💰🚜 How Playrix turned a 17-Year-Old Tycoon into a $45M/Month UA & Match-3 engine

Suddenly, there's stuff like this. What does this mean here? Which is a fully fledged match three game and I mean fully fledged like thousands of levels, not some random mini game thing.
I wonder where they are getting the match three expertise.
[laughter]
Right? Of course. And not only that, there's all other different loops that are in this game because again, here Oh, here we go. There's exploration adventure loop, basically energy based one. Where did we see in here?
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Hello everybody. Welcome to this What is like super rare special episode? I'm not sure like what's the what's the actual rarity of these episodes, but ultra rare ultra rare episode because today we are talking about Township and we are going to do a little bit of history lesson, insights, and go through pretty much all Township since the beginning.
a little bit. Yes, so buckle up. It's going to be couple hours, maybe. Well, we'll see. Anyway, my name is Matija Lanchere. I'm Jakub Remiar. And I'm Erno Kuiski. Hi. Hi everybody. As a special guest here uh coming from Game Refinery. So, happy to be here. Hello hello. So, we are your hosts. Perfect. So,

I know you want to introduce again like you Game Refinery and then we go straight into the Township history lesson. Yeah, so a Game Refinery, first of all, if if you didn't know the company, so it's a basically market intelligence focusing mostly on the product side, features, live events, all this jazz. What are whatever top games, games that are not doing so well, what are they actually doing in terms of feature, feature implementations, how they evolve, how they build their live event frameworks, all that jazz, basically. And then we work with our clients to provide basically competitive intelligence through that. And nowadays, we are part of the bigger Liftoff family, so there's the like the UA part coming in. But the Game Refinery as a tool itself, it's very much still like product focused, but we are part of the bigger Liftoff family now uh working working with them as well and you know, expanding our reach to a bit of bit wider from just the product into the UA UA side as well. Nice.

It's pretty much the analytics for game designers, I would say. And yeah. And then And by the way, one of the first, let's say, pioneers of doing like game genre taxonomy, especially on mobile, which is quite important, just say. It's It's been a while. It's like we've been around for now, I think, 11 years as since we started, so very very very early days. It's been a while since we've been like deconstructing, you know, markets nowadays. Back what what it used to be when we started in terms of these type of types of tools or these type of insights, it was quite a different landscape overall than whatever it is nowadays. So, Township. Township by Playrix. And very very interesting game. And it's on our radar for a long long time. And I mean, when is the better time than now? I mean, their revenue is growing, all time high, is insane, super old game. So, what's going on? What's going on? That's why we are here. Yeah, that's why that's why we're pretty much talking about all this because maybe let me just uh

share this for a second so you get a taste of like why are we actually talking about this and like at what Township what do you mean like this is whatever like now they're what nearly Yeah, they're going to be 20 years old in in in three years pretty much, so 17 years old game.
17 years old game. All time high. Yeah, but this is the the reason why we're talking because this is what like 45 million in March and again, that's still rising and rising and rising and is the biggest Playrix game currently. So, this game is literally evergreen. This is the evergreen game. No one else is compared to these guys. So, yeah, we're talking we'll be talking about Township, that's why we called Erno. So, you see that we need the experts because this will be long one. And the thing that these guys did with the game was amazing, but just to kind of give you like brief intro like what Township is and why we're talking about this. So, this is coming from the old like first era of mobile games where they were not even on mobile, they were on browser. Facebook canvas, what are we

talking about?
canvas, exactly. And it was the era of FarmVille. And again, this is a farming game because during that era you needed a farm game to kind of make it in the game industry. The question to the audience, please comment in in the YouTube section under the video like who out of all of you guys remember Facebook canvas? That's the very big question. Tumbleweed.
[laughter]
Yeah, so we are dating ourselves. We have We have the game as or the game started as this kind of like, you know, innocent farming simulator stuff like that. But then a lot of things happens. So, there's not already like the usual kind of farming loop of you getting resources, collecting stuff from your cattle, and completing orders. Suddenly, there's stuff like this. What does this mean here? Which is a fully fledged match three game and I mean fully fledged like thousands of levels, not some random mini game thing.
I wonder where they are getting the

match three expertise.
[laughter]
Right? Of course. And not only that, there's all other different loops that are in this game because again, here Oh, here we go. There's exploration adventure loop, basically energy based one. Where did we see in here? So, yeah, we go through all of these things to kind of frame it and put it into context for you. As Matija said, this will be a longer one, so we want to get deep to it, but yeah, trust me, you want to see this by the end because it's It will pretty much tell you what's the current state of the market and why everybody is doing what they are doing and why this game is so successful with it. So, let's let's start with that. Oh, hello. Hello there. I didn't see you. Thank you very much for coming to this episode. It's brought to you by our sponsors, PVX Partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing. If you're scaling your business and need funding, here's the deal. With PVX Partners, you can grow your game easily

in your business. There's no equity dilution. You can repay as you get paid and it's flexible, fast, and fully tailored to your growth. So, you can secure funding in 30 days and get a term sheet in just 24 hours. Don't you wait. Take control of your UA budget without giving away of a piece of your company. Visit pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you grow your game faster and stronger. Don't wait. Go to pvxpartners.com. Perfect.
Well, like Jakub said, the game nowadays it's almost like a platform of games. There's a lot of aspects, but it wasn't back in the day like that. So, I think kind of good way to start off is little bit quickly go through the history, like what has happened throughout the history, what has been like said, it's a game out there for 17 years. So, what has happened actually, how the game has evolved, and what kind of a phases the game has had because it has had quite a bit of a different phases. There's still the core tycoon is still nowadays, but

honestly, it's just one of the aspects anymore. And I In my opinion, it's not even the key aspect anymore in the whole game. So, if I start sharing my screen, um I made a little quick timeline how I think about the kind of like the eras of Township. Made it into three uh sorry, five different different eras. So, like the very very early early days what we talk about the social media. Social media days, the web days, and then [snorts] we had the transition already to mobile and also PC platforms. That happened That's also like the 2012 in App Store. It's been ages out there. Then we started to see some kind of like I would say early live game era, how that went on. They they still really started to add features. And to Well, the whole market market was changing more and more live ops was, you know, it was becoming a thing. It was not just okay, we add

some horizontal content and that's it. And then into the even kind of like a more nearer uh like to 2021 2023, what Jakub showed, the puzzle aspect, it started to, you know, raise its head in the game. And it started to become more and more relevant to the game. And then nowadays, if we are looking at the past three years two two to three years, pretty much all the new content, pretty much all the new loops and live events, everything is very much tied to the match three. So, the match three has become like a such a relevant thing to the game and it wasn't even part of the game when it was launched. So, it's an interesting shift of focus that they the whole game has seen throughout the years. But if we go a little bit through the eras, so like I said, the early early days, I'm not going to spend a lot of time there. It was mostly, you know, they're finding their footing. The live

ops wasn't that much of a thing yet. It was mostly like horizontal content, you know, your tycoon usual stuff, little bit new crops, little bit new like factories and all that stuff. But like that's minimal in the in the modern when we're thinking about the scale of modern day live ops. Not not that much interesting things to be honest happening. So I would I would I would maybe start uh going through from the 2021 era. So the like the early live game era. Maybe key features that I would put up from here. Of course, this is This is such a long history. We cannot cover it all.
already 6 years old by this time, by the way. The game is already 6 years old. Exactly. So we have to cut corners a little bit on somewhere. Um let's try to focus on the on the actual like highlights and and the key key features for the game. And and like said, it's been constantly adding the horizontal content for the, you know, end end end game players. They are getting more and more content and giving reasons uh to play the game. But what happened actually in terms of features

and this kind of like uh bigger live events and fundamental shifts that the game has had. So in this early live game era, 2015, they added the zoo.
[snorts]
I would say that was the maybe one of the bigger one of the first biggest features that they added. So zoo, if you haven't played the game, it's basically you have your tycoon main, you know, area, your main town. Then the zoo is a separate instance. Go to a button, you click that, you go to a kind of like a separate area, which is called the zoo. Wasn't there like a Zeus caves or something similar to like the on their portfolio?
There was, by the way. Yeah, it was like 2020 something like that. They tried it. I don't know, did it ever came out of soft launch? It was live, but I don't think it was a big success. Right. True. True. True. Uh but yeah, zoo is basically kind of similar idea as with the main core town. But it's a separate and then now that it's themed around a zoo. But one maybe like interesting factor that I would

point out from the early days zoos, the zoo feature, was that it actually had very familiar card collection mechanics back in the day already when the card collections were not such a trend yet what do we see in every single casual game nowadays. It worked a little little bit differently, but it was a casual game that had this kind of like a gotcha monetization that in this format you basically collected these cards of an animals. How did you get these card packs then? Was by, you know, playing the game, participating in some of the like a simple events and all that jazz. But like very very early kind of like a format of a the the the collectible albums that we see in every single casual game nowadays. I guess I guess that they back then were unable to trade the cards as you have now with the No, no, no, no, yeah. Very very simplified. Which would be interesting because 2015, there was way bigger Facebook era than it's now. Mhm.

