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Century Games has found a 4X creative direction nobody else is using yet, and the crew is betting the whole category copies it within a month.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg run September's creatives. They retire Golden Goblins from the top slot (with the sharp lesson from Idle Zombie Miner: copy a dying game's creatives and you die with it), pass through the Idle Lumber studio's gross-but-working Top Tycoon fish-sushi concepts, SayGames' Tower War and its new Pocket Sort, the Pantheon clones everywhere, XP Hero's continued "steal the 4X creatives back" campaign (Last Asylum's, King Shot's "no ads," feeding crocodiles, even Smash Fest), and Butcher Hero's peak (grindy, no new content, and every second Reddit post is how to hack the APK).Century's Top Force runs civilization-style mass-battle creatives — armies, numbers, control-the-troops, a Lords Mobile flashback upgraded with toy-soldier visuals — that look nothing like the industry's hunting-bears template, and Century got there by testing ~500 unique concepts. The crew also covers Last Beacon (the renamed Endless Sea, pre-registration, trying every concept ever made), Cube Land's creative glow-up (200 new, revenue up), the Wool Crush wildcard (yarn + arrows + bus jam + save-the-cat in one, 2,000 creatives on an old game)Two conclusions: it's now hard to find a creative that isn't AI (the show is splitting into two AI episodes and one "normal" per cycle), and watch whether Top Force's mass-battle concept spreads. The crew's bet: it willThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Zedge removed banners from an app with 721 million installs — half as a joke, to be consistent in a refresh-rate test. Impressions fell 38%. Revenue went up 1%. Their North Star metric rose 1.77%. Then they ran it in reverse to make sure, and got the same result. Banners might genuinely be dead.Felix Braberg goes solo for an ad-monetization interview with Ignas Danielius, Head of Ad Monetization at Zedge (the personalization company behind the 721M-install, 4.7-rated wallpaper and ringtone app, plus Emojipedia, GuruShots, and the new Dataseats AI-training-data business). They cover how ad-mon has evolved (from painful waterfalls to bidding and, ironically, back to user-value-segmented waterfalls), why banners went from Zedge's main revenue driver to a stale unit (the format is functionally unchanged since the late '90s while interstitials and rewarded have been through a conversion arms race; 5-second refresh rates kill advertiser value; misclicks and unfixable redirects), and the experiment itself: a refresh-rate test (15/20/30 seconds) with a "for a laugh" variant that removed banners entirely — run from December 8 through January, spanning the best and worst ad-ops months, with the no-banner group outperforming control for the entire duration. Ignas explains the mechanism (advertisers bid on the user, and a fast-refreshing banner is the cheapest impression to "buy" them on — remove it and later-session interstitials, numbers four through six, see fill rates explode), why the first interstitial didn't change, why Google likely drove the biggest effect, the conditions under which other publishers can reproduce it (top networks, up to 15 bidders on interstitials, low latency, a full format mix — and frequency of use matters)The takeaway: "the banner always contributes" was a status quo nobody tested. Zedge tested it. It didn't hold.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Meet Ignas — ad monetization at Zedge05:15 How ad-mon evolved — and why waterfalls are back06:05 The banner's slow decline: a unit that never innovated09:55 5-second refreshes, misclicks & redirects — how banners kill themselves11:40 The experiment — refresh rates, and "for a laugh, remove it"14:50 The result — 38% fewer impressions, +1% revenue, +1.77% North Star17:10 Why it works — advertisers buy your user cheap on the banner21:40 Should you turn off banners? The checklist---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA
A job-search app shipped a Flappy Bird playable that ends with "there's a relevant job for you." Two years ago that would have made zero sense. This month it's the trend: non-gaming apps are flooding the playable space, most of them vibe-coded with AI in an afternoon.Matej Lančarič and Ondrej Mosberger are joined again by Robin Kuyer (Unity PlayWorks) for the "everyone brings playables" format — with the bold creative twist of reversing the order. https://lancaric.substack.com/p/h1-2026-brutally-honest-ua-report?r=7qqafMatej's Brutally Honest UA report puts playables at 40-60% of creative spend, up from 30-40% a year ago, as AppLovin, Mintegral, and the SDK networks keep growing. Robin brings the "Frankenstein" playable (Wool Crush: arrows + yarn mechanics + save-the-cat, every popular concept stacked into one ad — plus his spreadsheet method for engineering ideas from what's trending), the non-gaming wave Ondrej closes with a Fumb Games playable vibe-coded in Playable Maker (30 iterations and the next version does it in three) and a clean memory-game hidden-object playable that respects the player's intelligence.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Playables are 40-60% of creative spend — the Brutally Honest data06:25 Wool Crush — the Frankenstein playable and the spreadsheet method11:20 Non-gaming apps take over — Indeed's Flappy Bird, finance, cleaners19:40 Hero Wars — the open-roam level playable and how to iterate it25:05 Supercell's playable — lost seven times, should a playable let you lose?29:40 Sunday City — GTA timing, Grove Street, and the double-hook debate38:30 Cozy Florist's AI merge & the cats-with-guns wildcard44:50 Vibe-coded in Playable Maker + the memory-game playable that trusts youThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Game discussed in the video - One Mage Army: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eyaegmoranm.onemagearmy A solo developer messaged Jakub at Gamesforum to say the podcast helped him grow his game from zero to $25K a month, now heading to $50K. This video is for exactly that person: one game, no creative team, no UA department — and a launch that needs to happen anyway.Matej Lančarič goes solo for the first episode of his dev journey, launching his own game, One Mage Army (Android now, iOS in a couple of weeks), in the least ideal conditions: the build was done, Singular and ad monetization were in, but every motion designer and playable person was busy on client work, there was no gameplay footage anywhere online, and all he had was the store page. He walks the whole setup in order: wiring the network connectors (Unity, Google, Mintegral, Meta, Moloco, and more), the Singular events he needed before anything could run (ad impressions, purchases, level victories, hero unlocks — the first-session events), then the creative problem. With nothing to work from, he fed Layer.ai the store link and one brief — 59-second, story-driven, "one mage vs. a horde," keep the store's art style — and had ten AI videos in about 90 minutes, no gameplay at all. They're not perfect, and he says so: any client would reject them. They're also his best performers on Facebook and Apple. Add Playable Maker playables (plus playables built in Layer from the game's own sprites, seven more in the back pocket), and the campaigns: on Facebook, an ad-impression campaign to get any data ($0.18 CPI, ~200 installs), then a level-5 achieve campaign that started producing purchasers on its own (10-13 IPM, ~$0.90 CPI on tier 1, Germany best), then tier-1 purchase campaigns (~€3 CPI, US ~$4.50). On AppLovin, blended-ROAS worldwide (the game is ~40% IAP / 60% ads): a brutal $60 CPI on day one, $30, then $7, now $3.60 and heading toward $2 — and the discipline of not panicking when it's your own money.The lesson, stated plainly: volume and diversity beat polish. Ten imperfect videos beat one perfect one. Get data in first, ladder the campaigns, iterate the winner. Next up: Firebase, Google Ads, and hybrid ROAS.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
A hide-and-seek game where you paint yourself to blend into the map, made by two people in two months, just made $60 million. That's the winner of this quarter's Steam Scanner — and it's the one idea on the list mobile genuinely can't clone.The closing caveat matters: it's survivorship bias — 20K+ games hit Steam a year — and Steam's discovery means a Mecha Chameleon never gets brute-forced by three Voodoo clones in a month. That's the whole difference between the two platforms.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The Steam Scanner is back — Q2, smallest to biggest04:20 Taskbar Hero — an idle RPG in your taskbar (and the widget hint)08:00 Supermarket Chaos & Oaken Tower — the tidy-up trend and an idle PvP tower12:00 Idle gacha, Solarpunk & the evolve-into-a-crab roguelite18:20 Librarian & Rome's Dead — high-budget cleaning and Roman survivor-slop22:10 Vampire Crawlers, Paralives & the co-op casino-debt game27:20 The winner — Mecha Chameleon, $60M by two people35:30 Survivorship bias and why Steam can't be brute-forcedThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Find the Cat 2 — now in color02:40 Cat-as-ornament hiding and 70-cat hard levels04:20 Shorter levels, more interstitials — the pacing change08:15 The meow is the whole game13:00 Rewarded ads, 260-second Google formats & the Mintegral fix18:00 The numbers — 125K downloads/day, 350K DAU, vs Find the Cat 124:40 Felix's ad-scaling thresholds and the banner decoy28:30 The creatives — AI doctors, 17 playables & find the IP infringementThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
Newzoo says the global games market hits $213.9B in 2026, with mobile the largest platform at $121.1B and — for the first time in a while — the fastest-growing one. And that mobile number is still missing the $10-15B earned off-platform that the trackers can't see. Three stories this Friday, plus the weather.Felix Braberg flies solo for the Friday news. First, Newzoo's 2026 Global Games Market forecast (via Michiel Buijsman, August 25): $213.9B total, up 6.1%, with growth across all platforms and regions; mobile at $121.1B (+6.8%) ahead of console ($46.9B, +5.1%, anchored by GTA 6's November launch) and PC ($45.9B, +5%, moderating after a record 12% in 2025). The mobile growth is coming from deeper spending per player, Chinese publishers gaining share abroad, and expanding D2C — and Felix layers on the off-platform caveat from the recent FastSpring/Chip episode, meaning mobile's true size is meaningfully larger than reported. The player-side forecast is the strategic one: 3.7B players in 2026 (+4.4%) but growth slowing to ~3.2% through 2029 as penetration flattens at ~62% of the online population — so future growth depends on retaining and monetizing existing audiences, not adding new ones. Second, Makers Fund closed its $250M Fund IV (bringing AUM to $1.5B), the San Francisco games-VC behind Dream Games and Voldex — exactly the kind of capital the industry needs flowing to the next generation of studios. Third, AppsFlyer secured a $400M credit line from Bank Leumi on top of a June transaction that valued it at $2.7B (Google, Meta, Unity, and Moloco as minority investors, and liquidity for long-time backers like General Atlantic and Goldman Sachs). Felix's finance read: they bought out investors who wanted out after the IPO failed, came up short on cash, and took on debt to fund growth toward being big enough to go public.Then the weather: Smash Fest leads US iOS free downloads, Meow Doku is #2 (and #1 on Google Play, beating Roblox), Block Out and Magic Sort (both Grand Games) follow, and Royal Smash vs Smash Fest is now a live fight for the biggest smash game.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Three stories and the weather — Friday news00:40 Newzoo 2026 — $214B market, mobile $121B and growing fastest02:30 The off-platform asterisk — mobile's real size03:30 Player growth is slowing — retention is the new growth05:10 Makers Fund closes $250M Fund IV06:20 AppsFlyer's $400M credit line — the post-IPO read08:00 The weather — Smash Fest, Meow Doku, and the smash-game fight---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
