Google's €890m EU fine and why Netflix's gaming figures mean nothing | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we chat about the week's news and provide some insights. I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz. With me today is our features and data editor Aaron Assel and our editorial director for events Mariam Madz. Welcome back Mariam and good to have you on the show Aaron. How have you tuned in? Mariam, what's been going on? I have just come back from BC and what a wonderful, beautiful place it is and I recommend it to everyone. It was such a wonderful time. I visited my best friend. We went camping. It was probably one of the few times in my life I've said this is perfect weather cuz it was 25° maybe 24 with a slight breeze. Yeah, it was we went on a camping trip actually. We had like a it was like a multigenerational camping trip with about 12 people. So, it was a lot of fun. So, yeah, I'm still riding high from that trip.
That sounds awesome. So, when you say camping, are you camping in like tiny little tents? You got big camper vans? What's the What's the setup?
We slugged it out a bit. We kind of did.

So, our tent was massive. It It could fit two queen beds, but it was still in the middle of a very sandy place. And it was a very quintessential camping experience with portaotties and no access to showers. So,
yeah, it was serious camping.
It's serious. Yeah. I've never done it. I don't know. The the most I've done is we put our tents in someone's like massive backyard and that's it. Nothing like out in the actual world.
That doesn't count because you can run into your house whenever
that doesn't count. [laughter] But that sounds amazing. And British Columbia sounds really really cool. Face like Mariam. Aaron, what have you been up to? Can can you top camping in British Columbia?
No, not this week. Yeah. Um to you?
Nothing crazy eventful going on, but um at the weekend I went out. It was a bit of like a bittersweet night out. One of my friends who I sort of got to know from going to the gym over the past couple of years and we like go to gigs and things. He he's moving or has possibly moved. It's today or tomorrow. So we went out over the weekend like one

last harrah type thing before he goes and moves in with his girlfriend up north. So yeah, a couple of us went out for for drinks and then cuz none of us follow football. So we all went out and then realized like ah there is football on. Kind of forgot that's a whole thing. But we actually we managed to get into Weather Spoons. Um and people weren't too rowdy about it really. Nothing else major going on. No camping trips.
That sounds pretty cool though. Wishing your friend all the best their new adventure. Very very exciting. As myself, I got stuck on a train. Right. And the time was about what time did I get this train? 10:30 from London and then it made about two stops and this was going to be I was trying to get like the last train home eventually and it made about two stops and then just sat there for a while and we got told by the driver, oh there's someone on the track so we can't move and then I started hearing a helicopter flying overhead and it stayed around for quite a long time

so I assume there was like a manhood going on. I don't know. And then the lights went off. Like a lot of the lights went off on the train just because we're just stuck there. I was stuck there for like hour and a half. I did not make my train home after that. And it got stuck even longer because one that person was on the track and they they just couldn't get them. I guess like police eventually turned up. A helicopter seemed to be involved and then another person went on the track because they left another train that had stopped and they got sick of waiting. So I then had to go back a stop or two eventually and I had to get a a cab home and let me tell you they're not cheap. It was like it was like 100 quid to get home. That was insane. Don't
many things I love about the UK and miss about the UK. Public transportation and trains is not one of them.
Yeah, it's crazy. Like if thing is the the network and the system in theory is amazing. Like London Underground in theory is incredible. didn't make it to the underground and yeah, National Rail

needs to sort itself out. I don't know if that's possible at this point, but yeah, otherwise just thinking about going to China next week. Going to keep looking next summit, Shanghai 29th and China Joy. So, if you're there, hit me up and yeah, look very much looking forward to it. Right, before we head into the news, going to just a shout out for events. I just mentioned that we're going to Shanghai on July 29th and the team will also be at China Joy. If you want any meetings, we got Pocket Gamer Consi October 20th, 21st and we have the Mobile Games Awards taking place in Cologne during Gamescom on August 25th. Voting is now over and we will reveal all of the finalists live at the show. So, please join us. A lot of industry luminaries, experts from the biggest studios in the world will be in the room for a nice sit down. So, it would be really fun. Right, that is that is all the shout outs out the way. So, we're going to move on to the news. And today, a big news broke that the European Commission has fined Google €890 million

