Gram Games: From Early Success to Global Scale

When Onur Yaman joined Gram Games nearly a decade ago, the studio was fresh off the success of 1010!, a quickly-produced, ad-based puzzle game that had found a global audience.

But beneath the wins, leadership knew the model had limits. Shifts in marketing economics made ad revenue less reliable, and the path to long-term growth lay in building games that could generate sustained engagement and in-app purchases.

"I came in after we lost all our analytics data from a third-party provider. My first job was to make sure that never happened again, so reliability and scalability became non-negotiable for me from day one." - Onur Yaman, Senior Director of Engineering at Gram Games

Onur’s own journey, from a founder of a startup that never quite found a breakthrough to building Gram’s internal analytics system after a major data loss, had shaped his deep focus on scalable, reliable systems.

As Onur rose to Senior Director of Engineering, Gram’s portfolio evolved alongside him, pivoting from rapid-fire releases to building “forever franchises” like Merge Dragons, supported by larger teams, deeper infrastructure, and the technical foundations to keep players engaged for years.

This shift demanded a deeper technical foundation, larger teams, and the ability to sustain player engagement for years rather than days. The acquisition by Zynga accelerated these ambitions, increasing both resources and expectations.

Meeting those demands required a backend partner that could deliver transparency, flexibility, and scale. Their provider at the time couldn’t provide the visibility or performance Gram needed.

The move to Nakama, an open-source game server that can be run locally for testing, was a game-changer, offering both the technical capabilities and a collaborative partnership that would define the years ahead.

"With Nakama, we finally had full visibility into our server-side operations and the ability to test locally. That made scaling and problem-solving so much faster, and having Heroic's team, even their CEO, jump regularly on calls with us was a huge difference." - Onur Yaman

Gram’s LiveOps Evolution

For the Turkish gaming ecosystem, famous for its speed of iteration and data-driven approach, LiveOps is never an afterthought. It’s a core design pillar, baked into the DNA of the game from day one.

"In Turkey, you don't survive without being fast and agile. You have to constantly deliver new content, targeted offers, and evolving gameplay loops if you want players to stick around." - Onur Yaman

That philosophy paid off in Merge Dragons, where well-timed events could cause concurrent users to spike up to four times their usual numbers almost instantly. Managing that scale required a backend with the flexibility and visibility to respond in real time, and Nakama delivered exactly that, giving Gram not just the ability to handle current surges, but the confidence to plan even bigger events knowing their infrastructure could scale with their ambitions.

Beyond stability, Nakama also enabled richer social systems in Gram’s games. Take the Friends feature for example, where up to 30 players can join up and visit each other’s camps. These types of social features deepened community ties and kept engagement high, breathing new life into their core gameplay loop.

Their newest title, FruitFall!, integrated Nakama and Hiro from day one, allowing the team to test advanced social features during development and launch with a server-authoritative stack already battle-tested for LiveOps at scale.

"Thanks to Hiro, we could experiment with social features we might not have risked before. It gave us the confidence to move faster." - Onur Yaman

With that foundation in place, Gram built deeper player personalization into FruitFall!. Using Hiro’s user segmentation capabilities, the team was able to tailor offers, events, and challenges to different player cohorts in FruitFall!, a capability Onur calls “critical in a post-IDFA world, where retention is everything.”

Scaling Together

At Heroic Labs, it has been our privilege to work alongside Gram Games through many of their most exciting milestones, from scaling Merge Dragons to launching new titles like FruitFall!. Helping them solve complex challenges, whether it was building custom cloud solutions, integrating advanced social features, or ensuring their live events ran seamlessly, has been a technical and creative collaboration we’ve deeply enjoyed.

We’re honored to have earned their trust over the years and proud that Nakama and Hiro have played a role in enabling Gram to focus on what they do best, which is delivering innovative, long-lasting experiences to millions of players worldwide.

As LiveOps continues to evolve, we look forward to supporting Gram in pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in social, live-service gaming.