Berlin-based mobile game studio StarBerry Games, known for titles like Merge Mayor, faced a familiar challenge for growing studios: managing increasingly complex data pipelines with a lean team.
With a structure where a single person handled both analytics and engineering, the company needed a solution that could scale efficiently without requiring dedicated data engineering resources.
After migrating to Bruin, StarBerry transformed how its team works with data, cutting setup time, reducing costs, and enabling self-serve analytics across the organization.
The Challenge: Scaling Data Without Scaling the Team
StarBerry operates with a compact team, meaning responsibilities often overlap. In their case, one individual was responsible for both analytics and engineering workflows.
As their portfolio of mobile games expanded, so did the complexity of their data pipelines. Maintaining and scaling this infrastructure became increasingly difficult without investing in additional engineering resources.
The studio needed:
- A reliable and scalable data pipeline solution
- Reduced dependency on manual engineering work
- Faster setup for new game data pipelines
- A system that could empower non-engineering team members
The Solution: Migrating to Bruin
StarBerry adopted Bruin as its unified data platform to manage data ingestion, transformation, and analytics workflows in a single environment.
Bruin enables teams to:
- Build and manage data pipelines using SQL, Python, and other tools
- Integrate data quality checks directly into workflows
- Run pipelines across multiple environments without heavy infrastructure overhead
For StarBerry, the migration process proved smoother than expected.
“It Just Worked From Day One”
One of the most notable aspects of the transition was how quickly the system became operational.
The day after the migration was the defining moment. Instead of dealing with broken pipelines or post-migration issues, everything ran smoothly from the start. This allowed the team to immediately focus on higher-value tasks rather than troubleshooting.
“It’s like having a second analyst to bounce ideas off. I mainly use it to kickstart SQL queries, validate my thinking, and explore alternative approaches.
“I already recommend Bruin — even when people don’t ask. For gaming studios in particular, where speed and iteration matter a lot, it just makes sense. Especially if you don’t have a large data team, the leverage you get is hard to ignore.”
Kerem Pilav – Data Analyst at StarBerry Games
CEO and Co-founder Antti Hattara highlighted a similar realization shortly after implementation:
“Easy recommendation to give to any studio wanting to set up their data pipeline on a solid base. Data Engineers are expensive, today you don’t need one if you run on Bruin… save money, save time!”
Antti Hattara – CEO & Co-Founder at StarBerry Games
Key Benefits and Results
Significant Cost Savings
By eliminating the need for dedicated data engineering resources and reducing infrastructure overhead, StarBerry achieved approximately €100,000 in annual savings.
Faster Pipeline Setup
Bruin enabled the team to build data pipelines for new games three times faster compared to their previous setup.
This acceleration allowed StarBerry to:
- Launch analytics systems for new titles more quickly
- Iterate faster on game performance insights
- Reduce time-to-decision across teams
Self-Serve Analytics for the Product Team
Instead of relying on engineering support, team members could:
- Query data directly
- Explore insights without bottlenecks
- Make faster, data-driven decisions
Reliable and Stable Data Infrastructure
Unlike traditional migrations that often require extensive debugging and stabilization, StarBerry experienced a clean transition.
The system:
- Ran without major errors from day one
- Eliminated time spent on fixing pipelines
- Provided consistent performance across workflows
AI-Powered Data Exploration
Another standout feature was Bruin’s AI analyst integration, which allowed the team to interact with data more intuitively.
The AI assistant helped with:
- Generating SQL queries
- Validating analytical approaches
- Exploring alternative solutions
This effectively acted as a “second analyst,” improving productivity and accelerating insight generation.
Long-Term Impact
StarBerry has been running on Bruin for approximately 1.5 years, using it as the backbone of its data operations.
Over time, the platform has:
- Simplified data workflows
- Reduced operational complexity
- Enabled the team to focus on product development instead of infrastructure
Conclusion
StarBerry’s transition to Bruin highlights a broader trend in the gaming industry: lean teams need tools that remove operational friction rather than add to it.
By adopting a unified data platform, the studio was able to:
- Cut costs significantly
- Accelerate development cycles
- Democratize access to data across teams
For mobile game studios operating with limited resources, StarBerry’s experience demonstrates how the right data infrastructure can unlock both efficiency and scalability, without requiring a larger team.
