Misleading ads, Apple’s ‘mobile gaming headwinds’, Roblox results, PlayStudios shenanigans, more

Hello and welcome to the mobilegamer.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. Here we go. The UK's Advertising Standards Agency has slapped King, Scopely, and more with bans on some of what it believes are misleading mobile game ads. Farm Heroes Saga, Pixel Flow, Dark Wars Survival, and Last Z were the games found to be advertising found to be advertised in a misleading way according to the ASA. Just the four rulings published on Wednesday this week. ASA senior investigations executive Freddy Alcock says mobile game ads must give people an accurate impression of the gameplay they can expect and mustn't mislead them with scenarios or features

that aren't representative of the actual game. The Farm Heroes Saga ad showed match-three gameplay but also some extra stuff that isn't in the game. Same deal with Pixel Flow. The ad for that showed a pipe-rotating puzzle operated by a hand cursor that does not exist in the game. This is interesting in that it is a regulator punishing misleading mobile game ads, but I would offer that, you know, there are a lot of game companies engaging in this behavior. So, not sure how their process works, but I'm sure anyone listening to this could forward on some misleading ads to the ASA and they would have a little bit more work to do. But, yeah, some interesting action being taken on misleading mobile game ads, but yes, I would suggest that this is the very, very tip of a very, very large iceberg.

Apple says mobile gaming headwinds have slowed down revenue growth on the App Store. This is a snippet from Apple's latest financial results. It's Q4 2026 in which CFO Kevan Parekh said, "We did see some headwinds in mobile gaming that we've talked about before and expect to see those continue into the December quarter." He also pointed again to quote, "Changes to the App Store business model in certain countries." Adding that in the US, Apple continues to operate under a court ruling impacting link-out transactions. So, this appears to be corporate speak for a slight slowdown in App Store revenue, a lot of which is games, but I think Apple will be fine. Services revenue hit a record $31.6 billion in the quarter, up 10% from a year earlier, but down from the 15%

growth in the same quarter last year. So, growth is slowing in the services division. Obviously, that is a big division. That also includes revenue from iCloud, Apple Music, and obviously the very large app ecosystem which now includes lots of AI companies. Apple also expects services growth to slow again to between 8% and 9% in the December quarter. The App Store saw a record of nearly a billion average weekly visitors. Apple Arcade is now bundled into iCloud Plus plans in more than 100 countries and regions, too. They'll be fine, but there are signs that yes, the loosening up of App Store rules and regulations is having an effect on Apple's bottom line. Slightly late to this one, but certainly worth covering, Tetris Block Party. The closure of that game this

month alerted me to what's going on at Play Studios. I dug into its SEC filings and so on and it turns out there's been quite a lot going on at this Las Vegas-based mobile game developer. A lot of their stuff is slots games, but it also has the Tetris license, which is pretty interesting. It has launched and closed a whole load of Tetris games. It still runs the main Tetris game on the App Store, but Tetris Block Party is no more. It earned an estimated $8.1 million in app purchase revenues from 5.6 million downloads since its launch in January 2025, which I think is decent. I assume there's some ad revenue in there as well, but it was clearly not enough. The game has now closed and that actually followed on from the closure of four of Play Studios' studios over the summer

and the loss of 177 jobs at the company. That is according to the last two financial reports from Play Studios. It was also at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. Its share price was trading under the minimum bid price requirement of $1 and Play Studios recently underwent a reverse stock split to boost that share price and therefore stay on the Nasdaq, but yeah, doesn't look great for this studio if it has resorted to these measures and another example of a casino type company expanding out into casual and then retreating once they realize that it is a tough old business. So, yeah, if you want more detail on the shenanigans at Play Studios, the headline here is Play Studios closes Tetris Block Party after cutting 177 jobs and shuttering four

studios. The makers of Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero, Hoyoverse, their next game is a life sim called Pet Island, and it is launching on December the 4th. So, this is their take on that Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley type genre, which does not have a dominant player on mobile, and Hoyoverse has, clearly, a very good record in terms of launching incredibly successful mobile and PC games. So, this game's coming to iOS, Android, and PC come in December 4th. Switch 2 is coming 2027. This game's had a couple of betas, and judging by the previous massive success of Hoyoverse's games, could be one to watch when it launches on December the 4th. Our news editor, Vicky, spoke to the guys behind The Baby in Yellow, which you may have seen knocking around in the charts. This is made by