Yeah. 2015, that's 1 year before Clash Royale was released. Yeah. Just think about that. Think about like what would they kind of become already 2015 if they had all these Facebook group capabilities and trading stuff. Yeah. Just look at Monopoly Monopoly Go. Monopoly Go proof. Insane. Ah. This is an amazing example. Then let's go 1 year forward. They added social. Uh they didn't have any social almost at all back in the very very early days. Or like they didn't have the proper, you know, I think they might have had like some friend list, maybe some chat, but they didn't have guilds, for example, which is a must in a tycoon game nowadays. A lot of the the the the game play loop is around working together, talking to, you know, like uh social group, trading the the resources in the in the guild feature. And also they added the the regatta, which is if you are familiar with Hay Day, it's basically the Hay Day derby. So the competitive aspect, the main activity for the social groups. Uh that

was also added in 2016. So kind of the the the era when the social aspects also in the mobile game started to little bit grow. Especially casual back in the day, it was like I remember the days of like doing presentations in like 2018, 19 and social in casual was like, ah, nobody wants to, you know, play together and it's everybody so casual and they just play puzzles alone and look at the market nowadays. All of them have some kind of like a social aspect implemented into them. Then actually if we jump quite a few years, it was kind of stable uh in terms of like the product development. Like I said, they are adding horizontal content. They are like having these recurring loops of events um uh in the game supporting the core game play loop, but not that many like big big features. And then 2019, they added a battle pass. Uh which is still nowadays, of course,

in the game. And that was the era of, you know, battle passes starting to happen in the era of Fortnite.
Yeah, Fortnite. Exactly. Fortnite comes up, it's a total disaster, change the game to PUBG, makes a battle pass monetization and everybody starts copying it.
Yeah. There we go. That was the era. Yeah. Thank you very much for listening. See you See you next time.
[laughter]
But Playrix was one of the early ones in the casual space to embrace battle passes, which was around that time. Fortnite came, yes, mid-core market. We were seeing a lot of lot of battle passes. But then I remember also back in the day when the first battle passes were starting to happen in different kind of casual games and and people like, ah, I don't know, this is such a mid-core feature and ah
[laughter]
Yeah, and I was like, it's all around. Yeah, like what are you talking about? Yeah. But one interesting thing maybe like on the early early battle pass implementation that they had was that

kind of like a it felt more subscription-like than many battle passes because many of the benefits that you were able to get from the battle pass track were these kind of like, hey, if you know, your crops grow two times faster. So this kind of like a subscription-like benefits. So it wasn't just that, hey, you unlock this and this reward if you reach that on the reward track, but it was built actually more like, hey, buy this in the early season so then you can earn these benefits for the duration of the whole, you know, battle pass season. So it was built kind of like a extra subscrip- subscription model almost like for the game to increase the monetization on the game. Yeah, just one one one caveat I want to add there. During this era, it was also a era of hits to the economies because battle pass is your biggest discount on your economy and not every game can absorb that. And Clash Royale learned that the hard way. Just saying. So be careful with these mechanics, please. 100% and it's not the only only example

that we see in the like actual negative impact on the on the on the performance. But I would say those were like three kind of like a key key like early early early features on the mobile era. But to be honest, if we go back and look at Township, many of their features have been actually implemented as live events. And if we look at the let's say past five, six years, this type of like a permanent features that are not timer based, so not live events, there isn't that many on top of the kind of like a just adding horizontal content into the game. But for the Township story, I think the most interesting aspect is how their live ops and how their live event framework actually has been evolving. So in those early days, like 2016-ish onwards, they started to experiment quite a bit on mini games. And what is kind of like a interesting

here is how these do they work nowadays. So if we take a look and like how did the early mini games basically work? Usually event starts, last for, I don't know, 2 weeks. Then there's like event building and then event building in the tycoon core game play loop, you are using it to produce basically energy to play the mini game. So you have like event items and in order to get those event items, you need to, you know, participate in the core game play loop, do your crops, do your products in the factories and all all this jazz. And then once you have done that, you are able to produce energy and then that energy is used actually to play the mini games. So the the the playing the mini games was the reward. And back in the day, there was a huge variety of those mini games. So there was like fishing. There was a lot of like a very hyper casual and like UA creative inspired mini games. So for

example, this one where you like tap the screen and hold the screen to make this bridge and it falls. Very popular like a creative at one point. There was a mini game like Was it literally Helix Jump? Exactly. Exactly. Literally Helix Jump implemented there. This type of a different mini games that you hold a button and then you need to, you know, jump the pig on the next platform and it's like very straightforward simple mini games. But one of those mini games that this was the early early days. I think it was 2017 when the first time they actually introduced match two. So this blast toon blast type of a puzzle. But now the key thing here was that they were kind of like a separate like one of mini games that and then also it was like, hey, you know, create these things in the tycoon and then you get to play one or two levels of a match two blast puzzle game. So it was a it wasn't in the center of everything at all. It was just a like a

very few levels here and there not not like completely like like constantly on. It was actually like a reward mechanic because again you need to keep in mind that in between you're still doing these longest timers on all the crops and all the cool downs and all the buildings. So what to do in between? You play mini games. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Especially if if it works so well in the UA then why not to implement it in the game when people are whining about this is fake this is not in the game. Oh wait a second. Well now you know it is. the hyper casual era now and hyper casuals are destroying the charts. That's why we put all the hyper casuals in Township. Also you you need to remember where it all started with Playrix acquiring a minority stake in Hero Wars. It's pretty much Nextters. Then in Nextters and then immediately after they saw what's happening under the hood with Hero Wars they're like you're doing pull the pin? We're doing We are doing pull the pin. Exactly. And then we are doing pull the pin on all the [ __ ] games and then

suddenly the charts are exploding and the revenues are going up as as never before. They're like okay. Let's not end there. Let's start adding more hyper casual stuff which are also destroying charts now. Yeah. Sounds sounds like a good idea. Yeah. And it was interesting. I remember Township back in the day it was very unique in this way that they did not not a lot of games did like this type of a live ops in their games that it's like so many different variety of mini games and there was coming like a new one every month every every two months a new one appears and it wasn't this kind of like a very formulaic yet. It was a lot of variety in terms of the mini games which is kind of different what is it nowadays. Once we get to get to it. But yeah, you play the mini games and then surprised because every every month there was a different different hyper casual game in the in the top charts. Every two months. Yep. I have a plan. Let me take this and put it in Township. Yeah. See you next See

you next month. See you next month. Especially back in the day it felt like a you know platform of mini games platform of games that okay what we going to get this month and there was that variety which what was kind of interesting at the time in the market. You know what's what's even more interesting like people don't even notice happened. Mhm. If you ask like oh so have you seen all the mini games in Township? What what are you talking about? What are you talking about? They are not there in first 30 minutes. Yeah. Exactly. So it's an amazing insight. But yeah, this was happening like this same format. It was always the same format. Okay, let's support the core game play loop. Let's incentivize you know the participation in the core game play loop. Get get energy play the mini games and then get the rewards. Usually the rewards were like might have been like a leaderboard based that okay earn this much energy and then you get on in the leaderboard by playing the mini game. Get rewards through there or then usually they had also like the personal goals so just like point thresholds and that was the format. It was the key live ops machine for the whole Township for

years and that's all the events worked in the same fundamentals and in a similar mechanic and that was happening pretty much from 2017 and 2021. But then we started to see a little bit of a shift I would say in 2021. So like I said back in the day the mini game design was built so that the playing the puzzle or playing the mini game that was the reward and that was very very restricted. But in 2021 we started to go and shift towards what the game is nowadays where the role of the puzzle actually becomes even bigger. Uh then basically the shift happened so that actually when a new event started how did you get that energy? Wasn't actually anymore that you need to create these event items in the Tycoon loop but actually there was a proper match two so the blast

approach or the match three. And then that was hey play this puzzle and then you have your all the usual you know monetization things there your boosters and your continues and all that jazz all the expertise from the scapes games that the Playrix took. And then the so called mini game was actually now the meta of the events so to speak. So you actually played the the match three which was the core to get the energy and then how you progressed you had renovation events. You know your usual Playrix stuff choose from three and you know renovate an area or room or so on. They had like makeovers project makeover this type of stuff. Then 2022 they actually added merge Yeah, more mention hello. Exactly. Exactly. That was the loop so okay play the like puzzle to get the energy to play that and then the important one that what like Jagup already showed was

this like exploration energy based mechanics. What is it called now? Yeah, that's that's It's called Nexters. Also you know man it's also like Diggy. Like you know Yeah, I know. exploration energy loop where Family Island. Yeah yeah you just like drives the narrative you you spend energy and unlocks like small environment the puzzles and like stuff around this there but it's mainly energy mechanic and because it's energy mechanic you can tie to anything because it's energy based. Also like would you say now instead of one game we have three games in one? There's multiple cores. That's for sure. That's the important part like there's multiple cores now in the game. Yeah, which is everything that we are talking about for past two years pretty much. And these guys are doing this since 2021. Yeah, much sooner than Chinese in Forex by the way. Exactly. That's the important part that everybody is ignoring here. That's why I'm that's why I'm bringing this up because this is just you know not even two and a half steps ahead of the whole industry is like [ __ ]

yes yeah yeah exactly. They definitely were the early adopters of the whole mentality that the industry is talking about nowadays in that that sense. But yeah, that was like when they started to do this they started to experiment. Like I said they they had both blast mechanics in the puzzle. They had the match two and then they introduced the match three. Let me check the charts. So match two like said they had those one off type of a match two events already 2017 there was those one off things but then in 2021 this type of a shift on the design that okay now you play the puzzles. Then they had match two events for quite a while still. 2022 they introduced the the the match three core. So those two different types started to rotate that okay now I get a match two blast event with let's say the renovation. And then I got like match three event with the exploration and then the next one is like match two and merge for example. So these type of a

two different cores on how to play the mini game or play the event and then different type of like a progression vectors for playing that mini game and then naturally for playing all of those then you get the rewards. So there was a lot of like experimentation still going on with the both cores and with the different uh different And then we start to move on to like the more recent years. So the actually the match three focus. So if we look here in 2023 actually the match two so the blasting mechanics they like stopped appearing completely. So it was only match three anymore. And then in 2023 also the renovations and the make make over kind of like a meta layers actually disappeared. And 2024 to 2024 they they actually ran the merge events.

But in 24 that also actually disappeared. So then that takes us where we are now where it's actually constantly only match three basically focused uh events and these kind of like expedition events. So I think in order for me to illustrate this a little bit better I could hop on to the actual game finder platform to showcase kind of like a calendar calendar view what I'm talking about.
Perfect. So here we have basically a calendar of Townships live event framework. And now we're currently looking at January 23. Uh like the early days of the kind of like the shift to the match three era. So if we look at the framework it's at this point you're going to see when we go to the you know what whatever happening happening there today it's very light. So we have naturally the battle pass.
This is very light.
This is already light man. Very light.

