King dodges Xbox cuts, Destiny Rising, Google's store fees, Ustwo slams platforms, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games industry. This week recorded on Brighton Beach. Here we go. As teased slightly last week, it seems that King has escaped the majority of the Xbox cuts for now. So published this one on Tuesday after pursuing a couple more sources just to confirm that it was correct. Four different people told me that there has not been any communication of impending layoffs internally at King and there is actually a sense of surprise among some in the workforce that the Candy Crush maker has seemingly escaped a major restructure. One person close to King said it's a very profitable part of the business. The Eye of Sauron won't be looking at them just yet. I guess they have 12 to 24 months to show some new games or

improvements to the bottom line before any cuts. Obviously contacted Xbox and King PR last week for comment and they have not responded as yet, but I will update the article if they do. King staff are not 100% safe and I guess no one is in the current climate. But um as I say in the article, the 3,200 jobs that are going at Xbox, of those jobs, 1,600 have been announced already and were announced last Monday. Most of those are in the platform and console business, but another 1,600 will come at some point this financial year. So yes, some nervousness still exists internally at King, but as our sources noted, and as Xbox boss Sharma explained in her note last Monday, King and Mojang were actually sort of promoted in the Xbox hierarchy as this

reset was announced and both of those studios are now reporting into Sharma directly uh because they are largest by monthly active players. is uh I think the important thing here is this quote they bring critical geographic demographic and differentiation to Xbox which you know you could read through the lines as saying these studios have large existing player bases and are successful. They know what they're doing. The platform and console business on the other hand maybe not so much. And you can see that reflected in where the damage has been done in the Xbox organization. The extra context to this is that maybe King has taken its medicine already. As we say in the article, King made around 200 job cuts, about 10% of its staff last summer. Our sources claimed around half of those

were in Stockholm, about 30 at King Barcelona, and the rest were drawn from London, Berlin, and its full-time remote worker workforce. Sources claimed that some of those staff cut were effectively being replaced by the AI tools they helped create and train. That was quite a big story last summer. And there's a quote in there from one of the sources that I spoke to and a few links to the other King reports. The one about layoff lawsuits, toxic management, and low morale. The secret developer diary piece written by a senior King person talking about how many of those staff are pampered and maybe a bit oversensitive. And then in March, Eva Riot of King did refute the claims that AI replaced some people's jobs last summer. Of course, they're well within their rights to refute those claims. So yeah, king safe for now from the big

Xbox reset, but further pain may come over the next financial year if it is seen to be not as profitable as it could be, as is the case with basically everyone in the games business right now. Another one from Tuesday written by Ryan Gilliam, who is effectively our Destiny correspondent at this point. He is a hardcore Destiny player, game journalist, and overall expert on all things Bungie. And I asked him to take a look at how Destiny Rising is doing now that Destiny 2 is effectively dead or unsupported with new content at least. And even Destiny Rising, it seems, is, as Ryan puts it, in a death spiral. There's been very little new content in the new season. It's kind of a remix of

old content that Netis had put out. Revenue does not look good either. As we note in the piece, it earned about 6 million in launch month, 3 million the month after. And then for the last 3 or 4 months, it's earned about 300,000 in in app purchase revenue per month, which is not a lot of money for a very high-profile game like this. So, it may well be in the process of being wound down. Certainly seems that way. But there's more detail on the game's woes and how it relates to Destiny 2's effective closure in the piece. Another banger from Ryan. These stories about Google policy seem to do well pretty consistently. I think mainly because there's a lot of confusion out there about these policies. We were offered a follow-up after the blog Google put out reiterating a lot of the policies that

are effective now in the UK, US, and Europe. effectively meaning that inapp purchases on new installs using Google Play billing will be subject to a 25% inapp purchase fee from Google rather than a 30%. Older installs are still subject to that 30. We were offered a Q&A with Orash Mabod, Google Play GM for games, and he did not answer the questions about Epic Games. Understandably, there are legal matters of foot here, but we did ask, has Epic Games played a role in the formation of these new policies? and were these new policies effectively forced upon you as part of the settlement with Epic? Google could not answer those questions, but they did say some of the changes have been in the works for multiple years.