for breaching the digital markets act. Specifically, this was for self-preferencing its own services on Google search and for putting in restrictions on businesses to direct consumers to quote alternative often cheaper purchase channels on Google Play. So, off to your own DC platform, web shop, etc., right? It was uh breaking that down, it was fined €460 million euros for the Google service breach and €430 million for the anti- steering breach on Google Play. The European Commission said Google prevents app developers from freely communicating and promoting off offers and concluding contracts with users in distribution channels of their choice including third party app stores. Uh interestingly the European Commission said Google can receive a fee for facilitating the initial acquisition of a customer via Google Play. So that is like the platform fee I guess rather than a payment fee which is what it was always till obviously the recent court battles but it said however the level this is a quote the level of the steering related

fees charged by Google and the length of the charging period for these fees went beyond what is considered compliant with the DMA as part of today's two decisions the commission has ordered Google to bring the non-compliance to end in particular Google must implement measures to treat third party services that feature on Google search results in a fair and non-discriminatory manner by reference to its own services and also allow apps developers distributing their apps via Google Play Store both technically and contractually to freely communicate promote offers and conclude contracts with users not only within but also outside the Google Play app store. It added the commission also notes that Google has rolled out changes related to Google steering terms. These constitute good progress towards compliance and will be will also be assessed in light of the cease and desist order of today's decision. That sounds like a specific call out to the Epic and Google deal which is as I mentioned has there's now like a platform fee which is 20% plus your 5% Google Play sorry Google pay fee

and then there's difference it can go down if you use certain Google services to like 15% I think even lower for recurrent subscriptions etc. it all gets very confusing and but this deal was something we kind of questioned last week because also the Epic of Google deal has been dropped in the US just as they were due back in court to explain why they have made this deal and why it's I guess better or better than the last judgment that was made calling Google a monopoly. So I'm kind of surprised they just announced this decision though without reviewing it seemingly without reviewing that settlement properly. So the settlement is still applicable internationally assuming that this is what the European Commission is referring to. If that is the case, it seems like a pretty weak position for such a massive fine because surely then Google is it I don't know if you think this is good progress, isn't this some sort of compliance rather than not complying? I thought that was quite strange. But in any event, failure to

comply here within 60 days could see Google risk further penalties of up to 5% of its total worldwide turnover. The last couple things I would point out though that this all sounds big and it is this really huge news. But Apple has been threatened by the EU European Commission. It made changes and then that's all gone quiet and it's still all ongoing. So I'm curious how long this judgment and this case against Google gets clogged up in the courts as the EC concluded itself. Google may decide to appeal these decisions. And don't worry if anything to go by it absolutely will. And then the last thing is that this could all get muddied further because who knows, maybe it's already happened during this Trump, President Donald Trump may end up getting involved and try and scupper these fines with another trade war and tariffs or or just wild threats. So, we'll see what happens there as well. So, I guess to conclude is it's good that the European Commission is trying to show some teeth and actually say you need to comply with

the digital market set cuz when it first came about, we're all worried that it wouldn't have any teeth. you wouldn't really do anything. So, it's good. But on the other hand, is it actually doing anything other than shouting quite loudly, slapping fines that might never get paid? Yeah. So, big news of the week and we'll see where it goes. That's why I say it just crumbles on and on.
As you say, it's kind of I guess we'll see. Yeah. When the um when it all started, the digital market stuff, it was a bit unclear whether anything would really come of it or not. And then yeah, I think last year with the Apple stuff um that kind of had Trump um doing tariffy things that um I feel like we were talking about every week for a good while.
Yeah.
So yeah, curious if we'll get kind of round two of that now or whether it will play out differently, but um as you see at least I guess the EU is like trying to actually do something with the
DMA. Just also add actually that while I've called out Trump for like the trade wars and stuff any US administration I

