Google cuts store fees and welcomes back Fortnite plus Hay Day Match, Halfbrick, Antihero and 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's happening in the mobile games industry. Here we go. Big news of the week. Google and Epic have resolved their various legal disputes. It means a couple of different things. Fortnite will be returning to the Play Store around the world at a unconfirmed date. But perhaps more importantly for the rest of the mobile games business, Google is effectively chopping its cut of all inapp purchases down from 30% to 20%. That will drop further for people. That will drop further to 15% for inapp purchases in new installs. if a developer signs up to Google's games level up program.

Now, as ever with these things, there are a few different caveats and nuances, but essentially Google has uncoupled its billing services from the Play Store. So, your average game developer can choose the billing provider of their choice. that billing provider, be it a web shop company or Stripe, whoever, they will then likely charge 5% on all inapp purchases as a service fee. Google is effectively matching that. If you use the native Google Play billing, Google will take 5%. But perhaps importantly, that 5% flat fee is for EU, UK, and US developers only. Outside of the EU, UK, and US, a quote market specific rate will apply, but those rates have not been confirmed. I would imagine that rate will be based

on the average take rate of a third party payment provider in Japan, Korea, etc., etc. The new pricing structure come is coming to the EU, UK and US by June, Australia by September, Korea and Japan by the end of the year and this will be global by end of September 2027. For people who run subscription apps, I think the flat recurring subscription fee will now be 10%. But that's not super relevant to games, so I didn't include it. Elsewhere in this blog and as part of the settlement of the disputes with Epic, Google is rolling out a registered app stores program which will effectively mean that there are fewer scare screens and an easier onboarding process for people who want to download, for example, the Epic Game Store for on Android. So

Tim Sweeney very happy with this. Uh on the public face of it, I guess getting Google to chop its feed down from 30 to 20% 15% in some cases is a victory. Let's use the example of Fortnite. This means Google now takes 20% of Fortnite's revenue on Android versus 30%. So not a comprehensive victory, but obviously welcome. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't feel like even the Apple ruling in the US last that took place last year that effectively just opened the whole store up to alternative billing and non native Apple payments. That hasn't caused any sort of revolution in mobile games. And Google knows that actually a lot of its business on mobile is in advertising between iOS

and Android. Obviously iOS is where the big spenders are anyway. Not to say obviously that that 30% now 20% isn't a lucrative business for Google, but it's certainly less than the money that Apple is raking in. So yes, a victory for sure. Hopefully it's not too much of a muddle for developers to actually implement, which I think is another problem with the various app store liberation policies. It's too complicated and annoying to implement. But effectively, if you're running a mobile game and you do absolutely nothing, you'll get 10% more of your inapp purchases in the next few months and years, depending on where you are. Heyday Match is the new Heyday spin-off made by some interesting people.

UK-based mobile studio Player Bit. Those with long memories may remember that studio was formed in 2021 with investment and help from Wildlife Studios. Wildlife Studios went on a bit of a spree of setting up these game studios with some quite interesting talent from other games and Player Bit was one of those. Player Bit's founders in 2021 were Tugal Attack, Ahan Sahin, and Ant Siglli. All of whom played major roles in Toy Blast and Tomb Blast. So, these guys know what they're doing. According to the Player Bits website, as of 2024, the studio is now independent. You can speculate as I have in the article that Supercell probably played a role in that, but um it's based in London and Heyday Match is the second Heyday spin-off after Heyday Pop, which soft

launched in March 2020, didn't get through to global launch. And there's also reference here to Boom Beach Front Lines, the Space Ape Boom Beach spin-off, which went into soft launch October 2021. and actually got several million downloads, but not enough traction on the inapp purchase site to keep going. Cancelled November 2022. There's a link at the bottom of that story to the postmortem of Boom Beach Front Lines, which I think is interesting. But yes, interesting that Supercell is open to outside developers doing spin-offs of its games. And heyday does fit that casual puzzle demographic clearly. So this is an interesting one. Limited time uh early access testing will be happening soon in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. So good news for the UK game development scene I

think and we shall see if this game actually makes it out to global launch. Some funding news for you. Anti-hero Studios, the new startup staffed by many Supercell and King alumni, has raised $4.5 million in preede funding from A16Z or Zed if you're British. Leighton Ventures. There was also participation from CESU which I think had funded the formation of the studio previously. As mentioned in the articles headline, there are some big Supercell and King guys involved in this studio. Bryce Lavil San Martan is an ex Supercell art director. Fellow co-founder Frank Yan is an ex Brawl Stars game designer. and Andre Pero, another co-founder, is King's former technical director. So,

some pedigree here. Other staff at the studio also have credits on Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga. They also recently hired former Supercell CMO Fernando Romano as marketing advisor. The studio's debut game is called Misfits with a zed, and it's effectively Brawl Stars does extraction shooters with a kind of edgy Gen Z art style. It has been tested by 70,000 players already, says the press release. And they've also engaged with Cairo's Time, who is an influencer, part of the Supercell Creative Program. to start building community around this game. The co-founder and CEO Saman says that extraction shooters are fundamentally more social games and all of that stuff will help its organic

reach. The mildly spicy quote here is studios haven't had to earn love through brand so we continue to build boring uninspiring companies that stay out of touch with today's players says Saman they say obviously UA will be a big part of the misfits launch but also it is investing in the anti-hero brand. So, good luck to these folks. [snorts] Half Brick has unfortunately had to lay off 41 staff. The Australian maker of Jetack Joyide, Fruit Ninja, Bluey, Quest for the Gold Pen, and many, many more announced the cuts on LinkedIn, but didn't specify a number. So I followed up with them and turns out it was 41 jobs going which is quite a lot. The company has I think

it's fair to say struggled to transition into a free-to-play company. It has had some success with Fruit Ninja Jetack Joyide. Obviously those big hits will support any game studio. But as I say in the article there's a bit of extra context around this. The company effectively pivoted into subscriptions in 2023 and has been focusing on that ever since. So it launched this Half Brick Plus subscription service where you get access to all of Half Brick's games in purchase and ad free. There was no mention of the success or failure of Half Brick Plus as a product in the layoff announcement, but like most layoff announcements, there was reference to it being a tricky time for game developers and tough decisions being made. But yes, 41 jobs going at Half Brick. Best of luck to those looking for work.