So you have the battle pass on all the time. Then you have the regattas which is the you know the derby like guild competitions and so on. And then you always had a mini game some kind of a mini game. So like see here we see there was like a makeover and a match two event. Then there was an exploration and a match three event. Then there was a renovation and a match two event. So this type of a thing. They all are running templates. That's the important part. They all are running templates with different skins. All the time. Like they had the mechanic and then it just reskin on whatever of those like selection of those two or like those different metas and the match three two or or three basically. Then all the other events these type of like shorter events they were already back in the day running these what I like to call like match three support events. So when let's say this event started the match three exploration event. They were running the usual like you know usual suspects from puzzle game events on top

of that. So you had this was the key event that okay hey play match three and and progress in an exploration. Then there was also like the your leaderboards your race events your like uh these kind of like a threshold events anything that you see in a you know normal puzzle game these type of events on top. Just to illustrate the stuff that you see on the sides of the screen in Royal Match. This is it yes forcing you to play the progression. It's like glorified progress trackers. That's it. That's it. Exactly. I like always like to call them like a core support events. So you have just events that gives you short-term or mid-term progression vectors to just to play the core which is in my Royal Match case you just play the Royal Match and then you get this small brief feed of progression and rewards. And then what Township did back in back in 2023 the match three was still kind of like a it wasn't active all the time or because they were

rotating between the match two and match three it was always still an event but they still were running like support events for an event core gameplay which is kind of kind of interesting and very unique approach. So it was basically event for your event in a way. There's that was the time where I guess they were still not sure if this should take over the game and they were still testing it in a way. So it's like this metamorphosis of like still being you know caterpie instead of butterfly but somewhere there like metapod stage basically. That's a good that's a good analogy. My god yes that's very true. But yeah from here we can see that back then still they were like rotating like I said match two they were even trying this like couple day event. This was a you know the Zen Match style event. So this type of an event. They were trying that out. They were in an experimenting phase with the puzzle what kind of a core we should like really go for what is the best return on

investment what's the best meta so to speak so you had you know okay let's try the blast mechanic with the renovation. So you play the the puzzles and then you renovate an area. And so on and so on. So they were testing and they were rotating all of these. Then here we see the 2023 we are in March. First time they ever did the merge merge aspect. So how that that worked was basically again you play the puzzles. From playing the puzzles you get the energy that then you can use to play your merge mansion basically. It's also almost like a matchington story as well. It's just the merge was merge free and then just match three as well. They have merge five there plus plus match three yes. True. So you could always like But again this is 2023. 2023 already. They've been doing it for a while. Yeah. A long time and they've been like honing it. Once we get to the like the modern day now it's such a

like a template machine that they are running. I would imagine like all the processes because they have they're not in an experiment this was still the experimental phase when they were like trying it out. Now they have really like snipered in into the like the best return on investment mechanics and honed those to the perfection. I mean the 45 million a month speaks for for itself. Exactly. And also you have three free years of of content and data and it's like okay. This let me put this into the game. Exactly. And also the portfolio effect because of the match you know puzzle aspect they are honing. I don't know how much now the teams are talking with with each other but I would imagine that the player ex portfolio effect also how big the puzzle is nowadays in the game honing that all the well we're going to talk about later about the economy overhaul that they did quite recently which also kind of like aligned the game a bit more economic wise to their like the puzzle yeah portfolio like the scape

games and so on. Yeah but I I I would guess that these teams talk like on daily basis or like they're pretty much supporting each other one to one. I would imagine so. Even if you take the example when they were getting on with nexters and like hero wars and all these things that what they did is you could see like okay somebody just came from the other team and gave them all the know-how from the previous team like one to one and I wouldn't be again surprised if like for now it's like every everything just supports Township in the portfolio because it's it's the money printer. And one important thing like before you start adding all these cores to your game and whatever whatnot keep in mind that this is a perfect match audience-wise also because tycoon crafting is also dominating by female casual audience which is also this like perfect match for match three pretty much. So this isn't that easy to pull off if these things wouldn't be you know aligned within themselves they wouldn't be able to do it. Yeah but you can you can say you can slap tycoon stuff or simulation stuff into

merge game. Yeah yeah you can you can but you cannot you know you cannot slap whatever Clash of Clans thing into Brawl Stars. You mean you mean ever merge or whatever was that? [laughter] Uh no no no but I'm just saying like there's lots of underlying factors here playing in favor of them that just need to be kind of pointed out because it's not that easy like like these things that you see morphing into this because you know next stage after metapod is not butterfly it's a money printer. Yeah.
[laughter]
There's there's dollar signs in the butterfly. It's obviously. But yeah and also like the
[snorts]
the resources that they probably and and still of course have but especially in the experimenting phase when they were adding new cores like new core gameplay aspects on a relatively high cadence and you know testing them out. It's not like every small studio can pull off that kind of live ops very easily so It's a separate game it's not live ops. They literally

create a new game and you put it in. Exactly. But then if we continue a little bit on 2023 as we are seeing now like looking at the like these mini games over here. It's constant there was always a mini game on and it started to be that okay there's match two match three they were rotating but now in May 2023 onwards if we look at the live event framework match two disappears. So it's only match three onwards anymore. It's always okay we have match three and the exploration. We have match three and a makeover. We have a match three and a merge. So most likely at that time if we think about player ex portfolio again like homescapes and gardenscapes and so on they are all match three they are not really blast. So their expertise on that they probably were like we know this better we get the better return on investment on this one. Let's scrap the match three aspect at all and let's put all our effort into match three driven events. And also

still back in that day you know the match three it was still like very event faced it it's not what it is nowadays that the button is there in the actual main you know tycoon gameplay. It wasn't that it was actually under it was basically very connected to the events that okay hey you know this event comes play the match three and then a new event comes then again it's under it's kind of like a more separated what it what is it nowadays. But that was the early days that they started to like push a little bit more little bit more the match three into the forefront and it started to be kind of like a part of the game almost all the time since 2000 2023. Then if we move a little bit further there's of course like if we look at the calendar they are rotating more and more mini games to all all the support events we talked about battle passes happening all that jazz. In 23 they started to add a little bit more of these support events so emphasize on the match three again

growing for your disco fever is this you've been playing Royal Match like you click the the button and then like one hour competition starts just another type of a leaderboard event. This one v one type of an event that okay you know you again kind of like a play the the puzzle and then you are competing just against the one player and then gaining score and then rewards are based on that.
stop it for a second so people understand the disco event or the disco ball event that it's called like casually in the industry is one of the like key events that Royal Match pretty much did there because it literally you can pinpoint the revenue increase with that event as it was put into there. And from that point on this kind of style of extremely aggressive events and like very low timers has been the game the name of the game. 100% and it's like we're going to see on the on the like the even the the last years and so on more and more of these like the you know the lava quest style when there's like win streak

like this and but basically this sense of urgency events the player triggers the event and gives that time frame that okay hey now it's the one hour I'm going to play or 30 minutes and then that short time frame really gets that sense of urgency for the players compared to you have a leaderboard that lasts for two days. It's a completely different kind of like a feeling that you get from this type of an event.
It's a different motivation for you like if you if you have a one Then in 2023 also what we start to see that now the renovation like on the mini game side the renovations and the makeovers that we were seeing they actually started to drop those. So now if you're looking at the calendar it's merge exploration. Merge exploration. Two merges in a row. Exploration. So, they dropped completely the like the makeovers and the renovations. So, why? Well, explorations, merge, both of both of them are energy-based. Both of them are much more monetized. You can buy more

energy or you can play play the puzzle and then get energy from there, which is then, you know, exposes player to the, you know, buying continues for complete four levels and so on and so on. So, but the with the renovations, it was just, you know, you play the puzzle and then you get the current you couldn't buy progression there. So, they dropped completely those type of an events and it started to be just match three and just merge and exploration. Also, again, we need to say Playrix invested in Vizor Games around 2020 and pretty much since then until 2023, I think, even Klondike was kind of starting to to grow and then since they seen the revenues, again, it's very similar situation that with the Hero Wars. It's like, "Oh, wait a second. Let's just take Klondike and put it in my [ __ ] game and make more money." There you go. Exactly. Exactly. And it's very interesting, actually, like we're now talking about just Township, but we

were If you go back and look Playrix any Playrix title, you look at Homescapes, Gardenscapes, there are a lot of similarities there. And if you look at Gardenscapes or like Homescapes nowadays, they also are full in on this exploration energy-based Klondike style events. So, it's very much like Playrix at that point where like, "Okay, this is the return on investment. This is working well." Yeah.
Like it's like exact same setup as Hobby, basically. So, they have their template pretty much, like their meta game template. And between the games, they keep improving it and using it to every other game, pretty much. So, the learnings are kind of continuing from there.
Sure, but they are releasing new games. These guys really some new games didn't work that well. So, they came back to like, "Oh, wait a second. We have a [ __ ] game which is 17 years old. Let's just put everything there." We figured out the UA. That that that's what the problem that Hobby does, that it struggles with keeping the scale of those new games. Whereas these guys already are keeping the They struggle

with UA.
because UA is the key here in the end and will be. Yes. Yes, everyone. We'll get there. We'll get there. Just you wait. But then, if we a little bit jump forward, for then like much throughout 2023, 2024, not that much was happening. They were operating as it as it was. So, like I said, mini game all the time, match three almost all on all the time. There were exploration with the energy-based mechanics, the merge mechanics. They had the support event for the match three and then, you know, new seasons for battle pass, new seasons for the the regatta on the tycoon side. Rotating like kind of constantly. Not that much happening. So, if we roll a little bit forward, over here to 2024, what we saw is that actually the merge uh start to disappear soon. So, we are still seeing some of them. I think this

one was the last in July 2024. This date onwards, all the way to the current day, they only always have exploration as a mini game. So, again, going back like honing the template, balancing all the events, all that stuff. They have now 100% went on full on about the exploration or like the energy-based energy-based exploration like the Klondike. Every single mini game events that they have had pretty much since that date, July 2024, has been this. So, if we wind back a little bit to the era when they were experimenting with a lot of the like the hyper casual mini games, a lot of different type of course, it's kind of different what it is now. They found the one that really gives them the best return on investment, best maybe engagement for the players, and they have really really doubled down on that. And that's something that we see at the moment in the game only anymore. Yeah, I

think it's a mini game. If it's also one other thing that it gives them, which is it's production light in a way that you can do this because what you're doing pretty much I I think like the most kind of new content is basically the story itself or whatever they're they're kind of doing there, but then it's just what like few environments, reskins or re- reshuffled a little bit and that's it. And you know, the numbers are pretty much there as for like the balancing and everything. It's just templates. So, it's very very efficient to run these. And this is this is, by the way, one of the main things why Gardenscapes even become what it what it was and what it before was because Gardenscapes originally was a hidden object game. But to run a content treadmill on the hidden object game compared to merge match three game, those are two different things. You need like those were the days that we didn't have AI that you would just crunch out assets and art all the time. You would need to draw it all yourself.
Yeah, exactly. Production capacity in this well-oiled machine is also important factor, how they run this giant content treadmill. Exactly.