think they've always been if especially Europe another country region gets involved with penalizing the conduct of their of big US companies particularly like these big tech companies presence and administrations they always get very angry about that so it's not necessarily just a Trump thing but I'm sure that will be on the minds of of people in the European Union rights So, we'll move on from that, but that's the big news. So, Aaron, what else have you got?
Yeah. So, first from me this week is that it's already been a month since Pokemon Champions launched on mobile. Uh, and in that time, it's made around 7.2 million in mobile player spending. That's according to AppMagic estimates. It came [clears throat] out on Switch back in April, but yeah, we've had a month now of it being on mobile. And the majority of mobile spending has come from Japan so far, about 55% of the total. The US makes about 17%, South Korea 8%. They're kind of the top three markets thus far. And I say like

obviously it's probably made more in that time with the Switch version cuz there's also like cross progression. So, you know, it may have attracted new newcomers on mobile who've since tried it on Switch or, you know, Switch players who've done their purchase on purchases on Switch, but now they're playing mobile cuz it's more portable. You know, it's kind of a bit of a hard one to judge, but yeah, from Google Play and the App Store, it's just over 7 million. Yeah, I think the the kind of monetization model is quite an sort of important element in how the revenue is looking so far because it sort of fell off quite quickly but has had a bit of a comeback in the past week or so. So, like the game made just under 400,000 on launch day, peaked at about 600,000 on the 20th of June, and then like quite quickly fell off after that through the rest of June. And then it had a bit of a spike again around July 8th. So that was up nearly 50% over July 7th which kind

of coincided with a new battle pass rolling out cuz this game is mostly kind of monetized through its battle pass and there's a subscriptionbased membership which is separate to that as well. So rather than even though there are kind of in-game currencies and things you can't kind of directly buy those you acrew them through battling but you can get obviously boosts to things by subscribing. And so this the subscription there's like a a monthly element to that. So like the game, you know, potentially coincidentally, but had a bit of a bump like a month after it came out pretty much on the dot. So that maybe indicates that people who bought the membership in the first couple of days, you know, it's renewed in its second month now. Battle passes are slightly different like timing wise cuz they run alongside a season which seems to vary in length a little bit. Some of them are a couple of weeks, some I think the longest was like six weeks maybe. So you'll have a battle pass tied to that and then when the season ends there's a new battle pass. So I think

that's quite an interesting kind of case for kind of why the revenue declined because there's not really much to keep buying after you, you know, if you're going to spend on those, that's kind of all your purchases that you can do until the next month essentially. Um, and the kind of revenue chart kind of tracks with downloads as well pretty closely. So, I'd say we've probably seen the peak already for spending in the like first week unless they do a big like UA campaign and get a lot more people playing because um, so the revenue is kind of very much tied to whether you commit to these more subscription based purchases. There's like a there's a starter pack that you can buy once, but if you you know if you did that already, you can't do that again. So again, that kind of relies on new people playing the game. But even so, I think that's quite maybe useful context. I think it's done fairly well for a game that you can play entirely for free. Like I haven't spent any money

on it and have been playing quite a bit and it's mainly just a bit more limited in like how many Pokémon you can keep in the game at any one time. Um cuz you have like a storage limit of I think you start with like 30. As you kind of progress through the ranks it expands to 50 or so. Uh so obviously 50 Pokémon is quite a lot but if you want to be really experimental with teams of six. You know there's only so many of those you can make with 50 Pokémon. Whereas if you pay for one of the subscription options I think the storage expands to like a thousand. So that's very quickly. You know a lot more options than 50. But anyway, I guess overall, like I kind of expect it looks like from how month two has sort of started out that this is just going to be a monthly thing now that we'll see it kind of decline and peter out when a season's in progress and when we're not kind of around the month anniversary of the game launching and then, you know, we'll hit the next month milestone and it'll shoot up again

