Black Friday 2026 is Friday, November 27, with Cyber Monday on November 30. For a mobile game, it's the week players are most ready to spend and most ready to try a new place to do it. A web store lets you price, time and shape the sale yourself, and keep more of each purchase than you would through app-store billing.
This playbook is the whole sale, planned in a day and run from the Studio.
The calendar
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Now to Nov 13 | Decide the offers, build the bundle, prepare the banner art |
| Nov 16 to 20 | Preview the store on a small phone, set up promo codes, schedule banners |
| Nov 23 to 25 | Announce in game: "Black Friday deals in our web store" |
| Nov 27 to 30 | Sale live: Black Friday to Cyber Monday |
| Dec 1 | Banner ends, offers return to normal, compare results |
The same plan works for Christmas, New Year and your game's own anniversary.
Step 1: pick offers players can read at a glance
- Bonus currency on your top packs. "+50% gems" on the packs players already buy is the clearest deal there is.
- One Black Friday bundle. Currency, an item and a booster, only that week. Set the bundle's price in dollars and the store shows local prices.
- A first web purchase bonus. The week to win players who have never bought outside the app.
- One promo code for your community. Share it on Discord or in your newsletter and see who it brings.
Keep it to three or four offers. A store full of badges stops reading like a deal.
Step 2: build it in the Studio
- Offers: pick the packs, set the bonus and the start and end time.
- Bundles: create the Black Friday bundle from your existing items.
- Promo codes: create the code, its limits and its expiry.
- Banners: upload the art and schedule it for November 27 to 30.
- Sections: put the sale at the top of the store.
- Preview, then publish. Check the smallest phone, long pack names and every local price before you press Publish.
Every published version is kept. On December 1, publish the regular store again, or restore the previous version in one step.
Step 3: bring players to the store
- From the game: a "Black Friday deals" button that opens the store with
openStore(), or a single pack straight to checkout withpurchase(sku). See payment links for mobile games. - From your channels: the promo code in your Discord, social posts and newsletter.
- Check your platform rules before you add any in-app link. Our dated guide covers whether iOS games can link to a web store.
Step 4: the night before
- Open the store on a phone over mobile data, not office Wi-Fi.
- Buy one pack yourself and check it arrives in the game exactly once.
- Confirm the banner start time in UTC and in your players' main time zone.
- Make sure support knows the offers and the promo code.
No web store yet?
There's still time. Create your store free: paste your App Store or Google Play link, and Appside drafts a store in your game's look in about two minutes. Your developers connect it in three steps, and the price is 3.9% per successful payment, with no setup fee and no subscription.