Inside PGC Summit Montreal 2026: Industry Leaders Share Crucial Insights on AI, Omniplatform Design, and Global Expansion

Running alongside the Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS), the recent PGC Summit Montreal brought together top-tier developers, publishers, and service providers on November 10th and 11th for two intensive days of panels, keynotes, and collaborative discussions. As the games industry continues to navigate a shifting economic and technological landscape, speakers from across the sector took to the stage to share practical strategies for survival, growth, and long-term sustainability.

From navigating the complex promises and pitfalls of artificial intelligence to designing fluid ecosystems for omniplatform play, unlocking the massive Chinese market, and breathing new life into established intellectual properties, the summit offered a comprehensive look at what is actively working for studios today.

Use AI, But Don’t Outsource Your Thinking

Discussions surrounding artificial intelligence dominated much of the discourse at the summit, reflecting both the profound anxieties and the strategic opportunities the technology presents to modern studios. Rather than viewing AI as a universal panacea for rising development costs, industry veterans offered sobering reminders about where real value lies in game development.

Rhys Dekle, an M&A advisor at Strategic Alternatives, cautioned attendees during his session that artificial intelligence will not inherently raise a studio’s overall market value. According to Dekle, AI merely relocates value rather than creating it from scratch. The true competitive advantage, he argued, remains anchored in assets that competing studios cannot easily copy, such as proprietary intellectual property, deeply engaged communities, and valuable proprietary data. Using a stark mathematical metaphor, Dekle warned that a studio with a "zero moat" multiplied by artificial intelligence simply equals a faster path to zero.

Furthermore, legal and compliance realities are catching up to generative technologies. Because pure artificial intelligence output cannot be legally copyrighted under current frameworks, prospective buyers and publishers will increasingly demand verifiable proof of human authorship. Dekle emphasized that the studios that appear legally clean and attractive to investors by 2028 will be the ones that meticulously maintained their developmental records and provenance logs starting as early as 2026.

These sentiments were echoed loudly during a dedicated MIGS artificial intelligence panel featuring executive voices from Virtuos, Behaviour Interactive, Winking Studios, and Keywords Studios. The panel converged on a vital counter-intuitive truth: faster technological execution does not automatically translate to cheaper overall development. Citing internal comparative tests, speakers noted that while senior artists could reach a finalized asset more rapidly and with fewer prompts, relying solely on automated workflows poses a systemic danger to the talent pipeline. Cutting junior staff positions today risks creating a severe shortage of experienced senior talent tomorrow, as foundational skills are bypassed. Claude Bordeleau, Chief Revenue Officer at Winking Studios, summarized the sentiment bluntly during the panel, telling the audience that a studio can never afford to delegate its fundamental thinking to an algorithm.

This perspective was further reinforced by indie consultant Adam Clare of Game Space Agency, who pointed out that an over-reliance on generative tools tends to push projects into a crowded corner of fast, low-quality output that modern players actively ignore. Sharing market data from Steam, Clare noted that 47 percent of games with fewer than 10 user reviews explicitly disclose the use of artificial intelligence, whereas only 14 percent of titles boasting 1,000 reviews or more do the same. Furthermore, AI-disclosed games currently account for roughly 40 percent of total releases on the platform but capture only about 13 percent of total user reviews.

Clare reminded developers that massive computing power cannot substitute for artistic discernment, noting that creative skills inherently atrophy the more a creator relies on automated generation rather than human ingenuity.

Design for Players, Not Platforms

Moving beyond production pipelines, the summit also addressed fundamental shifts in how games reach their audiences. Valérie Motard, User Experience Lead at Frima, argued that the industry is rapidly transitioning away from traditional multiplatform releases toward a truly "omniplatform" paradigm. In this new model, players expect the exact same game and continuous progression to flow seamlessly across devices, with the user experience dynamically adapting to how, where, and why individuals choose to play. The future of game development, Motard asserted, is no longer about managing disparate platforms, but about building cohesive ecosystems.

Highlighting mobile technology as the most globally accessible gaming platform in existence, Motard pointed out a persistent industry paradox: mobile is frequently the medium that receives the least dedicated attention during the critical early stages of game development. She characterized this as a major missed opportunity, arguing that strict mobile hardware and interface constraints frequently force better, more disciplined design choices across the board.

To successfully execute an omniplatform strategy, Motard outlined five core principles for developers. Studios should design for every target platform from the very beginning of production rather than treating ports as an afterthought, construct layouts that respond fluidly to changing screen sizes, diverge platform-specific mechanics only when there is an absolute design justification, build deep customization options directly into the core framework, and lean heavily into the unique strengths of each individual device. Before splitting a feature across different platforms, she advised teams to critically evaluate whether the added cost and complexity genuinely justify the player benefit. Ultimately, developers should design not for hardware specifications, but for the holistic needs of everyday players.

Making Great Games Requires an Effective Core Loop

Sustaining long-term player engagement remains one of the most difficult challenges in modern live-service development, but several sessions highlighted the enduring power of a well-crafted core gameplay loop. A prime example was presented by Ludia, whose mobile title Jurassic World: The Game achieved its most successful financial year in 2025—a full decade after its initial launch—surpassing its previous low point from 2019 by 92 percent.