for a couple of days when people's subscriptions renew. And I guess potentially like we've got Pokémon Worlds which is next month I believe which is like the esportsy competitive competitive event that will be like live streamed on YouTube and stuff and they're using champions for that this year. So that might get more kind of casual people who don't realize it's a thing might end up trying it out and that might give it a bit of a bump. Um, so currently, cuz I know we've talked about this one before, Craig, like I'm I'm not seeing the next TCG Pocket as yet, but um happy to be proven wrong in time.
Yeah, it definitely performs a lot. It doesn't perform as well for sure as as Pocket. I guess the key questions for you, Aaron, are you enjoying the game as it is? Like is and do you think you you would play for like the next year? And is there anything you think they could do that would be interesting that it could generate more revenue that you'd be willing you think yourself and players would be willing to kind of pay?
That's a good question. So, in terms of

enjoying it, like I am liking it a lot more than I expected because I was never really into competitive Pokémon battling and then this came out and I thought like, well, I'll give it a try. You know, it's technically a new Pokemon game, even if it is basically like just a PvP hub. And then yeah, ended up getting really kind of into it and dedicated to getting into the Master Ball tier mainly because it sounds cool.
So like engagement isn't a problem.
No, I don't think so. And like when like when I'm playing it, there's no issues in like finding someone else to play against. Like you just go to the battle and it, you know, a couple of seconds and you're in a battle with someone. And obviously it's the core Pokémon gameplay which people clearly like cuz the franchise is very successful. So, is there anything you think they could add?
I think or just do different ones
in a in a broader sense, maybe just more one-off purchase options, you know, if you could buy more in-game currency just directly or um if they added so far cuz

there's like a cosmetics shop which you can use your points on that you've built up through battling. And I kind of expected each season they would add to that which they haven't so far. But I think if there were more kind of customization options and it would be hard to keep up with them if you were free to play, but you could buy the currency, I think that could be one way to monetize the game a bit more. It's currently I say the selection that's there is the same as what was in it back in April on the Switch version. So if you So there's not you've like I've kind of got the clothes I want for my character. There's no reason for me to go into the cosmetic shop now cuz it's just the same stuff that I didn't choose before. So presumably that will expand over time. So I think those are quite easy kind of fixes of just adding more stuff to what they've already started. Um and I say from a monetization perspective, maybe doing it at a pace that's hard to keep up with freeto play might encourage more people to spend. But yeah, currently like the cosmetics there's just there are some that are the

only ones they've added are in the like premium battle pass. So, it's just either you spend money and get this outfit inspired by a particular gym leader or whoever, or you don't buy the battle pass and you don't get that. Um, and then even after the maybe there's some element of like FOMO to it that they'd want to keep, but even after the battle pass is like expired and it's the next month, that costume doesn't get added to the shop or anything. It's just you either got you either got the battle pass or you didn't. So the me so the message is for them they could they could they could certainly add more stuff which is kind of seems like it's teed up for where they've just not done it yet. Interesting. Right. Thanks Aaron. So Mario what story have you got?
I have a story because I love a bit of corporate double speak deduction. So my my my pickings for this week is Netflix reports that its kids mobile game engagement is up 600% yearonear via playground which is the mobile gaming app for children and cloud gaming. So within the context of Netflix, that means TV gaming is up 11x since scaling

began in October 2025. That was of course led by the FIFA World Cup game. I think it was called Launch Edition and Unhinged, which was the game that Paige mentioned a few weeks ago, that first person narrative horror game. They also report uh that Playground has tripled its daily player count since launch. So before I cast a sort of like cynical eye on the situation, I do want to mention some of the sort of positive points. So, if everyone remembers, they started off as sort of wanting to contend with the big big wigs, the AAA studios. If I remember correctly, they tried to hire all these sort of big studio big studio leads from a range of different companies and they code they even had a code name for their California-based endeavors and it was called Blue. Very James Bond/ sort of spyesque of them. All that to say that sort of fell flat on its face and this has been a pivot that you can kind of say has been successful. Now, I want to get into sort of the more cynical side of things. Now, when you see the figure 600%, it's a big figure, but a percentage alone doesn't tell you anything to do with shape. It

