🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Google's Antitrust Blow, AppLovin's Hidden Strength & Smash Fest's Copycat Army

port. That's around 403 billion. Lots to unpack here, right? I guess this is like the best news ever. But fast bringing all these payment companies that allow you to have payments outside of the Google Play and App Stores. This is just another blow for them, right?
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Two and a half gamers exclusive.
Breaking [music] news.
Literally breaking.
Hello everyone and welcome to another fantastic news episode of the Two and a Half Gamers Podcast. This week again, it's me, Felix, uh reading you the news and explaining a little bit of what's going on in our beautiful industry. This week Matija and Jakub are on secondment in China Joy, so you get me two times in a row. So, I have two news stories for you today and then we're going to go through the top charts in Sensor Tower to see what is performing in this week inside of mobile. So, we start here that Google

has been hit with a 1 billion euro fine. The European Commission has fined Google 890 million uh for antitrust practices, reports uh from here from mobile game game developer biz, uh including making it difficult for developers to steer consumers towards web stores and prioritizing its own search services. Under the EU Digital Markets Act, Google Play developers should be able to freely inform customers of alternative and cheaper offers and direct them to those offers on websites or [music] alternative stores. But as part of an investigation into non-compliance that kicked off in 2024, the EU deemed Google gives preferential treatment to its own services over third parties, therefore breaching the Commission's rule rules. In particular, Google prevents app developers from freely communicating and promoting offers and concluding contracts with users in distribution channels of their choice, including third-party app stores. The EU

Commission said today, Google has been fined 460 million euros and 430 million for those breaches. As well as the fine, Google has been ordered to treat third-party services that feature in search results in a fair and non-discriminatory manner and allow app developers to freely communicate and promote offers and conclude contracts with users not only within but also outside the Google Play app store. Google now has 60 days to comply, after which it risk periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of its total worldwide turnover according to Alphabet's 2025 financial report. That's around 403 billion. Lots to unpack here, right? I guess this is like the best news ever for FastSpring and all these payment companies that allow you to have payments outside of the Google Play and app stores. This is just another blow for them, right? So, Google is fighting this tooth and nail. I think I read

somewhere that 12% of Google's revenues come from the Google Play app store. But, I have a feeling that a large portion of the profits of Google's is comes disproportionately from the Google Play Store as well because, yeah, just taking a 30% on payments, that's quite a profitable business to be in. Essentially, this means probably that Google will be under fire from even more companies in Europe that will use this to try to, yeah, get payment for damages. But, also the fact that we probably are heading to a place where Google and Apple no longer can pay or can charge 30 for their purchases in their app stores. This is great for developers, great for everything. Yeah, let's see where this comes out of. I think we're going to do another FastSpring episode in the future soon with Chip, who always has great insights on this topic. But, this is slowly unwinding and unfolding and it's going to be a bit longer before we're free and having normal style payment fees. So, moving on to our next story, this is

from Seeking Alpha. So, it's about AppLovin. Basically, it's written by Richard Durant. AppLovin, the market continues to underestimate the fundamental strength. In summary, AppLovin stock has come under pressure in recent months despite robust financial performance. This likely stems from concerns around competition, the e-commerce platform launch, and introduction of AI-powered ad tools. AppLovin's game gaming runway is likely larger than anticipated, which should be complemented by a more material expansion into other verticals. While AppLovin's valuation may appear high, this must be weighted against the company's high margins and strong [music] growth prospects. So, as you may or may not know, AppLovin stock has come under significant pressure in 2026, which is likely due to the combination of valuation and growth durability concerns. So, what actually happened here in the start of the year was that the announcement of CloudX with Adjust buying coincided with a big sell-off in

the markets on traditional software-as-a-service companies, which basically was labeled the SaaS apocalypse. AppLovin for some reason got lumped into this with everyone else and basically because CloudX being a AI-first tool, they thought that they were going to take the whole market. But, basically, what's actually happening is that AppLovin continues to grow, has super strong fundamentals, and essentially is dominating how you basically discover apps on mobile. It's now the largest network most likely on iOS and probably nearly the largest also on Android. So, yeah, it's quite interesting to see that basically no one really understands how our industry actually works, but
[snorts]
AppLovin max as long as the like dominant mediation player in our space, essentially will mean that they will have a strategic advantage on any other companies in [music] our markets. So, moving on now, let's take a little look

here at the top charts from Wednesday in the US on the games category side. So, leading, which has been increasing from the third place last week on free downloads, is Smash Fest from new game maker in Turkey, Flow Games. This is beating out Roblox, which is a hell of a company to beat out on, followed by Meow Doku. I think we've covered that on the podcast before. Vita My Ong, which is actually from the same studio as Meow Doku. Then we have Arrows by Lessmore, but then also here on the sixth place place, we have Royal Smash by Cypher Games. So, basically, Cypher Games copied Flow Games and now has a top six game, right? So, it's quite interesting to see that all the copies that copied Smash Fest, there's I think about 70 of them, but basically one of them is actually growing quite a lot, which is quite interesting. And we have also My Ong Blast, Magic Sort is the one that's probably fallen the most out of all

this. It's quite interesting to see. But what's also super interesting here is on the 18th place, we have Level Double. So, it's rumored that the original founder actually sold this game and essentially now a new company has taken it over and is actually scaling it up quite a lot. Super interesting. We also have EA Soccer, which is still increasing and still in the top 25, which is quite interesting after the end of the World Cup, but it's still going super strong. What else do we see here that's quite interesting? Let's take a look at the top grossing. We have Monopoly Go. And let's take a look at iOS as well. We have Monopoly Go, we have Candy Crush, Township, Monopoly Go, Royal Match. Yeah, Sand Zone zero, which is quite interesting climbing up quite a lot. In terms of the paying games, which is not that interesting because it's the same games that [music] has been forever, it's pretty much everything you'd expect and nothing really new

happening. But, it's quite interesting to see that Turkish studios still are dominating and fighting it out with the Chinese studios for dominance in the app stores. So, I'm going to end it there and saying that everyone's on summer holiday and I guess the news is not really catching up with that because there wasn't that much to pick on this week. But, still nonetheless an interesting week in the fascinating industry of mobile gaming. I'm Felix Bråberg. Thank you for listening in on this week's news segment. Bye-bye.