What if the future of entrepreneurship isn't just about hustle, but about reimagining how we build, connect, and create in an increasingly digital world? In this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, listeners are challenged to reconsider their assumptions about what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur—and how technology and creativity are breaking down old barriers in business and life. Our guest, Oana Ruxandra, brings a fascinating background as a refugee from Romania who rose to leadership roles in finance and later as Chief Digital Officer at Warner Music Group. Having witnessed the transformation of music from an exclusive, costly art to an accessible, creative playground for millions, Oana now channels her passion for empowering people into Pop Hatch, a platform designed to support the next generation of entrepreneurs. The conversation, led by Marcia Dawood, explores how new tools and technologies are radically democratizing creativity across industries, reducing barriers to business-building, and shifting how we think about community and intellectual property. Oana breaks down why now is a pivotal time to turn side hustles into real ventures, how AI is opening doors (while also presenting new challenges), and reveals how Pop Hatch aims to make finding market fit and meaningful connections easier for founders everywhere. This is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, harness their own creativity, and stay ahead in a rapidly shifting world. To get the latest from Oana Ruxandra, you can follow her below! https://www.linkedin.com/in/oanaruxandra/ https://www.pophatch.com/ Sign up for Marcia's newsletter to receive tips and the latest on Angel Investing! Website: www.marciadawood.com Learn more about the documentary Show Her the Money: www.showherthemoneymovie.com And don't forget to follow us wherever you are! Apple Podcasts: https://pod.link/1586445642.apple Spotify: https://pod.link/1586445642.spotify LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/angel-next-door-podcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theangelnextdoorpodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marciadawood
OOC is marketed as "playable anime." There's almost no anime in it. It's a wall of text — an AI-powered dungeon master running an interactive story you steer with your own prompts. And it's doing an estimated $100K a day, 74% of it from the US, on pure AI-generated text. Welcome to the weirdest, most future-facing app the crew has covered.We break down OOC by New AI Entertainment (a subsidiary of Korean AI company VRTN) — and use it as a window into the fast-scaling "AI companion" / LLM-driven-content category. We walk the actual experience (a micro-drama-style menu of isekai and anime scenarios, but instead of scripted choices you type free-text prompts, and the LLM improvises the world like a Dungeons & Dragons game master — Jakub compares it directly to 1970s multi-user dungeons, the text-only RPGs that existed before graphics), why the generative freedom is both the magic and the flaw (you can break the story like the genie-with-infinite-wishes paradox, and the AI has to scramble to hold it together), and the token economy (you burn ~90 tokens per response on the good model, run dry in a handful of replies, and get pushed to refill — with 30% off on web). Then the numbers and the category: OOC at ~$100K/day since a June launch with sky-high US IAP conversion, sitting alongside PolyBuzz, Tipsy / Live Your Story (~$500K/day), Status, and others - all LLM-driven content apps that barely existed two years ago. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 "Playable anime" — and why there's no anime03:20 How it actually plays — you write the prompts08:00 It's a 1970s text MUD with an AI dungeon master12:00 The genie problem — breaking the story13:40 The token economy — pay for the good model20:40 The numbers — $100K/day, 74% US, and the category35:00 Why it's not on AppLovin (and the missed playable play)This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100-PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Almost every game that tried the Backpack Hero setup on mobile failed. Overgeared Hero didn't — it's the strongest adaptation the crew has seen; it's doing ~$100K a day, and it pulled off the thing most Asian-developed RPGs can't: it cracked the US.We break down Overgeared Hero by Craft (Korea) — a mid-core RPG built on a Hobby/RPG chassis (gacha, energy, idle expedition, gear-merge, endless tower, pet dungeons) but with a genuinely novel core: inventory-Tetris roguelite runs where you arrange, merge, and position gear in a backpack, and adjacency bonuses (place items near the right weapon or armor) turn it into more than just Tetris. The standout mechanic Jakub unpacks: your upgradeable starting gear sits outside the recipe book, so meta-progression makes you stronger at the start of each run — a roguelite spend-depth lever that lets them keep raising enemy stats and keep you spending. They cover the numbers (~$100K/day since a June launch, ~20K downloads/day, and crucially 24% of revenue from the US, then Japan at 23% and Korea at 13% — rare US strength for an Asian mid-core), the deliberately simple ad setup (12 rewarded placements, all unlocked at once after floor-one round-six, ~15% ad revenue / ~$19K/day, with LINE in the stack for Japan), and why this audience (hardcore PC-pixel, Castlevania/Shovel Knight/Balatro-adjacent, the players who check a tier list before they play) doesn't want aggressive interstitials and can't be scaled on cheap high-volume traffic. Then the UA: ~2,700 creatives, heavy AI, Hobby-style explanatory/altered-gameplay hooks, a channel mix that finally diversified from Facebook/Unity/AdMob into AppLovin This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Soft Launch Sonar is where we dig through the millions of games brewing in soft launch to find the patterns before anyone else. This time: Century's not-so-secret second account, Supercent cloning Smash Fest twice in a week, Miniclip taking a swing at Forex, and a Smash Fest clone count that's hit 123 with the honest verdict that almost none of it contains a single new idea.Supercent's two near-identical Smash Fest clones (Wackstack and Smashdown) shipped in one week, part of a clone wave Felix now counts at 123 — the Pixel-Flow-sold-for-a-billion gold rush in full swing, with everyone piling in despite zero genre expertise. Combo Games brings a puzzle spread (a promising arrows-with-holes ball game, a bubble-associations game, and the obligatory Cube Land clone "Cube Smash"), Miniclip surfaces a mysterious Forex entry (a Chinese-owned British studio going the other way), Match Villains' UA chart is flatlined (pivoting to LiveOps and profitability), and the crew heaps genuine praise on Total Battle for a slow-and-steady hockey stick that's now doing record revenue by owning its "gate" niche. Plus InnoGames, Say Games, and Gamespark — rumored to be RiverGames trying to wrestle back 4X share with a one-to-one Last War template in King Shot visuals.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Soft Launch Sonar returns — millions of games, one crew02:20 Century's secret "Innovation" account — merge + Forex only06:40 Top Force Commander — Century's King Shot clone13:00 Supercent's two Smash Fest clones and the 123-clone wave18:20 Combo Games' puzzle spread and the Cube Land clone24:00 Miniclip does Forex + Total Battle's slow-and-steady miracle31:40 Gamespark — the rumored RiverGames comeback playThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
We break down XP Hero by Supercent: an idle RPG built on the same Alien Invasion core as Butcher Hero, but with far better onboarding and vastly more ads. They walk the deep feature set (a growing hero, monetized cargo capacity and return tickets, boss raids that force you to upgrade a whole team, Legend of Slime-style blessings, gacha chests from the Habby template, a PvP intrusion system, an endless tower, and map-spawning chests), the ad monetization (Felix's counted 47 rewarded placements, an interstitial on a 60-90 second cooldown tied to rewarded views, 53% ad revenue versus Butcher Hero's 32%, landing ~$85K/day in ads on possibly-undercounted DAU — so plausibly $200K and maybe $400K/day total),Then the UA masterclass: Supercent runs a fake-out "no ads / idle lumber / tower-defense" playable that has nothing to do with the game, This is genius, not lazy, because 4X originally stole those concepts from idle RPGs - so Supercent, having finally built the actual idle RPG everyone's been imitating, is just stealing it back. ~1,300 creatives in three days (700 new), heavy AI, AppLovin + Mintegral led, all channels running.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 XP Hero — Butcher Hero with better onboarding (and way more ads)04:00 The monetized-cargo mechanic and forced backtracking06:00 The interstitial-every-60-seconds cooldown trick08:10 The deep feature set — boss raids, blessings, gacha, tower14:00 47 rewarded placements — Felix reads the whole list18:45 The numbers — 53% ad revenue, ~$200-400K/day22:45 The "no ads" lie and the fake-out playable27:00 Stealing 4X creatives back — the UA masterclassThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Review Radar 12 is where we revisit the games we've covered and find out who lived and who died. This time, the joke's on us: nearly everything came back scaling up. Felix kept reaching for the stick to poke dead games, and Jakub kept insisting they're all still breathing — and mostly, he was right.The lesson that keeps repeating: hard work pays off, revenue and DAU often tell opposite stories once D2C is involved, and "dead" is a lot rarer than a declining revenue chart makes it look.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Review Radar #12 — the time-machine begins02:00 Arrows & Forge Master — Lesmore is on a heater06:45 Pixel Flow stabilizes — the "this won't hold" call08:15 Cozy games, Sand Loop & the Voodoo learnings11:35 Finch — the D2C monster hiding in a wellness app16:55 Gacha RPGs, Angry Birds Rush & the death pile22:45 Yarn Loop vs Jelly Buster — the sort race heats up24:55 Castle Clashers plateaus & ButcherHero's winning 2.0--------------------------------------This episode is brought to you by Potensus — a premium ad network built by people who've been on both sides of the industry, with direct (non-programmatic) deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Vodafone landing in your game at premium CPMs, plus a Playable Maker partnership that turns brand videos and statics into native gaming playables and rewarded formats. Head to potensus.com to get started. https://potensus.com/This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