It's very diff- it's very different to balance like thousand levels in match three and then just do Yeah, exploration. Yeah. And I can imagine also when Township had all of these, you know, yeah, they had the merge, they had the match two, they had the match three. Like they are like, yeah, sure, they're like puzzle style games, but they are like completely different beasts. And then you when you're bouncing around all of these and rotating all of these, like how can you actually be very efficient and get the best return on investment all on all of these? It must have been quite a you know, quite a juggle for them to have so many different or so many different types of, you know, mini games. Yes, they are rotating, they are learning by iteration by iteration, but compared to what they have now, you know, in and just iterating that must have been like much much more easier for them as well. But you know, if you remember in 2019 19, pretty much I acquired Serbian development studio I

picked. So, it's pretty much like an acquire for you to exactly like this like content production, which was cheaper pretty much because obviously so They they they have still giant content treadmill. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, older games run on giant content treadmill. This is not, you know, Clash Royale that that was run originally by 10 people team because players are the content, the matches are the content. This is heavy heavy heavy content. Exactly. And now we're just talking about the like just the live event framework. Sure, they haven't added a lot of permanent features or that kind of things on top, but the horizontal content for the tycoon, horizontal content for the puzzles, it's not just the stuff that we are looking on here that you need to always keep pushing, get get get, you know, more content for the players. So, we're talking about It's nothing. Production light, but it's I mean, to certain extent, it's also super hard. It's a lot of work. But again, you see that the revenue increases month over. Did anyone say web revenue? Oh, yeah. This episode is brought to you by FastSpring, the no

drama D2C partner that's been scaling with mobile publishers for over 20 years. They're fast-growing, profitable, and seriously reliable, which is more than you can say about most vendors in this space. Anyway, whether you're launching a new web store, replacing your current D2C step, or adding a backup plan, FastSpring is here for you. Visit fastspring.gg to set up your web store today. fastspring.gg Hello, FastSpring. Thank you very much, guys, for sponsoring this episode. Definitely pay pays off. Uh then, we are actually already getting to now we start to see even more and more. I think 2025 and 2026 were the the kind of like the years when the match three focus started to pick up even more.

Couple key things. Uh I think it was in July 2024, they added familiar feature for anyone who has played puzzle games in the recent years and know about efficient and features that give usually a good return on investment on puzzle games. This something called the super light ball that the little game Royal Match implemented a while ago and now if you look at any puzzle games, have it. So, they implemented this also to Township. So, if anybody doesn't know how it works, it's basically you play 10 levels, then you activate this benefit which usually the benefit is that it doubles the the benefit that you get from the the kind of like the biggest combo piece in the puzzle. So, in match three, it's usually the rainbow ball or like something like a rainbow item which destroys all the one specific color pieces from the board. The biggest booster that's combined from five five match. Exactly. Now, and then now it actually destroys

two colors. So, the the benefit is doubled. So, Royal Match implemented I think this was to the end of 2023 or something like that when they implemented this. And now it's one of those kind of must-have features on any type of a puzzle game. They had a very good positive impact, especially Royal Match when you look at when they implemented this. There was a clear correlation on the performance. Toon Blast also, look at their implementation implementation of this feature, clear correlation on the performance. But I have to say like this is also one of those features that we have seen also negative impact because like if your difficulty balancing is not correct, you can actually give a little bit too much and it makes the level sitting too much easy like easier and then it actually can have a negative impact on your performance. So again, a feature that's, you know, balancing is everything. The the the hidden detail like devil in the detail in this image. Read the bottom line. Will be active until your first loss. Sorry, yeah.
This this is the whole spending point because what this gives you is pretty

much this supercharge hammer where it in my opinion breaks the difficulty because match-three levels are not designed in a way for this booster to be too color strong. It just it breaks the difficulty which is amazing feeling because you're blazing through the content. But if for some reason you lose, you don't want to lose. You buy your first plus five moves everything. So you spend like crazy because during this small period you just blaze through all the stuff that was like so hard to do and everything. And as Erno said, yeah, it breaks the difficulty. In my opinion, it completely breaks the difficulty. So it's just about like do we have enough levels to throw at you and to keep you in the loop because retention equals monetization in match-three. Basically, if we keep you in the level saga. Yeah, and that's also like one of those things that because it breaks the difficulty you need to be ready for that. Sure, it's balancing that, you know, how we balance the levels for having this

positive impact for the player that this kind of like a feature has, but usually it just you cannot balance both. So you need to be ready to have enough content because like Jacob said, you know, people are going to chew through the content. So you need to have that horizontal amount of content. That's why actually we don't see this feature. You look at like early versions of like some games that don't yet have thousands of no levels in puzzle. It's not the one of the first features to add because there's the risk of like people chewing through the content a bit too quickly.
Yeah, because your game need to be able to absorb it. So only like high high level count games can even afford it basically. And in my opinion, it's also good in a way that it's kind of a balancing act where, you know, you start the game or match-three game with 1,500 levels, then you end up like I don't know, Candy Crush is with like 17,000 levels.
23
You can be much more generous with your content cadence now. So this thing actually helps you because it speeds up

the LTV that you would be waiting for much longer. Mhm, exactly. Yeah, but you as you said, you need to have that content in the game
you about content. It's easy. 17, come on, man. 17 years of content. Yeah. All righty. So that was the first step I would say in the like complete push towards the match-three shirt active started to be active all the time. But then if we move a little bit forward I think it was let me see a lot of the same mirror stuff, similar stuff. in rotating. I think it was December 24. I don't have it here, but like the now in December 24 they brought the match-three button into the main screen. So it wasn't anymore hidden in the UI. It wasn't anymore hidden under the kind of like you go to the event and then you have the match-three button over there. But now even if you're playing the Tycoon, it's right there on the same spot on the bottom right corner. So they

brought the match-three to the forefront for all the players. So even if it's like, you know, you don't want to participate on it, it's right there. It's much more in your face.
player profile, if you go into player profile, even now it shows your town level and match-three level equalized in one line. Both numbers are there now shown. From there on we go to kind of like a get to like summer of 2025. Then a lot of stuff start to happen in the live event framework. Like I said, we had this match-three was already active all the time and the exploration was the like the rotating on the on the game. And they had some of these like, yeah, we had these like you know, tournaments and this stuff. But from this point on onwards, we start to see kind of like let's implement all the all the features that all the events that the all the Homescapes and Gardenscapes have and Royal Match have. So we start to see the

usual suspects in terms of just pushing events for the puzzle core. So we start to see these kind of like a not one trendy event type that okay, hey, you have tasks in a stages and that in in devices you to play the core core gameplay. You have the collection album finally like the modern collection album.
Yeah. And not anymore the zoo one. So we saw that happening. And also in this one where do you get the get the packs? It was mostly by through other events and the other through the other events in this game start to be like 80% my like those support events for the match-three. So your leaderboards and so on and so on, they start to add more leaderboard weekly contest straight from Royal Match exactly the same week long. There's like match with your friends type of a stuff. If you look at the size of the the framework compared to what we were looking at 2022
this looks a little bit more robust.

Yes. It starts to grow all the time. And then we get to 2026. Even more we had the social co-op events. We have seen all of like this is one of the event types actually also where we see quite a lot of correlation with the performance. So if you don't know this social events or the social co-op or social partner events, what do you whatever you call it. I think it was Monopoly Go implemented in 2000 maybe 24. Basically is that you partner with one friend and then you can partner with multiple friends at the same time. But you have a separate progression for each of the kind of like a friends you are partnering. So it's not a one huge team, but it's like one-to-one partnerships that you do. And then you progress that. How you progress that? You earn currency. How do you earn the currency? Play the match-three. And then if you get to a certain level in your partnerships, you get rewards. And there's an extra incentive that okay, if you complete all the three partnerships

that you made, you get a grand prize. But again, very trendy event has been for a couple of years in all of type of casual events, but especially in the puzzle events. And in this game game's case, all about going into the like supporting the match-three aspect. More races, different kind of competitions and so on and so on. And now we are here in the modern day. If you you feel compare like Royal Match event framework and the Township event framework, a lot of the similarities. A lot of the like pretty much same kind of events. And I think the key thing here is if we think about we are talking about Tycoon game. And if you look and looking at the kind of like all these events The type of them. Yeah, the type of the events and how they are designed pretty much 95% of them is to support the match-three. It's not the Tycoon. It's not the Tycoon. Even actually I think it was

let me see the the the battle pass was they had a reno overhaul of the battle pass which I actually missed in 2025. And what did what did they do with the battle pass overhaul? Was that they actually removed the quests all together. And now what's the progression? You just play the match-three.
Match-three, yeah. There we go. So like every pretty much live event nowadays in the modern Township is built to support the kind of like a match-three more than the Tycoon. So the focus has totally shifted. Township to be almost like a match-three game with a side Tycoon if we think about what it used to be back in the day. Yeah. It's it's really shown here in the current game. But in January 2026, basically they completely kind of like overhauled their premium currency economy which is this called Township Cash in the game. They did that only for end game players

