Digital Chocolate’s diaspora, Destiny: Rising woes, EA’s shooter revival, November’s top games, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I'll go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games industry. Here we go. Let's talk about digital chocolate. This is a company that has cropped up so many times in the jobs digest articles I do every other Monday. It was famously Trip Hawkins mobile game company and the company that acquired Sumea led by Ela Parnan who [snorts] took a core group of six guys from Digital Chocolate and turned that into a small company called Supercell. That's not the end of the story. There are 12, 13, 14 other executives, influential people in that article who also worked at Digital Chocolate during that foundational time for the mobile games industry. And over time, I started collecting people who had worked at Digital Chocolate, asking people about it in

interviews, things like that. and it culminated in actually speaking to Trip Hawkins at a Supercell event in October 2024. So, here it is. Trip Hawkins and the Dchuk Mafia. The Deto Mafia is a phrase I'd heard from a couple of the alumni from Digital Chocolate. And just to run through some of those people, obviously you've got the Supercell 6 led by Ela Parnan. You've [snorts] also got Sonia at Phantom Game Labs, Gerard Fernandez, Omnid Drone, Scopely, David Fernandez, Remisile, who had senior roles at King and Sansoft, Auntie Hitara, Starbury, Mishka Katco, Savage, and deconstructor of Fun. Emmy Casso, now boss at Gamehouse, Jamie Lays, boss at Future Play, bought by Polarium. Marco Lastika who ran EA Helsinki, Zinga Helsinki and now Netflix Helsinki, Henrik Surinan, [snorts] one of the founders of Play

Ventures, very influential VC firm. Eric Suffort, mobile dev memo, blogger, advisor, consultant, now part of the unity team. Manel Sort, big deal at King. Mika Taminkosski, leader at Metacor at the moment, and there are plenty of others. Hawkins estimated that there are now hundreds of CEOs, he says, across gaming and tech who have previously worked for him. And what this group of people seems to excel at, I've summarized as combining the art and business of games. Hawkins says, quote, "The whole idea of a free-to-play game and a virtual economy, that was a fresh new idea. Most developers and game designers know how to make a good game mechanic, a core loop that's fun. Trying to design an economy is a very different situation. What had to be done is to knit those two together. And some people actually are really good at that. It's [snorts] these

types of brains that can combine the fun and the business of game design who have excelled. And clearly, judging by the seniority of these people, they're pretty much all CEOs or founders. Whatever Hawkins was doing back then at Digital Chocolate, it has had a massive influence on today's mobile games industry in terms of passing down wisdom. Obviously, you should read the article, but Hawkins says he was learning about the idea of company culture at college, at business school, and his first big job was at a company called Apple. He joined in 1978 when there was 50 people. He left in 1982 when there was 4,000. And there's a little anecdote in there about him going to Steve Jobs and Steve Wnjak, the founders of Apple, and saying to them, "We are losing our unique culture. Someone needs to keep on top of this." And they say, "We're a bit busy right

now reinventing what computers are." I'm paraphrasing. Hawkins is told to go away and take charge of that exact thing. So, he became kind of the Apple culture enforcer. culture lead at that formative time within the company. And those ideas obviously he has kept reinforcing at his time at EA and you know less successfully at 3DO digital chocolate and his other ventures that he now runs GF Games for a living which has just released a M3 game. key quotes on the DRock mafia [snorts] is that Hawkins says he wanted to be really good at [snorts] establishing and maintaining company cultures and that's how you get this diaspora. He says quote I probably helped a lot of these

people realize they could do it like Steve Jobs helped me realize I could do it. So obviously digital chocolate did not survive the transition from early smartphones through Facebook and then onto the app store. But obviously Supercell did and all those other people in that article have since gone on to have very successful careers having started out at Digital Chocolate. Yeah, enjoy putting that together. It took ages. I hope you read it and pass it around because when things take a long time like this, you want to be sure it gets read by lots of people and the right people pass it around to anyone who used to work at Digital Chocolate or are interested in company culture and Trip Hawkins. On Monday, I published another piece about Destiny Rising, which may well be the last one. Ryan Gilliam, who is deep inside the Destiny community. He picked

me another article about the current state of it. Season 2 has flopped. He says there's very little new content to enjoy in there. And looking at the numbers, that China launch hasn't happened yet. There's a small amount of revenue coming through China and it is technically in open beta there. You would imagine when Netis does fully launch that game in China, that will hopefully turn the game around, but it's not looking good. Ryan notes that while it is nominated for best mobile game at the Game Awards and next week, it may not be around to be nominated for best ongoing game in 2026 at the current rate. Couple of numbers for you. Destiny Rising downloaded 4.4 million times since its near global launch in August. According to App Magic, basically 12 million in inapp purchases to date.

Daily earnings peaked at 300,000 in September. But where you would expect a nice spike at the introduction of season 2, there is a little bump, but it has not continued. and it's now down to making about $25,000 a day. Uh there's a particularly tough paragraph in the middle here where it says, "While it seems a little early to complain about a lack of content, Rising asks players to log in daily and play the same things over and over again. It gets stale quickly without regular content injections, and players are already complaining about struggling to matchmake with others." There's also reference to what Ryan covered before in terms of the actually quite generous approach to player spend and the net system of evening out the playing field between payers and non-payers is maybe too gentle. And

given the amount of money it's making, maybe it does need to segregate paying players and free players a little bit more rigorously and have the payers compete on their own servers and have the free players compete separately. So yes, not looking good for Netty's and Bungie's bigname shooter. I have asked Nettis for comment on the article, but they have yet to respond. So, we'll see what happens with that one. You are halfway through the podcast. Here is a commercial break. I'll be back after this. Exola connects developers with the resources they [music] need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally. With Exola Web Shop, sell [music] 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 [music] number one web shop solution, Exola

provides the tools for developers to focus on what's most important. Creating great games. Visit exola.com [music] to learn more. That's xsol.com. Now then, is EA taking another shot at the mobile shooter category? It seems that way. It is hiring a VP and head of mobile shooters that'll report into Respawn and Battlefield GM Vince Sampella. This is a job ad that popped up on EA's recruitment site and obviously follows on from the cancellation of Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile in early 2023. The job ad says the successful candidate will expand existing franchises into new markets. Existing franchises being Battlefield and Apex Legends presumably and introducing innovative new titles that

complement and enhance the product strategies for our shooter category. [snorts] There's also reference to leveraging the mobile platform to expand franchise reach into global markets starting with Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. That's interesting. 10 cent seems to have the mobile shooter category all sewn up, certainly in China and Japan and Southeast Asia. So EA taking on that juggernaut is interesting and ambitious. So, this seems to be the beginnings of EA reviving the mobile shooter category and obviously comes within the context of that $55 billion Saudiled Go private deal which as one EA insider put it and not long after the deal was announced would allow EA to invest longer term in user acquisition and not be so beholden

to the 90day a earnings call clock that in some ways stops large game companies from taking risks and looking further ahead. So yes, Apex Legends Mobile, Battlefield Mobile could be coming back. Um, who might make those games is anyone's guess, but I if I was EA, I would commission Tencent or Netis to do it and split the money. Interesting stuff, especially considering all of that context around the Saudi takeover and the many, many mobile games EA has closed down in the last few years, including Apex Battlefield, Kim Kardashian, Hollywood, The Simpsons Tapped Out, Sims Mobile, Lord of the Rings, [snorts] and as I've noted in the story too, it merged its mobile teams into its HD counterparts in March 2024. for so

signs of life at EA Mobile, which I think is good news. It's also the start of the month, so I have delved into the numbers in App Magic to pull out the top grossing and most downloaded games of last month. At the time of recording, I haven't done the full written analysis of what's going up and down, but [snorts] Block Blast is on top in terms of downloads. Freef Fire continues to climb up the charts. It's now second. Blockbust 29.4 million downloads in November. Freef Fire 22.5. Third is Roblox. Fourth, Pizza Ready. Subway Surfers in fifth. Jig Solitaire is a new entry in the top 10 from a Japanese studio called Gaming Cat. And then you've got Vita Majong X Clash. Another new entry, Solitaire Associations from Hit Apps and Clash

Royale. while hanging on in 10th. Top grossing. Last War Survival is top 115 million earned in November. Roblox is second, 112 million. Monopoly Go third, 111 million. White Out Survival Royal Match four and five. Notable that Honor of Kings steep drop dropping five places only 81.5 million dollars earned in November. The rest of the top 10 pretty steady although Delta Force one of Tensent's many mobile shooters creeping into the top 10 with 55 million earned in November.
[snorts]
Like I say, I haven't done the full analysis on the numbers just yet at the time of recording, but if you go to the website, you will find a full analysis of the ups and downs and ins and outs of the top downloads and top grossing charts in November according to

AppMagic. A quick one about the mobile puzzle gamification of newspapers. There's another one. UK studio Magicave has a game called Mindset Go, which is on mobile now, and it has struck a deal with The Observer, a longrunning Sunday newspaper, to publish the sort of ven diagrambased puzzles in that game in print every Sunday. So, good news for small UK studio Magic Cave. There's a few extra little bits of information about the creation of that game in the story on the website. But yes, it seems like every newspaper and social network and even the likes of LinkedIn are adding daily puzzle games to their roster of features and it should boost discoverability for that game at least a little bit. So, good news for that small UK indie mobile game studio. Onto this week's regulars, Data Digest

has 10 cents financials in which Valerant, Honor of Kings, and Clash Royale were the highlights. Valerant Mobile, a China only game. We'll see if that comes to the west or not. That was categorized by Tencent as the biggest mobile game launch of 2025 as measured by first month DAU and gross receipts. Honor of Kings also reached 139 million daily active users in October. And Delta Force is doing well. Supercell's Clash Royale gross receipts rose more than 400% yearonear. The recent revenue comeback for that has been widely reported. There's also some interesting stuff in there from the Irish Times which has the financials for Google Commerce which is effectively a kind of tax shell company for Google Plays European and MENA earnings about $3.36

billion earned in 2024 through that company. Most of that will be revenue through the Google Play Store, but it also includes Google's Pixel hardware sales, which I don't think are very high. Sensor Towers October top earners and top downloads are also in that article. Mobile game revenue hit 4.83 billion in October. It says [snorts] there's also fundraising news for Super Gears, 2.1 million raised there. And a very in-depth atmagic article. looking at revenue so far in 2024 plus individual breakdowns of how each genre and indeed subg genre is performing year to date. There's also in Jobs Digest moves at Metacore Hutch, Everplay, Nordius, and more. And that's it for this week. And as we roll into

the end of the year, there'll be some slightly sillier stuff on the website as people effectively give up and get into Christmas mode. So, look forward to that. Stay tuned to mobile gamer.biz. Sign up to the newsletter. Tell people about the podcast. Follow us on the socials. All that jazz. Thanks very much. Goodbye.