FastSpring surveyed 110 senior mobile decision-makers — directors, VPs, C-suite — about direct-to-consumer, and the results premiere right here before Gamescom. The headline: 59% now have a web store, but the 41% who don't are held back by three fears that are all out of date. And the #1 reason studios adopt D2C isn't profit anymore.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg welcome back Chip Thurston (FastSpring) for the sixth D2C episode — a full breakdown of FastSpring's 2026 D2C survey (Q2 2026, 110 respondents, all senior manager or above, 92% from 100+ person studios, 91% doing over $10M/year, split across US/Europe and casual/core). They unpack why web-store adoption barely moved year-over-year (57%→59%) despite 60% planning it — game dev is hard and roadmaps slip — and the three "reasons not to adopt," which Chip reframes as misconceptions: technical complexity (rooted in confusing a merchant of record like FastSpring with a payment service provider like Stripe — the MoR handles all the tax, compliance, and audit exposure for you), damaging Apple/Google relationships (a fear anchored in 2023, when there were real repercussions; in 2026 both platforms have defined, approved D2C compliance paths), and legal uncertainty (the terms are actually solidifying — Epic/Google settling, Apple's Japan/Brazil compliance as the bellwether). The most surprising finding: profit margins ranked only #4 among reasons to adopt — behind brand visibility & loyalty (#1), customer data & insights (#2), and pricing/promotion control (#3). The takeaway: the fears are outdated, the data problem means the industry's "decline" is partly an illusion, and D2C is now about owning the player relationship — not just dodging the 30%.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The 2026 D2C survey — who FastSpring actually asked05:30 Adoption barely moved (57%→59%) — why plans slip07:30 Reason #1 not to adopt: "too technically complex"09:30 Merchant of record vs payment service provider, explained16:30 Reason #2 & #3: Apple/Google fear and legal uncertainty25:45 The ping-pong-ball estimate — how much D2C is hidden?32:30 The big surprise: profit is only the #4 reason to adopt39:00 The new terms — Google's 20% fee and Apple's window---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric, Chip ThurstonJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
Bus Traffic Fever fuses two proven puzzlers — Marble Sort and the bus/traffic-jam arrows game — into one brutally slow, weirdly sticky machine. Levels take 30-40 minutes, the frustration is genuinely phone-throwing, and that's exactly why it prints ad revenue.We break down Bus Traffic Fever by GooDroid (a CyberAgent subsidiary in Tokyo) — and the twist is that it's the second time they've covered this studio in a single month, because these are the same people who made Hexa Away.The numbers (soft-launched in March, ~$70K/day IAP, ~400K downloads/day, ~2M+ DAU, US leading IAP with tier-3/tier-4 traffic behind), and Felix's ad-mon breakdown (revive-after-fail driving ~60-70% of ad revenue, an estimated ~$131K/day in ads — ~75% of total — putting the game plausibly at $200K and maybe $400-500K/day once you correct for Sensor Tower's DAU under-counting). Then the part that matters: the UA is making the exact same mistake as Hexa Away — ~20 new creatives, ~85% AppLovin⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Marble Sort + Bus Jam — two games in one02:15 Why it's brutally hard (and an hour per early level)05:30 The bench "mosh pit" and the slow-on-purpose pacing09:00 Fail-state mechanic, boosters and the shallow feature set12:00 The numbers — $70K/day IAP, 2M+ DAU14:10 The ad-mon breakdown — ~$131K/day, sunk-cost monetization19:30 Same studio as Hexa Away — the UA mistake repeats26:20 The 30-day window and how it should've been doneThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Cube Land's studio just raised a seed round four months after launch, a rival app store returned to Google Play in the US for the first time in over a decade, and Sensor Tower says gaming revenue fell 4.5% in Q2 — except that last number is only half the truth. Three stories, and Turkey keeps winning.Felix Braberg flies solo for the Friday news. First, RotateLab — the Turkish studio behind Cube Land (a recent friends-of-the-pod deep-dive on the show) — raised a seed round co-led by Leighton Ventures and Arcadia Gaming Partners, with Cube Land past 2M downloads and into the US top-50 free games and top-80 grossing just four months post-launch. It underlines a bigger trend: right now Turkey and Vietnam are where gaming funding and talent are concentrating, with VCs literally opening Turkish offices. Second, Aptoide became the first rival app store to return to Google Play in the US (after the loosening of restrictions long criticized as anti-competitive) — a Portugal-based store with ~40,000 apps and ~25M users that previously had to be sideloaded. It's a genuine milestone for app-market competition, and the draw is the same one powering the whole D2C wave: dodging the 30% Google fee. Third, a Sensor Tower Q2 report shows non-gaming revenue up 14.6% (led by AI apps) while gaming revenue fell 4.5% year-over-year — but Felix flags the missing piece: on the upcoming FastSpring episode, Chip estimates $9-12B of D2C gaming revenue sits on top of last year's $52B iOS figure (15-20% earned outside the stores), which Sensor Tower can't yet see. So the "decline" is only half the picture. Plus the US charts, where Turkish games (Block Out, Smash Fest, Bus Traffic Fever, Magic Sword) plus Meow Doku are dominating.The through-line: the money and talent are flowing to Turkey, the app stores are cracking open, and gaming's "decline" mostly disappears once you count the D2C revenue nobody can see yet.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Three stories that matter this week00:40 RotateLab (Cube Land) raises a seed round03:00 Why Turkey and Vietnam are getting the funding04:30 Aptoide returns to Google Play — the first rival store07:00 Why it matters: dodging the 30% fee09:00 Gaming revenue down 4.5% — but it's half the truth11:00 The charts — Turkish games and Meow Doku dominate---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
Here's a game that breaks every mobile rule and prints money doing it: Idle Obelisk Miner looks like a DOS game from 1995, has no tutorial, no ads, and almost no marketing — and it's doing an estimated $100K a day on just 4-5K downloads. One developer, a fanatical community, and unit economics nobody else can touch.We break down Idle Obelisk Miner (by Checkbox Entertainment) — a one-man-hit-wonder in the same family as The Tower and Level Devil. They cover the deliberately old-school design (mono Sound Blaster music, pure text, "here's the game, figure it out, we don't care if you don't"), the deep idle systems (mining, crafting with crit chances, drones, prestige, the obelisk DPS-gate, event automation), why it plays like an "unfolding game" that keeps moving your engagement to new mechanics, and the extraordinary numbers: ~$100K/day IAP on ~4-5K downloads/day, pristine tier-one traffic, ~$13 revenue-per-download (versus ~$3 for Golden Goblins), and an ARPDAU multiples above The Tower — all built on a spend-depth the crew estimates at ~$40-50K. The story behind it: solo developer Alex William Olds in Northern Ireland, an "anti-mobile-game" philosophy (no ads, no pop-ups, purchases quarantined in a dedicated store), a 57K-member Discord and a 14K/40K-weekly Reddit, three years of flatlining before the feature set finally hit and retention went positive, and a steady migration of hardcore players from The Tower. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 A one-man-hit-wonder like The Tower — Idle Obelisk Miner02:30 "Here's the game, figure it out" — the no-tutorial design06:15 Mining, crafting, drones & the obelisk DPS gate14:30 The unfolding-game design and why prestige works here16:55 Why an idle game with no ads is the right call17:40 The numbers — $100K/day on 5K downloads24:00 Build it for yourself — the one-man-wonder thesis27:30 The community engine — 57K Discord, stealing Tower playersThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
The most freeing idea in playable ads keeps proving itself: your playable doesn't have to match your actual game. This month a zombie survival game ran a football playable, and an isometric strategy game ran a non-isometric one. The crew breaks down nine playables and the lessons underneath them.Matej Lančarič and Ondrej Mosberger are joined again by Robin Kuyer for the "everyone brings playables" format. They cover ZomLine Survival's World-Cup-timed football playable (a themed playable bolted onto a 4X game — nothing to do with the core, and that's the point), the perennial themed-playable truth (it either performs brilliantly or does nothing, with slot/casino games running Christmas playables all year), the frustration-as-motivator debate (Ondrej's 3D-Tetris-on-a-Clash-of-Clans-lookalike playable that's built to make you fail), the mini-game-per-mechanic strategy (Happy Nation/Miniclip's nonogram — if your app has many mini-games, build a playable for each and measure which end-screen choice players tap), visual rewards vs literal rewards (Epic Stickman's one-click combat that pays off with a cutscene, not a chest), the textbook hand-holding playable (Estoti's Frostworld), and Matej's picks — Smash Fest (which he crowns the trend everyone should follow), Rogue Legends (a smooth tower-defense playable with no logo or download button at all, for a game that looks nothing like it), and a wild Bart-Simpson-plus-undressing screw-puzzle hook fronting a Forex game (IP infringement and all). Plus a genuinely useful tangent from Robin on how network preview templates clash with playable UI, and how Unity tracks users bouncing between CTA and end-card.The through-line: run different playables to capture different users, don't fear a mismatch between ad and game, and let the physics (or the frustration, or the reward) do the work.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The format — everyone brings playables (and a heatwave)04:20 ZomLine's football playable & the themed-playable truth09:40 3D Tetris on a Clash lookalike — the frustration debate16:30 Happy Nation's nonogram — a playable per mini-game20:00 Epic Stickman — the visual reward, not the chest23:50 Cooking Go & Frostworld — visually appealing, textbook onboarding32:50 Matej's picks — Smash Fest & the no-logo Rogue Legends playable39:50 The Bart Simpson undressing hook & Smash Fest as the trendThis episode is brought to you by Potensus — a premium ad network built by people who've been on both sides of the industry, with direct (non-programmatic) deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Vodafone landing in your game at premium CPMs, plus a Playable Maker partnership that turns brand videos and statics into native gaming playables and rewarded formats. Head to potensus.com to get started.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
