More Epic-Google deal detail, Clash Royale, GDC reactions, Bossfight, NCsoft, data, jobs, 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 from GDC in San Francisco. Here we go. On Sunday, I spent 10 hours on a plane. And during that time, because I'm a fun guy, I read the official legal document related to Epic and Google's much publicized agreement which came out last week. The reality of that agreement is a little bit different to how it was announced by both parties really. I think the way to think about it is really what happens if you do nothing. If you have a game on the store right now and you do nothing, what changes? Assuming you are using Google's payment systems, which most people do? So in that scenario, Google's effective rate

goes from 30% to 25%. because Google will take 20% of inapp purchases and then the new part to this arrangement is that Google will take 5% of inapp purchases for using its billing system. So the publicized 10% drop is really not as clean or as easy as all that because you've got your payment processor fee on top which is new. And also 5% is broadly speaking the default for other payment processors like Exola, App Charge, Fastring, Neon, etc., etc. Obviously, cases vary depending on the deals struck between the developer and the payments provider. But really, as the headline reads, Epic and Google's new Play Store deal is not

the decisive victory they claim it is. The reality is not that everyone's getting 10% of their business back. It is a bit more nuanced than that. If you're Epic, of course, and you already have your own payments infrastructure, you will not be giving Google 5% of your inapp purchases because you own the payments infrastructure. So, their effective rate does indeed go down to 20%. But for everyone else, they will be going through a payments provider and they will probably take 3 to 5%. And if they keep going through Google, they'll take 5%. And there are other nuances in here. So the 5% Google will take for using its billing actually only applies to US, UK, Europe, and Australia. Fees will vary outside of those locations. And having spoken to a few different payment providers out here this week, because of the complexities of those

different markets, the rate an average billings provider takes in those countries does vary and in some cases goes up to 20 25%. So it's not as easy as all that. Another note of complexity to add into this is the game's level up initiative. So if you join that, Google will take 15% rather than 20% of your inapp purchases, but you have to jump through some technical and quality assurance type hoops to be eligible for that program. And as I say in the article, you will have to if you are a developer with limited resources as most are, you will have to think quite carefully about whether the effort required to put yourself into that program and stay in it is indeed worth 5% of your inapp purchases. You would imagine it would

be, but it's a lot of extra work to take on by the looks of it. Unless Google make it easy to join and simple to calculate fees. Should be said for the games level up program that that 15% rate only applies to new installs which is after the point at which the new terms and conditions kick in. So another wrinkle and complication to it and obviously new players may be less inclined to spend a lot of money and most of the money made in mobile as Google and Epic know is from large existing titles. So Google will still take 20% of money from those existing players. Yeah, [sighs] it is complicated, isn't it? A little further down into the article, I do reference the complications and chicainery of Apple when they put out their rules for complying with the digital markets act in the EU which were

very clearly deliberately complicated and convoluted so that no one signs up and their commission doesn't really change. This is not the same situation with Epic and Google. It's not quite the same level of cynicism involved, I would say, but at the same time, it's really not the liberation, revolution, whatever you want to call it, from Google store fees that both companies have been publicizing. There's a paragraph in there about Epic not being able to criticize Google Play and the terms in this settlement publicly. I think in the act of being inserted into this legal document does suggest that maybe Tim Sweeney and Epic aren't actually that happy with this arrangement at all, but this is the best they could do. That is pure speculation on my part, but I think it's worth mentioning. I mean, it is possible to both be thankful and grateful to Epic

for plowing millions and millions into fighting this fight, but also it is understandable and reasonable to at the same time believe that now this dispute with the Google is at an end. It is still not quite what Epic wanted and the rest of the market wanted. So, it's a mixed bag and it doesn't quite fit a clean victory or loss narrative. Really interesting talk from Supercell on Monday about the big Clash Royale comeback. James Bach and Alexander Marovich, the game leads on Clash Royale, went through some of the big changes to that game, the thinking behind it, and yes, they did credit Supercell's creator community before those guys start screaming into their webcams, but really it was for an audience of mobile game makers. And the

