GDC concerns, AppLovin allegations, why app makers want game talent, jobs, data, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what is happening in the mobile games business. Here we go. Let's start with GDC and international attendance. This story was teased a little bit last week and is based on many conversations I've had with people in the mobile business last week and in previous weeks. In fact, as March approaches, everyone starts asking each other, "Are you going to GDC? Are you not going to GDC?" And many, many more people than usual are not, it seems, from the UK and EU and indeed elsewhere. There's a few anonymous sources in that story, as well as some people who were okay with speaking on the record. You always invite a little bit of skepticism when you use anonymous sources like this. But trust me when I say the

sources in these stories are very wellnown and indeed the large companies that say they are going treating it business as usual are also very well known. But yeah, this feels like an accumulation of a lot of different concerns. Actually cost of going to GDC has always been an issue. I always go because I get a press pass and it's free. So all I have to cover is travel and accommodation. But I can understand the thousands required to attend is a bit steep for lots of companies especially in the current climate. GDC has tried to address this. I obviously contacted GDC to get their responses to the claims in this story which are in the story of course and they say that they have restructured the passes and that it should be more accessible this year from a price point of view but that message doesn't seem to have got through. And then of course

you've got the overall political and safety climate we're in. Couple of other outlets have done their own kind of versions of this story and gone more aggressive with the ice angle, which [snorts] I can understand, but that wasn't the focus of the concerns from the people I spoke to. It was really cost, location, and safety all bundled up in one. Obviously, if you are trying to get into America from a country that America does not deem friendly right now, you might have trouble and you might have a wasted trip on your hands and that would be very costly. So, I can understand the concerns. Absolutely. Honestly, I feel pretty safe in San Francisco as long as you give the nutters around the Moscone Center a wide birth and stay in the right areas.

Generally I feel pretty fine but I can understand people who don't and yeah I mean this story was mostly written before the weekend when obviously those ICE agents killed another protester and the situation has escalated further still. So I mean it's not in the story but some other people I spoke to even in the US don't really want to travel right now. Those people are US citizens and they don't want to get on a plane or travel anywhere right now. So these concerns are pretty widespread, not just in the international community and it's a real shame. I really like GDC. It's a great event and I love going every year. I get loads out of it. But as it says in that story, you know, it is not the force it once was. Last year was a little m muted. I

thought it was a great event personally, but it was a little bit muted. And more generally post pandemic, I think people are a lot more inclined to just do business on calls. I mean, I'm certainly seeing it from my very small events business. People really like smaller events where the audience is more focused and more relevant to their business needs. I'm not saying this because I'm somehow trying to suggest my very small off thereord gatherings are going to replace GDC, but there are a ton of smaller events dotted throughout the gaming calendar now that are designed to hit certain needs and targets. And that appears to be the way things are going rather than these big mega events on the

west coast of America. As one of the sources says in the story, this happened to E3. The world is a changed place and maybe people don't see the value in going to these big mega events as much as they did before.
[snorts]
I didn't go too hard on the this may be the last GDC angle because honestly people complain about GDC every year. But I think this year does feel different with the political climate with the GDC organizers restructuring the passes to try to be more accessible. Yeah, this year's circumstances do feel pretty unique. And indeed, after I put that story out, TechCrunch, the giant tech publication, did a similar story saying international developers are skipping GDC this year.

They cited my story, but they also [snorts] mentioned the number of people saying they're skipping it this year on LinkedIn. And aftermath the consumer site which is formed of ex Kataku staff they had a very similar story too where they spoke to a load of people not going from international markets and pulled together the concerns there. So this is definitely happening. There's a few slightly Trumpy guys out there who have quite aggressively hit back at this story. You know, these woke snowflakes won't dare to travel to America. But I don't, you know, if people have concerns, they have concerns. And if you just scream at them for that, their concerns will not be helped. I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, I hope GDC is okay. Maybe it should split itself up. I mean, GDC has tried to do GDC London, GDC Europe before, and it hasn't quite

taken flight. But maybe they could
chop it up a little bit and do smaller, more regional GDC's every quarter or something. I don't know. I don't run an enormous events business, but that feels like the way the wind is blowing and obviously we have a little bit of precedent with what happened with E3. So yeah, after March and all the numbers are totted up, interested to see if attendance is down. I think it will be and certainly the show floor itself has been shrinking as well and increasingly people just go without actually getting a ticket. So it seems pretty inevitable now that international attendance will be down due to that. combination of cost concerns, political instability, and safety issues. This seems to be quite an

emotive topic. So, if you have any further thoughts on this one, let me know and maybe I'll do a follow-up next week. You are halfway through the podcast. Here is a commercial break. I'll be back after this. Exola connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally with Exola Web Shop. [music] Sell virtual items, in-game currency, subscriptions, and custom offers directly [music] to players while driving up to five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number one [music] 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. On Tuesday night, CNBC had a report on Apploving, which is facing yet more wild shortseller claims. This time, it's from