We are joined by ad monetization guest Katerina to break down Smash Fest and the clone explosion surrounding it. We cover the physics-based cannon core (each ball is a move, run out and buy five more — match-3 logic on a physics engine), the detective work tracing it back to Toon Blast's "Cannon Fest" event (spotted by Game Refinery back in November 2024, and run by Peak as both playables and creatives — someone put two and two together and realized it worked), why Smash Fest was abruptly pulled from Google Play right as it scaled to ~300K downloads/day, and the seven-studio clone wave (Royal Smash by Cypher Games, Carnival Knockdown, Knockout, Knock Fever, Stack Smash by Tripledot, Carnival Blast, and more). Katerina digs into the monetization — Smash Fest's fairly basic setup (one rewarded placement, interstitial every fourth attempt) versus Royal Smash's smarter double-your-coins rewarded flow — with estimates landing around ~$130K/day in ads for Smash Fest, and the crew guessing the true total (IAP plus ads) could push toward ~$1M/day given a reported ~1M DAU. Then the UA reality: Smash Fest scaled ~300K downloads/day on ~50 creatives and essentially one great playable, ~90% AppLovin — while Royal Smash is catching up fast with 10x the creative volume, more channels, better LiveOps, and a monetization edge.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 A new physics-puzzle category — and the controversy03:00 The core loop — cannon physics, each ball a move07:00 The detective story — it's Toon Blast's Cannon Fest event10:30 Seven studios clone it in one month12:30 Why Smash Fest got taken down as it scaled16:30 The monetization breakdown — ~$130K/day in ads23:00 A new category: physics puzzlers take over from Angry Birds28:00 The UA reality — 50 creatives vs Royal Smash's 500This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Katerina Maliaran, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
This week is one giant lesson in consolidation: everybody's buying everybody, the money is concentrating, the ownership is concentrating, and the people are getting cut. Tripledot bought Supersonic from Unity, Saudi Arabia closed the biggest leveraged buyout in history to take EA private, and Netflix gutted a studio seven weeks after praising its game on an earnings call.Matej Lančarič flies solo for the weekly news. Tripledot acquired Supersonic from Unity for $40M cash — a striking number given Supersonic likely did ~$40-45M in revenue over the last 12 months (per Sensor Tower plus ad revenue), and given ironSource paid $150M for it 11 years ago and Unity got it inside the $4.4B ironSource merger in 2022. It's the final piece of ironSource leaving the building — and the second time Tripledot has done this, after buying AppLovin's entire games business for $800M a year ago. The pattern is now complete: both AppLovin and Unity have exited game publishing to become pure ad-tech companies (ad networks make ads, publishers make games). That sale landed alongside Unity's best quarter ever (revenue $546M, up 24%, Grow segment up 35% to $389M on Vector AI, approaching GAAP profitability). Saudi Arabia's PIF closed its $55B take-private of EA (now delisted, ~93% PIF-owned with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners) — the largest LBO in history, with ~$20B in debt that will push EA hard toward recurring mobile and live-service revenue, plus a Vision 2030 soft-power dimension via EA Sports FC. Netflix's FIFA World Cup studio Refactor laid off 85% of staff seven weeks after Netflix named the game one of its most successful cloud debuts — the same praise-then-kill pattern as Squid Game Unleashed. And AppLovin posted a "miss that isn't a miss" (revenue up 53% to ~$1.92B, just under consensus).The through-line: the ad networks make ads now, the publishers make games, and the ownership of the whole industry is concentrating like never before.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 A week of pure consolidation — everybody's buying everybody01:40 Tripledot buys Supersonic for $40M — the ironSource endgame05:30 The pattern: ad networks exit publishing06:40 Unity's best quarter ever — the Vector AI turnaround09:30 Saudi Arabia takes EA private for $55B13:00 The Netflix FIFA disaster — praised, then gutted17:30 AppLovin's Q2 — the miss that isn't a miss---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
One concept is eating the entire Forex creative market right now: a "fat guy" gets slapped, abandoned, or humiliated, then rises to power. It was everywhere last month — this month it's on steroids, and every big Forex game has its own version. The crew runs 123 AI creatives in 30 minutes to map where AI creative is actually heading.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg speed through the month's AI creatives and surface the patterns. Golden Goblins still wins with clever non-AI hooks (power progressions, the tag meme) rather than full AI. King Shot's "no ads" theme has spread through Forex, puzzle, and everywhere else — often paired with the now-ubiquitous slapped-guy power fantasy (complete with a one-to-one "Henry Cavill from Wish" character). Playrix's Township and Gardenscapes are flooding feeds with flower-team and egg-overload AI creatives, one-to-one across the portfolio. The through-line: the concept is an old mafia-boss power fantasy reborn through AI — and it's everywhere because, chaos and all, it seems to be working.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 123 creatives in 30 minutes — buckle up01:55 Golden Goblins — winning with clever non-AI hooks03:00 King Shot and the "no ads" theme everywhere04:10 The "fat guy getting slapped" power fantasy — on steroids07:55 Playrix — Township & Gardenscapes' AI flood14:45 Top Heroes' chaos — poop filters and cratering revenue27:00 Pixel Flow & Meow Doku — AI creatives done right29:50 123 creatives in, Mr. Fat Guy leads the packThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
"The CPI is going up, so change the creatives" is not a UA review — it's just narrating the dashboard. A real review has next steps, digs under the naming conventions, and usually finds money you're already wasting without spending a cent more. This is how to do one properly.FULL ARTICLE: https://lancaric.substack.com/p/ua-review-bible-how-to-do-it-properly?r=7qqafMatej Lančarič goes solo for a UA-audit masterclass, built from his popular Substack piece and 12+ years of spending on and reviewing user acquisition. He walks the five layers he audits every time — the strategy behind the spend, the campaigns, the creatives, the MMP/dashboards, and the people making the decisions — and the order that matters (data and raw conclusions first, context and conversations second, so nobody colors your read before you've formed it). Along the way: why you must strip out fraud before you trust anything (one game looked like five healthy channels until fraud removal revealed one channel eating 70% of spend), why you should never trust a campaign's naming convention (build the spend-by-campaign-by-geo pivot and look underneath), how splitting a "worldwide" campaign by geo and OS surfaces small high-ROAS pockets (his own US spend was dragging the whole campaign down until he split it four ways), most reviews don't call for more budget — just reallocation — and you should run one every month.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 There's a review, and there's a review02:14 Why UA audits matter — and what a bad one looks like04:00 The five layers: strategy, campaigns, creatives, MMP, people06:00 Data first, people second — protecting your raw read07:30 Strip out the fraud before you trust anything10:00 Never trust the campaign name — pivot by geo12:30 Splitting by geo and OS — finding the hidden pockets15:30 Cohorts, blended-number traps & the LTV questions
Here's a first: we reviewed the copy, not the original. Colony Flow is an ant-themed "destroy the picture" puzzler that's doing an estimated $150K/day — and it's currently being sued over. The crew digs into the game, the monetization trick underneath it, and what the lawsuit might mean for the entire copycat economy.We break down Colony Flow (by OneSoft/ABI Games) — a sort puzzler in the "destroy the picture" genre where a colony of ants slowly carries colored cubes off a picture into your bench. The standout is the monetization: the ants are deliberately slow, which creates constant friction that the game resolves with a rewarded-video (or premium-currency) speed-up. We cover the standard sort-puzzler feature set , the numbers (~100K downloads/day rising to ~200K in July, ~$150K/day IAP with likely 40-50%+ on top from ads), and the UA (~600 creatives, ~90% AppLovin and Mintegral, zero Facebook — because blended campaigns just don't work there). The through-line: the copy is outscaling debate, the friction mechanic is genuinely smart, and this lawsuit could set a precedent for the whole clone economy.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 We're reviewing the copy — the lawsuit setup02:40 The game — ants destroying the picture04:00 Why the ant pathfinding points to Pixel Flow06:10 Slow on purpose — the friction-into-rewarded-ad mechanic09:00 Blockers, fake "daily rewards," and the feature set13:00 The numbers — $150K/day and the Famfinity lawsuit20:00 The creatives — 600 ads, AppLovin & Mintegral, no Facebook29:30 What the lawsuit means for the copycat economyThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
The EU just fined Google €890M for making it hard to steer users to cheaper web stores — another crack in the 30% wall, and genuinely good news for every developer. That's the lead of a quieter, summer-holiday news week, with Felix flying solo while Matej and Jakub are at ChinaJoy.Felix Braberg walks two stories and a charts tour. First, the European Commission fined Google €890M (split €460M + €430M) under the Digital Markets Act for antitrust practices — preventing developers from freely informing users about cheaper offers and steering them to web stores or third-party channels. Google has 60 days to comply or face periodic penalties of up to 5% of worldwide turnover (~$403B), and it's another blow in the slow unwinding of the 30% app-store tax that companies like FastSpring exist to route around. Second, a Seeking Alpha analysis argues the market keeps underestimating AppLovin: the stock came under pressure in 2026 (swept up in the "SaaS apocalypse" sell-off after the CloudX agentic-buying launch), but the fundamentals are strong, the gaming runway is bigger than assumed, and as the dominant mediation player (AppLovin Max), it holds a structural advantage. Then the US charts: Smash Fest (Flow Games, Turkey) is now #1 in free downloads — beating Roblox — followed by Meow Doku and Vita Mahjong (same studio), with the standout story being that a copycat of Smash Fest (Royal Smash by Cypher Games) has itself cracked the top six out of ~70 clones. Plus Level Devil sold and scaling under new ownership, EA Sports FC still strong post-World Cup, and Turkey vs China duking it out for chart dominance.The through-line of a quiet week: the 30% tax keeps cracking, AppLovin keeps winning, and the copycat economy is faster and more brutal than ever.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Solo news week — Matej and Jakub at ChinaJoy00:40 Google fined €890M under the Digital Markets Act04:00 Why it's another crack in the 30% wall05:00 AppLovin: why the market keeps underestimating it07:30 US charts — Smash Fest beats Roblox08:30 The copycat that cracked the top six10:00 Level Devil sold, EA Sports FC, and Turkey vs China---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
