Apple app review woes, EA job cuts, Supercell, Monopoly Go and more

Hello and welcome to the mobilegamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games business. Here we go. Have you seen App Store review times stretch out in the last few weeks and months? Several anonymous game development people, CEOs, company bosses, have told me in the last week and a half that they have and those conversations were the basis of this story we published on Tuesday, which Apple, to be fair, responded to immediately when I requested a comment about it all, outlined what it is doing to handle the new wave of AI-made apps and games being submitted to the store and gave me a statement. So, according to these people who wanted to stay anonymous because they didn't want to damage their relationships with Apple,

some of them have seen review times for new games in particular stretch from the usual 24-48 hours approval to weeks, several weeks in some cases. There's a lot more back and forth with that review, they have said in recent times, and they also noted that no such problems can be found with the equivalent process on the Google Play Store. Review times, approval times on that store seem to be largely the same, which is interesting. And there's a little bit more context in the article around what many are calling vibe-coded apps and games, but I'm not going to use that term cuz it's awful. The information reported that AI-made apps and games had caused an 84% year-on-year jump in submissions to Apple App Store. That was a report back from April. Apple's developer forums are

as ever flooded with complaints about app review. And [snorts] there's also things like Runway's app review time tracker, which have shown a recent rise in average App Store review and approval times. One game developer CEO told us, "Devs are waiting weeks for updates and new app submissions to be approved by Apple. It's gone back a decade in terms of approval times. Google is totally fine, though." Another one agrees and says, "When they do get a reply, it is a generic automated template rather than insightful evaluation. Google Play is fine. Totally consistent, no recent delays. At the time of writing, we have five apps waiting for review for over a week, and all were approved on Google Play within 24 hours. Time is money, and these extended waiting periods directly disrupt developer release schedules and product road maps. This poor service by Apple is

costing developers significantly." Another one talks about experiencing repeated issues with app reviews, automated rejections based on inaccurate conclusions, test accounts review notes being overlooked, games flagged as spam or copies based on generic gameplay mechanics or visual style, vague feedback. And it concludes, "For a small studio, this creates unnecessary back and forth, delays critical updates and releases, costs valuable time, and results in lost revenue." One [snorts] mid-sized game developer I spoke to about this issue had not seen any change in app review times. They run a pretty well-established game on the App Store, which has been out for about 5 years. So, it seems that it is new apps that are causing the bottleneck or apps submitted from relatively new companies. Apple, when contacted, as I say,

were actually really proactive, sent me a load of contacts, which I have summarized in the piece. They did say that it has prioritized reviews of updates to existing apps and expanded its use of automation in the app review process. They've also strengthened abuse detection and added safeguards against repeated submissions with the same unresolved issues. They also gave me this stat. In the last 12 weeks, its app review team processed an average of 378,000 app submissions per week. They also recently launched an app review help portal on its developer site and stressed that developers can request an expedited review or use the bug fix submission process where relevant. There's also a fairly general quote here that I've added. But, the gist of that is

that they are excited to see developers embracing the latest tools to turn their ideas into apps and we continue to evolve our review process to support that growth, Apple says. Um and they reiterate that they have to maintain the same high standards for every app and game submitted. So, yeah, couple of weeks in the making this story. It's a good read and representative of what's happening on the stores right now. The headline, if you want to read more, is app review times are being dragged down by a flood of AI-made apps and games. EA is cutting 400 jobs as part of a restructure, which will also see the publishing giant close BioWare, the beloved maker of Mass Effect and many other RPGs. A memo sent around internally and obtained by Variety and Bloomberg

confirmed that. About 3% of the global workforce will be affected. That's about 400 jobs. And BioWare's Edmonton, Canada office would therefore close as part of a bit of a reshuffle over there, which means work on a Sims game known as Project Lotus will stop. And the Sims team will refocus on a project called Evergreen. The Skate team will be downsized, but there are also investments going into action-adventure stuff like Star Wars Battlefront 3, an Iron Man game, a new Star Wars Jedi title, and further investments in Apex Legends, EA FC, Madden, etc., etc. There was no word on what this means specifically for mobile in the memo, but it is worth noting that

the $55 billion deal to take EA private was completed in August, and the company has been delisted from public markets. It is now effectively owned by Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. This means a huge windfall for its executive CEO, Andrew Wilson, as we reported back in November 2025, stands to earn about $105 million. Laura Miele, about 44 million for her. Stuart Canfield, 33 million. Mala Singh, Jacob Schatz, 24.6 million each. We spoke to one EA mobile Insider when this deal was done and they were pretty bullish about it all saying that it will allow EA to invest properly in user acquisition for its games monetize a little bit harder

and so on and pointed to the example set by another Saudi investment Scopely which is now owned by Savvy Games Group and later went on to acquire of course Niantic's gaming portfolio including Pokémon Go, Monster Hunter Now, Pikmin Bloom, and so on. So, yes, cuts at EA maybe not a surprise but still very sad. Good luck to those EA staff now looking for work. Supercell has completed its acquisition of Merge Mansion maker Metacore. The Merge Mansion team moved into Supercell's Helsinki office this week. As of October 19th financial terms for the deal have not been disclosed but Supercell which had previously invested in Metacore announced its plans to buy the rest of the company in May. Since then Metacore has cut 159 staff at