just tells you the sort of scale. So, does that mean 10k users to 70k users? Does that mean 1 million to 7 million? And admittedly, they even said themselves that they had a small starting base. And this clearly makes sort of like big multi multiples easy to produce. And that's what makes that sort of big hard headline of 600% look like wow. But all that's to say, what's clearly missing in this conversation is any indication of real sort of industry standard health metrics. Anyone within the gaming space knows, and indeed this is seen through like investor checklists in press releases when people are reporting on the successes of their games in Q1, for example. There's no mention of anything to do with DAUs or MAUs. So daily active users, what does the stickiness look like of their games? Are people just playing the game because they thought, "Oh, Netflix released a game. This looks really interesting. Never to pick it up again." or are there people that have built a real culture around it? Now, this is their favorite game on their favorite platform. We don't know because we don't see those metrics and these are non-confidential metrics as well, I should add, like it's a wellestablished fact that people or companies do sort of release these.

Another thing that I sort of wanted to bring up is they don't talk about crossropy engagement either. So, how many and they've done this before with when it comes to their streaming platform. So, how many of those players on Playground have also sort of watched the show? That would be an interesting metric to know. So all in all, they don't reveal any sort of real revenue or subscription data. And interestingly enough, on the earnings call, I think his name is Spencer Wang. He's Netflix's VP of finance, corporate development, and investor relations. When he was asked how the games business is doing, he just sort of echoed what was in the headlines. There was no, it was entirely percentage figure- based. There was no player numbers or any sort of useful metrics like that. And as I was doing sort of research for this and sort of compiling my thoughts, I came across a very straightforward, hard-hitting quote by the gaming outlet Aftermath, who called it out and they said, "If the real numbers were good, Netflix would share them." And that's kind of where I leave this. That's kind of my sentiment on it, too. They are wins. I'm not saying they're not, but they seem sort of loweffort plays that have paid off after ditching the sort of AAA endeavor.

So, they've reskinned a kid's IP. I should mention it was K-pop Demon Hunters, so massively successful. PJ Mask as well, which I don't really know much about, but again, I've heard it's massively successful. And they've licensed cloud titles rather than sort of bringing up original games. And yeah, I think ultimately my thoughts are it sort of reads as a pivot dressed up as Momentum and something that would probably look really good on a shareholder letter and in press releases. Whether or not they're going to release those figures, I don't know, but it would be interesting to keep an eye on this one and see how their gaming endeavors go moving forward.
I think you're completely correct. It's it's such it's just a load of BS, isn't it? Like it's cool that it's growing, but then 11x is like, well, what they it grew from like two players to, you know, it's it's we have no idea.
And there's no metrics. They haven't even released and they've and I should I think I did mention they do release metrics for their streaming platform. So, it's like it it almost seems more suspicious. There's no metrics of like retention. There's nothing to do with like what does D1 versus D7 look like in

terms of how much players are staying on your game. There's nothing. There's just this like 600% figure. And I think there's one other figure. I can't remember, but it was again it was nonsense. It it didn't say anything.
So, they they do this all the time. Like back in I I was just trying to look this up. I managed to find it. So back in July 2024 even we reported that they said last year it is 20 the company tripled engagement with games and Peters the CEO noted that it Gregory Peters noted that the company was looking good for 2024 growth and it planned to stick planned to have even more aggressive growth goals for his games are 2025 and 2026 but once again it didn't provide any actual metric of like well what is engagement like if you say it's going up, right? What
and it's almost like and it's d it doubly means nothing because you're saying this to people who are well in the weeds of monetization and UA and have access to all these metrics all the time. So, they're going to be reading this and thinking, well, what's the real data? Cuz that's complete fluff.
I um I think it seems like they're

