The Latest from Google Play: Q4 2025

Hi everyone,

As we kick off the new year, I’ve been reflecting on the incredible momentum and energy from our final months of 2025.

It was inspiring to see the creativity of our community firsthand during our recent top partner events in Brussels, São Paulo, Vietnam, Seoul, Tokyo, and Shenzhen. These gatherings are a vital opportunity to strengthen local relationships and share the product updates that help our developers build successful global businesses.

To wrap up the year, we also celebrated the Best of 2025, honoring the outstanding apps, games, and books that impressed us with their brilliance, ingenuity, and quality.

We’re proud to build alongside such a talented community and remain committed to evolving our platform to provide the tools and support our partners need to reach even greater heights. Read on for more highlights and milestones from the past quarter.

Continuing to make Play the best destination for games

Whether players prefer casual mobile titles or immersive multiplayer PC games, Play supports their journey from discovery to gameplay and beyond. Since unifying our gaming platform in September, we’re excited to see huge engagement from the gamer community driven by competitive mechanics like Streaks, Achievements and Leagues alongside enhanced rewards through Play Points and Play Pass, which continue to deepen player loyalty.

Play Games Leagues: Scaling global competition with top gaming titles

Following our first Play Games League launch in September with SYBO Games’ Subway Surfers, we debuted our second league in November with Garena’s Free Fire and Free Fire MAX. These leagues allow players to compete for Play Points rewards and bragging rights, driving deeper engagement for our top titles.

Google Play Points: Even more rewards and member experiences

As one of the world's largest rewards programs with over 300 million enrolled members, Google Play Points continues to elevate member value by unlocking exclusive, money-can't-buy experiences.

• A VIP experience for Austin City Limits: In October, we launched the Google Play Rewards Tour at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. On the ground, attendees experienced  a giant tower to play our custom game and earn prizes. And on Google Play, members could exchange points for exclusive Candy Crush in-game bundles, artist merch, and a limited edition Nik Bentel bag.

• New ways to play and win with Diamond Valley: We reimagined our signature treasure hunt game, Diamond Valley, with a revamped experience and new ways to win. In October, we introduced "Diamond Hero" in the US—a game-within-a-game—alongside collaborative team squad challenges. Players collected diamonds for a chance to win high-value prizes, including the Google Pixel Watch and Play Points. We also relaunched Diamond Valley in Korea, Japan and Taiwan and expanded to the UK for the first time.

• Improved Play Points reporting to help quantify impact: We launched the new Play Points page in the Play Console to provide developers with a comprehensive overview of program performance. Developers can now track total revenue driven by campaigns and access new reporting on Google-funded promotions, offering a clearer picture of how Play Points fuel business growth.

Google Play Games on PC: Helping developers optimize high-performance graphics

Google Play Games on PC has reached general availability, offering a seamless multi-platform experience with a catalog of over 200,000 titles across mobile and PC. To further support developers, we’ve launched the OpenGL ES 3.2 graphics API, making it easier to enhance graphics capabilities and optimize performance for large-screen devices.

Helping people discover even more content they’ll love

We launched new tools and features to connect people with their favorite apps and games while helping developers reach their ideal audiences.

Apps Home updates: Driving discovery with more entertainment content 

Over the last year, we’ve been revamping Apps Home with more personalized and visually engaging content. We're keeping the momentum going with more updates that make finding great content simpler than ever.

• Where to Watch improvements: We recently launched video trailers within search results to offer a richer discovery experience for movies and TV shows.

• Entertainment feature expansion: Building on the new entertainment space, launched in Korea in September, we recently expanded these entertainment offerings in Korea to include comics sampling on Apps Home as well as Trending TV and Movies.

XR Storefront: Surfacing relevant apps for new form factors 

In October, to coincide with the launch of Galaxy XR, we introduced a fully spatialized store UI featuring immersive 360-degree app trailers and spatial search. Support for XR apps on the mobile Play Store now allows users to easily search, browse, and install content directly from their devices, with dedicated features for “Made for XR” and “2D XR compatible” apps and games.

Google Play Books: Celebrating 15 years of bookselling

In December, we celebrated 15 years of Google's digital bookstore. Since launching in 2010 as Google eBooks, our bookstore — now Google Play Books — has expanded to more than 75 countries and our catalog has grown to over 10 million ebooks and audiobooks. To mark this milestone, we counted down 15 reasons to love Google Play Books and offered a 15x Play Points multiplier on all Play Books purchases over our birthday weekend.

Developer tools to optimize apps: Validating deep links

To further connect people with the content they love, we equip developers with advanced tools to optimize their apps for a global audience. The new deep link validation tool allows developers to validate deep links with a built-in emulator within Play Console. By ensuring users land exactly where intended, developers can provide a more seamless journey from URL to app.

Driving global growth with secure, frictionless payments

Google Play Commerce helps buyers make seamless, secure purchases and unlocks international revenue growth for apps and games businesses.

Digital gift cards on Google Play: Enabling secure gift purchasing

In December, we launched digital gift card purchasing on Google Play. Play users in the US, UK, and Mexico can now easily buy digital gift cards for a wide variety of brands including Target, Starbucks, Uber Eats, Adidas, and of course, Google Play. Gift givers can select from a variety of digital card designs, choose email or text for delivery, include a short message, and process the transaction with Google Play’s secure billing system,

Subscriptions enhancements: Enabling greater flexibility and control for developers

With over 400 million paid subscriptions, Google Play is one of the world's largest subscription platforms. We're providing even more ways for people to manage their subscriptions and tools for developers to maximize recurring revenue.

