Google Playground, AppLovin’s court battles, Scopely’s next game and plenty 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 game business. Here we go. The big news of the week I think anyway is Google and its playground platform. This is a browserbased game making platform where players can put in a prompt and create a game. It follows on from Meta who announced a similar kind of service a couple of weeks back at its Horizon conference. Google Playground is live today in the US for people over 18 for some reason. There's no word on a global roll out, but it does say within the press release that Google one subscribers, which is their suite of web tools and AI things, they will get access to it soon. But for the general public, it's US only for now. The industry facing part of it is

interesting too. Within the announcement, Google said Playground will be integrated with Unity Spark, which is Unity's own AI game creation tools. This will provide prolevel functionality, advanced mechanics, 3D capabilities, and quote, the flexibility of the Unity runtime. Another interesting industry angle to this is that it follows on from those Project Genie demos that came out back in January and then sent Roblox Unity and Take 2's share price plummeting. But interesting that Google and Unity have partnered for this. As we reported recently too, Google owned YouTube also has ramped up its gaming efforts with the roll out of more of its playables web games. They're now available and playable in about 50 markets worldwide. So, Google making moves in games. In the

announcement, there was no talk of any integration with Google Play or a sort of route to market for those who wish to bundle up and sell their Google Playground creations as standalone apps. But I think this is really interesting development and there is in general a lot more movement in this web games space as people maybe tire a little bit of app stores and their shenanigans and move on to the open web. This was a consumerf facing announcement. So there was no mention of monetization or inapp purchase or ad revenue in this Google Playground announcement. But you would imagine that if you do have a hit Google Playground game, you can probably at some point stick some ads in it and Google will be happy to provide those,

you would imagine. So yes, Google investing in AI powered web games in a big way. Playground live for US players at the moment. A roll out across other territories to come soon. Two stories about Apploving in court this week. Let's cover last week's one first. Apploving is suing Unity over alleged data collection through its ad quality SDK. It has filed for a temporary restraining order in the court of San Francisco accusing its rival of harvesting data without permission. This is a report from Digid Day, a very good digital marketing trade publication. Apploving claims in the lawsuit that Unity took the data it harvested and built it into models used against AppLin in live ad auctions, training its own systems on

Apploven's output to anticipate its bidding decisions. Unity dismissed Apploven's claims as anti-competitive and provided quite tasty quote actually. Apploving's legal filings against us are a classic case of a dominant incumbent resorting to litigation and intimidation to address increased competition and slowing growth. So fighting talk from Unity in this lawsuit, which is quite good fun. There's a separate arbitration against Unity here as well. Abloven is pursuing claims for breach of contract, trade secret, misappropriation, interference with business relationships, and violations of California's unfair competition law. And then you got the second one which came through on Tuesday. This is more about serving ads to the wrong people. So, San Diego County is taking legal action against Apploving, claiming it served children ads for dating services,

alcohol, vaping, and sexual content in games played on devices with parental controls switched on. This is according to a Bloomberg report. The county also claims that apploving collected sensitive information from children's devices, even where parents had opted out, detailed enough to show where kids live and go to school, and whether they are asleep. Applovin has not responded to Bloomberg's request for comment. San Diego County also filed two other lawsuits. One of the others targets Roblox over claims it doesn't do enough to stop adults posing as children and contacting young players. But yeah, Apploving Lawyer is going to be busy fighting against Unity and San Diego County. Scopely appears to be making a Genchin Impact like contender in the action RPG space with the help of Marvel. So, this is apparently Project Comet. This is all

unconfirmed rumors, but if you join some dots from Scopley's various recruitment adverts over the last few years and rumblings going on in the industry, you'll probably know about this one already. What appears to be a trailer initially appeared on Chinese video platform Billy Billy on October 2nd. couple of consumer websites called The Gamer and Insider Gaming picked up on the news earlier this week and also referred back to a round of leaks over the summer when Project Comet was apparently revealed to be an openw world action RPG with crossplay between mobile and PC versions just like Genchin Impact. The gameplay footage looks very snazzy. We have of course asked Scoply for comment. They have not yet responded.
[snorts]
And then we go into some of the job ads knocking around on Scope's job site. There are references in various listings

