More than three billion people play video games. The smartest brands do not interrupt them with advertising. They make commerce part of the game. Products become hidden rewards, weapons demonstrate benefits, glitches unlock offers and scoreboards deliver discounts. Here are eight tactics from the Discount Engine that turn the mechanics of play into the mechanics of purchase.
- Hunt The Object
- Hunt The Target
- Find The Glitch
- The Branded Game Asset
- The Game World As Map
- The Game Mechanic As Product Demo
- Hijack The Game's Infrastructure
- The In-Game Assassination Service
1. Hunt The Object
The product or its equivalent already exists inside the game as a findable, claimable object — hunt it down and earn the real thing.
Call of Discounts — Mercado Libre, GUT São Paulo, 2025, Brazil
Mercado Libre noticed that Prop Hunt — a hide-and-seek mode in Call of Duty where half the players disguise themselves as everyday objects — was already full of items that existed as real listings on its marketplace. GUT São Paulo mapped 420 props across 16 game maps to their real-life equivalents and rewarded players who hunted them down with discounts on those exact items. The prop being hunted and the product being discounted were the same object. Neymar Jr. played as several matched products — a children's toy, a golf bag — and players who eliminated him received steep discounts. Sixteen thousand discounts redeemed within 45 minutes. $1.3 million in sales. The most watched livestream on Twitch Brazil that year. See campaign ->
2. Hunt The Target
A human target inside the game carries the reward — the harder the target, the bigger the deal.
Killer Discounts — KFC, MRM/McCann Bucharest, 2020, Romania
KFC wanted to reach Romania's gaming audience authentically and to do so recruited the five best Fortnite streamers in the country and renamed them in-game as discount percentages — 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% and 100% — calibrated to their skill level. Players who eliminated them claimed that percentage off at any KFC restaurant. The harder the streamer, the more valuable the reward. All five played simultaneously, live-streamed from five perspectives — the first multi-stream live event of its kind in Romania. The campaign became #7 in YouTube's top gaming videos. See campaign ->