And when asked, why not just cut the flat fee? Why introduce all these different tiers and programs and slightly confusing policies? Mabod claimed that Google is actually doing both in that it is actually dropping the standard 30% cut a little while adding in optional added value type policies that developers who have the resources and can engage with all this stuff without going mad can take advantage of. He re reiterates that they're decoupling the billing fee which is 5% for UK, US and Europe. The billing fee for other markets has not been announced yet. and he effectively explains that, you know, we want to incentivize game developers offering a really good rounded technically excellent experience and having to jump through the hoops

Google has laid out to get into this level up program will ensure that, which is fair enough. And then we also challenged him on whether he thinks the 30% or 25% depending on how you structure your inapp purchases is worth it. Do you think they're doing enough? Of course. He says absolutely we are doing enough. He says, "Google Play safely, efficiently, and intuitively handles the complexities of taxes, compliance, and subscriptions across 195 plus markets with over 300 local payment methods. I think from this you can take away that Google has a decent defense for introducing these new policies. In an ideal world, of course, they would drop the fee more significantly and make it easier for everyone to just benefit. But of course, you can understand that

they don't really want to loosen the grip too much and lose out on too much money. So, at least this is progress of a sort. And you know, at least they're talking to the press and explaining themselves, which is something that their friends and competitors at Apple have never done really, and they continue to be pretty mysterious and difficult to get an answer from. So yeah, an interesting defense of the new policies even though they are pretty complex. Have a look at the article on the site. The headline is Google on its new Play Store fees and that new level up program.
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five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number one web shop solution, Exola provides the tools for developers [music] to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit exola.com to [music] learn more. That's xsol.com. Us two games boss Maria Science had a few things to say about platforms and discoverability here at Develop Brighton. She was part of a keynote this morning in which she and a couple of colleagues talked through the sort of origins of us two games and its evolution from premium game maker to the premier game maker for Apple Arcade and Netflix. But also within the chat she was asked about discoverability and said a few things that raised an eyebrow or two. platform holders are not doing their job when it comes to fixing discoverability is the headline here.

She talks about reaching an audience in a very crowded market and she says I would say they're not doing their job. You know, you pay 30% to a platform for a number of things and one of them is to help you reach an audience and right now that's not really working. and she was equally blunt on why us two games moved from mobile to PC as revealed on mobile gamer.biz a few months ago. She continued, "The games we wanted to make, we just couldn't make them profitably on mobile on our own without either Apple or Netflix paying us to make them. And Apple and Netflix didn't want to pay us anymore to make those kinds of games." And she goes on to explain that they wanted games that keep you coming back for more, have better retention than the kind of single player games that us two makes, especially, you know, games like Mon Valley and Alba and Assemble with Care. Games with a

narrative and a very clear beginning, middle, and end. There's also bits in there about DEA, the game us two made for Netflix, which didn't really work out. And Danny Gray, the lead on that project, explains that making games with the creative flare that us two games games have does come with risks. And as much as they put their personalities into these games, sometimes they just don't resonate. And that's fine. He says you need to take risks to make creatively satisfying games. I'm paraphrasing, but uh read the whole article on the site for more. At the end of last week, I ran through June's top grossing and top downloads. Honor of Kings, White Out Survival, Royal Match, Gossip Har leading the way in top grossing. Of course, Honor of Kings inapp revenue dropped month by

around 50 million and that was still not enough for White Out Survival to overtake it. Pretty close at the top though. 111 million earned in inapp purchase revenue according to App Magic for June. So, Honor of Kings ahead of White Out Survival 109 million. Royal Match 103 million. Gossip Harbor establishing itself in the top five 93 million. Roblox Monopoly Go. Kingshot all pretty steady. Candy Crush Saga suddenly dropped from earning 97 million in inapp purchase revenue in May to just over 77 million in June. That is its lowest monthly estimated earnings since April 2022. This is all according to App Magic of course. And similarly, Last War and PUBG