making their strategy at the moment seems to make more sense with games like
it does. I guess family and kids.
Yeah.
But I'm still not really sure what they're doing in games.
[laughter]
I'm with you there
after reading this especially.
We will see. I I guess it is it is simply just value ad, isn't it? So, I might get this instead of an Apple TV because I can also get games with this. But, uh I mean I mean I won't go on about it, but like as a as a personal opinion, I think Netflix's TV stuff is pretty poor at the moment and rival services have better stuff. That that could just be a personal preference, but I think they're struggling there. I don't think games is going to be the thing that tips people over
especially because it's a well-known established. They have to contend with the fact that they very publicly ditch their AAA efforts. I can't remember which game companies they try to head hunt people from or they had headhunted from, but they were massive companies and you know this is this is stuff that's all out there in the ecosystem

that they that was a flop. So yeah, I don't know what what next steps look like for them.
Also that kind of thing I can't I can't remember specifically now. Well, I know for for glue there the the the people, but it is such a big tech company thing of like we're just going to hire these big names, get them in, do this cool stuff, and it never it never you never see anything from it. Now, no offense to these like talented people that come in like I'm sure they want to make great games, also getting paid very well, I'm sure. Right. And and then I think just the whole structure
and the goals that always constantly change. It just never happens like with Google and Stadia. They announced the console and then they announced the um well they announced Stadia streaming and then at the same time they sort of were like we've got Jade Raymond leading this studio and they're like basically starting work on this game like right you're announcing the the service now it's going to take a few years.
It reads as almost like this loweffort lazy spray and pay spray and prey effort that it's like it's like you said we're just going to get this guy from this huge company they'll make something

work. They've done it before, but it's like there's no real sort of tactic or strategy.
I just imagine coming into this and be and then like inevitably the strategy changes up top because they don't really care at the top level.
So yeah, interesting. I I think I know that public companies do share stuff, but I think the games industry and when you're public companies, you have to, but like game the games industry is pretty notorious for not sharing enough data out there. Like I could find the cost of a film quite easily. I could find the box office for a film quite easily. Or streaming like you say, they share those figures. The games even outside of Netflix, it's a lot harder to find like an actual like production budget for anything.
That's another
great awesome. Uh thanks for that. So I'll go through this next story quite quick. Really interesting. So Tencent is reportedly in talks to acquire Super Play from Play in a deal worth up to $1.5 billion. The studio is famous for games like Domino Dreams, Dice Dreams,

and Disney Solitaire. Dive stream Dreams used to be his big game, followed that up with Domino Dreams, which was pretty successful, I think. And Disney Solitaire is just kind of taking things to a whole new level for them. So, this was a report from Calculist and apparently negotiations going under the way. Actually, the valuation, sorry, is between 1 billion 1.5 billion. The outlet reported that Super Play's rapid success has become a financial burden for its parent company. So, if you remember, Playa acquired Super Play for up to $1.95 billion. It might actually be two million because I think there was a 50 million earn added on to that. But because it's so successful at the studio and you can see it in the recent financials, Play Tekk has become kind of hyperfocused on investing in Super Play to one help it scale kind of meet its potential and two kind of simply as as this report would suggest to cover the costs of the deal because when you read the financials, the company's really just focused on this one game. And it's kind of crazy because that they would sell it because it comes just after Play

Tica said it would focus on casual gaming. They also they also have a casino armory and they've actually made acquisitions in the past like reworks and seriously with best fiends. They don't have the best track record with some of these acquisitions at least in the long term I would say. But Super Play seems to be good. They got to focus on casual and now if they make this sale then they're getting rid of their star team, Star Studio, Star Games in that category. So does that mean they're going back to casino? It does doesn't really make sense, but I guess this the context. Uh it's worth noting that back in April, Plate launched a portfolio wide strategic review across its portfolio to quote maximize shareholders value. The publisher provided no specifics in a short announcement on the matter. The company said the review will be conducted by a special committee of the board of directors composed solely of independent directors. It had previously launched this strategic review back in 2022 and then paused it in 2024. During that time, there was talk of they were attracting interest from private equity buyers, but it

