About thatgamecompany
thatgamecompany designs and develops artistically crafted, broadly accessible video games that push the boundaries of interactive entertainment. They respect our players and want to contribute meaningful, enriching experiences that touch and inspire them.
What do they do?
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Founded on the principle of creating emotionally engaging and humanistic experiences, Thatgamecompany is a video game studio with a soul. Their flagship title, Sky: Children of the Light, is a free-to-play online MMO that fosters social connection and friendship. As the company grew from 40 employees in 2020 to over 200, so did the complexity and volume of its data, originating from game servers, player telemetry, and platform partners like Google and Apple.
My ideal, with an ETL tool, is that I just don't want to think about it. You kind of just want it to work. And for us, Hevo has been really solid.
The Challenge: Outgrowing a Manual Data Stack
When Drew Forbes joined TGC as a data engineer, the company's data processes were managed by a backend engineer using custom Python scripts to move data from Postgres and MongoDB into BigQuery. This approach was not only a drain on engineering resources but was also slow and unable to scale with the company's needs.
The data team, operating in a hub-and-spoke model, needed to provide reliable, fresh data to a growing number of stakeholders:
Player Insights: To analyze player behavior and improve game design.
Finance: To track revenue from in-game purchases and season passes.
Game Security: To identify and combat malicious actors.
Player Support: To ensure a safe and positive community environment.
The existing system was a bottleneck. The team needed a robust, automated solution that could be managed by the data team without relying on backend engineering.
The Search: Finding a True Partner in Data Integration
Drew’s team began evaluating ETL providers, including Fivetran, Stitch, and Hevo. Their criteria were clear: they needed a tool that was reliable, scalable, easy to set up, and fairly priced, with excellent support.
Their initial attempts with other platforms ran into roadblocks. "We had a lot of trouble with them," Drew recalls, citing technical failures, an undesirable pricing model based on monthly active rows, and a lack of support.
The experience with Hevo was different from the start.
"I don't know how we found Hevo, I was just Googling around a lot," Drew says. "We ran a demo, and everything just kind of worked. The prices made sense for us... It's been great."
Hevo stood out for three key reasons:
It Just Worked: The initial setup and proof-of-concept for their PostgreSQL and MongoDB pipelines were seamless.
Sensible Pricing: Hevo's event-based pricing model was a much better fit for TGC's high-volume, write-intensive data compared to the monthly-active-row model of competitors.
Superior Support: "I've always felt very supported and able to reach out, which you don't always feel," Drew notes, highlighting the value of Hevo's chat support, ticketing system, and dedicated account management.
The Win-Win Outcome: Speed, Efficiency, and Impact
The partnership between TGC and Hevo created a win-win scenario, enabling the game studio to achieve its goals while validating Hevo's position as a leader in the data integration space.
A Win for Thatgamecompany: Data-Driven Success
By replacing brittle, manual scripts with Hevo's automated pipelines, TGC unlocked significant, quantifiable benefits.
Accelerated Time-to-Insight by >100%: "We went from stealing back-end engineers' time... to me being able to just really quickly click on a nice UI," says Drew. He estimates the time to get data from source to a queryable state in a Tableau dashboard became "100% to 200% faster."
Empowered Critical Business Functions:
Fighting Hackers: The game security team used the reliable data stream to run mass actions against cheaters, with remarkable success.
Improving Player Experience: The Player Insights team conducted a data-driven overhaul of the first-time user experience, analyzing where players were falling off to improve engagement and retention.
Building a Safer Community: Player Support teams use dashboards built on Hevo-powered data to investigate players reported for abusive language, enabling them to make confident decisions on disciplinary actions.
Increased Operational Efficiency: With Hevo reliably running in the background, the data team could focus on high-impact analysis rather than pipeline maintenance.
A Partnership in Growth
Thatgamecompany's success is a testament to Hevo's ability to serve as a long-term strategic partner, not just a vendor.
Proven Scalability: Hevo successfully scaled with TGC as it quintupled in size, proving the platform can handle the demanding, high-volume data needs of the gaming industry.
Validated Value Proposition: TGC’s selection process and subsequent success underscore Hevo's core strengths: reliability, ease of use, fair pricing, and world-class support.
A Powerful Customer Story: TGC’s innovative use of data for everything from game design to community safety provides a compelling real-world example of what’s possible with a solid data foundation.
With a reliable data stack in place, Thatgamecompany continues to focus on what it does best: creating beautiful games that bring people together.
Excited to see Hevo in action and understand how a modern data stack can help your business grow? Sign up for our 14-day free trial or register for a personalized demo with our product expert.
