In Brief:
- Pixels is opening Stacked, its internal AI-driven rewards and engagement engine, to external game studios.
- The platform was built over four years inside the Pixels ecosystem, which has generated more than $25 million in revenue and hit one million daily active users.
- In one internal campaign targeting lapsed spenders, Stacked produced a 178% lift in conversion to spend and a 131% return on reward spend.
Pixels is making its internal rewards engine available to outside studios, betting that the AI-powered tooling behind its own monetization can work for the broader games industry.
The platform, called Stacked, functions as an SDK-based engagement layer. Studios plug it into their games to track player behavior in real time, then use natural language prompts to design and deploy targeted offers. The system is live at stacked.xyz.
Built inside Pixels
Stacked isn’t new technology for the Pixels team. It’s been running internally for four years across the studio’s portfolio, which includes Pixels, Pixel Dungeons and the early access title Chubkins. That ecosystem has crossed $25 million in revenue and one million DAU.
The strongest public data point comes from a re-engagement test. The team used Stacked to target veteran players who hadn’t made a purchase in more than 30 days. Rather than a blanket campaign, the system segmented the audience and delivered personalized offers. The results: a 178% lift in conversion to spend, a 129% increase in active days for targeted players and a 131% return on reward spend.
What it replaces
The pitch is aimed at studios that either cobble together their own reward systems or rely on generic engagement tools. Stacked’s offer engine analyzes granular player events and handles segmentation, targeting and deployment from a single interface. Studios can query the system in plain language rather than pulling in data science staff for each campaign decision.
“Most reward systems treat every player the same and optimize for the wrong things. Stacked is built to reward actions that actually matter—like coming back, progressing, spending, contributing to a healthy economy,” said Luke Barwikowski, founder of Pixels.
“We’ve essentially built an AI game economist that any studio can access without needing an entire data science team behind it. This isn’t theoretical tech. It’s in production inside Pixels, and it’s what made us profitable on return-on-reward spend, and now we’re opening it up to everyone,” Barwikowski said.
Scope beyond games
Pixels isn’t limiting its ambitions to the games vertical. The company says the underlying tech is built to work across any consumer application where behavioral incentives drive retention, citing e-commerce, fitness apps and educational platforms as potential use cases. The long-term goal is to position Stacked as a general-purpose reward platform for digital businesses.
Integration starts with an SDK hookup. Studios interested in access can apply through stacked.xyz.
