Skillz Announces Upcoming Debut of Pro SDK at GDC 2026, Expanding Creative Control and Monetization Capabilities for Developers

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ), the leading mobile games platform bringing fair and fun competition to players worldwide, today announced the upcoming debut of Skillz Pro SDK, the next evolution of its SDK designed to increase flexibility, expand creative possibilities, and potentially unlock new monetization opportunities for game studios. Pro SDK will be formally unveiled during a live session at next week’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.

Pro SDK builds on the foundation of the Skillz platform, which powers real-money gameplay through head-to-head matchups, live events, and leaderboards engaging millions of players globally. With Pro SDK, the competitive experience lives directly within the game environment. Developers can design custom lobbies, tournament flows, match interfaces, and progression systems with more creative control, while Skillz manages the underlying platform infrastructure.

“Pro SDK gives developers greater creative freedom while allowing them to harness the full power of the Skillz platform,” said Andrew Paradise, CEO and founder of Skillz. “Over the past year, we strengthened our architecture to give studios more confidence in how they build and scale. By extending our Core SDK with a Unity-native framework and live-service capabilities through Beamable, we’re expanding how developers can create and monetize—while preserving the integrity, payments infrastructure, and competitive systems that define Skillz. Our goal is simple: make it easier to build durable, scalable competitive games.”

Pro SDK is designed to enable developers to:

• Build fully customized, game-focused user experiences
• Integrate progression systems, collections, personalization, and rewards directly into gameplay loops
• Introduce layered monetization models including meta systems, cosmetic economies, content bundles, and in-app advertising
• Deliver dynamic content updates through asset bundles without requiring full app releases
• Access Skillz authentication, tournament, matchmaking, and player data through direct APIs

By consolidating gameplay and meta layers within Unity while preserving secure transaction and compliance systems within the Core SDK, Pro SDK creates a modular and connected development framework that supports both real-money and non-real-money formats.

The development of Pro SDK reflects Skillz’s evolution into a unified platform-and-publisher model, strengthened through integration with Beamable’s live-service backend technology. Beamable will power the scalable infrastructure behind Pro SDK, enabling real-time content updates, virtual economies, and LiveOps capabilities.

Published titles will serve as proving grounds for new features before ecosystem-wide release, with Puzzle Blockz acting as the first live implementation of the integrated Pro SDK and Beamable stack. This approach accelerates iteration, reduces risk for developers, and ensures new capabilities are validated in real-world environments before broader rollout.

Skillz will unveil Pro SDK and present its vision for the future of competitive gaming during a live session at GDC on Wednesday, March 11.

Developer access to Pro SDK is expected to begin in Q2 2026, with a self-service onboarding pathway planned for later this year.

About Skillz Inc.

Skillz is a leading mobile games platform dedicated to bringing out the best in everyone through competition. The Skillz platform offers developers the potential to build multi-million-dollar franchises by enabling social competition in their games. Leveraging its patented technology, Skillz hosts billions of tournaments for millions of mobile players worldwide, with the goal of building the home of competition for all. Skillz has been recognized by Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators, CNBC’s Disruptor 50, Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, and ranked the number-one fastest-growing company in America on the Inc. 5000 list. Please visit www.skillz.com to learn more.