actually. You need to be I don't remember the exact levels. So but you need to be quite far in the game. So what did they do? They basically made this kind of like inflation for the whole currency. Basically they lowered the value of a individual like a bill of Township Cash. It used to be that okay, you would get I don't know like buy the extra moves in the the the match-three part like let's say 10. And now the the the value it was increased by I think it was like 80 80 times. So basically they inflated the currency a lot. So now the numbers are much much more much more bigger. So that happened also with of course with all the prices. But also naturally they had to change the what they are giving as a reward as well. But in proportion, it was much lower what they are now giving as a reward. So they basically tightened the economy. So everything was made a little bit more

expensive. The amounts that you get of course were like got bigger, but not in the same proportion that the prices went up. So basically one way to kind of like a change the economy to feel that, you know, we are giving more because now with the lower value of the premium currency, you can get the sense that you are getting more because they can hand hand it out as a reward in a relatively bigger numbers, but the value is actually lower. So as a reward in the event, you were able to get nowadays you are able to get much more currency and it feels that you are getting more, but actual value that you are getting it's not more. It's just the amount like the amounts that you are getting more. But maybe the main main important thing again to the narrative of the match three focus is that now from every single puzzle level that you complete, you can get the premium currency. And if we think about that economy model of premium currency, it actually now reminds a little bit what

they have for example with Gardenscapes and the Homescapes. So every level you get the currency, you get the currency from the from the from the events and and so on and so on. So my like feeling on why they do this is they aligned a little bit the economy to all the all the puzzle games, even more emphasized the the kind of like a need to play the puzzles because that's one of the key sources for that premium currency nowadays. And it kind of like it becomes even more mandatory than like it it used to be because like you're still using the same premium currency in the tycoon and the main source is by playing the match three. And then of course the aspect of like even tightening the monetization monetization a little bit trying to increase basically trying to increase the monetization. When we are now looking at the performance graph from January 26th onward, we don't see like a huge jump yet.

Players sentiment of course has been very very negative. Players are not stupid even even when they try to you know make it a little bit like it's not so straightforward that we are just increasing prices and that's it. They made this whole overhaul to that it kind of feels like more rewarding, but then when you start to calculate it's not. So players were not happy. But in terms of performance, we haven't seen a big dick dip yet or what we haven't seen yet. It's still too early to see that you know what's the actual impact of this economy overhaul that they did. So but again one factor, especially the one that you know now you need to play the match three to get access to the main source source of the premium currency. Another factor that kind of like a pushes the game to be even more match three focused than A few things that I want to add here. Gardenscapes runs only on one currency. I guess that's that's also the push because their gold is hearts of like one currency basically. They don't have hard currency it's one currency. In

uh Township of course we have gold and the cash whatever hard currency pretty much. So there's normal two currency system. So I guess that they're lining that because it removes complexity means the match three even more easier to go. That's first thing. Second thing is this is pretty much I would say quite close to what happened with Clash Royale and Brawl Stars when they were doing their moon phase up and down because they also went a little bit on cost cutting on the economy budgeting which means Brawl Stars you know removed their gem cost of the battle pass. Each get much more pricier so on so forth. Clash Royale the same they removed free to play shop and all these other things with this giant overhaul added also the the merge uh sorry merge tactics pretty much in into it and all these other things and again shot up. So I'm guessing they're also following this thing and the last thing is which I'm thinking is in the end the biggest problem that they're facing is that their end game players are probably sitting on lots of cash because they were there and they were getting it from the tycoon progression

all the time and they want to get rid of it. And how do you get rid of it? You inflate it away. You just you know change zeros here and there. Oh we give you more don't worry we give you more because you lose sense of value immediately. So I'm I'm thinking they're trying to inflate this giant lump of cash that's being sitting on players inventories from like the tycoon era because those are their best players and players Exactly. And then trying to kind of slowly absorb it into the match three kind of engine because match three engine is just better engine and I'll have more on that later, but it's just like seems to me like a logical step. And yeah there will be this kind of a pains growing pains with this, but I think there's no other way for them because otherwise like these guys their best players just like you know sit on infinite cash basically from the old era and just like click click click pay through it. So no no other way to do that. Okay. Anything else here or shall we go to the game then? Yeah let's let's do the game. Like we really love this style man like great job on making this. Especially with the like the points and everything yeah. Well done. Well well

done explaining everything pretty much. Okay so you can share the screen now now. Okay. So here we go.
do the UI at the very very end. So people
That's that's not the end for sure. That's the end. So just so you see this is the the match three level that I just played and I'm getting yeah. It looks literally like Gardenscapes. Yeah. So I'm getting the soft currency which was the gold there and then the energy that goes into the loop as you saw there. Anyway. So let's start again from scratch what's happening here in the new game. So I was really keen New game. Yeah it's literally a new game. Like I remember playing Township for like four or five times. Like like we can we can actually check like I have it here so you so you see It literally looks like a new game honestly. Because like this is this is 2018. Check how all like grainy and and kind of it's all this looking and like this was cutting edge by 2018 to be

honest like it's definitely like they you know and and now we see this like super saturated very color for nice and like you know this kind of literally super sellish style UI here. Here we have the of course the match three button in top right corner here. Also the exploration button here is in one of the main buttons. If I click here it goes into the exploration mini game. So that's there. You still start with this you know typical field of FarmVille or whatever you know building mechanics and stuff like that. Let me just show you what happens very very early in the game because this is something that I was really looking for because if you look at uh if you look at you know other Playrix games like Gardenscapes and Homescapes, it literally stitched with all these pin puzzles or whatever you know the fake creatives that are every second third level pretty much in the beginning. And here I was like like do I also start with this or what not? So what happens here is that somewhere around second minute they introduce

orders for the first time which is just normal just basic onboarding of the tycoon core. And then there's your mini game right there which is still quite optional because you can select between the orders and normal ones. And if you go here it's kind of a zoomed in a little bit zoom in like their signature creative. The one with the resource overload, the one where like resource puzzle, the one where it's like a blend of pizza ready with with your building stuff and then you're selling stuff. Pretty much resource management and the stacking. But again like this thing that you see here like like this like you walk onto a spot and you pay with your stack of cash on your back. This is pizza ready literally. This is super cent. Yeah. And then again they put a little bit of resources, but again if you would look at this like this is literally Outlet Rush and Pizza Ready. Like If you know If you know If you know if you know. Like this is again those are again hyper casual games from Supercent the guys from Korea. It's one of their main creative of

course with Playrix and I was like really curious what happens here. So it's actually a fully fledged like I don't know three four five minute level. Like if we skip here you see that this this person really enjoys it. Yeah like you can see. You want to earn that money come on man. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. So you go here and takes like literally like lots of time and I'm frozen whatever. But again you play it for something like five minutes and then gives you like five hard currency that's it and goodbye. And then I had it one more time here in the order somewhere like 10 minute mark 12 minute mark and that's it. And that that was it which I'm still kind of surprised because I was expecting more push towards this kind of a mitigation of fake ads going into the onboarding as we see with Forex or these other games where it's like literally like a separate core working for you like in King Shot or Whiteout Survival and so on so forth, but here no it's What I mean in King Shot with King Shot it's just the like first 10 minutes. It's the same basically. If you go and like look Playrix click on the Playrix

ad and you go here and you expect that you will be building the thing. Again you will be building in second minute and that's it goodbye. So it's still the kind of the next there's way where you would just put in the playable creative into the onboarding and that's it and you don't care because Yeah exactly. If you if you look at the Forex way that what Forex games do these days, they they don't shun off like doing even three cores there. Good example of that do you know the the game that is currently scaling the Last Asylum? It's using also the stacking two weeks It's it's a bit more more sophisticated than just that small one mini game over there. Yeah yeah we we just covered it and it's literally it's one my my perfect hotel Yes. gameplay in the first 20 minutes and only then But don't forget. This is 17 years old game. So you need to you need to stitch the tears somewhere and find Yeah you cannot just build it into the onboarding. Yeah you can't do just oh let's just take my perfect hotel and build it in in in Township. It would be very difficult. With Forex cores

those are I think much more easier to adjust because Forex cores are the same for like last 15 years I guess. With again slight differences, but cores are the same. But the thing is like if you're now building in Township two, then yes you can build it around all of these. But how you want to put it in here? You have limited space. And you know what's what's better like the best out of this is like it's actually working with like two places of that stacking mechanic or creative in there. Like first 10 minutes you play twice and then It's gone. So but then you kind of mitigated that with that old live events in in the past so. Exactly. So so you know again what we're doing is like the original Tycoon gameplay is just a giant resource puzzle or resource conversion thing where again we have these primary resources which are the ones that grow on the field then they gets turned into secondary resources which are these like I don't know our lovely cows here or whatever

stuff like that and then we in the end fulfill the orders or send them on train which I'm still waiting for which gives us these materials that you need to kind of build the buildings and this goes by the way quite quite big as for its like scaling like where do I have it here I have it here in the tab here so for instance this is just a basic you know how at the scale like how many different products you can build through it and like go through it or our corn or like what's what's there you see as they go lower and lower it gets like tinier and tinier because you don't it's a giant complexity basically but the key thing here with these things that their timers increase like they're like you see like milk takes 20 minutes to kind of you know cows chew the thing and gives you the milk. Mushrooms takes 5 hours for one. And when I was even like playing this game before then they already had like a lot of mini games even before which with these like for instance like this vine

which is literally like a mini game that you go deeper and deeper and blast out with dynamite well it's like very cute nice mini game. They would like you know naturally they're trying to fill out the time when you're waiting for the timers because the whole game is like Tycoon crafting is basically around timers nothing else like you just set your timers and you go because that's it. And you know FarmVille FarmVille was using a negative conditioning back in the days to kind of force you in because it means that if your crops has grown and you didn't come back they would die. Yeah that was a negative condition you come here and there's a negative emotion like your crops died you want to revive them. Other than other than here like when you come back of course you have your all crops waiting for you because that was kind of I guess too strict by the time. But anyway you you do this Tycoon crafting thing and all these loops kind of unlocked very very soon meaning the match three one and the energy one also collectible album unlocks quite fast which in our opinion they kind of I would implemented it sooner even though they knew how powerful it was even from 2015 because sooner Time wise. Yeah time

