App Review woes, GTA leaves Netflix, Türkiye's hot streak, iconic icons, Zombies Run, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games industry. Here we go. Here's a fun one. Apple is holding back millions from developers having wrongly accused them of fraud, says Apple's former app review boss, Philip Shoemaker. So, I spotted this on Substack a little while ago. Uh Shoemaker has a Substack about all things App Store and wrote a post called the App Store's new scandal recently in which he claims that he's spoken to multiple app and game developers who have had their account just terminated without any explanation, no evidence provided. And of course, their payments have now been withheld. millions of dollars in some cases. Another messy one for app review to handle. Shoemaker obviously used to run app review, worked with Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller during

the beginnings of the app store. So he knows what he's talking about. I think he is now a consultant working with developers on ways to get the most out of the app store. So hence his substacking and blogging. He says, "In short, Apple can accuse you of fraud, shut down your account, keep your money, and never tell you why." A very concise way of summing up Apple's behavior in the last 10 to 15 years, according to Shoemaker at least. He goes on to say, "This fraud accusation problem is also getting worse." And perhaps most cynically, he suggests that there are marketing agencies out there who can run deliberately fraudulent marketing campaigns for competitors apps in order to trigger Apple's fraud systems and get them pulled from the app store, which is quite a claim. I'd be interested to hear

from anyone listening who has seen this in action. But yes, this was more of a theme of the website a couple of years ago when people were really coming out and having a go at review that seems to have calmed down lately. But, you know, when you do talk to developers at review continues to be a complete nightmare, it's just been a nightmare for such a long time that it perhaps doesn't get the coverage it should. So, this is my attempt at reflecting that and reminding people that yes, Apple needs to get its act together with that review as it has needed to get its act together for the last decade plus. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is leaving Netflix games soon as well as 12 other titles, but GTA is the big one that has racked up over 57 million downloads through Netflix since it was released in December 2023. It's top performing game

by an absolute mile. So, it leaving Netflix is a big sign once again that Netflix is rebooting and refocusing somewhat. I mean, those figures will be purely downloads. I would assume that the retention is quite bad once people realize it's not much fun to try and play a GTA game on your phone. But the other titles leaving the service soon are sort of emblematic of the change to approach at Netflix. Civilization 6, Reigns: Three Kingdoms, Kentucky Route Zero, 12 Minutes, or kind of cool indie games that have critical acclaim, but perhaps not the numbers to back up their continued presence on Netflix games. I also pulled some numbers on the current standings at Netflix Games. Like I said, GTA San Andreas by far the top download, 57.4 million installs.

Second, Storyteller, 22.5 million. Football Manager Mobile. Third, 14.8 million. Bloons TD6 14.77 million. Those are the top five alltime Netflix games by downloads according to App Magic. And the reboot continues. So, there's a load of family games, a load of party games playable on your TV. And also Red Dead Redemption and WWE coming to Netflix games in the next few weeks. So, the turnaround is nearly complete and we will see how this new approach plays out in the weeks and months to come. It's Thanksgiving week, so things tend to quieten down a little bit. This week's gave me the chance to clear the decks and publish some things I've been meaning to get out the door for a little while. First among them is Turkey. Regular listeners of the podcast will

know I went to Istanbul last month and at the Mobictum conference I got a good sense of what's going on in the Turkish ecosystem and in particular there was a couple of good talks about the current mobile gaming climate there from Akin Babuette and Anton Gordetski and a finance type minister from Turkey and couple of other investors and I things like that. I wrote it all up in an article and as I say in the piece is perhaps no surprise to the average mobile gamer.biz reader or listener copying what Turkey does has come up at every single one of the off thereord events this year. And in the piece I ask, can other markets realistically compete with Turkeykey's mix of extremely hardworking, lowercost workers, huge government incentives, and a gang of investors committed to backing local talent? Probably not right now, at

least. I conclude. There's a little bit of context there about how Zingga and its M&A team certainly helped kickstart this ecosystem with landmark deals for Peak, $1.8 8 billion dollars and Rolic 180 million plus in 2020 that have helped fan the flames of this ecosystem. And then from there, of course, we've seen Dream Games, Good Job, Grand Spike, Ruby, and many others emerge and flourish. There's some other remarks in there from Anton saying that Istanbul took the crown as mobile gaming's capital from Helsinki a couple of years ago. There's some more comments from Akin on Turkeykey's talent for brute forcing things, making them work, making them better, executing, finding quick hacks. He did warn in that talk as well though that the ecosystem could overheat if too many investors

invest in too many similar products. most obviously Matt 3 puzzle game studios and hybrid casual game studios as well as that sort of investor communities led back in and also firms like Leighton ventures the government has a big part to play I asked Mobict and founder Batu who I'm sure lots of people listening to this will know to just explain what exactly the government is doing there's cashback schemes studios receive a percentage of their marketing spend back after meeting certain criteria. There's also no corporation tax for studios based in designated technology development zones or techno parks. Equipment is VAT and customs duty exempt. There's income tax relief for employees working on R&D projects and further state support for personnel costs for up to five years.