a very small indie studio, Team Terrible. It's just 11 people. They estimate they're pulling in about 2 million pounds a year from this game, and perhaps unusually, it is dominated by Android. 320 million installs on Android, 80 million on iOS, 100,000-ish on Steam. The story is interesting because horror games on Steam are a big market. It is people who are streaming this game on PC who are then encouraging people to reach for their Android and iOS phones and download The Baby in Yellow. Business model is free to play. You can unlock additional cosmetics for $4.99, but there's no story or major content locked behind a paywall. The game started off as an entry in a game jam, and then footage of that started getting really popular online. Team

Terrible made it into a proper game, released it on PC first, and then a load of copycats on mobile encouraged the team to release it on iOS and Android and the rest is history. About 400 million downloads for this game now and a rare positive indie game story for mobile.
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Sean Rutland, co-founder of Hutch, his new studio is starting to emerge from the shadows.

It's called Anorak and it specializes in interactive generative video according to some of the stuff Mr. Rutland has been putting out on his blog in the last few weeks. You can also glean a few other things from these blogs. He has staff in London and Chengdu, China making what looks like a lot of interactive generative video experiments which you can actually play on the Anorak blog. He's also working with fellow games industry veteran David Amor. He is COO at Anorak and there is a funding round to be announced at some point in the coming days and weeks. So what this company is doing so far appears to be play things rather than what you might call traditional mobile

games. It is also working on distribution with details to follow in a later post. So Anorak is Sean Rutland and David Amor's new studio. More to come soon. This Skills and Papaya stuff keeps going. A US bankruptcy court has barred Papaya Gaming from moving money out of its US bank accounts while Skills tries to collect the roughly $730 million the Solitaire cash maker owes it. This follows on from a court ruling in which Papaya was found to be doing some nefarious stuff which Skills successfully argued that it was then liable to pay them damages. There is a lot more fine detail in this story if you want to keep abreast of what's going on between these two companies which is quite entertaining. Roblox's financials were

a mixed bag as ever. The markets didn't like these Q3 figures. Shares down 19% the day after they were announced. That is despite Roblox beating guidance on billings, revenue, and cash flow. The problem is that it is facing tough comparisons with 2025 when the fundamental success of Steal a Brain Bro and Grow a Garden was at its peak and nothing's come along since that has replicated that kind of success. It has also invested in player safety and moderation tools that have damaged engagement. Its recommendation algorithms are now according to the company directing players towards games and experiences with longer term retention rather than these quick hit slightly cynical heavily monetizing steal something type games. So yeah, revenue was up for Q3. $1.6 billion up 16%

year-on-year. Bookings were down 12% year-on-year, $1.7 billion. Profits as measured by adjusted EBITDA were 138 million up dramatically from 45.7 million the year prior, but profits don't seem to be part of the picture for Roblox. Net losses were 230 million, down from 258 million the year prior. Daily active users 138 million, down 9%. Lot of growth in India and Japan, according to the cherry-picked highlights from Roblox. In a shareholder letter, David Baszucki stressed that 80% of the top 100 games in Roblox were made with the help of its new suite of AI creation tools, and it is positioning itself very much at the forefront of the AI game generation trend. He also said Break and Steal an Egg and Haze Valley were both created almost entirely with

AI. Those games were among the newer breakout hits on the platform in the last quarter. It also has Build, the prompt-to-game tool it is testing in New Zealand, Singapore, Serbia, and Thailand. Half a million users since its launch in those territories. The people using that have so far published 70,000 games, he said. There was also a reference to the new tools that Roblox announced would enable creators to publish their experiences to platforms outside of Roblox. Those are expected in the first half of 2027. And there's some other bits and bobs about its users who are over 18, a bit on advertising, and also user acquisition as well. So, for the full details and a lovely set of graphs, have a look at the story on the site. The headline is Roblox shares fall as it beats billing guidance, but growth stalls. You may have seen this Assassin's Creed