wise like the whole Playrix portfolio implemented this what like last year or year before or something like that. Actually one of the like if we because we followed the all the top casual games and for some reason this format of collectible albums Playrix was one of the last top companies actually that implemented. Same same with King by the way I think Candy Crush also was kind of pretty last to the party. Do I remember correctly? Like that Royal Match took it after Monopoly Go in the current version not the other way. Royal Royal Match had it actually like it was interesting but Royal Match had it as a permanent feature without the seasons since the launch of the game since global launch of the game but they shifted into the like the seasonal based that that's been already while also 2023 maybe something I don't have the exact number here. Because I keep hearing that it was actually like in this current form that's it's being run in Monopoly Go it's in some like old Playtika game because I know Scopely had it with like Yahtzee with Friends in that form already but even before then like some

people keep telling me I don't know which one was.
Playtika like social casino game like slots games. Yeah yeah yeah. I think that's the origin of that feature. I remember like that's like years and years ago some of them had the same mechanic already. Yeah yeah exactly. But again you need a giant game to kind of you know proliferated around the industry like Monopoly Go but then everybody's like oh this definitely works we going to throw it in. Yeah because because if it works in Monopoly Go it's going to work in my game. Exactly. No but the thing is that like the people don't look outside of their genre to just borrow the different things and if it's here if you're in a Township of course but in like but in like overall you borrow something from social casino which was sitting there for years but nobody was brave enough to just bring it here because we don't look at social casino because we're all only only focusing on match three which is our lane like that's wrong. Exactly. So here we are basically where we have as I said the match three level here and again it's fits the loop very very naturally because now we have this multi core loop basically multiple cores that we need to

kind of tend to and maintain.
Yeah yeah yeah exactly. Like again this is this infinite session budget now it's completely different than the previous session because it's like like I remember that that was one of the paradigms that I was told like you create soft session endings like you know like chesting Clash Royale like you fill them up you can still play the game but you won't get any rewards to like come back later because there was always this paradigm like you don't want your players to burn out on mobile games. Nowadays no nowadays it's infinite sessions all the way. You don't want them to leave the game. Exactly. Like it was old days in FarmVille because FarmVille had this ambulance crops thing where you would start planting crops in the late game and by the time you planted them all you could start harvesting the [laughter] starting field. You can't leave you can't leave now. So big but that was a balancing issue not not the intent purpose. And if you think about any puzzle games nowadays compared to back in the day like lives actually had a meaning back in the day nowadays it's no it's unlimited lives to everybody. Unlimited lives reward for everybody all the time

you you have win streak and you don't want to lose the win streak so you just yeah it's like okay. I don't care about lives anymore. Yeah yeah so so the times are really shifting and again I see it perfectly here because as I said you set your timers you you do your thing like by the way you get stuck so much all this barn puzzle Tetris mechanic which is like you know you need to upgrade this because there's there will be basically more and more types of resources so I guess like this is just worse and worse this is like pretty good monetization but again nothing comparable to the match three as for the engine itself.
what you know what what they're going to do? Man I I already figured out like next step for Township Playrix 27 Thank you very much you put Playrix in there and they're good. It's going to have female players and male players at the same time which they already have I think it was called Everdale already died. I know I mentioned I mentioned it already. Anyway so again you set your timers and then what to do? Again you go and you play this very very structured progression and and one thing I wanted

to show you like as I said like I'm this is my profile like pretty fresh account like this week basically but again you see the town level is on the same equal footing of your match three level like how they pretty much already kind of show it in here and if I go here and like look for some like random friends here there's a person that's level 12 level 67 there's a person it's level 66 in town level 13,000 in in match three. Like just guess how much time spent this person shifted between the Tycoon crafting and between the actual match three And you know what's what's even better like this person started in 2024. Yeah. He's already playing for two years.
Exactly. And you see you see this thing you see this kind of a flower thing you know where this is coming from? This is from Royal Match because this is what you get for the ultimate cosmetic of the collectible album and by the way I don't know if these guys also have it but I know the Royal Match one Yeah yeah grand prize yeah yeah. Yeah he

completed this this this season already. But uh do they have double bottom here as in Royal Match? I'm not sure on the on the but like yeah Royal Match Monopoly Go Yeah yeah. A lot of them have but I'm not sure on this one. The biggest games have double bottom which means if you complete the collection there's grand collection which just reset the progress you can complete it again for even better cosmetic during the same time. The same obviously. Giant spender. I mean yeah but it's also I mean for the hardcore players like that's that's the challenge. That's exactly what they're going for like just the one the one for the ultimate one because like who cares about the normal one like Yeah exactly. Plebs. For plebs it's for normal people I mean yeah exactly. So so we have all these all that jazz. As I said the the old loops are still like here so for instance again the port starts on level nine here's the regatta thing that starts on level 19. They're all here but as I said they're kind of more pushed to the sidelines as Erno said like some of the things got cut out and cleaned which in my opinion

is better because there's so much maintenance there would be so much maintenance to like Even now it's like it's super like resource heavy I feel. overloading player budget and and stuff like that so that's there but still you see that it fits very nicely in this loop of me setting the timers and then going to play the match three because that's that that's what's happening here and again these two loops
Jacob you know what is happening here? It's the UA play that you mentioned like this is this is it. So pretty much for match three games and you need to kind of do all the pin puzzles that they are doing and like okay this is expensive. Which game from our portfolio has the best CPIs? Wait a second maybe there's the Township with all the stacking mechanics and all the fun in the UA special. What do we do? Oh let's just put our best high invested monetize games in here so this is a UA funnel. Yeah. There you go and there you go. Yeah 100% I agree because like honestly Yeah go ahead go ahead. Like yeah if you

think about any like they haven't really added almost any features to the Tycoon for ages so it's just an honestly like a UA play for their match three game nowadays. It's like they're not cutting because it's you know they have this great side game out there but it's not more like a UA play I feel nowadays. It's literally like reverse Forex because you know with 4X games, you always start with the 4X core and you looking for these like front ends to kind of duct tape on and like create the onboarding funnel like last the asylum with my perfect frozen city with the idle. Here, it pretty much was shifted the other way around. Yeah, the other way around, exactly. The main game was turned into the front end and we added this giant core. Which is by the way the key key
It's genius. It's genius. genius because it's the key learning here that like all of these things were done basically because of UA optimization. Because that that that's why this whole thing can works. And yeah, this is the one thing that I wanted to mention here because pretty much the whole market is pretty much

converging towards this one specific thing which is like UA is the main problem. Like we know how to do UA.
no, UA is the main solution. Yeah, whatever. So so it's the biggest problem, so we need to kind of do these things on the front side. So we know what to do here, but what do we do on the back side of like where do we actually make money? And this is the issue that's also been kind of not challenging, but we are all pretty much going on the same direction. There are only few engines like these meta game engines that can pull off the current CPI numbers to be profitable into LTV segment. Only few. And I mean stuff like 4X, stuff like match three, stuff like merge, stuff like social casino, and maybe one or two more. That's it. Everything else is just not scalable into these heights. You just cannot create the game that's making 20 million plus with these other meta game engines because it's just not possible.
on, man. Yeah, we we'll see. We'll see. Sword is is getting there, but yeah, we talked about sword and sword still is waiting for it's like if it's

if it goes and and like moves. But but yeah, but still it's you know, it's honestly it's a level based engine also. It it it makes sense. So so so it's part of part of this stack. But still the thing is that I think this is again the time where we we see the exact same dynamic just reversed as you said as as is happening in 4X because the key is to lower the CPI through a highly attractive and very approachable front end, which can attract in the players from the creatives from all the low CPI of like all the traffic pretty much and then have some kind of giant monetization engine in the end which offsets the the game play. That's what's most important like the spend depth because then people like everybody should create the game from the fake ads. Sure. But you need to actually monetize the players. Like that's the key. It's not it's like people still forget like there's the CPI versus LTV equation and there's like two parts of that equation, not only one. Yeah. So so this is just a in the end like a

logical evolution to this like very like I guess surprising twist of events what happened with Township. But again, as Mati said like Township became the front end and match three became the The onboarding, yeah, the onboarding key. And here yeah, that's it. And it makes complete sense because like why would you do it the other way around if this is the part making money. So that's there. I would be I would be surprised if they added a Township onboarding to game Gardenscapes and Homescapes.
[laughter]
Wait, let's try to do it other way. And we'll see what happens though. Yeah, I'm guessing it's because again, you see it like if you want to see what are the companies best creatives looking into their onboarding within these companies and there's usually their best creative like with King Shot. Like King Shot is the creative because it was the Steam game that they took from Chrome phone. And that's the creative [clears throat] that like by the way even puzzle games are now copying it like Royal Match is running King Shot style ads. Not even the Match Factory is running. It's like it's pretty much everywhere and I might actually show

Yeah, I have one one creative
you can go. You can go. Very similar. Okay, so I'm so when we are talking about the the King Shot stuff I'm going to share pretty much year by year creatives and I'm I'm starting with 2026. And you know why I'm starting starting here because look at this. What does this this reminds you? I mean it's King Shot right here. I mean come on, it's the same layout. Yes. It's the same [ __ ] layout and it's the same thing. It's just again, a genius UA move. Instead of shooting soldiers you have Yeah, exactly. You're selling stuff on the resources You're selling stuff and like do you know like how insane this like uh combination is? iteration is Yeah, exactly. not combination
Yeah, it's iteration of of the King Shot like but it fits so well here. Yeah. So like this is the the pure and it's like it's one minute long obviously, so it's suitable for AppLovin and there you go. Now it's scaling. I know for some people this this this could mean like like what do you mean like is is the same as like

