Tophatter’s games are reminiscent of the mini-games that have appeared for the past few years on Chinese e-commerce apps. One of the earliest examples is Alipay’s “Ant Forest,” which was launched in 2016, and gives users points that they can use to plant virtual trees each time they pay for, say, public transit. Most other mini-games, however, have... See more

The new gaming features are integrated into the experience of browsing. The Treasure Spin appears at the top of a customer’s feed in the Tophatter app, and the skins they win are visible to all of the bidders on a particular product. “If you have time to spare and you’re looking for what to do in that time, we want to be top of mind in terms of a s... See more

The backdrop for Tophatter’s new approach is gaming’s overall rise in the U.S., which has pushed retailers and brands to experiment with gaming-adjacent platforms like Twitch. (Twitch has nearly tripled the number of monthly broadcasts it has hosted since 2019, bringing it up to 9.7 million monthly streams today.) In-game transactions, called micro... See more