Mobile Gaming Today: May'22

😶‍🌫️ 50 Layoffs at Wooga, Supercell to Netflix & More.

Gamigion

May 21, 2025

Hey Fam,

Making it to Gamesforum Hamburg soon?

Hit me up to grab a Holsten or Astra! 🍻

🦄 Report of the Week: Playables in Q1 2025

🚀 84% of New Playable Ad Impressions Came from AppLovin!

We had a cool chat with my buddy, Brijesh, Co-Founder of Segwise.

They built AI Agents to improve creative ROAS, and they used their AI Creative Agent to tag and analyze top-performing playables.

👌🏻 Top Gaming Update: Studio Speed-Date?

💣 SuperPitch incomiiiing!

» Supersonic’s SuperPitch: 8 Studio Speed-Date?

They’re opening the door to just 8 studios, a live pitch session where selected teams will present their games and get real-time expert feedback.

From Trash Tycoon to Screw Master, Supersonic has already published 130+ Games, hit 190M+ MAU, and racked up 6.4 Billion installs.

So, what’s SuperPitch?

🤟🏻 Industry Highlights

🎬 Supercell’s Clash of Clans is coming to Netflix!

Barbarians, Arrows & Absurdity.

Yep, it’s official: Netflix is bringing the world of Clash to life with a brand-new animated series straight out of Supercell’s chaotic, comedy-filled universe.

😶‍🌫️ 50 Layoffs at Wooga Berlin Office

Berlin-based Wooga has quietly cancelled its upcoming title Claire’s Chronicles: Solitaire, leading to a wave of layoffs across the Playtika-owned studio.

⚡️ Can hyper-casual still work?

Anything is possible, but, I’d recommend against it.

👎🏻 Squad Busters’ original thesis has been falsified.

What once seemed like KPI paradise: hypercasual-esque core, aggregating Supercell’s beloved IPs à la Super Smash Bros., and infinite consumable-based monetization with zero marginal cost, is now unrecognizable.

⭐️ 7 Things Squad Busters Needs to Experiment with NOW

The game needs to go crazier. If game development aligns with an explore-exploit model, Squad Busters must continue exploring.

⚙️ How to utilize your in-game friends lists with “Social helper” mechanics?

This mechanic, which essentially means borrow a friend’s character for 1 battle per day 😅, is a popular social feature in many F2P mobile RPGs, mainly gacha games.

💵 Game Investments

🇹🇷 Casual Mobile Games: TaleMonster Games secures $7M

TaleMonster Games, an Istanbul studio founded by Peak Games veterans on a mission to bring depth and creativity back to casual puzzle games, raised $7M in funding.

TaleMonster Games secures $7m seed funding to boost puzzle game development | PocketGamer.biz

🧩 Studio 42 Secures $3.6M to Power Up Puzzle Games

The round was led by Play Ventures, with backing from GEM Capital and Arcadia Gaming Partners. The studio’s 14-person team is spread across four countries and includes talent with experience from Belka Games, Snap Inc., Playrix, and Game Insight.

🍌 Super Banana Studios Raises Funding for Casual Puzzle Games

Founded by Danil Moskovoy and Nikolay Ternovoy, two industry veterans with roots in Zeptolab, Voodoo, Tripledot, Popcore, and Playrix, Super Banana is built on a sharp thesis: build fast, build smart, build with purpose.

💸 Layer.ai raises $6.5M: AI Content Creation for Game Studios

We’re the leading AI-powered tool for content creation, and we’re here for game studios,” said Volkan Gurel, CEO of Layer.

😶‍🌫️ Investing in Gaming Stocks?

2020 feels like yesterday… but $1,000 then could’ve made you $15,300 today.

More » InvestGame

⭐️ Mobile Game Marketing

⭐️ Mobile Game Monetization is both Art & Science

🦄 11 Tips for Killer UA Ops - Q2 2025

Here we go again! The previous UA killer articles were super successful, so I started writing a UA killer tips segment.

📊 Is 24-Month Payback the New Normal?

We discuss insights from UA data from over 300 games in 2024.

⚡️ Offline Games Reaches 10.8 Million DAU

The game skips Banners and Interstitials and monetizes entirely from Rewarded Ads.

Assuming that 40% of users watch an average of 4 Rewarded ads daily, and adjusting for organic eCPMs, about $80k/day in ad revenue or close to $30M annually.

💰 Century Games's Kingshot just passed $1M a Day

In less than 3 months from launch, scaling downloads to 200K a day.

⭐️ Hottest New Genre: Creative Copy-Paste Simulator

Same layout. Same mechanic. Same “rocks fall, drama happens” edit.

🧩 New Puzzles: Bite Size Insights!

Out of 552 new puzzle games released last week, 87 made it with a decent CPI.

🐬 River Game Arrived at $2B Lifetime User Spending

In April, Top Heroes hit $20M in monthly revenue, compared to Top War’s $8M.

🌲 PlaySimple’s Word Search Explorer makes $163K a day in Ad Revenue

Looking at these games even though their overall daily revenue is similar, the difference is of course the volume of installs they are pulling in.

👑 Royal Mach Hits a New High With $6B User Spending

The game added one more billion in user spend in just 4 months. 🤯