On April 18, 2025, UDO, formerly known as Udo Games, officially rebranded with a clear and forward-looking mission: to reshape the way games are built, scaled, and operated.
Türker Karahan spoke about the company’s relationship with TaleWorlds, Hammer Hub’s importance for UDO, and the future goals.
UDO has deep roots in mobile gaming, while your investor TaleWorlds, is prominent in PC. How do you balance the needs and strategies of both mobile and PC game markets within the same company?
While UDO’s core expertise is in mobile gaming, especially hybrid-casual and casual, having TaleWorlds as an investor brings a unique long-term perspective. Their deep experience in PC development has influenced our production culture, encouraging depth, polish, and a global mindset even in mobile-first projects.
Looking ahead, we plan to expand into PC publishing by leveraging the infrastructure we’ve built, especially our technology platform. TaleWorlds’ support and insight will play a key role in this transition, allowing us to combine mobile agility with PC-scale storytelling and monetization. It’s an exciting next step in building a cross-platform publishing model.
Do you foresee UDO branching out into PC or console game development directly, or will your focus remain strictly on mobile?
Our primary focus will remain on mobile, where we’ve built strong expertise in publishing, growth, and monetization, especially in hybrid-casual. But we absolutely see potential in expanding into PC publishing, especially for select titles with mid-core or system-driven depth.
We don’t aim to become a traditional PC developer, but rather to bring our strengths in game operations, tech, and data to that space, just as we’ve done in mobile. With TaleWorlds as a strategic investor, we’re well-positioned to take this step when the timing and projects align.
What lessons from managing mobile games have been most useful in understanding or influencing strategies in the PC space?
Mobile taught us how to move fast, iterate based on real-time data, and focus on retention and monetization from day one. These disciplines are now essential even in the PC space, where user expectations and competition continue to rise.
What we bring from mobile is a deep understanding of lifecycle management, live ops, A/B testing, creative optimization, and data-driven decision making. As PC games become more service-oriented, these capabilities give us a strong edge.
And with Hammer Hub, we’re building the infrastructure to apply these same principles across platforms, not just for us, but for the studios we support.
About Hammer Hub
You’ve introduced Hammer Hub as a core component of UDO’s transformation. What are the biggest problems in traditional publishing that you believe Hammer Hub solves?
Traditional publishing often leaves studios disconnected from the core of their own game’s journey, with limited visibility, minimal data access, and almost no operational flexibility. Hammer Hub was built to change that.
Hammer Hub solves three key problems:
- Real Transparency, Not Reports: Studios get real-time access to performance, marketing, and monetization data.
- One Platform, Full Control: Everything from UA to live ops is centralized in one platform.
- Built for Shared Growth: instead of a black-box approach, Hammer Hub empowers teams to learn, grow, and operate with confidence.
In short, Hammer Hub gives studios the control and clarity they need to self-publish smarter, with the backing of a full-stack tech and publishing partner.
How does Hammer Hub empower small or mid-sized studios differently from standard publisher-developer relationships?
Hammer Hub gives small and mid-sized studios something they rarely get from traditional publishers: visibility, flexibility, and ownership.
Instead of handing off control, studios using Hammer Hub can manage everything from user acquisition to monetization and live ops in one place. They get access to real-time data, A/B testing tools, creative performance insights, and remote configuration, all without needing to build internal infrastructure.
On top of that, we support them like a true partner: offering optional creative, marketing, and design support while still letting them lead their own operations. It’s a new kind of relationship, one built on enablement, not dependency.
Could you walk us through how a game team would typically use Hammer Hub—from concept to live operations?
Hammer Hub supports studios from setup to scale, all in one platform.
We begin by setting up their full publishing stack: UA and monetization accounts, tool integrations, and partner connections. Then we walk the team through integrating our SDK and using key features like campaign management, analytics, remote config, and live ops.
From day zero, studios can test prototypes, manage soft launches, and scale promising titles — all with real-time performance data and full operational control. Each team also gets a dedicated account manager to support their journey from concept to growth.
There’s mention of AI, remote config, live-ops systems—how important is automation and data in today’s game publishing, and how does Hammer Hub enhance that?
Data, automation, and AI are no longer optional, and they’re the foundation of scalable publishing. That’s why they sit at the heart of Hammer Hub, not just as features, but as the core of our long-term vision.
From day one, studios can run fast and flexible testing, launch live-ops strategies, and make informed decisions based on real-time insights. As the platform evolves, our AI-powered systems will drive even deeper prediction, segmentation, and campaign optimization, helping teams focus on creativity while the platform handles complexity.
With Hammer Hub, we’re not just building tools, we’re building a smarter way to publish games.
Rebranding & Vision
What triggered the decision to move from “Udo Games” to simply “UDO”? Was it more than a name change?
It was much more than a name change, it was a signal of evolution. “Udo Games” reflected our roots as a game studio and developer. But over the years, we’ve become much more: a publisher, a technology company, and a platform builder.
Dropping “Games” and becoming simply UDO allowed us to reflect this broader vision — one where publishing, development, and technology come together under one brand. It’s not just a new name; it’s a new identity for what we’re building and where we’re headed.
You’ve positioned UDO as a full-stack company blending development, publishing, and technology. How do you maintain focus and agility while managing such an integrated operation?
Our strength comes from integration, but our speed comes from focus. We’ve structured UDO around three core pillars: development, publishing, and technology, but each pillar has dedicated teams with clear ownership. What ties them together is a shared platform and a unified goal: to build and scale great games efficiently.
Having our own tools, data, and creative capabilities in-house actually reduces friction. It allows us to move faster, make better decisions, and support both internal and partner projects without the usual silos or delays. It’s not just full-stack for the sake of it; it’s full-stack built for agility.
UDO now works with a network of developers and partners through Hammer Hub. What kind of studios are you looking to collaborate with, and what can they expect from working with you?
We’re currently partnering with a wide range of studios, from those preparing to soft-launch investment-backed casual games to teams breathing new life into dropped projects originally built for publishers.
We also work with studios that are actively shifting from traditional publishing relationships to self-publishing and looking for more control and long-term sustainability.
What connects them all is the ambition to build better games and operate smarter. With Hammer Hub, they gain the tools to manage their own publishing pipeline: from testing and analytics to monetization and live ops. Alongside that, they get support from a team that deeply understands game production. It’s not just a platform. It’s a partnership built for real growth.
With the new identity and tech infrastructure, what does success look like for UDO over the next two years?
Success for us means building a new standard in game publishing. Over the next two years, we aim to grow Hammer Hub into a widely adopted platform, powering a global network of self-publishing studios. We want to prove that great games don’t need to rely on traditional publishing models to scale.
On the business side, that means operating a portfolio of high-performing games while also generating strong recurring revenue through our platform. But beyond the numbers, success is about being the go-to partner for studios that want both independence and impact. That’s what we’re building.
