🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Mobile Stagnates, Monopoly GO Hits $6B, Liftoff Files for IPO

No other title has reached 6 billion lifetime AP milestone this quickly, said Sensor Tower analyst Sam Anu, [music] adding that the speed of its rise is unprecedented, even among the most successful games ever released. Two [music] and a half gamers exclusive breaking you [music] literally breaking. Hello everyone and welcome to another two and a half gamers news segment because [music] it's beautiful Friday and what better way could we celebrate that it's Friday than by looking back at the biggest news stories. So today I have three leading news stories that I think is the most important [music] in terms of mobile gaming from the last week. Global mobile gaming revenue rose slightly to $81.8 8 billion in 2025, while non-game app consumer [music] spending surged 21% to 85.6

billion. Really big caveat here. This is me talking. This is also what we're seeing. Gaming is kind of stagnating, but not really because there's a lot of revenue that's not being counted by these platforms cuz there's a significant amount of revenue that now goes to web shops. Anyway, let's get back to the story. So that's according to sensor tow's state of mobile 2026 report which described 2025 as a year of divergence in mobile gaming. There were no new games that surpassed 1 billion in revenue [music] for the first time with caput TV and GPT leading the charge. The latter reaching over [music] 3 billion in inapp purchases. Overall, 18 apps reached 1 billion in revenue last year, which was evenly split between games and non-game sensor tower notes. And that Pokémon Go TC Pocket is on track to secure over this revenue threshold in 2026. Looking at genres, casual and midcore remained at the top earners, while

hybrid casual saw the highest [music] increase in spending, growing to 17.1% from 3.5 billion to 4.2 billion. [music] If you've also seen this podcast, you will definitely realize that we've covered a lot more hybrid casual games this year. So that makes a lot of sense. The strategy genre also saw downloads increase across Asia, North America, and Europe with leading titles being Funflies. Last war Survival and White Survival were the top games globally in terms of revenue earned, followed by Dream Games Royal Match and Scopley's Monopoly Go. 10 cents remained at the top spot for IP publisher earnings at almost 8 billion followed by Scopley and Century [music] Games. Elsewhere, Roblox captured 75% of all visits to game publisher websites last year. 90% of those were direct while 5% came from organic [music] searches. However, Supercell's web store experienced the most traffic drawing in 1.5 billion visits. data from sensor

tower state of mobile report reflects iOS uh reflects iOS app stores and Google download revenue estimates between January 1st and December 31st [music] of 2025. So my little take on this before moving on to the next story is that yes looks like mobile games have started to decline or stagnate a little bit. However, big portion [music] of a lot of large scale developers now are actually reporting that they're sending almost 40 to 50% of their revenue to actually online web stores to circumvent the Google and app store fees. So, I'm not sure how true these amounts are right now, but yeah, hoping to get an estimate on a later episode so we can actually get some of the real data here. So staying with the same topic for the second news [music] story and that is uh reported by Respawn and that is that Monopoly Go becomes the fastest mobile

game to reach $6 billion in lifetime revenue. So here's the story. Scopley's Monopoly Go has surpassed $6 billion [music] in lifetime inapp purchases revenue, becoming the fastest mobile game in history to reach the milestone, according to estimates from Sensor Tower. The figure covers spending from Apple's App Store and Google Play uh was reached in 2025 just 1275 days after launch. Sensor Tower shows Monopoly Go hit the mark significantly faster than previous top earners. Mixie uh Monster Strike took days while Honor of Kings reached 6 billion in uh uh 1762 days. Other titles to cross [music] the threshold include Royal Match, which took 1868 days, Genching Impact, which took 1873 [music] days, and Clash of Clan from Supercell, which took it in $2,26 days. Launched globally on April 11th,

2023, Monopoly Go is estimated to be generating around $200 million per month. It currently ranks as the 14th highest gross grossing mobile game of all time by playing spender on iOS and Android making it the youngest title in the top 15. Only Royal Match released in 202 uh 2021 comes close in terms of recency. The report says that Monopoly Go was the number one mobile game worldwide by inapp purchase revenue in 2024 and has it at ranked as the top casual game by player spending since debut. [music] The firm also said that Monopoly was the highest earning mobile AP IP driven by revenue [music] driven by Monopoly Go and that the title title all tabletop themed mobile games by player spending in 2025. And here comes a quote. No other title has reached 6 billion lifetime AP milestone this quickly, said Sensor tower analyst Sam Anu, adding that the speed of its rise is unprecedented, even among the most successful games ever released.

Now, moving away from the story, personal take here. I think they probably have earned even more here because I know for a fact that Scopley has web stores, [music] which means that that's not really tracked by Sensor Tower right now, which means that probably it's safe to say that Monopoly Go has actually earned more revenue. Might even have hit this threshold a lot sooner. Not sure if Scop is going to say anything about it, but yeah, pretty interesting nonetheless. Now, moving on to our third and final story for this Friday lovely news update, and that is that Blackstonebacked Liftoff, the mobile ad network and DSP that merged with Vungle a couple years ago, has filed for a US initial public offering. So, the story goes, Liftoff, a mobile app marketing provider backed by Blackstone, filed for an initial public offering in the United States on Tuesday last week. Private equity firms are expected [music] to set up their

activity in 2026 as exits remain slow and holding periods extend, creating pressure to return more cash for investors. Reuters last year reported that Blackstone uh was exploring the sale of Liftoff that could value the business at $4 billion [music] or more, including an IPO or a private sale. So, I guess they went with the IPO here, right? So, the company reported a net loss of $25.6 million on a revenue of $491 million for the 9 months that ended on [music] September 30th, 2025, compared with a net loss of 7.4 million on revenue of 377 million for the same [music] period in 2024. So, what do we take from that? Revenue is growing, but so also is costs. So in May, Blackstone sold a minority stake uh in Liftoff to General Atlantic while retaining a majority ownership. Redwood City,

Californiabased Liftoff offers AI enabled platform that en that provides end-to-end performance marketing and monetization solutions for the mobile app economy. IPOs are likely to gain momentum in [music] 2026 as anticipated interest rate cuts bolster investor confidence and appetite for risk. The company intends to use its IPO proceeds for general corporate purposes and repay outstanding debts. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Jeff are the lead underwriters for the offering. So, Liftoff will list on the NASDAQ under symbol LFTO standing for Liftoff. Right. So, my take on this very interesting. So we kind of had the inkling that this would be the year that a lot of companies will go public in our admon [music] space or adte space. Liftoff merged with Vungle a couple of years ago. Basically merging a DSP with Vungle's SDK network giving them direct

[music] access to inventory which prompted the other largest DSP in the space called Maloco to basically start building their own SDK solution to get direct access to mobile demand. So my take on this or Felix's hot take would be that most likely Maloco will probably also file for a US IPO this year and basically [music] we'll be watching this IPO very closely for to see essentially how it goes. So that summarizes the news on this beautiful Friday. Wishing you a beautiful weekend and have a good day. Thanks for joining us. Bye-bye.