HeyRuby.tv Launches on iPhone and iPad With a Creator-First Model for Microdrama

New entertainment platform gives creators 70% of episode ticket revenue, 80% for exclusive content and 100% of fan tips, with creator contract published openly.

ORANGE COUNTY, CA, UNITED STATES, September 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — HeyRuby.tv today announced the launch of its entertainment app for iPhone and iPad, bringing thousands of short, vertical episodes to mobile audiences while introducing a fundamentally different economic model for the creators who make them.

According to media research firm Omdia, global microdrama revenue reached approximately $11 billion in 2025 and is expected to grow to $14 billion in 2026.

The United States is now the largest microdrama market outside China.

The growth is not just financial. Omdia reports that U.S. viewers now spend more time per day watching microdramas on mobile apps than they do watching Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video on mobile devices.

For HeyRuby, that rapidly growing audience creates an opportunity to rethink not only how short-form entertainment is watched, but how the creators making it are compensated.

HeyRuby.tv is built around a simple idea:

If creators make the entertainment, creators should participate meaningfully in its success.

Rather than placing creators into an all-you-can-watch subscription pool and dividing a portion of subscription revenue among them, HeyRuby.tv uses tickets that viewers spend to watch individual episodes.

Creators receive 70% of the ticket price for their content.

Creators who make their series exclusive to HeyRuby.tv receive 80%.

The only thing we don’t pay royalties for is free promotional tickets.

And when fans choose to tip a creator, 100% of the tip goes to the creator.

The company also publishes its creator agreement openly on its website so prospective creators can read the terms before deciding whether to participate.

“We didn’t want to call ourselves creator-first and then bury the economics in a complicated contract,” said David Perry, CEO of Real Games, Inc., the company behind HeyRuby. “The deal is public. Creators get 70% of the ticket price, 80% if they are exclusive, and 100% of their tips. We wanted to make the incentives extremely simple: if the creator succeeds, the creator should win.”

A Different Model for Streaming Entertainment

Most streaming services are built around subscriptions: viewers pay one price for access to a catalog. (Needless to say those streaming services want to keep most of that revenue and creators get pennies on the dollar, or no upside at all.)

HeyRuby.tv takes a different approach.

Viewers use tickets to unlock episodes they want to watch, allowing revenue to be connected more directly to the specific entertainment audiences choose.

That creates a much clearer relationship between a creator, an audience and the economic value of the work.

Fans can also follow the creators they discover and support them directly through tipping.

“The long-term relationship isn’t just between a viewer and HeyRuby,” Perry said. “It’s between viewers and the creators they love. We want someone to discover a filmmaker on HeyRuby, become a fan, follow what they make next and have a direct way to support them.”

HeyRuby.tv is designed for vertical, phone-first entertainment, with serialized stories told in short, highly bingeable episodes across romance, comedy, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, reality and more.

The platform already features thousands of short episodes available to discover and watch. But its larger ambition is to expand who gets the opportunity to make entertainment in the first place.

Great Stories Can Come From Anywhere

For most of filmmaking history, creating polished entertainment required substantial capital, specialized equipment, production crews and access to distribution. That is changing rapidly. HeyRuby.tv welcomes traditionally produced entertainment as well as AI-assisted and AI-generated productions from creators who control the necessary rights. Actors, writers, directors, filmmakers and production crews remain central to the platform. AI is simply another tool available to creators, one that can dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of bringing an idea to the screen.

The philosophy is intentionally technology-neutral: great stories win.

“What matters is whether you can tell a story people want to watch,” Perry said. “The next great filmmaker may not live in Hollywood. They may not have a production deal. They may not have a large crew or a studio-sized budget. Our job is to give talented storytellers a real opportunity to reach an audience.”

New AI-generated series including Crowned by the Shadow Fae and Back to 18 demonstrate how quickly these new production tools are evolving.

HeyRuby.tv gives creators the ability to submit vertical series, micro-movies and short dramas while giving audiences entertainment designed around the device already in their hands.

A few free minutes can become an episode.

An episode can become a series.

And a series can create a fan.

From Creation to Audience

HeyRuby.tv is one part of a broader HeyRuby ecosystem.

The company is also developing HeyRuby.app, a creation platform intended to dramatically lower the barriers to producing video entertainment.

Together, the mission can be summarized in one sentence:

HeyRuby.app helps you create.

HeyRuby.tv helps you get seen.

The goal is to make it possible for a storyteller to move from an idea, to a finished production, to an audience, and to participate directly in the economic value they create.

Viewers can visit HeyRuby.tv or download the HeyRuby.tv app from the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Creators can visit HeyRuby.tv to review the creator agreement and submit a series.

About HeyRuby

HeyRuby is building a new ecosystem for creating, discovering and watching entertainment.

HeyRuby.tv, available on the web, iPhone and iPad, is a creator-first platform for vertical microdramas. Creators receive 70% of the ticket price for their content, 80% for exclusive content and 100% of fan tips. Find it in the App Store.

HeyRuby.app is being developed to make video creation dramatically more accessible.

HeyRuby welcomes traditional, AI-assisted and AI-generated storytelling with one guiding principle:

Great stories win.

One EIN-specific formatting note: I also removed the extra space before the parenthetical in the streaming section and kept the section heads on their own lines, which should paste more cleanly into their editor.

Hey Ruby Media Team
Real Games Inc
press@realgames.ai
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