about a crossplatform strategy/MMO title. There's also a new unannounced ARPG mobile title based on a major IP. That listing [snorts] also asks for experience working with Chinese gaming studios and also lists experience in midcore RPG strategy 4X mobile games as a bonus. Scopely well placed to invest big in a Genshin Impact type contender. It obviously has all that Saudi money. So, yes, no official word on this one, but if the leaks and industry chitchat are to be believed, Scopley is doing Genshin Impact, but with the Marvel license, and that sounds pretty exciting. Exola connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games

globally with Exola web shop. Sell virtual items, in-game currency, subscriptions, and custom offers [music] directly to players while driving up to five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number one web shop [music] solution, Exola provides the tools for developers to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit exola.com to [music] learn more. That's xsol.com. That game company, the makers of Journey and Sky and various other artfully made indie type games have launched that game publisher. You may have seen this on gamesindustry.bbeers and other industryfacing websites in the last month or so. In that reporting, there was no mention of mobile at all. So, we followed up and asked, "Are you publishing mobile games as this new publisher? And what kind of mobile games would you be looking to publish?" The answer, it seems, is

mobile games playing in quote meaningful emotional territory. That game publisher will cover funding, production planning, platform, and launch strategy, marketing, community support, and long-term IP development. There are no platform restrictions on what it will sign. They're not really looking for games that resemble Sky. Genre, scale, and platform aren't the deciding factors, but they do want to maintain the overall sort of indie positive, wholesome vibe that comes through in Sky, Children of the Light. So yeah, if you are on the more indie end of mobile game development, you can get in touch with that game publisher and see if they're a good fit as a publishing label. The new Crossy Road game, Crossy Road Rush, is an Apple Arcade exclusive and is coming on November the 5th. [snorts]

So this is the new game from Atari and Hipster Whale. Atari bought Hipster Whale over the summer for an initial $30 millionish dollars. It looks like a Infinite Runner kind of driving game, four player co-op and online play. And that game joins two other titles being added to the arcade service on November the 5th. state of plays, relaxing and very good puzzler Cami 2 and food stylist from Zest rounding out the November lineup for Apple Arcade. It's the start of the month, so of course we looked at September's top downloads, top grossing charts. Freef Fire Max still on top in downloads, followed by Roblox and Block Blast. The notable new entry here is Bus Fever Party. Another bus puzzle game,

which seems to have completely replaced Bus Traffic Fever, which was in August top 10 listings, but dropped 23 places for September. This is from a studio called Lumi Games. The game leapt up 141 places month to register 12.8 8 million downloads in September. According to these app magic estimates, Meowoku was back in the top 10 as the accusations continue to swirl around Okame/ Learnings apparent cloning shenanigans. Another title that looks rather similar to an existing hit, it's a game called Color Block from IV Mobile. Quick bit of googling says that this is a Chinese/ American company that has yes taken a bit of inspiration from blockb blast. If you look at their product page, they have also clearly noticed the success of

arrows, pixel flow and magic sort as well. So that was a new entry into the top rankings too. Up 12 places, 10.4 4 million installs for that game in September. And I added this right at the end, but Gangstar Mirage City, the GTA like game from Tencent and Game Loft, was in the top 10 downloads in August with over 12 million downloads. It didn't even rank in the top 100 in September, 3.5 million downloads in its second month on the market. In the top grossing chart, Honor of Kings is top of course and it is topped by an absolute mile [laughter] 135 million. Its closest contender, Gossip Harbor, pulled in 99 million in app purchase revenue according to App Magic in September. So, Gossip Harbor down a little bit on the 112 million. It

registered in August according to these numbers. Roblox also dipped under the 100 million mark again. Royal Match also under 100 million for September. It actually posted its lowest estimated inapp purchase revenue total since June 2023. White Out Survival, a pretty alarming drop for this one. September's total of 79 million is its worst performance since June 2024. King's Candy Crush Saga also posted its worst inapp purchase earnings since April 2022 after doing pretty well in the spring and peaking again in August. Pokémon Go very spiky monthto-month. PUBG Mobile similarly volatile. Last Wars decline continued further. 43 million earned last month. a pretty incredible fall from 135 million it was earning back in February March time. Again, there we've

