Is Farlight 84 Really Relaunching AGAIN?

[Music] This seems like a never- ending story. This Farlight 84. So, we had the Farlight relaunch. We or launch of a launch of a launch. So, I was curious about this game. They came out with a new global relaunch that is happening on August 7th. And now, this is a pet catching battle royale that receives a major update, effectively rebooting and relaunching the game. The version two introduces a new first-person mode, upgraded graphics, redesigned gameplay systems, and fresh mechanics. Now, if Farlight 84, as it's in Chinese set, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to pronounce it. If you're kind of remembering this name, it's because they announced this in 2021. It looked really great. It was the Unreal shooter game for mobile coming in from Lilith, which was an absolutely on fire. They had AFK Journey. They had that 4X game, Rise of Kingdom. So, this was like

a moment. This was the Chinese company to watch for. And so, they were introducing the shooter. Everybody was super excited. The trailer looked amazing. It looked like this will take over Fortnite. Well, it didn't. It was a well-made shooter. It felt super generic. I'll be honest. Didn't really stand out. Came in so late after the uh trailers. Felt kind of like same old. Didn't even experience the mechanics later on. And as you can see from the graphs, big launch, almost 6 million downloads in May 2023 and an absolute shark fin as you're looking both on downloads. They kind of tried to keep the downloads. You can see the spikes coming in on the months kind of like like the shocks of a of a dead body that is being dragged out of the ocean. The the pulse never returned. And so we went to obscurity and now they seem to be relaunching. And I remember they actually even tried a crossplatform play on this one. So, uh, monetization was awful. Clearly didn't have the retention. I was thinking about like how would they do it? And I would never

think that rebranding would be by introducing new mechanics. I thought that rebranding would be like, "Hey, we made an awesome looking shooters. We have an excellent team. Maybe we can put in another brand like gen like Star Wars, something something that would make sense, sell it to one of those Hollywood big houses." But apparently they're trying with with the same looks and the same vibe, but with more mechanics. So, Phil, is this like just not being able to abandon a sunken cost?
Well, I mean, I totally hear you on the hype for this. I mean, I just remember like Love was just so hot coming into this launch.
Not only that, like Supercell of China, these games are original. These were not derivatives. This did have like an Apex Legends core, but I thought there was a lot of really great ideas in the original game. Like, if you remember, there was this in round hero skill progression, which was something that I think they were even ahead of Apex on. remember there was vehicular combat that was pretty new. The jetpack system was huge for movement. They did a ton of interesting things and to your point they had that PC skew which did okay on Steam. I was disappointed in the level

of optimization. If you weren't from China, like if you're a Western player, you totally missed on all expectations. This game is really confusing that they're choosing to relaunch it. And if you remember, like Lilith has a lot of weird things. So, if you remember, they give their employees shares of a subsidiary that is where the game is actually owned by. And so, I'm curious if like some of their incentive systems are actually getting the best of them and like maybe that's preventing people from moving on or moving projects. I don't necessarily know, but I feel like that's been a very peculiar aspect of their culture and I'm curious how it interacts here. This new launch is bizarre. So, they're adding a buddy system, which is like you essentially capture Pokemon in round and they become like basically a grenade that you can use a tactical. I mean, this was in the original one, but now it's going to be expanded. So, now they're super powerful buddies, which are even more important, and they're building a meta around these in round buddies. And so, I'm just like utterly utterly confused on what's going on here. And I think I found it when we started to look at Lilith at the portfolio level. So,

this is a portfolio scorecard very similar to when we looked at Scopely. We're looking at year-to- date metrics across all of Lilith's games for the last 3 years, and it has been a dramatic decrease like we've seen with Scopely. So, they are down in terms of revenue about 30% across the portfolio year to date between 24 and 25. MAU is only down 6%. But I would say the curious thing about MAU for Lilith is that Sensor Tower only has them at around like an 8 to 10 million MAU portfolio, which is really small.
Now, I want to triple check that number, but like I I did some spot checks and like that was way smaller than I thought. They're really banging on an art mau here. And their downloads are down a little bit in a softer uh rate. The entire portfolio is basically Rise of Kingdoms. AFK Journey, I think, did not do well. I consider it a flop. But the other one that's really curious here is if you see line item number six, you see Palmon Survival. Now, what is Palmon Survival? We haven't really covered this a ton and I want to spend more time with

it in the future, but Palmon Survival is where they should be spending, I think, almost all of their resources abandoning AFK Journey. They have added a Pokemon core into Forex Baby.
Oh.
And so, right now, this is scaling. It's in the United States. It's not at any crazy numbers yet. You can see here they're only 3 million downloads in 2025. They've only done 7 million in revenue life to date, but this is still the thesis I expected Squad RPG to go after. And I think is why AFK Journey failed is that they went in the wrong direction.
And so this to me is what I expected Western developers to do to modify Squad RPG. And we haven't done a lot of it. And we we'll talk about DC Worlds Collide in a moment here. But I think this is what I I think the West really needs to wake up to. Like China is moving on this [ __ ] fake ad. I don't even call it fake ad. Like it's it's it's now a merged gameplay. It's not fake in my opinion. It's becoming closer and closer to the core. Like Kingshot does have real squad RPG mechanics. Like squad RPG is a real part of Star Trek Fleet Command as we've been covering. It's not just fake [ __ ] anymore.

