Garena reaches 640K new high-value players with Leagues
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Essentials
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Learning
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Programs
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Play Console
Test
Release
Grow
Quality
Monetize
Manage
This Level Up pilot demonstrates how Play’s new engagement features can boost player activity by 33%.
Since 2009, Garena has developed and published some of the world’s most popular online games, from battle royales to Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) and racing simulators. One of their most successful titles is Free Fire, a free-to-play battle royale game in which 50 players battle for survival over 10 rapid-fire minutes.
As a competitive multiplayer game with a history of successful collaborations and tournaments, Free Fire was a natural fit for Play Games Leagues. Leagues is a Play-driven competition that rewards players with Play Points for their in-game performance.
Leagues is the first advanced engagement mechanic designed to be powered by data from the Game Stats feature using the Game Stats API , a foundational integration that enables Google Play to power a broader roadmap of social and competitive features. Game Stats powers features like leagues and will power new mechanics by providing a reusable data model that allows developers to share player events and state once to seamlessly unlock future experiences. By meeting Level Up’s user experience guidelines and sharing data for the Game Stats feature, developers position their titles at the forefront of the next generation of player engagement spaces across the Play ecosystem.
What they did
Garena was one of the first developers to launch a Play Games League. They were eager to test Play’s out-of-game leaderboard to see if it could help them drive installs, increase player engagement, and reach a higher share of active spenders.
League participation was open to adult players in 32 countries, with Google Play offering rewards of up to 150M Play Points for the winning players. The Free Fire League opened for registration and ran from November 6-25, 2025.
Results
Play promoted the League to 124M unique players, across multiple surfaces. This visibility drove great results:
- 640K of the 1.8M participants were new installs.
- 77% of these new players became active spenders in the game.
- Gameplay intensity surged by 33% while session duration remained stable, as measured by the number of eliminations and matches played.
Garena’s results provide a clear proof point: when developers align with Level Up’s user experience standards and platform tools, they can tap into entirely new sources of high-value players.
Get started
While Leagues is currently available to select partners, it represents the first of many engagement mechanics launching through Level Up. By integrating with the Game Stats feature through use of the Game Stats API, developers can take advantage of the next wave of engagement mechanics coming soon. Visit the Level Up program page to get started.