ONLYPLAY Takes Rebrand and Hyper Play Demo to SBC Summit Lisbon 2026

ONLYPLAY used SBC Summit Lisbon 2026 to present its refreshed brand in person and to show the industry-first demo of Hyper Play by ONLYPLAY. The Partnerships team ran nearly uninterrupted meetings across the three-day event, leaving little time to walk the floor but creating a long follow-up list of proposals, marketing plans and technical discussions.

Brand presence: the rebrand as a physical environment

Before Lisbon, the ONLYPLAY identity had been visible chiefly on screens. At SBC Summit Lisbon 2026 the company occupied a large stand with digital displays, characters, merchandise, meeting areas and product visuals that made the rebrand tangible. Anna Serheieva, Head of Partnerships, said partners noticed the change without prompting: “What I loved most was that we didn't even have to point out our rebranding. Partners noticed it themselves.”

The stand layout encouraged people to stay beyond scheduled meetings. Attendees paused to view the characters, tried on merchandise and then often settled into longer conversations with the team. That organic engagement mattered because many visitors had prior reference points from earlier events; their spontaneous reactions provided more valuable feedback than a polite comment during a scripted demo.

Hyper Play by ONLYPLAY: first demo and product direction

ONLYPLAY used the Lisbon platform to introduce Hyper Play by ONLYPLAY, a strategic product direction combining iGaming experience with mobile and PC game-development approaches. The initiative focuses on new game formats, replayability, multiplayer interaction and deeper session design. Partners at the stand saw the first Hyper Play demo and discussed mechanics and formats directly with the product lead.

Eugene Lavrinenko, who leads Hyper Play’s product strategy and development, brought his experience to those conversations. Lavrinenko is a game developer and serial entrepreneur with more than 12 years in mobile and PC gaming; across his career he has worked on 400+ prototypes and several international hits. At Lisbon partners could question the direction face to face and probe the demo’s mechanics and potential integration workflows.

Meetings, integration detail and service reputation

Most of the substantive minutes at the stand were spent on practical matters: current integrations, results from past activities, forthcoming releases, marketing plans and technical issues. Iuliia Pelekhata, Partnership Manager, said the schedule left little time to absorb the full scale of the event: “To be honest, I'm not even sure I managed to experience the full scale of the event because almost all my time was dedicated to meetings and conversations with partners.”

That focus on operational detail produced some of the event's strongest praise. Partners commented not only on ONLYPLAY’s games but on the quality of service and cooperation. Pelekhata recorded that several existing partners were prepared to recommend ONLYPLAY to others on the basis of prior integration experience, support response and problem resolution.

Post-launch expectations: operators want continued support

Conversations shifted repeatedly from integration to what happens after go-live. Operators are increasingly asking for concrete plans around promotion, marketing assets, personalisation and sustained partnership once a game appears in an operator lobby. Olha Marchenko, Partnership Manager, summarised the change in emphasis: “There's much more focus on what happens next – how you promote that content, engage players, and build long-term relationships with partners.”

The meetings often moved directly from a technical integration discussion to a promotional plan or a calendar for marketing activity a month after launch. For vendors, that means additional work on the product roadmap and longer-term account support rather than a simple handover once an integration completes.

From contact to relationship: the value of face-to-face time

Many of the people the ONLYPLAY team met had been collaborators for months without an in-person meeting. Those remote contacts had been handled over Telegram, email or recurring video calls. Brief face-to-face slots — half an hour over coffee or a scheduled table meeting — accelerated context and clarified tone. Olha called Lisbon a useful "workation": time to review live projects, plan next steps and finally meet remote collaborators in person.

After these short meetings, subsequent messages and negotiations tended to read differently. Questions that had been delayed in chat threads were resolved faster, and personal rapport smoothed otherwise difficult conversations about priorities or technical constraints.

Follow-up and what came back from Lisbon

When the stand came down and merchandise was packed, the operational calendar did not shrink. The team returned with a list of follow-ups: proposals to draft, marketing activities to scope, second-round meetings to schedule and new contacts to convert. The most measurable outcomes from the trip were the concrete actions now assigned to people rather than ideas left on a notepad.

ONLYPLAY’s aims for Lisbon were simple and specific: show the refreshed brand live, meet partners, review projects and preview upcoming launches. The team left having confirmed that partners had noticed the rebrand, that service quality is a differentiator worthy of recommendation, and that the sector’s expectations about post-launch promotion and sustained support continue to rise. By Monday the event had already turned back into regular work: notes to sort through, emails to answer and the Lisbon conversations to move forward.

“To be honest, I'm not even sure I managed to experience the full scale of the event because almost all my time was dedicated to meetings and conversations with partners.” — Iuliia Pelekhata, Partnership Manager

“There's much more focus on what happens next – how you promote that content, engage players, and build long-term relationships with partners.” — Olha Marchenko, Partnership Manager