• New subscription discovery page: To help developers reach new audiences, we created a personalized discovery page that recommends top subscription-based apps for users with no subscriptions.

• Enhanced payment reliability: We expanded the ability to have backup payment methods to 13 countries. This allows subscribers to enable an alternative payment method if their primary one fails, reducing involuntary churn for developers.

Google Play Billing Library updates: Helping developers improve monetization management

The latest Billing Library updates provide developers with more ways to manage complex subscription lifecycles and global product offerings.

• Pre-orders for one-time products: Earlier this year, we introduced more flexible ways for developers to configure one-time purchases. This allowed developers to attract buyers with expanded purchase offers like rentals for one-time products. Now, developers can also offer one-time products as pre-orders.

• Enhanced subscription replacement: We introduced a new replacement mode that allows developers to upgrade or downgrade a user's plan while keeping their existing payment schedule unchanged. This provides a more seamless transition for users moving between tiers.

• Suspended subscription recovery: With a new API, developers can now retrieve suspended subscriptions. By identifying users whose payments have failed or whose accounts are paused, developers can guide them directly to the subscription center to re-activate their plans and reduce churn.

Expanded local payment options: Giving users more ways to pay

Google Play offers over 300 local payment methods across 65+ markets, with new options added regularly. We recently expanded our payment library to include buyer currency support in Mongolia. We’ve also simplified how users in India set up UPI, the country’s leading instant digital payment system, making it easier than ever for users to transact.

Proactive payment setup: Helping more people be ready to purchase

To make the purchase experience more effortless, we've been proactively encouraging people to set up payment methods in advance. To date, we’ve helped over 800 million users be purchase-ready. Most recently, we introduced a full-screen prompt for users to add a form of payment and set their preferred authentication method when first opening the Play Store on a new device.

Boosting trust with safer, high-quality experiences

Google Play enables high-quality experiences by prioritizing secure and seamless interactions, helpful developer tools, and comprehensive platform protections.

Play Integrity API: Strengthening security and simplifying user recovery 

To protect developer growth and user trust, we continue to enhance the Play Integrity API, a threat detection service that verifies genuine interactions and unmodified apps. We have recently simplified the integration process with new in-app remediation prompts. Developers can show a Google Play prompt to users to automatically fix a wide range of issues like network errors, code tampering, or device integrity issues within the app.

Android vitals: Enhancing battery performance with new core metrics

When it's necessary, app developers use wake locks to keep a user’s device from going to sleep. Excessive battery drain is top of mind for users, and we are taking significant steps to help developers build more power-efficient apps. Building on our commitment to app quality, excessive partial wake locks will now be a permanent core vitals metric. This metric was co-developed in close collaboration with Samsung and following a successful beta period, we have further refined the algorithm to be more accurate and representative, helping all developers identify and address sources of battery drain more effectively.

Play Age Signals API: Supporting compliance with new age verification laws

To help developers navigate upcoming age verification legislation in the US, we’ve announced the Play Age Signals API (beta). This tool provides a privacy-safe way to receive age range information directly from the Play Store, allowing apps to create age-appropriate experiences without handling sensitive personal data.

Championing our global developer community

Our global developer community is the heart of Play. We're constantly looking for ways to offer the resources they need to grow their businesses and to celebrate their successes.

Global initiatives: Empowering developers and startups around the world

Our programs provide essential training, mentorship, and funding to help local mobile app and game startups enhance their skills, grow their businesses, and expand their reach globally.

• Google Play Apps Accelerator: In October, we announced our new global accelerator helping early-stage companies from over 60 countries scale. Applications recently closed and starting in March 2026, this 12-week program will provide 1-1 mentorship and a curriculum focused on product quality, go-to-market strategy, and monetization. Stay tuned for the upcoming announcement of our first global class.

• Google Play x Unity Game Developer Training Program: In November, we kicked off the curriculum for our first-ever India cohort. 500 gaming enthusiasts were selected for this six-month program, which provides Unity training, certification exams, and Google-led webinars focused on AI tools and networking.

• Indie Games Fund in Latin America: We announced the winners of our $2 million fund supporting 10 promising game studios across Latin America. These studios will receive both direct funding and hands-on assistance to help them scale their titles on Play.

#WeArePlay: Shining a spotlight on the global developer community

One of our recent #WeArePlay films features Mikkel, founder of Miksapix Interactive and creator of Raanaa - The Shaman Girl. Raised in a reindeer-herding family in the Arctic, Mikkel is on a mission to preserve Sámi culture and languages through gaming. By transforming rich mythology into an empowering superheroine’s journey, Mikkel has reached players from Brazil to India. To date, the studio is using this global platform to inspire a new generation of Sámi children to take pride in their heritage!

And, that’s a wrap on this edition of The Latest. Last year, we continued to transform Google Play into more than a store—creating a destination with deeper personalization, immersive gaming experiences, and a more secure, frictionless commerce engine. This progress was fueled by our commitment to being a true partner in developer growth, providing the canvas and the tools they need to turn their boldest ideas into global realities.

As we start 2026, our teams remain dedicated to listening to feedback and keeping the needs of our users and developers at the center of everything we build. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements as we look toward the GDC Festival of Gaming in March.

With gratitude and excitement for the year ahead,
Sam Bright
VP & GM, Google Play + Developer Ecosystem