paused this whole review because of uncertainty in Israel and Ukraine before it started back up this year. Um, I guess my thoughts are I I guess I just don't really understand. I'm sure there's much more type of people out there that think, oh, this is why they're doing that. I I I it all sounds a bit desperate. What do they plan to get out of this in the long term? I guess they're trying to increase shareholder. I guess this gives them a war chest to then spend on other deals, especially if this company is kind of a burden in terms of where their investment is going right now. But then the investors going at it because it's really good and like if you if they were to acquire someone else, they did previously say that they might do bolt-on acquisitions, but I guess that's fallen by the wayside. I think since Super like the realities of the deal came to came to fruition. But yeah, if you could acquire other games of studios, but they might not be as successful. like good luck finding another super play especially for less money maybe there's someone in Turkey that they got their eyes on if they want to stay in casual it sounds strange bit desperate to sell your best asset and it

kind of sounds like to me unfortunately I I know they have they have students like they're really successful in that but it sounds like when they were looking at things that they could sell or they could sell the company either this was their best asset that they could sell or they need to sell this to then enable something else.
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting story, right? Uh Aaron, what else have we got?
Yes, the last one from me today is um another kind of daty piece. This time about Lilith Games Clash of Critters, which has been out for 2 months now. And at Magic, estimates suggest it's made about 16 million um in those two months so far. And one thing that I thought was particularly impressive um is that the the revenue has stayed like very stable month over month um obviously we've only got two months of data so far but um kind of while daily spending peaked quite early on monthly revenue only declined by 1%. So the game made 8 million in its first month and over 7.9

million in its second month. Um obviously you a lot of games kind of see revenue fall off quite quickly after the launch period but at least so far uh this seems to be an exception. Um it's a very very stable earnings and so far that spending has been led by the US. So 44% um of the kind of global total has come from America. But it's also worth noting that uh while the game's doing well so far, it's taking a similar approach to AFK Journey, which Lilith launched a couple of years ago. Um and that started out in the west and then a few months later Lilith launched it in China and it kind of exploded um in that region after like AFK Arena was very successful there. So, I say they it seems like they're doing something similar here because Clash of Critters is out kind of all over the West. Uh, but it hasn't

launched in like China, Japan, Taiwan or Vietnam yet or I think a few other parts of Asia as well. I say China is likely going to be quite a key region for the game. So, yeah, currently the US is leading. wouldn't be surprised if when it comes out in China, you know, we see a massive surge and China takes the lead. Yeah. So, I think it's just um strong start so far. Obviously, it's a new IP again. Obviously, they're completely different kinds of games. Like, this is a kind of monster capture come idle game with tower defense elements. Totally different thing to Pokémon Champions, but like obviously Pokémon's a massive IP. This is a brand new IP and it made a bit more in its first month than Champions did. So, you know, off to a good start in that kind of strange context. Um, and yeah, I guess good luck to Lilith going forward. I'm sure we'll be reporting on it when when the China

launch inevitably comes out and revenue probably reaches new record highs.
Good for Lilith that what looks like could be a new hit. It's been a while. I think I guess AFK Journey wasn't bad by any means, right? It's done well, but it's not been at the level at all of at least App Store, Google Play
of their massive like billion dollar hits, right? So, their biggest games AFK Arena and Rise of Kingdoms, they've been kind of looks like they kind of been struggling to to get that and obviously that's extraordinarily difficult to do. That's what a lot of studios even Supercell kind of struggle with right now. It looks like they found the maybe they found the formula, but we'll see. As always, like you say, potentially the unless it's out on Android stores already, like the China launch to come. So,
yeah, I'm pretty sure they said it's not out in most of Asia as yet.
So, yeah, very exciting for them. For those interested, we did already cool interview with them a couple years ago about basically how they greenlight all new ideas, things like that. So, check