4X strategy survival game. Jesus.
Yeah. Yeah. It's you can you can see Jen like if you go to the character collectors, we can see some of the Palmons. You've got your star system, your leveling. You're looking at a world map here, which is completely irrelevant. It's not a world map, excuse me. This is your exploring map, but you can see that there's also the 4X style map if you click around your usual one.
Insane amount of buttons.
There you go, Jen. That's a good one. That you've got your squad, you've got your normal attack system.
Oh my god, it looks like white out survival. This is white out survival.
Mhm.
It's with a Pokemon core. And this this is just the start of this. Like there's I I'm sure there is more of these in the hopper. When are we going to have match three 4x survival game?
I mean, well, look at Age of Empires, right? Like that was the tensson attempt was like, "Fuck it. Let's do RTS." Was the old EA one?
Command and Conquer.
Command and Conquer. They were that was floating around.
They did Red Alert, right? Out of China,

which is funny. Uh, but very on the nose, but they probably don't get the sarcasm.
Boy. Yeah. I mean, in the little bit that, you know, it's been a while since I played White El Survival, but what they did was incorporate like hero collection, squad RPG, hero upgrading into the 4X system. It looks like they're doing that here with, you know, Pokemon style characters versus
humanoid characters in in White Out Survival. I don't know, looking at this on the fly, but
it looks super cute.
Yeah. All right. It's a cute Forex game,
guys. We got it.
So, the other game we haven't had really a chance to spend any time with, but I'm sure Eric is playing right now as he's on his cell phone during Twig.
He's probably buying a car.
He's negotiating a deal. Is DC Worlds Collide? And there is a reason we haven't covered this one extensively. So, this is another attempt at a squad

RPG for DC characters. If you remember, there was one that was a while ago. Oh, I think it was around the time of Marvel Strikeforce coming out. Do you remember that one, Mishka, by any chance? I
forget.
And and but this is this is from the Swiss publisher, right?
No, no, no. You're thinking of Dark Legion. That was the recent Forax Squad RPG. This is a just pure Squad RPG that is coming out
at the same time.
This was by Warner Brothers, I believe, an internal studio.
Just hearing that, I I bet that this is not going to end well. So, right now we're looking at daily active users and downloads since its launch, which was in mid June. And it looks like it's settled into a steady state of around 40k DAU.
It's a good hobby project.
Yeah, it's I I just don't understand how you get to a place of of kind of launching these games. And when we look at it on a broader monthly Squad RPG report, which is really kind of where I wanted to situate this, we had Mystic Mayhem, if you remember that, that is number 19 on the United States top grossing list for July, but it still is

not at a decent enough scale. DC Worlds Collide debuted it at number 12, but again, it's already slipping. Like, the real winner here has been Pretty Derby. Like Pretty Derby is something we don't spend a lot of time talking about since our our first cast talking about it, but it has killed in the recent months. Like it did 16 million in revenue this month and is on a $200 million run rate in the United States alone. And the number two game I think shocks a lot of people. It's Dragon Ball Z. Like we were talking about anime being mainstream. Dragon Ball Z Dokan Battle is not only the number two grossing Squad RPG in the United States for July, it is actually the number one by lifetime revenue, which very few people have picked up on, myself included, until I started looking it up.
I mean, that game's been around for years, and they haven't.
Yeah, there's a new Dragon Ball coming, I think. Is it on Netflix? I think some of these are getting a little bit of like content revival, too.
Jen, how does this work? there's like

two DC RPG games on the list at the same time. Like does isn't it usually that you have some kind of a grace period before you can sell the IP in the same genre to a different publisher?
I've been curious about this too as we get genre blending is how do you word these contracts?
Oh, very carefully. Right.
I'd be mad. Everyone be like, "What the fuck?"
Yeah. There's a term called slicensing which is Marvel is famous for this which is I'm going to give you the squad RPG cartoon art style only in the US
only featuring yeah I don't know what's going on in this situation but yes you can have what's called licensing which is very specific areas where you can allow publishers or developers to make games. The DC Worlds Collides. It's published by Warner Brothers. I see that.
Yeah. So that's the internal.
I don't know what the other one was.
So DC Dark Legion is is that the Fun Plus version?
That is the fun plus one. Now that

actually when we look at these other games though, it's more clear what Dark Legion's thesis was. And remember, we did do an update or correction on it. It hasn't faded quite yet. It It's holding on tight. I don't think it's over for Dark Legion, I would argue. Like right now, we're looking at 3.7, but this is only United States, which puts at a $50 million run rate. You know, you probably gross that up in terms of Worldwide. You know, that's probably a game I think they'll at least continue operating. I don't think they'll abandon it.
Yeah, it's not over for DC Dark Legion, but it didn't even start for Worlds Collide.
No. And Mystic Mayhem, I don't think, isn't a better place either.
Oh, that that was the beautiful looking game.
Yes.
Damn. It's pretty much doing as any superhero movie nowadays, just bombing at the box office.
No, Superman did okay. Super did well. I might read too much of Chris Heatherly's LinkedIn post because I haven't watched it. But but he I think he he saw something that the box office just collapsed after the first week of
Fantastic 4.

That's true. That was the week off.
Fantastic 4 box office dive is a bad omen for Marvel's future.
It was super frontloaded with all hardcore fans.
Yeah.
Yeah. [Music]