This is the King Shot knight. Yes. It's there. This is it. I mean It does does very very specific nuance to being able to port a creative concept from one game to another game. Exactly. And it's also really hard, right? And to pull it off. To pull it off and it's not really just everybody can do it. But again, like this is pretty much we can start with 2026 with what they're running at the moment and then I will go back to 2019. The thing is it's only 2019 because Sensor Tower can't go to read it 2014, 15, 16. Unfortunately, I tried to do it on Facebook ads library, but couldn't. Obviously, it's too old, but Now, 2026. What do you see here? It's pretty much 90% playables. Is that playable that was in the game? Yes, pretty much playable. They said I couldn't make ads without the dev [music] team. They said I wouldn't understand the tech. Guess what? I just

made a fully [music] working gorgeous tap to play while eating [music] noodles and watching trash TV and taking care of my daughter. All thanks to Playable Mac. No code, no stress, [music] no ship Sherlock. We can we can try to to do it here and and play the actual playable. And see? I mean way more polished by the game. The the whole kind of logic behind this is the same. It's pretty much the same. You go, you get crops, you build stuff, you sell stuff, and throw it on the back in infinite stack. Exactly, yes. Stack it on your on your back. And then sell it here. Thank you very much. And then just earn money and do pretty much this like infinite playable. You're building grow and
and expand. Exactly. And you can do it until forever pretty much. And this is kind of the let's call it the best practice of of the current playables because then

you need to be able to spend so much time in here to convert the players because longer you are here more chance to actually converting. But again, so we have this this was the first playable. We have second playable which is pretty much the same concept and it was running for three months. Again, this reminds me a little bit more of the Piper's My Perfect Hotel to be honest because you have all these different elements and There's automation, yeah. There is, yes. Yes, there's automation. You can see it already that you can buy a guy.
buy a guy, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. You just scrub to time and this is two lips pretty much, but you sell them and then you just go here, take the money, and then buy the guy that's automating all of this. And again, we can spend so much so much time in here to we can convert the the players. Let's see. I we can just automate this. I I want to automate at least This is important because they have so many of these and again, Okay, so now I can

Hello. Yeah. It's multiple Thank you very much. So now perfect. And you can then upgrade and do all of the different things. Again, this is the second playable and we can spend five to 10 minutes in here. As my mom says, I'm playing Farm Heroes Saga and then there are like these different games that I play in the between levels. I mean like Mom, it's not they're not games. It's just playable of a different game.
[laughter]
And this is exactly what the target audience. My mom is yeah, almost 60 and playing all these match three games and all the all the different things. And it's anyway. So All playables. We have again a different playable here which is It's the river one. It's the river one, yeah, it's the river one. Which is again a little bit of things that are, you know, borrowing from the 4X, but still again, still selling stuff, cropping and then whatever else. Then you have the the the eggs and then you sell. Right? Yeah. So we have this and if you look at this, so

we are talking about pretty much let's say one, two, three, four, five, whatever. Like let's say 20 creatives, 90% of these are playables. And we have AppLovin, Unity, Mintegral, all over the place. So but these are let's say the new you can clearly see where is this coming from. Not from the number. At least the the start, but now I mean this is pretty good. I mean honestly That's very good. They improved the creatives like so much and it fits pretty much I mean you know, when we are talking about creative trends, there's always a Township ad because they're Mhm. like two and a half steps ahead. They're innovating even with the AI. Yes, innovating with different things. So then we have uh yeah, we have this Township. So we have the AI stuff which is here which we already talked about. Yes, with all of this. Which is amazing. Yeah, obviously. That's why Felix is not here.
[laughter]
And it's pretty much

Yeah, yeah, no Felix, no ads, no Felix. And this look at this carefully because this is one of their concepts that I will show you again that a couple years ago. Because this pretty much this stairs it was I think idle Bank or something which brought this so it's again coming from idle and it was really popular at the time when they were kind of running this and now they're bringing it back. So they're iterating on their like all the best performing concepts and then adding more complexity on this. Because then you start with the great hook but now it's it's 1 minute long video and then you're selling there's multiple people like it's like they're bitching about like all of these like emotions they're like everything that you need to have there. It is there. And you don't feel like it's super complex but if you actually zoom in and it's like so many elements like upgrading stacking emotions so many people so it's over yeah resource overload like even people overload so you know as I always

say like mass battles this is pretty much like just you know mass everything overload everything people resource stacking like it's so many mechanics here which is amazing and I love it it's this is another kind of yeah this is the the king for that. And then we have 2 minute long videos so you combine all of the best performing stuff and then you go from there and then you have so look so even How does the physics physics one that they still do? Yeah it look it's again like resource overload if you this second minute so now again okay thank you very much another another creative. Still this is such a great stuff look it's really visually really appealing and again still like upgrading resource overload
This is golden goblins basically.
But yes exactly. So pretty much all the stuff from from idle and little bit you know this one like top tycoon pretty much stuff from idle
is bus bus sort.
Bus jam bus jam bus jam exactly. So

again they're still borrowing different mechanics even to this date from the games that are kind of scaling I'm waiting for for pixel flow to to happen because look see this one we seen this before and this was one of their best performing creative and again it's 2026 and it's here again just an iteration of the things okay. So let me just go back into back in time yes and go to 2020 Here we go. Here we go. The pull the pin era.
Era. The pull the pin era but it still has like something really really in common and this is what we always talk about a near death experience. Yes.
It's all there. It's all there so even if it's a pull the pin there's still the element of we're going to [ __ ] die. Let's save this ship. Let's save them. Oh there's a wolf. Oh my god like what what do I do? This is again like we're talking about 2020.

Come on like how amazing is this like they were so far ahead of everybody. The big change in here and you tell me I mean you won't probably won't see it because
because you you don't know like where to focus. They are in 2020 running Facebook and Google mainly. So that's why we see all the videos but it's still videos and they're like all these like if you remember it was pretty much everywhere. Gardenscapes they had this like even like the there was the time where there was the guy like what was the consumer acquisition company and they were doing all these different kind of creatives and then everybody was doing pretty much it. These guys as well across every game every game again a different iteration a different near death experience. Again very important thing nails red nails nail polish yeah nail polish Polish.

It's that's also very important that at the time. But again I was trying so many different things. Was this was this during the time that they were in open UA battle with Matching Town Mansion?
I think so yeah I think so.
the time yeah.
Yeah I think it was around that.
The the companies were like oh we cannot get into UA market now because these guys
Yeah yeah glue was yeah yeah glue glue was like in their earnings call was like oh we can't spend because they're in
market force
market yeah yeah yeah
[laughter]
Yeah exactly. They kind of like you're looking at this like what the [ __ ] is this even like having common with with Township. Yeah of course.
I think it's that fire like the like blaze of fire that Matching Town Mansion had because you would like pour electricity on like water and stuff like that.
yeah different things
always end up in fire. Yeah I mean obviously looks like it's all the the same thing you build this whatever and still it's again near death experience you're trying to solve different things and but still like we are in the same like 30 second type of creatives all the

different things again. See like they're they're experimenting quite a lot but still like choice like you need to solve the the puzzle and then just pretty much
fail state that's the important part so they need to end up in fail state. And I'm I'm kind of looking at let's say 5 months in in 2020 1300 creatives fine. If we go into
3000 this this this month. Yeah. If you look at let's say January and June 2021 is only 600 creatives but it's kind of already moving somewhere I mean this is the old old video that they've they've been trying to run even now. They okay they're trying to do things. We still have pull the pin obviously here but then it's becoming slightly different stuff all the drama but still the core concept is choices fail state of near death experience because you

have still pull the pin but now it's also like a building elements and now we're still starting to already see them like 1 minute long videos. Which is I mean okay thank you very much fine. But we're still seeing these pull the pin stuff and else yeah this is There was also a time by the way when the whole store was also pull the pin. Oh yeah yeah. Yeah yeah exactly and now we have the pull the pin playables oh okay nice. Thank you very much still it's I funny thing it's this is Google but okay. Thank you. Anyway. So then they're moving into kind of this trend. Mhm.
Still pull [clears throat] the pin but now yes and I'm in there kind of still running this on Gardenscapes and Homescapes it's more like it's combination of freezing families and pull the pin or like it's not freezing families just
It's pull the pin upgraded with freezing families.
Yes exactly yeah it's pull the pin and not even freezing families but like poor families like they're
Yeah poor and freezing families.

yeah yeah exactly
[laughter]
exactly exactly exactly exactly that's that's right that's right that's right.
This is amplifying the emotion that's it because the creative is basically the same like you pull the pins you need to like heat something or like put coil in the heater or whatever and that's freezing family or small girl and and and her mother or something.
Yeah. Exactly. Or or is the butler or also the butler?
yeah yeah the butler so it's all pretty much the same stuff now with with this emphasis on on this pull the pin. Fast forward to let's say 2022 and I want to show you exactly this. Oh where is interesting where did we see this?
There's the stairs. Oh there we go. Okay so this is pretty much the the original creative which was 2022 or 2023. See the like the the watermarks here Township. I wonder why. I mean maybe because someone was stealing their creatives.

Who am I to judge? For those who don't know arc or like watermark creatives are there because lots of companies just take your creatives cut off the end card and run it in your pipeline they don't even ask. And the funny thing is I was just doing this kind of experiment on my own so I run stolen creatives on Facebook Google and AppLovin. Facebook nobody cares. Google nobody cares. AppLovin is like hey by the way we found out like you are running creative that is not game we took it down. So you can say anything about AppLovin but they are actually policing this quite
is today by the way.
And this was this was last week. This was last week. So they're actually like they're actually they take care of like what they see on their platform and if you are not you know working by their rules Yeah so for for Google and Facebook you need watermark. Yeah yeah yeah pretty much. Pretty much but now you look we are looking and we're going in that like kind of this is the first stacking creatives they they start doing which

was 2022 2023. So that's why I think they start implementing this directly into the game that's what we saw pretty much because this is like one of their first stacking mechanics. Yeah there's golden goblins. Exactly golden goblins and they're like few few hyper casual games on top of this because golden goblins didn't have the stacking mechanic did they? Uh I don't know I don't is it a super center golden goblins I think the original.
Well I think in that case it's golden goblins because super center was way way later than golden goblins but yeah of course like they're they're they took pretty much
AppQuantum creative in the first place.
I mean they're pretty much the same team right so again
Yeah again we're going back to they invested in Hero Wars took their creative pull the pin. They did investment in Vizar so they put Klondike in there so they also are in also invested in like AppQuantum they're they're running idle lumber and Township and golden goblins and pretty much everything. That's one of the best creative teams on the market AppQuantum for From the the

idle point of view absolutely yes and I even remember this creative. It was like crossy road slash stacking mechanic whatever I was like oh again like so complex but so easy. Because it's like [ __ ] hell. Fail state again. Fine. He made it. But they get stacking. Very very important because I think
remember my life by different creatives. Exactly. Right? Yeah, exactly because then then you know. No, and they're like more creative more playables finally happening, but it's mainly again like it's Google, Liftoff, AppLovin is becoming more more important. Is Unity again. So, it's like again it's it's it's more UA diversification outside of just Google and Facebook, which was back in the days. I mean, obviously I mean And and we're still in pretty much three era. Pretty much three era. Again, 2023.
Then we go to January and all until August 2024. It's 17 7,000 creatives.