Capital Watch, who put out a 35page report. And in that report, it alleges that apploving is linked to a Cambodian business which has been deemed a criminal organization by the US Treasury. There's also the bold claim that Apploving has been quote transformed into an asset safe haven for crossber black money. The allegations involve apploving shareholder Ha Tang and Chenzee who is chairman of Cambodian finance outfit Prince Group. That group has been deemed a criminal organization by the US Treasury and uh of course Apploving has hit back. It has sent a cease and desist letter to the short sellers in question and asked for them to retract the report and has obviously slammed the claims within as defamatory and baseless.

And the legal letter also says numerous absurd and demonstrably false statements are made in the Capital Watch report. According to the letter CNBC obtained, pretty extraordinary that these short sellers do not get just sued into oblivion when they do this. It's not the first group of short sellers that have seized on Apploving's rapid rise in the last couple of years. Around this time last year, a couple of reports emerged alleging that Apploving was engaged in the exploitation of app permissions, ad fraud, shady data practices. Apploving of course lawyered up and investigated those claims. But I mean, the short sellers claims did work. Applovin's share price dipped. And then a third report emerged about a month later saying that applovin is quote

built on systematically violating third party platforms terms of service. And that again prompted a strong reaction from Apploven. They alerted their lawyers and put out a couple of blogs explaining their business practices. So this short selling stuff seems to rumble on. And as I mentioned in the story, Apploving has had an eventful year. It sold off all of its studios to Triple Dot for $800 million. It was also briefly in the running to buy Tik Tok or at least the US spin out of Tik Tok. So yeah, loads going on at Apploving it seems and I guess the level of success it has seen in recent months and years does attract this kind of attention from short sellers. So perhaps it's inevitable, but I would imagine if these short sellers see a dip in the share price as a result of this, then they'll be happy with

their work. And if not, it hasn't worked and they're going to get sued. So a risky strategy, I would say, but one that seems to continue anyway. On Tuesday, I published a feature that's been sitting on my desktop for a little while written by Alex, a regular contributor to mobile gamer.biz and gamesindustry.biz, in which he talked through the tendency for app developers to increasingly be seeking out game development and marketing talent, particularly from the mobile space. It turns out that having a great understanding of marketing, retention, monetization, really valuable skills. And for those tiring of the churn of game development and the ups and downs of the games world, there might be a little bit of

safe haven in some of these app companies. Duolingo seems to be the case study here in terms of gamified app use. But also I referenced in the article Bernard Kim who used to run Zinga went on to run Tinder and Match.com. You know these skills that mobile game developers and marketers develop over months and years are really really valuable not just in mobile games but outside of that. So interesting article fits into a trend that I think is hard to ignore in in that app makers are looking to lean on some of the expertise in the mobile games world. and working at one of these slightly more calmer, slightly more established app companies might be a nice escape route if you're tiring of the turbulence and ups and downs of the mobile games industry.

So yeah, give that a read. It's a little weird to be effectively encouraging people to move out of the mobile games business with this feature, but here we are. Give the feature a read. Let me know what you think. On to the regulars this week. January means lots of jobs news. In the jobs digest, there are moves at Scopely, new publisher Arcade, Netflix, Outfit 7, Agora, many, many more. These get published every other Monday. So, seek those out on the site. I'm sure you will see a couple of faces in there you recognize. And then Wednesday's regular article, data digest. We have US mobile game market data from Sakana Monopoly Go leading there 1% rise in 2025 in terms of mobile game spend so effectively flat. There's a breakdown of sensor tower state of gaming report lead big

number on that is mobile gaming inapp purchase revenue rising to 81.75 billion in 2025. A CEO questionnaire from Aim, the investment and M&A company says 30% of mobile gaming CEOs predict double digit inapp purchase growth in 2025. I guess optimism is part of being a CEO. So perhaps no surprise there. Zebedee, the fintech company has secured 40 million in series C funding. So it will be building out its payments infrastructure further. App figures sent out their top earning and top download reports for December. Last world top earner according to app figures in December. Block blast of course leading in the download charts. Have a look at the article for more detail on those. Mag interactive net sales up 3% for Q1.

That seems to be doing okay. And Dino.io IO 10 million downloads. This is a hit for publisher views. So, thought I'd include that at the end. And at the back end of last week in the new game digest, worth mentioning the new New York Times app crossplay. Ark Knight's Enfield has come out. Rainbow 6 mobile is still on the way. [snorts] The new Angry Birds or Luck Battle game is detailed in there. Sega's new football management game, Braid, and some other indie stuff in there. And that's it for this week's podcast. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.