A studio in Gaziantep had the idea in November, started building at the end of December, ran a marketability test in January, and by July they're doing an estimated $300K/day. That's the Cube Land story — and we love it!We break down Cube Land Puzzle by RotateLab (Turkey) — a 3D voxel "destroy the picture" blast puzzler where you rotate a pixel-art object (a gummy bear, a Rubik's cube, a piano, a submarine) and blast matching cubes off it into number-tile slots. They cover why the 3D layer makes it a near-perfect iteration on This Is Blast / Pixel Flow (the rotation adds real strategy and satisfaction a flat conveyor can't), the deliberately light-but-solid feature set (standard blockers, Crown Tournament, Skylift, a journey milestone track, ~650 levels), and the numbers: ~$90K/day IAP visible on Sensor Tower (the hosts estimate the true figure at 1.5-2x that, roughly $150K IAP + ads for a likely ~$300K/day total, with a DAU spike toward ~700K and strong Japan traffic). Plus the UA machine: internal playables, ~90% of spend on AppLovin⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The game — Cube Land, a 3D blast puzzler04:00 Gameplay — rotate, aim, blast the picture apart07:30 Blockers, Crown Tournament, Skylift & the 650-level saga12:20 The studio story — RotateLab and the earthquake pivot14:00 Idea to scale in 6 months — the timeline18:20 The numbers — ~$90K/day IAP and the ~$300K estimate24:50 The creatives — 200 in 30 days, internal playables27:40 Why Meta can't compete for hybrid gamesThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Some months the creative trends are wild. This one, Matej says it straight: it's quieter — everyone's copying the same big 4X and Golden Goblins playbook, AI is everywhere, and studios are scaling down for summer. But the detective work underneath is where it gets good, including a live investigation into who actually spends the most on UA and who really leads on revenue once you account for the money Sensor Tower can't see.We run the month's creatives and end up somewhere more interesting than the creatives themselves. They cover the copy-paste economy (Golden Goblins reskinned with bears and trees as AppQuantum's new Animal Valley; Idle Zombie Miner cloning the original one-to-one), Pantheon's ~9,600 creatives iterating on a single three-year-old winning concept, the "revenue down but DAU up" signal that reveals hidden D2C web-shop money (Raid Rush, Monopoly Go), the sad death of Match Villains (UA turned off, ~30% DAU lost in two months)The honest through-line: the creatives are converging, so the edge is in the data — reading DAU vs revenue, spotting the D2C dark pools, and knowing who's really winning.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 A quieter month — and why that's still worth watching02:40 Top creatives by impression share — how to read the tab05:10 Golden Goblins reskinned — Animal Valley, bears and trees09:40 Pantheon's 9,600 creatives and the D2C revenue tell12:30 Match Villains is dead — UA off, 30% DAU gone16:40 The data detective — who spends the most on UA24:50 The revenue ranking and the D2C "dark pools"31:20 Playrix's AI flood and the Simpsons diminishing returnsThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
GTA 6 pulled an estimated $260M in its first week of pre-orders — and the real story is that its launch has quietly become a proxy for every gaming company's valuation. If it opens well, the industry holds. If it doesn't, the bottom could fall out — and mobile goes with it.Felix Braberg flies solo for the news segment, with three stories that matter. GTA 6 pre-orders hit roughly $260M globally in the last week of June (Newzoo forecasts $3.3-5.2B by launch week in November, ~51M units), and Felix explains why the whole industry is watching it as a valuation bellwether. Tencent is rumored to be in talks to buy Playtika's Superplay for $1-1.5B — a fascinating story of an earnout gone right for the founders and wrong for the parent: Playtika bought Superplay for $690M in late 2024 with a performance earnout, Superplay is smashing every target (Disney Solitaire alone is ~$5M/week, ~$300M/year), and the ballooning earnout liability (now ~$829M) plus a $2.3B debt wall in 2028-2029 is forcing Playtika to consider selling its crown jewel. And PubMatic signed an OpenWrap deal with Zynga, bringing transparent, fixed-margin ad buying to Zynga's inventory — the same play as Amazon TAM and Bid Machine.The through-line: the money is moving, and the balance sheets are calling the shots.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 GTA 6 pre-orders hit $260M in week one02:30 Why GTA 6 is now a proxy for all gaming valuations04:00 Tencent in talks to buy Superplay for up to $1.5B06:30 The earnout trap — how Superplay's success became a burden09:00 Playtika's $2.3B debt wall and the forced-sale logic10:30 PubMatic x Zynga and the OpenWrap transparency play12:30 Top charts — Block Out and Meow Doku dominate downloads---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
The single most freeing idea in playable ads: your playable doesn't have to be your actual game. This month's Playable Trends proves it — including a studio running what's essentially a Fishdom ad to drive installs for a completely different fish game.Today is the "everyone brings playables" episode — nine playables, nine different lessons. They break down Meow Doku's onboarding-perfect tutorial playable (a rare puzzle playable that's short, juicy, and instantly understandable), the non-authentic approach done right (Coin Master's scripted save/risky trail, Idle Miner's exaggerated 5x version, XP Hero's Forex "jump on the button" concept that's now everywhere), a genuinely wild example of a playable borrowed from an entirely different game (a Fishdom-style ad driving a fish.io title), and Robin's concrete CTR tactic: the 6-second auto-advance rule (if the user does nothing, make the first choice for them, keep the playable moving, and overall engagement and CTA climb). Plus standout new games — Last Asylum's chaos-from-second-one base defense, Voodoo's Path of Kings POV roguelite, and a Game of Thrones 4X playable drilled down to just a dragon and a couple of units.The closing lesson, straight from the crew: if you ask which playable performs best, there's no single answer — they each preferred a different one. That's exactly why you run all of them, to capture every kind of user.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 everyone brings playables04:20 Meowdoku — the onboarding-perfect puzzle playable11:35 XP Hero and the Forex "jump on the button" concept15:45 A Fishdom playable for a completely different game20:30 Raid Rush — the pick-your-towers customization setup24:50 Robin's 6-second auto-advance CTR tactic28:30 The Pixel Flow copycat that's scaling with ants40:10 Last Asylum, Path of Kings & the Game of Thrones playableThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Ondrej Monsberger, Robin Kuyer, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.mePlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Hexa Away did something genuinely clever — it took the arrows/sort mechanic everyone's chasing and rebuilt it on a hexagonal 3D grid, which turns out to be a better fit than flat arrows ever were. Then it scaled hard on AppLovin, hit a wall, and downscaled almost completely. It's a great game and a UA cautionary tale in one.We break down Hexa Away - a hexagonal-grid sort puzzler from the CyberAgent/GooDroid studio (yes, the Uma Musume people). They cover why the hexagonal grid is a genuinely better canvas for the arrows mechanic (escape routes, tangible blockers, room for more mechanics), the standard-but-solid IAP puzzler feature set, and the numbers that make it significant: it's now the sixth-biggest sort puzzler by revenue (behind Pixel Flow, Magic Sort, Yarn Loop, Marble Sort, and Block Out), doing ~$90K/day IAP plus ~$42K/day in ads at peak, with 500K+ DAU on pristine US-heavy traffic. But the real lesson is the UA story: they went ~90% AppLovin, scaled to 800K DAU in April, then crashed back — because a ~4% day-30 retention simply can't support that level of scale, and once you burn through the AppLovin audience, the ROAS doesn't come back.The takeaway: a great core and a clever mechanic aren't enough. Concentration risk on one channel plus weak retention is how you overshoot your UA and torch your cash.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Why Hexa Away is significant — the 6th-biggest sort puzzler03:40 Arrows on a hexagonal grid — "hexagons are the bestagons"07:40 The blocker framework and monetizing on difficulty11:20 The numbers — $90K/day, 500K DAU, pristine US traffic12:20 The ad-revenue breakdown — ~$42K/day, 36% of total13:30 Four new creatives, ~200 total, and the banner problem15:00 The AppLovin over-scale — 800K DAU then the crash18:30 The 4% day-30 retention that explains everythingPotensus is a premium ad network built by people who've actually been on both sides of this industry - game publishers, agencies, and successful exits. They get it.Here's the thing - Potensus has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone. Not programmatic. Direct. Those budgets land in your game at premium CPMs, no middleman tax.And they handle everything with their in-house team. PLUS they're partnered with PlayableMaker WINK WINK - so they'll take a brand's YouTube video or a static banner and actually turn it into a playable ad or rewarded video. Proper interactive format, built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming-native creative, publishers getting higher CPMs. Everyone wins.Head to potensus.com to get started or check their creative portfolio here https://vimeo.com/showcase/12093300?fl=so&fe=fs---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Take Minesweeper. Add Sudoku logic. Put cats on it. Congratulations, you've just made $200,000 a day..We break down Meow Doku by Oakever, the cat-puzzle that came out of nowhere to shake up a category that hadn't changed in a decade. They walk the game (it's Minesweeper crossed with Sudoku — one cat per color, per row, per column, cats can't touch — simpler than Minesweeper and endlessly satisfying), the pure ad monetization (100% ads, no IAP, ~80%+ from interstitials, a clever cooldown timer that tightens the longer you play), and the numbers (~400K downloads/day, 2M+ DAU with huge US and Japan share, an estimated ~$200K/day and climbing). Then the portfolio: Oakever (real name Learnings / Beijing Lexing) is a fully bootstrapped, Singapore-based Chinese giant with a ~200-300 person R&D team, 70M MAU, a billion cumulative downloads, five straight years of 100%+ revenue growth, and a claim to being the #1 Chinese game company by ad revenue on Meta and Google. And the twist that makes the whole thing a masterclass: MeowDoku isn't original — it's a cats reskin of "Queens Master Sudoku," a game that sat dormant making almost nothing for a year and a half until Oakever found it, added cats, and out-executed everyone on UA. Plus, this game is a LINKEDIN GAME!!⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The game we've wanted to cover for 3 years03:30 Minesweeper meets Sudoku — the core rules06:30 Why it's simpler than Minesweeper (and better)10:20 100% ads — the cooldown timer trick14:30 The numbers — 2M DAU, ~$200K/day22:50 Inside Oakever's monster portfolio27:30 The bootstrapped Chinese ad-revenue king36:40 The twist — it's a reskin of Queens Master SudokuThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Influence Mobile founder and CEO Daniel Todd joins Chris Lustrino to discuss how the company built Rewarded Play into a major rewards platform for mobile gaming. Influence Mobile helps game developers acquire and retain high-value players by offering rewards to users who discover, play, and spend inside mobile games. Daniel explains how his decades of experience in internet advertising and rewards programs led to the company's current model, why older women are among the most valuable mobile gaming audiences, and why mobile gaming's scale is often underestimated. The conversation also covers Influence Mobile's $28 million revenue base, its Android success, upcoming iOS expansion, white-label opportunities, and the long-term vision for a broader rewards ecosystem. View Influence Mobile on Kingscrowd
Pokémon Go removed the paywall from its biggest event of the year and made more money than any paid version in half a decade. That's the monetization masterclass of the week — and it's just one of five stories that matter.Matej Lančarič flies solo for the news segment, and it's a heavy week. Pokémon Go hit its 10th anniversary with over $9B in lifetime revenue, then ran GoFest 2026 as its first-ever free, no-ticket event — triggering a $15.1M single day, the game's highest in five years, and a 17-position leap to #2 in monthly revenue. Love and Deepspace is unfolding into the most instructive disaster of the year, with a cancelled love interest, a 230,000-signature petition, funeral flowers and cow dung sent to the studio, and a pulled Bilibili World appearance. Microsoft cut 4,800 jobs with Xbox facing roughly 3,200 over the next year — about 20% of the division — with King in the blast radius and a memo admitting the business "is not healthy" at ~3% margin. AppLovin opened Axon to global self-serve and the stock ripped from the mid-$440s to $564 in two weeks. And Meta shipped Muse image plus new AI-ad labeling that puts a visible tag right next to "Sponsored" if your creative features a photorealistic AI person.Five stories, one theme: the old assumptions about paywalls, scale, and trust are all breaking at once.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Cold open 00:30 Pokémon Go's free GoFest monetization masterclass02:30 The Love and Deepspace catastrophe05:00 Xbox cuts 3,200 — King in the blast radius07:00 AppLovin opens Axon to self-serve08:30 Meta's Muse image and the new AI ad labels10:00 Quick hits — UK job losses, Netmarble takes 40% of WeMade━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Pokémon Champions launched on mobile doing roughly $300-400K/day. Two days later it was collapsing. It's now around $80K/day and falling — a textbook shark fin from the biggest IP on the planet. We cover the wins on this podcast, but we also cover the failures, and this one is genuinely fascinating.We break down what went wrong with Pokémon Champions. The game is essentially Pokémon Stadium (the N64 classic) rebuilt for mobile — a pure battler with no exploration, no gyms, no story, no breeding, no catching Pokémon in the wild. The gacha is neutered into a "pick one of ten" system with no randomness at all. And the killer: Pokémon Home import lets players bring their existing collections straight in from Pokémon Go and other titles, so many players arrived on launch day with everything already unlocked — what Jakub calls "Web3 interoperability in play," and a total economy destroyer. Monetization is cosmetics, a battle pass, and ranch refresh tickets. That's it. The crew also contrasts it with the Pokémon apps that genuinely print money (TCG Pocket at ~$15M/month, Pokémon Sleep at ~$150K/day and ~$150M in three years, Pokémon Go spiking on the 30th anniversary), and picks apart the UA: ~300 creatives that are really about 7 concepts, almost all 15-21 seconds, cut from a year-old trailer.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Why we're covering a failure02:40 It's Pokémon Stadium, rebuilt for mobile07:05 The neutered gacha — pick one of ten11:26 The shallow monetization: cosmetics and a battle pass12:30 Pokémon Home import — the economy killer14:35 The numbers — shark fin, Japan-driven, 16% US17:06 The Pokémon apps that actually print money19:59 The creatives — 300 videos, 7 concepts, all too shortThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Tricia Han, CEO of Mistplay, and Sampsa Jaatinen, Chief Data and AI Officer at Mistplay, to explore the rapidly evolving world of rewarded user acquisition. We dive into how the rewarded model has matured from a niche Android-focused strategy into a primary growth engine for mobile gaming across both major platforms. Among other things, we discuss:Why rewarded user acquisition has moved from a niche tactic to a cornerstone of modern mobile gaming growth strategiesHow the shift in Apple's App Store policies regarding incentivized installs has created a new frontier for iOS developersWhether the rich behavioral data sets generated by rewarded platforms provide a significant competitive advantage over traditional ad networksWhat role machine learning and reinforcement learning play in optimizing the timing and nature of user rewards and recommendationsIf the play-and-earn philosophy can be successfully exported to non-gaming industries like retail, finance, and quick-service restaurantsHow the blurring lines between mobile and console gaming will influence the way platforms compete for limited user attentionWhen the industry will fully realize the potential of direct-to-consumer web shops coupled with highly personalized reward mechanismsThanks to the sponsors of this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.Branch. Branch is an AI-powered MMP, connecting every paid, owned, and organic touchpoint so growth teams can see exactly where to put their dollars to bring users in the door and keep them coming backInterested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:SpotifyYouTubeApple Podcasts
Block Blast got pulled from Google Play, and everyone assumed it was catastrophic. It wasn't — DAU dipped from about 56M to 50M and stabilized. The real story is much more interesting: Block Blast has hit its scale ceiling on the core game, and their answer is to quietly turn the app into a games portal.Jakub Remiar flies solo for a single-game Review Radar update on Block Blast, six months on from the original deep-dive. He covers the takedown's actual impact (minimal, and DAU had already peaked in March), the massive UA downscale (from ~30,000 creatives and 1.5M downloads/day in December to ~5,000 creatives and ~600K/day now — a downscale, not a decline), the arrival of Block Blast's first real competitor (Color Block Combo Blast from Chinese studio Flyers Technology, growing fast but on tier-2/tier-3 traffic with almost no US DAU), and the pivot that matters most: "More Games" has moved from a hidden settings menu into a full main-menu button, now housing eight fully-fledged games (Fruit Merge, Mahjong, Sudoku, and more) — the same playbook as the no-wifi offline-games portals. Plus Sensor Tower's ad-revenue estimate (~$22M/month, ahead of Vita Mahjong) and the standing Jakub-vs-Felix bet on whether Block Blast ever passes Garena Free Fire.The read: don't sleep on this game. The core has peaked, but the winter blitz is probably coming — and the portal play is the real evolution.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Revisiting Block Blast — six months on01:30 The takedown — how much damage did it actually do?03:00 The first real competitor arrives05:30 Why the competitor isn't a real threat (yet)07:00 The massive UA downscale — 30K creatives to 5K10:09 The pivot — "More Games" hits the main menu14:00 $22M/month in ads and the Garena Free Fire bet17:00 Has Block Blast peaked, or is the winter blitz coming?Potensus is a premium ad network built by people who've actually been on both sides of this industry - game publishers, agencies, and successful exits. They get it.Here's the thing - Potensus has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone. Not programmatic. Direct. Those budgets land in your game at premium CPMs, no middleman tax.And they handle everything with their in-house team. PLUS they're partnered with PlayableMaker WINK WINK - so they'll take a brand's YouTube video or a static banner and actually turn it into a playable ad or rewarded video. Proper interactive format, built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming-native creative, publishers getting higher CPMs. Everyone wins.Head to potensus.com to get started or check their creative portfolio here https://vimeo.com/showcase/12093300?fl=so&fe=fs---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
AppsFlyer just took attribution off mobile and put it on the open web, and it might be the biggest unlock D2C web shops have seen yet.Josh Chandley talks with Adam Smart, Global Director of Product for Gaming at AppsFlyer, about the company's new web attribution product and its bigger bet on becoming a "Modern Marketing Cloud" spanning web, PlayStation, Xbox, and Oculus.Topics Covered:• AppsFlyer's new web attribution product• The shift from MMP to Modern Marketing Cloud• Why D2C web shops are the biggest day one unlock• Mobile UA mindset vs web UA mindset• Fraud and accountability on mobile vs web• Connecting web attribution to in-app ad networksCHAPTERS: 00:19 Why Web Attribution Matters00:33 Modern Marketing Cloud Vision03:28 Web vs Mobile Measurement Basics03:59 Neutral Attribution and ROAS Truth05:59 Why Launch Web Now08:13 D2C Web Shops and Growth11:49 Day One Studio Changes13:38 Mobile vs Web Mindsets15:15 Accountability and Fraud Reality17:37 Connecting Web and In App Ads19:54 Modern Marketing Cloud Explained23:42 Future of UA with AI28:32 AI Agents and Automation in Outlier29:30 Wrap Up and Where to Learn More