that out. That's where the little inside of games, I think, is what we call. Thanks, Aaron. And Mariam, you got something else to round us out with?
I do. I have a fun story that somehow links back to my previous conversation on Netflix. But I'm really excited for this one. So, one of my favorite games that I haven't played recently, Don't Starve Together, which comes from Clay Entertainment. It's a multiplayer survival game. It launched just I think 2 days ago on July 21st on iOS and Android via publisher PlaySt. And it's the first time the sort of full co-op version has ever come to mobile. So to give you guys a little bit of a background for those who don't know, it's a sort of Tim Burton art inspired gothic survivor game where you have to manage hunger, health, sanity. You have to try and find a great place to build a base and of course you have to fight a fair few bosses as well. An interesting thing to note about the launch is that it's priced at $8.99. I believe it's a premium paid title, so it's not free to play with APS, which is pretty rare on mobile right now. So they're just setting at that price point. Whether or not that will change, we'll see in the months and years to come. But I think

what the really interesting thing for me is the way this links back to what I talked about previously with Netflix. So the project funnily enough was originally set to be published by Netflix before Netflix did their internal shakeup in 2024 2025 I believe. So Plagi and Clay sort of picked it back up and said okay fine we'll ship it ourselves which they did and they shipped it independently. So it serves as sort of like like this nice contrast point for me when talking about the Netflix thing. And there's no shade or no sort of hate to IPs. I think they do really well and they're they're valuable. But it's kind of funny to see how this is a project that Netflix dropped. The team picked it back up and they turned it into a real sort of product. And suffice to say that it can kind of show what a committed mobile dev team can do. And it's exciting, you know, amongst the de doom and gloom of all these layoffs and whatnot. It's nice to see a game, a successful and beloved game sort of doing well and moving onto a new platform which is mobile. And yeah, I'm personally really excited for it. I haven't had a chance to play it yet cuz I've been so busy with my camping endeavors and whatnot, but it's it's on my list and and yeah, I'm

excited for it.
I remember I've never played Don't Starve Together, but I remember playing Don't Starve. It's excellent game. Very difficult.
Very difficult.
It's so hard. Yeah.
At least. Yeah. At least when I was playing it, I was like, I don't know what to do. It takes like quite a lot. What's What's the What's the what I'm trying to say? It just takes a lot of learning, I guess, as you go through. And every time you think you've learned something new, there's always five more things to get to.
I'm really excited for it, though. I've been like, you know, when you're really excited for something, you don't want to play it just randomly after work. Like, I want to dedicate a day to it on the weekend. So, that's my weekend plans.
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. I I feel it like notionally it feels like premium games have it's it's difficult because they obviously don't hold even a candle to free to play but it feels like there's more been more premium games over the last couple of years
and maybe the years preceding that. I know that there was an article of games industry like this that kind of went into this.
Um I'm a bit skeptical on the revenue

stuff because a lot of that is frankly bilateral.
Mhm. But it is interesting to see that especially when I thought like premium would be particularly dead after Apple arcade came about Netflix subscriptions etc. But on the one hand it's coming back but then last week us Maria Science was basically saying that at least for a studio like us two there was just no way that they could do mobile premium anymore.
I wonder if this is going to be just for launch. Okay. It'll be interesting to keep up with this and see if they introduce APS down the road. But yeah, the fact that they've priced it at $8.99 I think is quite fair as well for such a beloved game. They're keeping it kind of they're keeping it sort of within everyone's price range it seems like which is always nice to see.
Yeah. Right. Thanks that Mar that brings us to the end of the week in mobile games. Thank you very much both of you for being on the show. Really great insights this week. Thank you everybody uh for watching or listening however you consume your podcast media. We will probably be back in two weeks. So, the

next episode is going to be the 100th episode, and I'm going to be a child of joy, and I really want to be on the 100th episode. So, we might skip a week, but yeah, look look forward to seeing you on that one. Have a great weekend. Catch you all soon. Thank you. Goodbye.