franchise update. Ubisoft did mention the mobile exclusive Tencent-made Assassin's Creed Jade in the previous franchise update in passing. That was in March. There was no mention of it in last week's update, which led to me doing a slightly speculative, but I think fairly well-informed article headlined, "Has Ubisoft quietly killed Tencent collab Assassin's Creed Jade?" I of course asked Ubisoft for any comment. They didn't have anything to share at this time. But, as I detailed in the article, the signs aren't looking particularly good for this one. This game was announced in September 2022. There was a closed beta in August 2023, and it was a big part of Tencent label Level Infinite's huge Gamescom booth that summer, which suggested to me at least that

Assassin's Creed Jade could be quite a big thing for Ubisoft and Tencent. Obviously, plenty has happened to those companies since 2023. We noted in May 2024 that Ubisoft stopped mentioning Assassin's Creed Jade in its financials, though it did continue to mention games like The Division Resurgence and Rainbow Six Mobile, both of which have since launched. Rainbow Six Mobile has also closed in that time, and it may well have been lost in the shuffle of this huge reorganization happening at Ubisoft, where as part of its Tencent sort of semi-acquisition, it was reorganized into what it is calling creative houses. So, mobile stuff is now in the casual creative house. Assassin's Creed being a mobile title, but also part of the Assassin's Creed franchise, means it doesn't quite fit into either creative house. So, that

makes it awkward. As I said, Ubisoft did reply and say they have nothing to share, so it was neither confirmed or denied, but yes, Ubisoft may well have given up on Assassin's Creed Jade. We await more information either way on this one. Lots of good stuff in data digest this week. Sensor Tower put out its top 10 mobile games of Q3. Led perhaps unsurprisingly by Honor of Kings. Gossip Harbor, Whiteout Survival, Royal Match, Monopoly Go are the rest of the top five. Have a look at the article for the full top 10. AppMagic listed some of the new games that have arrived in 2026 that have hit the top grossing charts. The top new games released in the last 11 months include Lost Asylum, Plague, Arknights: Endfield, Hololive Dreams,

Hollywood Merge, and Nevernest to Evernest. Definitely take a look at the article for more detail on this one. It's interesting stuff. Another report from Google CEE apps lead, Marius Gąsiewski, hope I'm saying that correctly, suggests that mobile will still represent over half the games market in 2026. 56.6% according to his calculations. I think he's leaned on some Newzoo data for this. South Korea has fined Google and Apple $47.6 million for breaking the country's app payment rules. Capcom's game revenue is up 70%. In the first half of 2026, not a lot of that is mobile, but noteworthy that Capcom is doing really well at the moment. Xbox revenue down 2% as Minecraft hits record highs. Some highlights from the

Microsoft financials there. Animo passes 15 million players. Tiles Survive hits 40 million downloads. Couple of milestones from FunPlus there. Nine Kings top 2 million downloads. Google Play is investing a million dollars in African-based mobile game developers. Europe's games industry employs 123,000 people according to some stats from Video Games Europe and the EGDF. And that [snorts] Magic has been in business for 10 years. They put out a load of stats around the last 10 years in mobile, which are also well worth a look. They to digest as ever brands every Wednesday. In jobs this week, loads and loads of moves. Atari appointed Matt Hall, Hipster Whale co-founder, as its head of mobile. There's a load of people moving from Metacore to Supercell after the completion of that acquisition. Also moves elsewhere at Scopely, Zynga,

triple.dot, Voodoo, Rollic, Loom Games, Gear Games, Tactile Games, Minsplay, Exola, Appcharge, Adserch, Biddies, and Appia in that update. Every other Monday, Jobs Digest is where you can find lots of familiar faces. And in new games this week, loads of big franchises. Monster Hunter Outlanders is out now, the Tencent and Capcom collaboration. Saints Row the Third Remastered has come out as part of Feral Interactive's production line of console game ports to mobile. No Man's Sky is out now on iOS. There's a new Digimon game. Darkest Dungeon 2 was announced. Cut the Rope Remastered is coming December. And there's a couple more bits and bobs in there. New Game Digest every Friday for all of your new game launches, soft launch, and release date needs. And that's it for this week. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.