been told there's a lawsuit around this game and the higher cost in purchase revenue packages have been removed. There's also been relatively little content added to the game apparently according to one source and there's other bits and bobs mentioned in there. Read the whole article for analysis of September's top grossing and top downloads charts. Nariel, the Devolverowned maker of the Reigns games, is closing down after 13 years. They had a hit with Reigns back in 2016, one of very few premium games to break through in the last 10 years or so. And that led to a load of spin-offs and sequels, including ones based on the Witcher and Game of Thrones franchises. There were some sci-fi and three Kingdoms era China themed versions of Reigns as well. They also popped up on Netflix and Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass. Nariel also made narrative

thriller The Crush House for PC on in 2024 and was acquired by Deolver Digital in 2021 for an undisclosed fee. So yeah, Devolver owned Reigns developer Nariel closes after 13 years. Quick one from Friday from Special Effect. They held their one special day event October the 2nd in which the likes of Supercell, Roio, Cybo, Playmic, Fingersoft, Super Solid, Hyperliminal Games, New Star Games, Mini Clip, Greenman Gaming, and Mag Interactive gave over a slice of their UK revenue to Special Effect. This is a charity that helps disabled people to play video games in more comfort. They also even launched their own game called Open Drive designed for players with a wide range of physical disabilities. So, good stuff from Special Effect, a wonderful

charity that does brilliant work. This week's round of EU regulation news involves the EU's Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, which is not a body I'd come across before. The CPC network has launched coordinated enforcement actions against games companies including King, Supercell, Mojang, Riot, Activision, Blizzard, and Ubisoft over how they sell and handle in-game virtual currencies. Krytek, Innoame, Pllearium, and PLR Worldwide are also named in this action. These guys are a group of consumer protection authorities from across the EU and EA coordinated by the European Commission. In a joint statement published September 30th, it said it had found a high number of video game companies had made no substantive changes to their practices since it published non-binding key principles on in-game currencies in March 2025. These

principles ask developers to comply to what they feel are appropriate uses of reward systems, loot boxes, reducing what it calls dark patterns, and other harmful influencing techniques in the name of child safety. So perhaps no surprise that no one really listened to any of these suggestions because they appear to be just that, suggestions. [snorts] And of course, Video Games Europe and the European Game Developers Federation pushed back on the CPC Network's actions in a statement the same day. We'll see what happens next. In Data Digest this week, we have Sensor Towers top mobile games by ad spend for August. I think this is really interesting in this is for the US only. Monopoly Go was the biggest spender. Gossip Harbor, Kingshot, Candy Crush, Royal Kingdom, the top five. The full

top 10 is in the article. You should have a look. Turkish mobile developers earned 2.76 billion in 2025, up 450% since 2020. A lot of that driven by Dream Games, of course. These stats are from a new report from Adjust. There's app figures, uh, slightly belated August top downloads and top grossing charts. There's also a little spotlight on food hunt courtesy of atmagic data there. Fiery, which is skills owner, sold there. 55 million stake in Photon maker exit games. Photon is the multiplayer tech that powers things like Stumble Guys and Peak. And [snorts] then you got Joy Grid investing in Odmar maker Mobji for an undisclosed fee. More detail, facts, and figures in the full article on the website. Every Wednesday, data digest. Take a look. In Monday's job

digest, we have moves and promotions at Scopely, Supercell, Google, Roblox, Triple Dot, Mini Clip, Play Ticker, Boom Bit, Neon, Trail Mix, Grand Games, and more. And in new game digest, Sefue, the indie fighting game is coming to mobile this month. Microsoft Jewel. It's bejeweled type game that was quietly released on mobile and may or may not have something to do with King's increased remit that now oversees Microsoft casual games. There's another new One Piece game. There seem to be about four or five of these. River City Survivors is a retro RPG reworked as a vampire survivors type game and loads of other bits and bobs in that new game Digest which is published every Friday. And that's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Bye-bye.