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Another quick one from Monday. Minute Games raised $2 million, which is a huge amount for any normal person, but not a huge amount for a games company. But I I picked this up, as did various other websites, because [snorts] I think it's interesting. I don't know why they didn't angle this as this is Tik Tok for games in the press release, but they

possibly should have. It's short form instantly playable games in an algorithmic feed which sounds a lot like Tik Tok for games but yeah they have some bigname backing another reason why I covered this one LVP and Sony innovation fund led the preede angels involved backing the company include Stefan Clem good game bigpoint tee soinen of small giant and class kerstic of Game Forge, Flare Games, and Phoenix. They're based in Hamburg. The founders Ole Shapper and Mark Book Haltz are both former execs at Viper, The Sandbox, and Kinder Games. There's a bit of extra context around this Tik Tok for games idea in the article where I've linked out to get the other companies trying this because I think it's quite a good pitch. Supercell

backed hype hype based in Helsinki that's been working on its Tik Tok for games for a long time. It's been in soft launch for possibly three or four years, maybe even four years. [snorts] Smirk was similar thing made by a startup. It still appears to be in soft launch. I reported on them late 2024. Playbite, the first of them pitching themselves as Tik Tok for games that seems to have closed and pivoted into making a rogike shooter apparently. And then Tik Tok itself has flirted with this idea of in feed playable games. There was they were testing some of them in the UK in 2023, which I reported on, but later that year the company told me that that experiment was over. I would assume that if you're stopping to play a game within Tik Tok, you are not

rattling through videos as fast and you don't see as many ads. [laughter] But yes, Minute Games is the next to try it and good luck to them. Now, Rainbow 6 mobile launched last week worldwide after many years in soft launch. It has been in development for seven years in total. first announced publicly in 2022. As we've reported before, 11 studios led by Ubisoft Montreal have contributed to the project and according to the piece Alex Forbes Calvin wrote for us this week. At one point, there were six developers working on the shooter at the same time. Alex spoke to the game's director, Olivier Alberachin. I hope I'm saying that correctly about the launch of the game, why it took so long to come out of soft launch and the very competitive mobile shooter market.

It's a chunky features, so you should go to the website and read it to get the full detail, but I guess the highlights are that they believe this game is going to succeed because of its tactical depth and focus on competitive play. as the headline references, even Call of Duty War Zone and Apex Legends Mobile with the scale of those franchises, they didn't make it. So, what will happen to Rainbow 6 Mobile? I think they're right to focus on competitive play, tactical play, that does make it different. They have a seasonal month-by-month structure to the game, a reputation system which is borrowed from Rainbow Six Siege. And as Alex notes in the piece, Rainbow Six Siege launched into a similarly competitive market in 2015 and has attracted over 100 million players

to date. So, Rainbow 6 definitely has its fans and best of luck to Ubisoft with this mobile edition. I think it's good for Western game developers, even if they are funded and assisted by Tencent, to make a fist of bringing their big IPs to mobile. And hopefully, this will succeed. In Wednesday's data digest, there is a load of big numbers and stats and figures. Sensor Tower released its top grossing games. It does not provide actual numbers, but it does provide a top 10. Last war [snorts] across iOS and Android was top in terms of inapp purchase. Second, Honor of Kings Royal Match. White Out Survival Game for Peace aka PUBG Mobile in fifth. Peak Fugo and Zinga alumni Vento Games raised $4

million. Another bit of funding from Arcadia Gaming Partners and Makers Fund leading that one. Vita Marjong topped January's ad charts. Jest, a marketplace for messaging games, raised $7 million. Grow a garden was perhaps unsurprisingly Roblox's top grossing game in 2025. Peacekeeper Elite, aka PUBG Mobile, aka Game for Peace, topped 90 million daily active users during its peak time, which was Luna New Year. And Sega Football Club Champions 2026 hit 2 million downloads. Lots more detail in the article. Have a look. In the soft launch update this week, Roio's Sonic Blitz, a Sonic themed card game, seems to have been removed from soft launch. And we've [snorts] added Overwatch Rush, couple of other notable

games in there. I forgot to add Minecraft Blast when that was revealed at the end of last year into this list. So, that's in there now. I've trimmed out a couple of publishers that I think the mobile gamer.biz biz audience is less interested in. But you've still got the likes of Moon Active, Mini Clip, Supercell, Tencent, of course, and many, many more in there. Couple of bits to sweep up from the end of last week. 10-centent reportedly, according to Bloomberg, interested in buying a steak in Block Blast Maker Hungry Studio. Not surprised by this. This has been the most downloaded game in the world for the last year. It's an absolute beast of a game. So yes, of course 10 cent are interested. There's also quite a detailed report on Play Ticker's latest financials in which the company reveals that it is now making a billion dollars

per year roughly from its direct to consumer business, skipping the app stores entirely. There's also some comments in there about its social casino business which is on the Wayne and it is now pivoting to casual after the success of those super play games Disney solitire dice dreams domino dreams and on Friday new game digest featured the global launch of subway surfers city rainbow 6 mobile reigns the Witcher news of Overwatch rush which was covered last week ball x pit and a couple more. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening.