital not only closed the financial gaps but also allowed the team to be rebuilt, bringing in specialized programmers and artists.
Dependence on a single publisher has proven fatal for many teams during economic downturns, but the CPO of Level 26 Games mitigated that risk by pivoting to private capital at the right moment and leveraging the product’s technological foundation as his primary argument in negotiations.
Building the Team and Growing Product Metrics
One of the persistent vulnerabilities of independent mobile development during periods of infrastructure change is cash flow gaps. While a studio is migrating a complex architecture to a new engine, the product generates no revenue, and aggressive monetization of a technically unstable build leads to audience loss. To avoid this, Roman Makeev made the decision to hold off on implementing hard paywalls and ad integrations until all technical issues were fully resolved, making user experience quality the top priority.
The capital raised in 2023 was directed by the CPO not toward aggressive traffic acquisition, but toward building a team of specialists experienced with Unreal Engine. Once the open-world adaptation for mobile devices was complete, the team set aside the configuration of complex commercial funnels and concentrated on foundational metrics: audience retention rate and session playtime.
“At this stage, the primary objective was to confirm that the updated product was actually retaining its audience,” says Roman Makeev. “Strong playtime and return visit numbers were proof that the fundamental rebuild had been a justified risk.”
Stabilizing the product on the new platform produced solid engagement levels among organic users. The improved visuals and reliable mechanics offset the absence of active advertising campaigns. The focus on refining core gameplay allowed the team to cultivate a loyal base of players, which gave the project the autonomy and resilience it needed during a period of resource constraints.
Funding shortages and the hardware limitations of mobile platforms frequently bring large-scale releases to a halt. Roman Makeev’s work demonstrates that advancing mobile game development requires not only sound management, but also the ability to establish new technological and design standards. His work on ALT CITY: Online proved that ambitious free-to-play open-world projects with full multiplayer are achievable on mobile devices, and serves as an example of how an individual developer’s vision can shift the trajectory of an entire industry segment.