its Helsinki HQ and closed its offices in Germany and Sweden. The game also has a new general manager former Small Giant Games CEO Jose Sañudo Nájera. I hope I'm saying that right. And Merge Mansion according to App Magic has earned around $490 million in app purchase revenue since its 2020 launch. So, Merge Mansion now a Supercell game Metacore now part of Supercell.
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Hasbro continues to do rather well from its decision to license out the Monopoly property to Scopely. It earned $41 million in Q3 in Q3 alone from Monopoly Go, bringing the 9-month total from that game to 127 million. This has got to be, as I've probably said before, one of the most lucrative licensing agreements ever made. It also does give us a slight sense of how Monopoly Go is performing because a lot of Scopely's revenue is obfuscated because of its earnings through web shop. So, it's hard to paint a full picture of how the game is doing. But, but roughly 41 million is about the same as what it earned in Q1. And slightly down from Q2's 44 million. And that follows on from various crossovers from Looney Tunes to The Simpsons and the current season, which is K-pop Demon Hunters, and

Ghostbusters. So, yes, Scopely and Monopoly Go and Hasbro all still doing pretty well. You may have read about a thousand layoffs at Netflix at the end of last week. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, if I remember rightly. And since then, I've been scouting around to see how many of those thousand layoffs were games people. There's a Netflix Games Talent Network spreadsheet doing the rounds on LinkedIn, which lists at the time we published this story, 57 people formerly of Netflix working in games who are now seeking new employment. And obviously, that list isn't necessarily a complete one, but it's the best we've got. Overall, the thousand people represents about 6% of its workforce. This follows all sorts of stuff going on at Netflix Games, of course. Netflix closed LA-based Oxenfree maker

Night School, Helsinki studio Moon Loot, cut other roles across its internal games teams. It also made loads of layoffs at Refactor, the studio that made its FIFA World Cup game. It acquired, then closed, Boss Fight Studios. It bought Spry Fox back in 2022, which has since gone independent. Most famously, perhaps, it set up a AAA game studio in LA, then closed it before that really got going. And this is all part of the ever-changing Netflix Games strategy, which saw Mike Verdu replaced by former Epic Games boss Allan Tuscan in 2024. And these moves, as they often do, come before some third-quarter financial results, which will be out probably by the time you listen to this.

So, yes, staff laid off at Netflix. Good luck to anyone seeking employment right now. The co-founder of Wargaming, Nick Katselapov, hope I said that correctly, has attracted another 10 million in investment in Mika Games, which aims to help mobile game developers bridge the gap between having a proven marketing record to access financing, but needing the upfront capital to build it. So, Flint Capital led this round and Mika Games will have a little bit more money to spend on product development, paid user acquisition tests, and plenty more. Mika Games has invested in five games so far, including Legend Dale and Punko. Not heard of either of them, but Mika invested 2 million in Punko in 2025 and says it aims to deploy about

50 million dollars in total. So, Wargaming co-founder Nick Katselapov has a little bit more money to spend investing in high potential mobile games looking for what looks like more user acquisition funding. In data digest this week, Sensor Tower put out another of its top mobile game publisher lists, which combines in-app purchase, ad revenue, and web shop revenue. Scopely is actually on top by quite a way. This is for the US market in Q3. 507 million total revenue for Scopely. Second, Century Games, 280 million. Dream Games, 271. Then there's a bit of a drop to King, 216 million in earnings for Q3. The full top 10 is in the article. Interesting stuff. There's some more data from AppMagic, which does a good job of putting out its data in digestible

chunks. Block Blast is top of the hyper-casual downloads chart with 47 million downloads in Q3, followed by Arrow Puzzle, Mergedoku, Amaze Go, and Bus Traffic Fever. Sales are down, but profits are up at MAG in Q4. So, some stats and figures from the Swedish puzzle game maker there. UFL has got 10 million downloads. This is a FIFA-ish contender, or should I say EA FC style contender in that space, which also includes things like Dream League Soccer. There's some stats on the Cannon Ball Physics genre, which is a new one that sprung up, the main two titles being Royal Smash and Smash Fest, who are duking out at 6.7 and 6.4 million in in-app purchase earnings, according to AppMagic stats.

Crazy Games has got 60 million active users. And there's a few more graphs and bits and bobs in there. Daily digest every Wednesday. In our regular jobs and new games digests, we have moves and promotions at Microsoft, Sky Darts, Apple, Google, Scopely, Supercell, Tripledot, Trailmix, Miniclip, Mainstay Games, Loom, Dream, Smadex, Rollic, Sypher Games. And in new games, a load of new indie games hit the App Store as part of its indie game promotion. Titanium Core, not part of that promotion, but an interesting and well-thought-of puzzler, also coming to mobile on October 29th. No Man's Sky, the big release on Apple devices October 28th. Sifu, the well-regarded fighting game, Vampire Crawlers, Nine Kings, Little Kitty Big City, another Gundam game,

a new game from Nüverse, new games from Atari, Raw Fury, Noodlecake, Bandai Namco, Konami, and more. You can keep abreast of the latest new games, release dates, soft launches, and more every Friday in New Games Digest. And that's it for this week. It is now much colder and wetter, which makes going on a walk, recording these podcasts slightly more of a challenge, but that's good. I like a challenge. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.