So, I'm recording this as the UK announces its budget and our economy seems to be plateauing somewhat, whereas Turkey, huge incentives for founders, tax breaks, all designed to encourage startups. And I think there's a lot to learn here for trade bodies, for governments around the world. But if you look at Turkey and what they are doing, there's loads of investment going into these studios. They're all going to come out with their products fairly soon and the cycle will perhaps continue where that you'll see hundreds of millions, billion dollar exits in the next few years. Perhaps Zinga will swoop again. You never know. But yeah, another loose theme from the off thereord events this year is that certainly in the UK, we need to learn how to be well, one person described it as killers, be more ruthless, be more aggressive. Perhaps

the UK is a little bit frightened, a little bit sort of squeamish about earning money. And we probably need to get over that if we're going to compete with ecosystems like Turkey where it is all hardcore work, laser focus on results, great government funding, and a VC community willing to spend big on people they believe in. You are halfway through the podcast. Here is a commercial break. I'll be back after this. Exola connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally with Exola Web Shop. Sell virtual items, in-game currency, subscriptions, and custom offers directly to players while driving up to five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number one web shop solution, Exola provides the tools for developers to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit exola.com to learn more. That's xsol.com.

There's also a piece this week on how to make an iconic icon. This is written by Alex, one of my freelance contributors that you may have seen his name on the site before. He also works for gamesindustry.biz and he asked three experts what goes into making a fully optimized tapable icon. There's lots of good advice in there, including some thoughts from Michael Flareup Flareup, who has literally written the book on the subject. It's called the app icon book. He says, "Styals come and go, but the job is the same. Create a recognizable and scalable little piece of utilitarian art. Clarity of concept and a unique silhouette are still paramount. The icons we remember fondly are the ones that feel wellcrafted and connect with the viewer. Just to give you a peak behind the curtain, I don't really publish that much of this kind of how-to guide type content and people seem to have liked it, so that's good. Uh, and there may well be more with this kind of

thing coming up soon. Um, so yes, read how to make an iconic icon if you are thinking about app store optimization. There's some good hints and tips in there to enjoy. A quick one from Monday. Naomi Alderman, the author of The Power and The Future, those are two different books, not one. She has bought back Zombies Run and The Walk, a two sort of gamified fitness apps that she co-created with UK Studio 6 to start. That studio was led by Adrien Han, who has written a book on gamification as well. This was a press release that was embargoed. I followed up and asked exactly how much Alderman bought these apps back for. I was told it was a high six figure sum. Zombies Run and The Walk are UK success stories really. They've been running for over a decade. Combined, they've rad in about 10 million. So, a steady, if not

spectacular, earner. And the reason I covered this is that these kinds of things don't often get that much coverage from mainstream games industry media and it's a UK success story that's exclusive to mobile and I thought it was interesting. So good luck to Naomi who has taken back full creative control of Zombies Run and The Walk. A a side note to that story, those games were bought by a blockchain firm at the height of the mania around web 3, metaverse, blockchain, etc. That company Olive X seems to be retreating now back into more typical fitness products. But yeah, Zombies Run and The Walk now back under the creative control of original co-creator Naomi Alderman. Another meaty data digest contains multiple interesting number nuggets. There's a chart in there from Aldora,

the data company run by Zost Vandernan, who is leading analyst type voice in the games business. It claims that Royal Match is the top earning mobile entertainment franchise ahead of Candy Crush, Pokemon with its various Go TCG pocket games and also Monopoly obviously led by Monopoly Go. Uh so another win for Dream Games there. Speaking of Monopoly Go, Scopes game led October's US spending charts. Mobile earnings were up 10% yearon year according to sensor tower and market research firm sir kana a full top 10 in there vita majong once again the top most advertised game in October according to social peta there's early numbers from app magic on Disney magic match 3D that's earning about 30 grand a day 1.4 4 million in lifetime

revenue since launch in October. So, a decent start for Jam City's new game. Mobile is now just 5% of Ubisoft's net bookings, down from 8% last year. That was part of Ubisoft's financials, which were delayed due to some boring accounting stuff as I predicted in last week's podcast. And as a side note on that, Tencent has indeed completed its 1.16 billion euro investment in Ubisoft's new Vantage Studios division, which is the new home of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow 6. The stats and graphs on China's mobile gaming industry from Exola, and Resident Evil Survival Unit got a million downloads in its first day. Not actually sure that's very good, but the company behind it are sending out a ton of press releases, so I thought I'd throw him a bone. The other regular this week, Soft Launch. Moon Active has removed Matt

Dreams Tile Puzzle from Soft Launch. There's also the addition of Plants Versus Zombies 3, The Sims Labs Town Stories, Super Sense Jewelry Hunter Go, which looks like match three meets Monopoly Go. There's what looks like a sequel to Match Factory from Zingga called Sort Factory. And Ubisoft has given slightly more firm dates on The Division Resurgence and Rainbow 6 Mobile. Both are due out by the end of its financial year, which is March 2026. Once again, thank you to everyone who came to Off the Record last week. It was another great gathering of mobile game brains. We were up against Slush and Unite. Attendance was great. I think off the record has a slightly smaller events budget than Unity and Slush. There will be more in 2026 once I have had a rest

over the Christmas period and thought about it a bit more. I think there will be, as I may have said last week, there will probably be fewer of these, but bigger and better. As we head into Christmas and things slow down a little bit, there's a little bit more time to think about what's going to happen 2026. So, feel free to send in feedback on this podcast, on the website, on areas I'm not covering enough, areas that I am covering too much, things that you want to read about. I'm also collecting your game of the years and your predictions for 2026 right now, just like every year. So, email me anytime, neilmobileamer.biz. I'm always available. Speak to you next week.