Software development companies seek to improve their processes implementing best practices through SPI initiatives. Such initiatives look for modifying the conditions and behavior of the process stakeholders. For this reason, change resistance increases the complexity of the SPI initiatives implementation; and exist a permanent search of strategies for facing with change resistance. Gamification is an alternative for influencing employee behavior, allowing them to improve the SPI initiatives. With this motivation, this paper shows a case study of the application of a gamified strategy oriented to decrease change resistance. The methodology for the strategy definition includes a sequence of steps for selecting and associating change resistance causes, change management models, and gamification principles. The study case evidences a positive impact on causes like lack of commitment management and a general improvement in the change resistance in SPI initiatives when the gamification is the central element of the strategy. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.