🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Ubisoft Restructures, IAP Hits $167B, Turkey Keeps Raising, Pokémon Goes IRL

Mobile mobile in-app purchase revenue hit 167 billion in 2025 according to Sensor [music] Tower report. Yeah. Stuff is growing on IP revenue side. Downloads are going [music] down, so they're going through this monetization first era where volume is not as that important as monetization [music] and being able to squeeze the LTV. Two and a Half Gamers exclusive. Breaking news. [music] Literally breaking. Hi there. This is Two and a Half Gamers segment again and we're going to dive into the news of this week. Beginning with our favorite story of Ubisoft. So, there was some pretty [music] major news by Ubisoft really revealed this week, which concerns a structure, some cuts, and some new policies. So, Ubisoft reveals new creative house

structure, cancels six games, announced final round of cost cutting, and studio closures [music] to drive 200 million savings. So, what was done here is pretty much Ubisoft is now segmented [music] into these five houses. And each of the five houses beginning with Vantage Studios, that was the one that they offloaded [music] it major IPs, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, and now [music] Tencent is all over it and slowly taking over. So, that would be the creative house house one. The creative house two [music] would be Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, The Division, so the shooter house. Creative house three would be Operating Rooster select sharp life experiences. So, uh stuff like Brawlhalla, For Honor, Riders Republic, Skull and Bones, [music] the too big to fail pirate game, and The Crew. House number four dedicated to immersive fantasy worlds, Anno, Beyond Good and Evil, Might and Magic, Prince of Persia,

Rayman. And house number five would be [music] the mobile house, which is Hasbro portfolio, Hungry Shark, then Ketchapp, and Kolibri, of course. Oh, there's the scanner restructure. There are some games canceled including Prince of Persia Sands of Time remake. I was kind of looking forward to it, so beat that. And three new IPs and one mobile title. On top of it, Ubisoft is asking all staff to return to the office full-time to boost the collective performance for triple-A. Still remember when they called it quadruple-A [music] in their case. Um so, what's happening here? Ubisoft is pretty much on the verge [music] of going down. So, something had to give and this is pretty much what happened. So, they're cutting more people, closing studios left to right, and either delaying or closing all games, [music] pretty much trying to live again within their means.

Let's see what happens. I'm still not very optimistic about execution in most of these houses because let's see what happens there. But again, the management, in my opinion, needs to change. Let's see. Cuz it's still within the Guillemot family. Last piece of news regarding Ubisoft is about its new strategy towards AI. As always, Ubisoft is the one that hops from one trend to the other. So, this this was always there. New operating model will further empower the execution of the group strategy centered on open-world adventures and game-as-a-service native experiences supported by targeted investments, deeper specialization, and cutting-edge technology including accelerated investment beyond player-facing generative AI. Which I guess the PC players will be really happy about, but what am I to say? Oh, but yeah, I'm all for AI as as as far as how to use it actually and you don't create the

famous AI slop. So, please don't call me calling Ubisoft to be Ubisoft, but yeah, let's see. Moving on. Rovio partners with Kingsoft and Kingsoft Shiyou and it's because they're relaunching Angry Birds back to China. Angry Birds, one of the most recognized IPs on mobile in the world. Originally launched in 2009 and it's already surpassed 5 billion downloads globally all together. The next Rovio announcement is that it partners with OBB to develop Angry Birds Rush, which is, as listeners may know, as we multiple times covered it on the podcast just briefly, is a luck battler or [music] coin looter or however you want to call it, pretty much the third generation of social casino games. Hopefully, we'll [music] get to get Rovio to speak about this live on the podcast soon. Moving on. Anka Ventures launches to back early-stage mobile game and app startups. If you guessed that this is

coming from Turkey, uh yes, this is coming from our friends from Turkey [music] because the market is extremely hot there. Some people are saying already overheated, but let's say because [music] there are big hits coming from Turkey and Turkey is still going full steam ahead. Italian competition authority is investigating Activision Blizzard over Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty [music] Mobile monetization. Pretty much some stuff on the seeming UI practices concerning parental controls and all these other things. So, no, it's not the world apocalypse [music] as everybody is kind of waiting to happen. Mobile mobile in-app purchase revenue hit 167 billion in 2025 [music] according to Sensor Tower report. Yeah. Stuff is growing on IP revenue side. Downloads are going down, so we're going through this monetization first era where volume is not as that important as monetization and being able to squeeze

the LTV is. Continuing, Runescape, uh your favorite childhood game if you were there, surpasses 3 billion in lifetime revenue as Jagex, the company behind it, marks its 25th anniversary this week. Yeah, it's pretty big achievement, I would say. This game, even though it's again, go Google it and you'll know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I would really like to see even games like Ultima Online also still doing these things, but yeah. Uh hats off to the guys and wishing [music] happy anniversary. Outfit7 launches new game division PlayVally, [music] and yeah, get this. Studio launch first title on PC and working on additional games planning new IPs and concepts. [music] Yeah, uh Outfit7, the guys behind Talking Tom from Slovenia, launching PC games was not on my bingo card this year, but why not? I'm really looking forward to it because as I said, as you know, they're focusing on Steam PC [music]

platform more and more as we go. Valve to slightly relax AI disclosure guidelines on Steam. So, what's happening here again? Thankfully, AI is getting more [music] mainstream and more streamlined. Before you had to disclose any usage of AI, if I understood correctly from the article, [music] and now you only need to disclose usage of generative AI including when [music] the game generates assets in itself as part of its functionality. So, that's good. Um hopefully, we get to kind of stop talking about killing printing presses. Wild game maker Moonshot laying off unspecified number of staff. Why [music] I'm keeping this up is because Moonshot is part of Dreamhaven and Dreamhaven being one of the biggest hopes of the PC [music] startups pretty much out there because this is literally uh set up by Mike Morhaime [music] in 2020, the former president of

Blizzard. And [music] they're already were already are basically five studios which are making games under this giant umbrella of ex-Blizzard folks.
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And it seems that it's getting from bad to worse for them because yeah, uh
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I guess market has changed a lot since they relaunch or since they launched World of Warcraft or StarCraft, but again, let's see. Fingers crossed that this can go somewhere because I would really like to see some new Blizzard-style quality games from there as I don't think so we're going to get that from Blizzard itself anymore. And then we have interactive Pokémon experience to debut debut at Universal Studios Japan. Because Pokémon is 30 years old this year. Again, congrats. It's actually quite mysterious because we don't know what this will actually be. [music] If it will be some kind of a Super Nintendo World theme park or some single experience or whatnot. They tried

to be like kind [music] of it will be this and that global development project. To bring the Pokémon world to life in an unprecedented interactive [music] and rich way. It's like I'm hearing Trump really. Oh, but let's see. I'm really looking forward to what happens here. Hopefully, maybe it will be some kind [music] of VR holography whatever thing. Let's see. Anyway, Pokémon is still killing it and for those who don't know, there should be Pokémon Stadium releasing this year and maybe even more Pokémon games on mobile. So, going to be a tough year for all the other Pokémon mobile games there. Anyway, that was the news. Happy weekend and see you next week. Ciao.