August
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Documents about August
Pokémon Masters EX Catches $75 Million Player Spending in First Year
Pokémon Masters EX achieved $75 million in global player spending during its first year of operation, establishing itself as the second-highest grossing mobile title within the Pokémon franchise.
- Pokémon Masters EX generated $75 million in player spending during its first year, making it the second-highest grossing mobile title in the Pokémon franchise.
- A major content update and rebranding to Pokémon Masters EX on August 27, 2020, triggered a four-fold increase in weekly revenue to $5.4 million.
- Japan was the primary revenue driver for the title, accounting for $39.3 million or 52.7% of total first-year spending, followed by the U.S. at $17.5 million.
State of Mobile Battle Royale: Fortnite Leaves a $1.2 Billion Hole in the Market
The removal of Fortnite from the Apple App Store and Google Play on August 13, 2020, created a significant disruption in the mobile battle royale landscape, effectively removing a title that had generated $1.2 billion in lifetime player spending.
- Fortnite generated $1.2 billion in lifetime revenue on mobile before its removal from the App Store and Google Play on August 13, 2020.
- The vast majority of Fortnite's mobile revenue came from the App Store, which accounted for over $1.2 billion in spending compared to $9.7 million on Google Play.
- PUBG Mobile is the global leader in the mobile battle royale genre, having generated approximately $3.5 billion in player spending as of August 13, 2020.
Epic Advances, Steam Reviews, Oh My!
This analysis examines the evolving landscape of digital game distribution, focusing on financial transparency within the Epic Games Store (EGS) and refined metrics for estimating Steam sales.
- Epic Games paid over $210 million in minimum guarantee advances for its initial EGS exclusives, but these titles only recouped $80 million, a 38% recovery rate.
- The 'Boxleiter Ratio' for estimating Steam sales has been revised to a more conservative 30x multiplier for games released in 2020 and later, down from 38x, due to increased review frequency.
- Epic Games has shifted its strategy away from advance-based exclusivity deals toward a more open storefront model after finding that only a minority of titles, such as Snowrunner and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, achieved significant commercial success.
How Did Fall Guys Get It So Right?
The success of the multiplayer title Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout serves as a case study for effective game design and marketing strategy in the 2020s.
- Fall Guys achieved over 5 million Steam sales within 20 days of its August 2020 launch by prioritizing a simple, physics-based battle royale format.
- Mediatonic secured an immediate, massive player base by launching the title as part of the PlayStation Plus monthly lineup.
- The project was developed with a budget between $3 million and $6 million, utilizing a focused scope to ensure a polished experience while allowing for future content expansion.
Tim Epic vs. Tim Apple
This analysis examines the evolving landscape of video game distribution, platform economics, and developer revenue, with a specific focus on the August 2020 legal conflict between Epic Games and Apple.
- The 30% commission fee charged by major platform holders remains a primary point of financial tension for developers, as highlighted by the 2020 legal conflict between Epic Games and Apple.
- Independent developers frequently struggle to achieve profitability, as net revenue is significantly eroded by platform fees, taxes, and operational costs, often necessitating external funding or rapid development cycles.
- Digital storefronts, including Steam, the Epic Games Store, and console ecosystems, are shifting toward an interconnected, subscription-heavy model exemplified by services like Apple One and EA Play.
Advertising During a Recession: 5 Innovative Marketing Practices
The primary purpose of this analysis is to provide actionable digital marketing strategies for businesses navigating economic downturns.
- Brands should segment their audience into four recessionary mindsets—'slam-on-the-brakes,' 'pained-but-patient,' 'comfortably well-off,' and 'live-for-today'—to tailor marketing strategies to varying levels of financial anxiety.
- Micro-moment marketing focuses on optimizing the first 0.05 seconds of a user's interaction with a website or app, as this brief window determines whether a customer stays or leaves.
- Animated video-storytelling serves as a non-obtrusive marketing tool to build brand connections, as demonstrated by Pipedrive’s use of Explain Ninja to create engaging, character-driven content.
Fortnite Removal From App Store and Google Play Causes Huge Decline in Revenue
The removal of Fortnite from the Apple App Store and Google Play in August 2020 represented a significant financial pivot for Epic Games, driven by a dispute over platform commission structures.
- Epic Games faces a monthly revenue loss exceeding $50 million following the removal of Fortnite from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
- Fortnite generated an estimated $350 million on the Apple App Store in 2020 prior to its removal.
- Since its launch on Google Play in April 2020, Fortnite earned approximately $3 million and recorded over 17 million downloads.
What Should a Game Publishing Agreement Look Like?
This analysis provides a benchmark for indie game publishing agreements, utilizing data collected from 30 non-mobile indie game contracts.
- Developers typically receive a 60% revenue share, which fluctuates to 55% when an advance is provided and rises to 71% in no-advance deals.
- The average financial advance for indie game funding is $318,000, increasing to $460,000 when excluding contracts that offer no upfront capital.
- Approximately 18% of publishing agreements provide no advance, a structure that generally correlates with higher revenue shares for the developer.
Vacation-Based Dividends: Time Off in the Games Industry
The games industry operates on a seasonal cadence driven by major events and product deliverables, yet many organizations fail to align their labor practices with these natural fluctuations.
- Institutionalizing time off as a predictable dividend rather than a reactive measure is essential for retaining the highly specialized talent whose departure can cause eighteen-month recruitment and training setbacks.
- Major publishers like Riot Games and Epic Games have historically implemented company-wide breaks only as reactive responses to intense expansion or public scrutiny regarding crunch culture.
- Rapid valuation growth, such as Epic Games tripling its value to nearly $18 billion in two years, frequently leads to management errors that prioritize scale over employee well-being.
Genre and Great Games Report
The Genre and Great Games Report serves as a comprehensive analysis of the mobile gaming landscape, designed to provide developers, marketers, and industry experts with actionable insights into player preferences and the feature sets defining successful titles.
- The 'Genre and Great Games Report' is a collaborative industry analysis produced by GameRefinery, Facebook Gaming, and Facebook IQ.
- The research is based on a comprehensive survey of over 13,000 mobile gamers.
- The report provides a cross-genre analysis of mobile gaming, covering market segments ranging from hyper-casual to midcore titles.
How Big Is Your Game's Discord?
This analysis explores the role of Discord as a community-building tool for video games and examines broader trends in game discoverability and platform marketing as of August 2020.
- Steam’s automated wishlist notification emails are a primary driver of sales, but developers must offer a discount of at least 20% to trigger these notifications.
- Discord serves as a vital hub for player retention, with effectiveness extending beyond official developer-run servers to include community-led and partner-affiliated hubs.
- While major titles like Minecraft, Valorant, Fortnite, and Roblox dominate Discord activity, indie games such as Terraria, Risk of Rain 2, Deep Rock Galactic, and TemTem maintain disproportionately high engagement levels.
What Do TikTok and Grindr Have in Common?
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) serves as the primary regulatory mechanism for addressing national security concerns regarding foreign ownership of American technology companies.
- The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has the authority to review and force the divestiture of foreign-owned assets deemed a national security risk, as demonstrated by the 2019 order for Beijing Kunlun Tech to sell the dating app Grindr.
- TikTok faces potential forced divestiture of its U.S. operations because its parent company, ByteDance, is subject to Chinese government data requests and the app's acquisition of Musical.ly was completed without initial CFIUS oversight.
- An outright ban of an app in the U.S. is legally and mechanically difficult compared to other nations because the U.S. lacks a national-level firewall, requiring enforcement at the app store distribution level.