According to Ludia Senior Product Manager Lucas Larbodière, the game’s core loop has remained fundamentally unchanged throughout its lifecycle. Every new piece of content introduced to the game is rigorously engineered to feed back into that foundational loop. Because individual dinosaurs require multiple copies to reach their maximum potential, a single creature is carefully integrated across a prolonged timeline, moving from the season pass to the Amber Market and targeted promotional offers over the course of more than a year. Larbodière emphasized that in live-service management, a flat performance line is synonymous with failure.

Sean Wylie-Toal, CEO of Extra Dimension Games and a seasoned veteran who shipped his first live-service title in 2009 before selling his previous studio to Electronic Arts, shared similar insights derived from shipping over 1,000 live updates. Offering advice on how to sustainably grow player lifetime value (LTV), Wylie-Toal advocated for a philosophy of multiplication rather than simple addition.

According to his operational data, while every added layer of live operations incrementally raises lifetime value, a robust and engaging core loop remains the absolute baseline requirement. The most substantial financial and engagement gains typically stem from carefully tuning live events that are already running rather than constantly piling on new, untested features. His operational rulebook is straightforward: ship frequently, resist the urge to over-polish every minor detail, and establish clear performance expectations before launching any update so that concrete results can be measured. Crucially, Wylie-Toal advised developers to recognize when an initiative is failing and maintain the discipline to move on without hesitation.

Echoing these gameplay mechanics from a design perspective, LoopLight co-founder Robert Warren explained that achieving psychological flow—often described as the irresistible "one more turn" phenomenon—requires the careful alignment of three distinct elements: crystal-clear goals, immediate and responsive feedback, and a level of challenge that precisely matches the player’s developing skill level. In Warren’s view, feedback functions as an essential part of the player reward system, meaning that the juicier and more satisfying the sensory response, the better the engagement.

Selling Into China Requires Patience, Not Budget

Expanding into international markets was another major focus of the Montreal summit, with Aleksander Ptak, Key Account Manager at Huqiao Games, delivering a comprehensive presentation on navigating the vast Chinese gaming market. Highographic data shared during the session underscored the sheer scale of the region, noting that China boasts 722 million active players compared to 212 million in the United States, accounting for roughly one out of every five gamers worldwide.

Ptak’s primary rule for western developers attempting to enter the market is to thoroughly validate domestic demand before allocating significant budgets to traditional launch marketing. Localized community platforms often provide far more accurate indicators of potential success than standard Western metrics like Steam reviews. As a case study, he pointed to Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, which achieved an impressive 9.7 out of 10 score on the Chinese community platform Heybox, attracted 820,000 players there, and generated an estimated 26.6 percent of its total global sales within the country.

However, entering the Chinese market involves hurdles that extend far beyond simple language translation. Technical details such as unreadable font rendering, the absence of dedicated streamer modes, and regional blood color settings are taken very seriously by Chinese players and can heavily influence review scores if mishandled. Political missteps carry even graver consequences, as demonstrated by past incidents where Red Candle Games’ Devotion faced severe review bombing over a single disputed art asset, and Paradox Interactive’s Hearts of Iron was banned outright.

To mitigate costs and build sustainable audiences, Ptak recommended organic community-building tactics, such as linking official Steam store pages directly to domestic platforms like QQ groups and Bilibili, allowing developers to directly manage their player base. Huqiao Games has successfully utilized these organic methods across 40 titles published by PlayWay, accumulating over a million views and driving games to the number two spot in regional sales charts. It is a market, Ptak concluded, that demands careful nurturing and localized cultural understanding rather than aggressive, broad-stroke advertising spending.

Licensed Games Take Center Stage

As the economic realities of developing entirely original intellectual properties become increasingly challenging, licensed properties have emerged as a dominant force in modern game development. During a dedicated panel focused on writing for established intellectual properties, Motive Studio Principal Writer Ashley Cooper shared insights from her work on titles like Gotham Knights, where she penned Robin’s coming-out storyline after the comic books revealed the character’s identity mid-production.

Cooper noted that working with an existing IP actually provides writers with a valuable head start, as the foundational fictional framework, lore, and character expectations are already established, allowing creative teams to focus on emotional resonance and personal connection. However, she strongly encouraged writers to take creative risks rather than playing it safe. While some writers worry that coloring too far outside the established lines might fracture beloved characters, Cooper argued that those exact creative risks are where fresh, memorable narrative takes are born, urging developers to be willing to push boundaries or risk missing unique storytelling opportunities.

Next Stop: London

For industry professionals who missed the discussions, networking opportunities, and insights shared at PGC Summit Montreal, the Pocket Gamer Connects series will return on January 18th and 19th, 2027, for its flagship event in London. Projected to draw upwards of 3,000 attendees from across the global games ecosystem, registration for the event is currently open as the industry prepares for its next major gathering of the year.