For more than 25 years, Berkley Egenes has worked at the intersection of storytelling, technology, and business, building a career across sports, entertainment, esports, and video games. His journey has been defined not simply by successful campaigns or recognizable brands, but by an enduring belief that marketing creates its greatest value when it helps people solve real problems.
Berkley Egenes as Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Xsolla, he brings that philosophy to one of the world’s most rapidly evolving industries. His remit spans global brand, growth strategy, communications, demand generation, creative, events, and go-to-market initiatives, with a broader mission of helping game developers launch, monetize, and scale globally.
What distinguishes his approach is the way he connects marketing with business outcomes while keeping relationships, education, and trust at the center. For him, growth is not about generating attention for its own sake. It is about creating lasting value that customers, partners, employees, and communities can continue to invest in.
The Making of a Growth Leader
Berkley Egenes’s career began with a fascination for how storytelling, technology, and business could come together to create meaningful connections. Early on, he recognized that effective marketing went beyond promoting a product. It needed to understand the problems people faced and communicate solutions in ways that resonated.
His career has taken him across sports, entertainment, esports, and video games, where he has had the opportunity to build global campaigns and partnerships for brands including NEXTVR, which was acquired by Apple, Alcatel/TCL, VIZIO, Kellogg’s, AB-InBev, NASCAR, IBM, Walmart, and CVS. These experiences taught him how to combine brand strategy with measurable business growth while adapting to rapidly evolving industries.
When he joined Xsolla, Berkley saw an incredible opportunity. Xsolla was not just another technology company; it was solving some of the biggest challenges in the video game industry. He now leads the company’s global brand, growth strategy, communications, demand generation, creative, events, and go-to-market initiatives. His focus is ensuring that game developers around the world have the tools, education, and support they need to launch, monetize, and scale successfully.
From Campaign Execution to Lasting Leadership
The journey from executing successful campaigns to leading organizations brings a broader sense of purpose. Leadership now centers on vision, culture, strategy, mentorship, and creating lasting impact beyond individual business outcomes.
Life Before Entrepreneurial Leadership
- Focused on executing successful campaigns
- Prioritized measurable business results
- Concentrated on immediate campaign outcomes
- Defined success through performance and execution
Life After Entrepreneurial Leadership
- Shapes long-term vision and organizational strategy
- Builds a culture where talented people can thrive
- Mentors and develops future leaders
- Creates organizations built for lasting success
- Measures impact across employees, developers, partners, and communities
- Finds greater fulfillment in creating meaningful, lasting impact
Relationships That Outlast Transactions
Berkley Egenes has always believed that relationships scale better than transactions. He believes that brands are built on trust, and that trust is built through consistency, transparency, and delivering value over time. Whether he is leading a team, working with partners, or serving customers, he tries to ask one question: “Will this decision create lasting value?”
He believes that while short-term wins matter, sustainable growth comes from building relationships that people want to continue investing in. This philosophy has guided him throughout his career.
Repositioning a Brand, Redefining a Market
One of the defining chapters of Berkley’s leadership at Xsolla was helping reposition the company beyond its traditional perception as a payments provider. The ambition was to establish Xsolla as what he describes as a global Merchant of Record purpose-built for games. Accomplishing that required considerably more than changing marketing messages. It demanded alignment across product, business development, partner success, communications, and leadership.
This became particularly important as Xsolla expanded its portfolio across commerce, distribution, Web Shop, and monetization solutions. The challenge was to communicate a broader value proposition without compromising the trust the company had already developed with game developers. For Berkley, one of the most demanding aspects of the role has been maintaining consistency across a truly global market. Independent studios and AAA publishers can have dramatically different needs, while regional regulations, cultures, payment preferences, and business expectations add further complexity.
The experience reinforced one of his most important leadership lessons: listening scales better than assuming. Rather than relying on assumptions about what customers want, He believes strong strategies emerge from deeply understanding them, empowering capable teams, and combining data-driven decision-making with human relationships.
Educate First, Sell Second
At the heart of Berkley’s marketing philosophy is a deceptively simple principle: educate first, sell second. He recognizes that game developers are highly knowledgeable audiences who are unlikely to respond to generic marketing messages. They value expertise, transparency, and practical solutions. Consequently, education has become a central component of Xsolla’s approach. That is why much of his strategy revolves around education through industry research, events, webinars, thought leadership, developer resources, and community engagement.
Internally, he views growth as a network of connected touchpoints rather than a traditional funnel. Every touchpoint, from product education and customer success to partnerships and content, should create value independently while reinforcing the broader customer journey. He is also deeply committed to measurable outcomes. While brand awareness matters, he believes it ultimately needs to translate into stronger engagement, better partner experiences, qualified demand, and long-term customer success.