Mobile continue to have a little wobble where once they were up in the top five, they're now clinging on to the top 10 in ninth and 10th place. Outside the top 10, top grossing. As we've noted before, Konami is doing really well with E Football. Delta Force is very spiky and has had another down month. Pokémon Go is now regularly getting about 30 million in inapp purchase. And Brawl Stars dropped six places month and out of the top 20 after posting under 27 million in inapp purchase revenue for June, having earned about 34 to 38 million in the previous few months. So, Brawl Stars is down pretty notably. Weathering Waves also had a good month, up to 25 million, possibly as a result of a cyberpunk crossover. In June's downloads charts, three Arrows games in the top 10. Arrows Puzzle

Escape from Mini Clip Amaze Go, which was formerly known as Arrows Go in at number two. And then Arrow Puzzle in number five. Most of the downloads for these are coming out of India. Garina's Freef Fire Max is doing pretty well and was once regularly second to vanilla Freef Fire, Subway Surface, Pizza Ready, Vita Marjong, all doing fine. Meowoku very close to getting into the top 10 this month and if it continues at the its current rate of growth, it will be a top 10 game by next month. 10.1 million downloads for June. And that game's only really been out for two, three months. In the sort of 11 to 20 bracket in the downloads chart, there's a load of football games that are benefiting from World Cup fever. Soccer Superstar, EAC, Mobile Football League 2026, and E

Football each seeing big month-on-month download rises. Block Crazy Robo Worldcraft seems to be consistently doing pretty well. This feels like one of those viral schoolyard games that gets talked about in playgrounds and at schools, but not talked about by anyone else. 9.5 million downloads in June for that game. And then Fortnite dropped eight places month following its re-release on iOS in May. Outside the top 20, Dream Games Royal Kingdom dropped 11 places month on month, down to 24th spot, 7.9 million in stores for June. And finally, let's rattle through the regulars in data. We have Pokémon Go generating $1 billion in 2025 alone. Few more stats and figures on that game in there. Rust Mobile 3 million pre-registrations already. Genchin

Impact creator Mihoyo listed as the world's 25th most valuable private company according to the Hin Research Institute. Bold Games secures $6 million. That's another Istanbul studio. They make market match. There's a breakdown of App Magic's latest deep dive, this time into the puzzle genre. Match three, merge and blast games dominating there in terms of inapp purchase, although the story is flipped in terms of installs. Bluey Let's Play 75 million downloads. I didn't realize this game was that big. That's only been out a couple of months. I think Supercell has launched up to 200k fund for African studios. There's some new zoo stats saying global games revenue topped 200 billion in 2025. Then you got May's top performers

according to sensor tower arrows top in downloads. Honor of Kings, top of revenue there, but the whole top 10 with numbers in the article. And then your random game download milestone for this week is Acrylic Nails. 200 million downloads in its lifetime. That game is from Crazy Labs. I like including these games because, you know, 200 million downloads for any game is incredible. So well done to acrylic nails. In jobs digest, you got moves at Sega, ROIO, Scopely, Supercell, King, Quali, Lockwood, Apploving, App Charge, Roick, Ever Play, Loop Games, Dream Games, and more. And in last week's new game digest, worth noting The Walking Dead: Aftermath game is out. It's first major release from Aries Interactive. the relatively

new publisher, mostly formed of Exclue staff. Rust Mobile again edging closer to release that's got a new beta coming. Gangster Mirage City, this is interesting. It looks like GTA meets Cyberpunk and it's made by Level Infinite, which is 10 cent. So, that is an interesting one to [snorts] keep an eye on. They seem to also have licensed the game loft series gangstar to make that game. Take 2/olic have another game and soft launch infinite crafter TD. There's also a Bleach game, new Apple Arcade games and a couple of other titles in there to check out. And that's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.