Gossip Harbor is now the fourth-highest-grossing game on the planet — behind only Royal Match, Honor of Kings, and Whiteout Survival. The merge category the crew has been covering for years is bigger and more stable than ever, and Century Games just showed exactly how you stack another winner on top of your portfolio.We break down Hotel Legacy by Century Games (of Tasty Travels fame), using it as a lens on the whole merge category. They recap the state of merge (Gossip Harbor at ~$95M/month and still climbing, Tasty Travels, Travel Town, Flambe, Seaside Escape), walk Hotel Legacy's board and its standard-but-polished feature set (three LiveOps systems, bubble offers, generators, the min-max storing loop), and dig into the genuinely puzzling part: the winning My Perfect Hotel / Last Asylum creative concept that's driving installs isn't actually in the game yet. The lesson: you stack merge games by shipping essentially the same game with a new theme, then testing creatives at scale until you find what to build next.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The state of merge — Gossip Harbor is #4 globally05:00 The revenue picture — $95M/month and climbing06:46 Hotel Legacy enters at #15 — 50K/day, all tier-one09:00 The "six merge games" player behavior theory10:06 Walking the board — LiveOps, bubble offers, min-maxing17:00 The mystery — the winning creative isn't in the game17:42 The creatives — My Perfect Hotel, Last Asylum, 500 in 30 days27:16 How to stack a merge game on your portfolioThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Voodoo's Path of Kings looks like Skyrim from the surface. It plays more like Tinder. And underneath the swipe mechanic is one of the more clever fusions of gameplay and monetization we've seen — where the gameplay itself is basically the offer pop-up.We break down Path of Kings, the Voodoo mid-core idle RPG they flagged on the Creative Trends episode. They walk it live — the swipe-to-choose mechanic (swipe right and you go straight into a purchase, swipe left and you skip), the Legend-of-Mushroom-style idle core streamlined for a Western fantasy audience, the ads-as-biggest-upgrade loop, the prestige treadmill that resets the map when content runs out, and a genuinely useful tangent on how to actually price a "remove the interstitials" offer (Felix does the ad-monetization math live). Then the numbers and the bigger picture: Path of Kings is doing ~$30K/day and sits right at the make-or-break threshold early Voodoo games have to clear, while Voodoo overall is doing ~$25M/month in IP revenue off Marble Sort and Castle Clashers/Busters — a real mid-core pivot that has everyone talking IPO. Plus the creatives: ~1,384 in 30 days, 100% AI, and gloriously broken (floating horses, dragons you don't sit on, four art styles per video).This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric
Offerwall eCPMs in the US can hit $800 to $2,000 for a single completed task — compared to $20-50 for a normal rewarded ad. But most publishers either add one too early, segment it wrong, or let it cannibalize their whales. This is the no-bullshit introduction to doing it right.Felix Braberg flies solo for a 15-minute offerwall masterclass, built from seven years of decks and hands-on experience across titles like the Ludia Trailer Park Boys games. He covers what an offerwall actually is (paying your time-rich, cash-poor users to complete tasks in exchange for in-game currency), the one rule that determines whether it'll work at all (you need at least 20% of revenue from non-ad sources — and "remove ads" as your top IAP disqualifies you), the metrics that define success (DoDAU, with ~10% as the benchmark), the segmentation and hand-holding that separates a sub-10% opt-in from a real revenue stream, how to think about exchange rates and avoid IAP cannibalization, why you start on API and graduate to SDK, and how sales and holiday boosts (yes, even Arbor Day) spike offerwall revenue. Done right, an offerwall can add 8-12% to total app revenue.The core lesson: offerwalls reward deep economies and clever segmentation — not a plug-and-play install.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 What an offerwall actually is and how it works02:15 Who should use one — the 20% non-ad revenue rule04:30 The players it monetizes: time-rich, cash-poor05:30 DoDAU and the ~10% benchmark07:00 Segmentation and hand-holding — the real unlock11:00 Exchange rates, cannibalization, and fraud13:00 API first, SDK later — the rollout strategy16:00 Sales and holiday boosts (even Arbor Day)Potensus is a premium ad network built by people who've actually been on both sides of this industry - game publishers, agencies, and successful exits. They get it.Here's the thing - Potensus has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone. Not programmatic. Direct. Those budgets land in your game at premium CPMs, no middleman tax.And they handle everything with their in-house team. PLUS they're partnered with PlayableMaker WINK WINK - so they'll take a brand's YouTube video or a static banner and actually turn it into a playable ad or rewarded video. Proper interactive format, built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming-native creative, publishers getting higher CPMs. Everyone wins.Head to potensus.com to get started or check their creative portfolio here https://vimeo.com/showcase/12093300?fl=so&fe=fs---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric
Lilith just did something genuinely new and genuinely reckless. Clash of Critters fuses the coin-looter/social-casino core with a pachinko machine and an idle RPG into one surprisingly clean package, then runs creatives packed with what can only be described as Pokémon from Wish. The crew breaks down whether the boldest iteration in the genre this year will actually fly.We go deep on Clash of Critters by Lilith (the AFK Arena / Rise of Kingdoms studio). They walk the game live — the pachinko coin-looter core that funnels directly into your XP, the auto-leveling idle RPG creatures, the raid/revenge social-casino mechanic lifted one-to-one from Coin Master and Monopoly Go, the card-album and gacha meta — and assess the iteration itself: a male-skewed, Asian-flavored coin looter built on a mechanic that's never dominated the very Asian markets it's aimed at. Then the creatives: ~4,000 in 30 days, heavy AI, Forex concepts, and a batch of blatantly Pokémon-styled ads that ran in Japan and then quietly went dark right before global launch. The recurring "see you in Tokyo" joke writes itself.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 What is Clash of Critters — Lilith's coin looter RPG02:57 The pachinko machine core and the XP connector05:27 The "Pokémon from Wish" creatures and auto-leveling09:33 The raid mechanic and the coin-looter formula19:43 The verdict — a clean iteration missing a front end22:00 The numbers — $200K/day and the Chinese soft launch29:22 The creatives — 4,000 in 30 days, heavy AI, Forex36:47 The Pokémon problem — "see you in Tokyo"This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
The roll-up model works beautifully on the way up and gets ugly in a hurry on the way down — and this week Stillfront showed exactly what the down looks like. That's one of four stories worth your attention this week.Felix Braberg flies solo for the Friday news segment. Stillfront CEO Alexis Bonte is stepping down after leading the company's strategic review and restructure — against a backdrop of declining downloads and revenue since the COVID peak, a share price well off its highs, and three board members replaced back in March. AdColony — the AppLovin of its 2014-2018 heyday — is getting a second life as Indian DSP company Aationa (AFL) buys the brand, SDK, and integrations from Digital Turbine for a reported sub-$5M, a smart backdoor into ~80,000 apps' worth of inventory. The World Cup is driving COVID-style download growth across mobile football (eFootball +60%, and the shock winner Soccer Superstar +62%). And Meow Doku, from the studio formerly known as Oakever, has gone from 15K to 1.7M DAU since mid-May by fusing cats, Sudoku, and brain-training into one low-CPI package — likely earning $70-120K/day on ads alone.Four stories, one theme: the models and the winners are shifting fast.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask Matej AI - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
Mobile has a creativity problem — and Steam keeps proving it. In this quarter's Full Steam Ahead, the crew scans the top Q1 Steam releases to find the genre mashups and fresh cores that could translate into mobile's next wave of hits.The throughline: all the creativity got outsourced to Steam. Mobile's job is to figure out how to execute these cores for a wider audience.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Full Steam Ahead — the setup and method04:00 Dialogue — the cyberpunk waifu dial-puzzler08:40 Raccoon coin-pusher roguelike + Screechy Scratch12:00 The proven sims — car co-op, video store, Quarantine Zone16:24 Star Rupture and the factory-building core19:20 Super Battle Golf — real-time PvP chaos22:45 Mewgenics — the Binding of Isaac creators' cat roguelite26:00 Slay the Spire 2 hits $140M — the deck-builder caseThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------Potensus is a premium ad network built by people who've actually been on both sides of this industry - game publishers, agencies, and successful exits. They get it.Here's the thing - Potensus has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone. Not programmatic. Direct. Those budgets land in your game at premium CPMs, no middleman tax.And they handle everything with their in-house team. PLUS they're partnered with PlayableMaker WINK WINK - so they'll take a brand's YouTube video or a static banner and actually turn it into a playable ad or rewarded video. Proper interactive format, built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming-native creative, publishers getting higher CPMs. Everyone wins.Head to potensus.com to get started or check their creative portfolio here https://vimeo.com/showcase/12093300?fl=so&fe=fs---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
What happens when a monetization manager gets to build a game from scratch? You get Tetris Block Party - a hybrid that fuses block-puzzle gameplay, coin-looter meta, and match-3 boosters into a single LiveOps machine where two operators can run almost everything without a dev ticket.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg do a live review with two guests: Erez Yosef, who manages Tetris Block Party at Play Studios, and Elias Sandler, founder and CEO of Kinoa. They break down the genre hybrid (active block gameplay instead of passive slots/dice, with a persistent board, trashable pieces, and a match-3 layer that generates the boosters), the brutal design challenges of adapting a block core to a coin-looter meta (the multiplier problem alone took countless iterations), and the LiveOps philosophy of building one flexible template that can become almost any event. The standout story: a coupon-wheel feature built without ever developing real coupons — just tokens and images — that drove close to a 50% revenue lift in a single day. Plus why showing ads actually makes players convert better (not cannibalize), how everything is segmented by player behavior in seconds, and where Kinoa is taking real-time churn and purchase prediction next.The throughline: build the infrastructure once, flexibly, and let operators create endless content without waiting months for development.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Epic Intro 04:00 The core - block puzzle meets coin looter06:30 Control vs randomness — the design balance09:30 The booster system and the match-3 third layer13:40 LiveOps architecture - the "Times Square" UI15:00 The multiplier problem and how they solved it20:30 The flexible-template philosophy and the coupon wheel36:00 Real-time segmentation and churn predictionThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric
The whole market is chasing the same thing: one magic creative that lowers your CPI. But this month's creative trends show the real storyWe run through the month's creatives and surface the patterns: AppQuantum/Golden Goblins as the copy-machine the whole market imitates (now with a ~100-person creative team), the onboarding land grab where studios slap My Perfect Hotel, Last Asylum, and other hyper-casual hooks onto match and merge onboarding, the Game of Thrones IP game (Dragonfire) as a test of whether Western IP can punch back against the Chinese creative machine, Voodoo's standout new mid-core game Path of Kings (old-school pixel RPG nostalgia, 60K downloads/day since a May launch), AI creatives flooding every genre (and the hand-movement tell that still gives them away), and several games clearly in troubleThe throughline: copy and execute are two different things. You can copy any creative - but can you actually execute it?⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The full crew and creative trends kickoff02:30 Golden Goblins / AppQuantum — the copy machine09:00 The "getting slapped" hook and Whiteout Survival09:40 Game of Thrones IP vs the Chinese creative machine20:00 Panteon, Raid Rush, and the AI-tower signature22:50 Voodoo's Path of Kings — the standout new game26:30 The onboarding land grab — Match Villains & beyondThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.meIf you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric
The World Cup is here, and three football games are quietly printing money — but in completely different ways. eFootball is doing $45M a month after nearly a decade of straight-line growth, and almost nobody in the industry is talking about it.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg break down the three realistic football giants — Dream League Soccer, Konami's eFootball, and EA Sports FC Mobile (the game formerly known as FIFA Mobile). They get into the wildly different country mixes (Dream League at 25% US revenue, eFootball at 43% from Japan, EA FC pulling 20% from China and 16% from Korea), the radically different ad strategies (eFootball at just 0.65% ad revenue, EA FC around 15-25%, Dream League a remarkable 68% ad-driven), the gacha and card-collection monetization, the FIFA licensing divorce that freed EA from a reported nine-figure annual fee, and the UA reality: all-real-gameplay creatives, great CPIs for the genre, and the curious fact that none of them are on AppLovin despite Dream League being a perfect blended-ROAS candidate.The throughline: same sport, same core gameplay, three completely different businesses underneath.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The numbers — eFootball at $45M/month01:30 Three games, big structural nuances05:30 Ad revenue split — 0.65% vs 15% vs 68%06:50 The country mix that changes everything11:00 Inside the games — gameplay and gacha17:30 The FIFA license divorce and EA's escape26:30 The ad stacks and what they get wrong35:30 UA reality — real gameplay, cheap CPIs, no AppLovin--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricPodcast: Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAChapters---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit lancaric.substack.com & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric
This month's playable trends are the kind you only catch when you're staring at hundreds of creatives in a row: the dress-up "please your boyfriend's mom" hook quietly flooding match-3 UA, and the Playrix templated-playable machine that turns one build into an entire portfolio.Matej Lančarič and Ondrej Mosberger are joined by Robin Kuyer, who leads Unity PlayWorks (formerly Luna Labs) and has been building playables for five years. They break down the fashion/dress-up template appearing across Crazy Labs, Kinetic, and others (often with identical assets) and why it's really a match-3 onboarding wrapper, the Playrix masterclass of strongly templated playables reused across Township, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes, and the single most underused tactic in the industry: taking one winning playable build and squeezing everything out of it with asset swaps, camera-angle changes, and different cut points. They also dig into long playables (and why 3 minutes can pre-qualify your best payers), the authentic-vs-non-authentic debate (where CTR can double but ROAS stays close), network approval chaos, and where AI playable production is genuinely heading — plus why "make a playable that performs well" will never be a working prompt.The throughline, straight from Robin: production speed means nothing without the foundation. Knowing what a good hook, reward loop, and progression actually look like is the part too many studios skip.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Game designers on playable team?03:35 The fashion / dress-up playable pattern08:00 Why it's really match-3 in disguise16:14 The Playrix templated-playable masterclass20:35 One build, many ads — asset swaps and camera angles27:00 Long playables and pre-qualifying payers36:46 Authentic vs non-authentic playables40:00 Can AI vibe-code a winning playable?--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
The old way of buying an MMP took weeks — sales calls, demos, contracts, CSM onboarding, documentation. Airbridge just collapsed that into a couple of hours. Core Plan: https://abr.ge/xqaqqluUse code Matej26 for bonus attributed installs!Matej Lančarič sits down with Roi Nam, CEO and founder of Airbridge, to unpack Core Plan — a self-serve, pay-as-you-go MMP that comes with 15,000 attributed installs free for a year. They get into why now (AI has driven a ~60% year-over-year jump in app releases, and those founders need measurement fast), who it's for (founders under $10M ARR, teams of 1-20, mostly consumer and subscription apps), how the AI-native onboarding works (MCP and an AI pilot that installs the SDK and builds reports for you), what got stripped out to keep it "core," and the roadmap — instant pre-SDK analysis from your ad accounts, easier web-to-app, and built-in signal engineering. On that last point: Roi shares how one sleep-tracking app cut CPA 27% with the simplest signal-engineering tactic — delaying the cancellation signal to Meta.The throughline: measurement should be as fast as the AI tools founders already use.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Meet Roi and Airbridge00:45 What Core Plan actually is — 15K free installs02:31 Why now — AI and the 60% jump in app releases05:04 How Core Plan differs from the enterprise plans07:15 The AI pilot and MCP — SDK install in 2 hours12:05 The roadmap — pre-SDK analysis and web-to-app14:18 Signal engineering and the 27% CPA win19:08 Who's signing up — the thick-tail app market━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Fox's $22 billion acquisition of Roku is one of the biggest media and advertising technology stories in years, and it could fundamentally reshape connected TV. In this special breaking news episode of the AdTechGod Pod, AdTechGod is joined by Kyle Dozeman Co-Founder & CEO at Kovva and former CRO of PubMatic, Richie Hyden (SVP of Publisher Solutions at Viant Technologies), and David Nyurenberg (SVP at InterMedia Advertising) to discuss the strategic implications of the deal. This episode covers why Fox made this move, what Roku's 100+ million household footprint brings to the table, and why identity, audience data, and operating system ownership may be more valuable than streaming content itself. They also discuss how the acquisition could transform audience targeting, measurement, content discovery, programmatic advertising, and Fox's ability to compete with giants like Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Disney. Will this create a new advertising powerhouse? How will brands, agencies, and publishers be affected? And five years from now, will this be remembered as a content play, an identity play, or the deal that changed connected TV forever? Tune in for expert analysis on one of the most consequential acquisitions in the history of streaming. Key topics Fox's acquisition of Roku and its strategic implications The role of identity and audience data in the deal Impact on content distribution and platform dynamics Changes in ad tech and programmatic buying Future of streaming, content, and advertising Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the Acquisition 01:50 Understanding the Strategic Importance of Roku 06:21 Identity and Audience Data: The Core Asset 10:16 The Impact on Ad Placements and Market Dynamics 14:01 Advertiser Perspectives on the Acquisition 16:55 Transparency in Advertising: A New Era? 21:18 User Acquisition and Market Positioning 23:19 Future Implications of the Acquisition 26:22 Looking Ahead: The Next Five Years Interested in attending Marketecture Live Chicago on September 23, 2026?. Attendance is free for qualified brands and agencies, and early bird pricing ends soon for everyone else. Register now to secure your spot at chicago.marketecturelive.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On March 30, 2026, Rec Room announced they would be closing on June 1, 2026 at noon PDT. I had a chance to speak to former Rec Room employee Shawn Whiting, who previously the roles of Head of Creators, Head of User Acquisition, and Head of Community. He shares some additional context for the past decade of Rec Room including reflections of some of their top milestones, riding the Metaverse hype, the benefits of costs of being available on so many different platforms, the impact of Meta's competing Horizon Worlds, and the challenges of monetization. We also share some of our favorite memories of the platform, and Whiting's time working for Rec Room. Rec Room is officially are closing everything down today at noon PDT, and you can check out their final AMA that was posted yesterday. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality
In this episode of Strap on Your Boots, I break down the reality behind the AI app-building boom and why so many founders are still struggling to get traction. While tools like Claude, Cursor, and modern cloud platforms have made it faster than ever to build apps, the real challenge hasn't gone away — it's shifted. I share my experience building apps over the past 30 years, how development has evolved, and why “vibe coding” isn't a business model. We dive into the real bottleneck most people ignore: marketing, distribution, and user acquisition. If you're building an app in today's AI-driven world, this episode will change how you think about what actually matters.
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