Education, Expertise, and Measurable Growth
The continued expansion of Xsolla Web Shop provides a strong example of how Berkley approaches marketing and growth. Rather than treating Web Shop simply as another product to promote, the team built an educational ecosystem around direct-to-player commerce. Research, industry events, customer stories, partner collaborations, webinars, and thought leadership helped developers understand both the functionality and strategic significance of the model.
The results demonstrate the scale of that approach. More than 700 mobile game developers now operate Web Shops with Xsolla, while Web Shop payment volume reached $1.5 billion across 2023 and 2024, with comparable volume in 2025. Developers can also establish a Web Shop in approximately 15 minutes. For him, the deeper achievement is not simply the transaction volume. It is helping developers understand why direct-to-player commerce matters and how it can contribute to stronger relationships and more sustainable monetization.
AI, Creativity, and the Value of Human Judgment
Berkley views AI as an amplifier rather than a replacement for human creativity and strategic thinking. Within marketing, AI can improve efficiency, personalize experiences, analyze trends, and optimize campaigns. Yet he maintains that human judgment must remain central to storytelling, messaging, and relationship building.
That distinction reflects a broader leadership principle. Trust remains one of Xsolla’s most valuable assets. Developers trust the company with critical parts of their businesses, making transparency, responsible data practices, privacy compliance, and ethical marketing non-negotiable. While technology evolves rapidly, Berkley believes credibility is earned over years through consistent actions.
Connecting Teams, Learning, and Customer Insight
The best ideas rarely come from one department. Berkley encourages cross-functional collaboration because marketing becomes stronger when product managers, engineers, customer success teams, sales leaders, designers, and developers contribute different perspectives. Continuous learning is equally important. Because the gaming industry evolves so rapidly, curiosity cannot be treated as an occasional professional-development exercise. It needs to become part of organizational culture.
Customer feedback plays an equally significant role. Berkley and his teams engage with developers through events, advisory discussions, product conversations, surveys, and community engagement. Those conversations inform messaging, product priorities, and broader strategic decisions. The result is a leadership model in which listening is not simply a communication exercise. It becomes a mechanism for improving the business.
The Future Through a Lens of Value
Looking ahead, Berkley’s priorities remain focused on empowering developers globally through commerce infrastructure, expanding into new markets, strengthening direct-to-player capabilities, and helping studios build more sustainable businesses.
From a personal perspective, he hopes his legacy will be defined by making marketing more valuable through education, trust, and measurable business impact rather than simply generating attention. He believes marketing can create greater value when it is grounded in meaningful engagement and outcomes.
For aspiring professionals, his advice is to stay curious, embrace change, develop both creative and analytical skills, and never stop learning. As one of the world’s fastest-moving industries, the video game sector continues to evolve rapidly. Berkley believes those who thrive within it are the ones who remain adaptable and continuously evolve alongside the industry.
Preparing Developers for Gaming’s Next Chapter
Few industries change as quickly as video games, and Berkley sees several developments fundamentally reshaping its future.
Direct-to-consumer commerce is likely to accelerate as developers seek greater control over player relationships, first-party data, and revenue. Artificial intelligence is expected to become embedded across development, marketing, personalization, customer support, and live operations. At the same time, localized commerce and alternative payment methods will become important as gaming expands into emerging markets.
Creator communities and user-generated content will also play a growing role in how games are discovered and how communities remain engaged. Rather than waiting for these trends to mature, he believes Xsolla should build infrastructure that allows developers to capitalize on them.
- Web Shops: Enabling direct-to-consumer commerce.
- Global Payments: 1,000+ payment methods across 200+ countries.
- Publishing Support: Expanding market opportunities for developers.
- Developer Education: Building skills for emerging opportunities.
The goal is to remove commercial and operational barriers so developers can concentrate on what they do best: creating exceptional games.
Building Growth Through Trust, Education, and Lasting Value
- From Campaigns to Organizational Impact: Berkley’s leadership has evolved from delivering successful campaigns to shaping vision, culture, strategy, and long-term organizational growth.
- Education as a Growth Engine: His “educate first, sell second” philosophy positions knowledge, thought leadership, and developer education as powerful drivers of sustainable customer relationships.
- Relationships Over Transactions: Berkley believes lasting growth is built on trust, transparency, consistency, and value rather than short-term attention or transactional wins.
- Listening as a Leadership Advantage: By integrating customer feedback and cross-functional perspectives into decision-making, he turns listening into a strategic mechanism for improving products, messaging, and business direction.
- Preparing Developers for What Comes Next: Through Web Shops, global payments, publishing support, and developer education, Berkley is focused on removing commercial barriers and equipping game developers to capitalize on the future of gaming.