And again, we're seeing more playables, but we're also seeing this very creative. What the What does this remind me? Oh, wait a second. We just saw this [ __ ] iteration of the 2026. This was one of their best creatives in 2024. I wonder. I mean, and obviously this is also very similar to what Idle Lumber was doing at that time. So, they were like borrowing this these different things because we were talking about it in one of the creative trends, and then people are like, "Oh my god, guys like they're one company." They're, you know, kind of formally around allowed to use this because it's the same it's the same team. But now in 2024, we start to see way more playables. And way more playables, but you see this counter here? It's not 90-second [ __ ] playable. It's like you can't actually skip this in like 10 seconds. So, it's a very very different thing, but it's already like starting to to be what we are seeing at the moment right now. Because again, you have here you're

stacking X. You want to get this and sell it. Again, and then you earn money, you upgrade stuff, you you, you know, get these guys here. It's not even guys like you are just automating all the all the all the stuff, but you can get all the guys here.
sign that money is not flowing into your back, but on the ground is like say games games. Yeah. Because if it flows directly on your back into again infinite cash, it's more super cent style stuff. Fair enough. Fair enough. And then again, more more playables. I mean, it's pretty good. This is the This is my perfect hotel. What the hell, come on.
is my perfect hotel.
much my perfect hotel, yeah. The cleaning thing and everything.
Yeah, exactly. Okay, thank you very much. So, again, more playables, more playables. These are the the pretty much the the best videos, and then again game with no ads with this. This is pretty much like I remember this again. We were talking about this creative for like 10 times in the creative section in

the creative trends. And now they use it with AI with the girl speaking to chicken. Yeah. That's the [snorts] mutation. That's the mutation. Again. All the same thing. And it again, it's pretty complex. It's 1 minute long. You get all of these resources, then you sell it, then you upgrade, then you get more resources, then you upgrade again, then you sell it. It's like it's so many things, and then even here same thing. 1 minute and 29 seconds long. So, this kind of brings us to Oh, I I skipped actually 2022. Sorry, guys. Brings us to 2022 to back to back to the future. No, but in this I think this was the time where it was like so many different hyper-casual games still because this is this hyper-casual. Mhm. Yeah.
lawn mower and all of these different things. So, they were experimenting again. There's like the watermark.
Power Yeah, exactly. Uh it's still it's the 2022. Yeah. Still drama and emotions.

there's the poor families. Yeah, exactly. So, there's already already there since 2022. And but it's still already stacking mechanic in in this creative. So, again, so many different different creative concepts, but still kind of 30-seconds videos mainly. This is definitely Golden Goblins, man. This is definitely Golden Goblins.
That's Golden Goblins one. So, so let's go to 2025 now. Last year. Now Yeah, now you see pretty much what we are talking about for again the same creative here a little bit better polish. Here is the the different kind of playable, which was running for 1 year. And even even now, it's still it's still live. So, this creative this is the the the playable, which is running for a year and a 5 months, and it's still live. And it started to run like 2024, which is insane. I mean, this is this is really really insane.

But then we have the the resource overload, right? This is We talked about this creative. And this is Golden Goblins. Golden Goblins [clears throat] that's the one.
Goblins for sure. Yeah. So, so this brings me to the point of that borrowing different things in the creatives in different genres that we always talk about. These guys pretty much took Idle everything that works in Idle and now even King Shut Down the other genres and kind of adapted to their game. So, this as we said, like this is the UA funnel because this works really well, and then they monetize with the match free layer. And this is just Golden Goblins. So, everything that works in Golden Goblins, Idle Lumber in like March, in April it's here. And I can guarantee like this is the this is the flow. This is pretty much the flow. It's not going to go anywhere. And again, like this is a little bit of What was it? Park gem bought some gem in here. Because you need to do the the sorting stuff

with all the the crops and then and tomatoes and the different things again. 45 seconds long. Way more playables than it's like because now it's AppLovin and SDK networks again rather than just just Facebook. Because if you if you go to Facebook here, I mean, there is going to be Facebook. Oh, well, actually there is no Facebook. So, even there. Most probably they're running something on Facebook. It's just not visible on Sensor Tower. But again, if we go to 2026, here we go. See how this changed over time? What is so much more polished obviously, but they again like double down on things that are working, and this is pretty much combination of five of their best performing creatives from 2024 and 2025 or 2023. And this is like in 1 59-second video. It's insane. It's just like heads off, guys. Like this is exactly how you should run like this like I mean, well, what do I know?

Like 17-year-old game it's it's longer than I'm in the in the gaming industry. So, but see like there is even a riot there like you were so slow, now we're going to steal all your [ __ ] X. It's amazing. So, again, it went from the Facebook Google to now AppLovin, Unity, ironSource, all the SDK networks, which obviously makes sense because that's the whole evolution of the the gaming industry at the moment. I love it here. Hello. One interesting very interesting thing. Well, I guess that that's that is the modern industry, but like if we think about the product timeline and we think about the UA creative timeline, what's the overlap? Not much of overlap in terms of like like whole thing whole shift towards the match three. Did we see any creative that anything even like small part of match three or any type of a puzzle? No. No, you can't. You can't.
So, yeah. Exactly. So, that's the whole Yeah, the whole CPI LTV discussion. Yeah. Because as soon as you you

you showed the the match three gameplay, then it's just $150 CPI or $100, and it's just it's not viable. Same with Forex. You show Forex games like, "Okay, see you never." You know, I'm not going to play this game. But oh, wait a second. I I can farm this so many resources. I can gather all of them. Oh my god. I can stack things. Oh, that's very popular mechanic. Oh, there is even like this whatever they say it is there, which is obviously not. And the the wood chopping. Great. Of course I want I want to play this game. Maybe if there is a match three, I will I will play that eventually. Yeah. So, I love it. Yeah. We'll see something very interesting at the end. I can frame it. Yes, please. Very very interesting.
you're going to show the the graph and the revenue stuff. Yeah.
worries. No worries. So, just to kind of understand like how this small yellow thing here have outgrown to be the biggest grossing game now in Playrix portfolio, it it pretty much took off somewhere in like What's

this? Yeah, like pretty much start of last year. They they pretty much are now the biggest one. No no questions asked, and it's just going up. All the other games like if I just took took these, they are kind of consolidating as they are, whereas Township is still growing.
It's growing like hell. No questions asked. Like all these And don't get me wrong, there's like hundreds of games on the portfolio. It's it's like like
it's meaningless. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like Yeah, if Yeah, you know, if I just put them all here, it's nothing. Yeah, won't change a bit. Yeah. But few important things here. So, if you look into the tycoon crafting category, of course Township dominates now with like 45 Let's say 45 mil here. Hay Day's 14. My Garden Tales 11 and so on so forth. Like yeah, they're still But let's look on into other chart, and let's end it here. So, this is the match three chart. And this chart is very interesting if we start to account these company portfolios into each other. Because if we have Royal Match the Kings now, which

of course they have the biggest game, which is like 99 plus 37, which is like 136 mil, let's say. Of course, said there's multiple numbers there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't talk about this, but let's say 100 136. If we start adding here a little bit of numbers here, we have Gardenscapes, which is 40. We have Fishdom, which is 22. And we have Homescapes, which is 29, which is 91. But if I slap here plus 45, Yeah, which is Township. we are pretty much at the exact same level now. Yeah. So, this is the question, who is now the biggest match-three company on the planet? Is it Royal Match or is it Yeah, is it Dream Games or is Playrix? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So, let me just end there, in a way, in this fantastic journey through the times, where, again, what you just learned is that the biggest match-three company on the planet is probably Playrix now with their ever-growing game, which is still not stopping. And we will keep an eye on

it because, as Erno said, what will happen now is, I'm guessing, it will probably do a little bit of a bump if they time the UA right and they do the economy changes, that's what I would expect it would happen. Or it could decline because if players couldn't do it, but I'm guessing that the first one will happen because Playrix is Playrix and they have tested these things to oblivion. The decline it's not even an option. Yes.
It's not even an option. I mean, the whole story of two brothers coming from Vologda or whatever the [ __ ] was like the the town was like, "Okay, we are fighting for our lives. Like, we need to make this work." And that's like the existential question. So, we make it work. Period. Yeah. That's it. It's such a big inspiration and should be inspiration for all the developers out there because this is how you do stuff. It's not like, "Maybe it's going to work." No, no, no, no, no, no. This is how it's going to work. Yeah, exactly. to work. And as you see, they're still pretty aggressive here with the downloads you see here.

Like, if I if I go here and check the you know, just to end it here with the download charts, of course, they're first. Yeah. Not comparable. And it's what, like around 6 million? But Supercell is never going to be even close. We would not even talk about this. So, so 6 million is pretty much here, somewhere on the same footing as Candy Crush, which is number two here. In the chart. By the way, as revenue-wise, it's like half the revenue of Township, which they're pulling on the download side. So, I'm expecting that this will just grow more and more the revenue because of the match-three cycle how they are behind the download. Exactly because it takes time to to get This was amazing. I think well, at least I think so. I learned a lot. I learned a lot. I learned a lot. I learned a lot and had some fun. And thanks for thanks for coming, Erno. And uh everybody
pleasure. Thanks for listening. This was a little bit longer, but full of insights you will never get anywhere else, only here. So, if you want to stay 2 1/2 steps ahead of the industry,

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