stuff in there was really interesting. I thought the theme here was really short-term pain for long-term gain. Some of the changes they made to the game in the last few years led the player community to be quite upset and that was b also borne out in MAU and revenue. But the the game recovered and actually MAU revenue started to rise long term. A lot of it was based on the introduction of card evolutions. After years of them pushing you to try out and experiment with different cards, these were ways of making your existing deck of cards in Clash Royale more interesting and obviously designed to encourage you to pay some money to upgrade them. But even the roll out of this wasn't straightforward. They introduced the idea through some live ops and level cap stuff which very few players were at a higher enough level to

get to. So they did a kind of gated live op around one evolution card and then had a second go at it for another evolution card which was much easier to obtain which was the Valentine's Day Barbarian evolution in early 2025. And that was really the point that kickstarted the comeback. There were mixed results from a couple of the new game modes added. Goblin Queen's Journey didn't really work, they seem to suggest. And then the addition of Merge Tactics seemed to have inconclusive results. Merge Tactics was effectively a streamlined version of Clash Mini, a game that was in soft launch for a long time. The more successful tweaks to the game's structure and monetization were really around progression and simplification. So, particularly for returning players, progression had really slowed down too much and had become too frustrating. So, they sped all of that up. They also took

out a lot of the icons and buttons from the home screen hub and hid them away into uh a game switcher mode screen. There's quite a funny bit in there where they just removed the events tab entirely and it when you tap on it, it says under construction, but Marovich says honestly nothing is under construction there. But putting all of the different game modes into one spot in the menu did result in more players more actively playing more games, said Marovich. And I back wrapped up by saying that this is all a learning process. Supercell's teams have the freedom to experiment to a point and without that experimental outlook, some of those gains would not have materialized. So, really interesting. Read the whole article cuz there's a lot of detail and nuance in there.

Exola connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally with Exola web shop. [music] Sell virtual items, in-game currency, subscriptions, and custom offers directly [music] to players while driving up to five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number one [music] web shop solution, Exola provides the tools for developers to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit exola.com to learn more. That's xsol.com. As is tradition, I had a little stroll around the GDC show floor and took some pictures and wrote it up for an article on the site called GDC 2026, who's got the biggest booth. So, I think it is really interesting to look at who's spending money at these events and why. As I say in the article, Epic and Unity are here behind closed doors, but nothing big or showy from them this

year. I mean, have a look at the article for the pictures, but show floor is a little sparse. As you come down the lifts, there's servers.com and Exola. That used to be the prime spot, or at least the first thing you see as you come down the lifts. There's a big hangout space called the Commons to the right. And then as you wander around, you'll see a big booth from Tencent, big Meta booth where they are promoting Meta Quest. I don't know if that booth was booked before those layouts were made, but seems like a strange thing to be to be doing if you're Meta. Xbox are down there. They've sponsored the cafe area and they've got quite a nice spot near the entrance of the South Hall. The tagline this year is build for what's next, which is, you know, quite a change from the this is an Xbox tagline that was all over GDC last year. Other notable booths here, Google Cloud, Virtuos, Optitra, Metatailor, you know,

Real Tools, middleware type companies. I thought it was interesting that Nexus Cross, not a company I've heard of before, that seemed to be the only the web 3 blockchain type booth there, but they had quite a big flashy booth, so they've obviously got a few quid. You've got your Brazil, Italy, Spain, Pakistan, trade bodies. Nothing from the UK body, but there is one from Wales specifically and Germany. Wales and Germany seem to be mixed in with Tencent and the other big guys. So, know what was going on there. And then you got the wackier indie stuff out in the IGF corner of the South Hall. There's a VR boxing game called Golden Gloves with an actual boxing ring. Some fun weird controller games. Game called Patchwork, which seemed to be about doing surgery on a zombie type thing. But yeah, good fun. PlayStation's presence on the show floor. Pretty miserable. Honestly, it was just a couple of screens and PlayStations for the PlayStation Indies

initiative. So, yeah, as anticipated, the show floor a lot quieter this year because there's loads of stuff going on in the Yerba Buena Gardens and a few other little bits and bobs around the Moscone. It doesn't feel that sparse. I think maybe even the idea of a show floor is a little bit outdated these days. So, not the disaster you would believe from a lot of the people who were quite loudly talking about not going to GDC this year, but also not super packed either. So, yeah, I quite like the idea of Festival of Gaming. The stuff in the gardens makes it look busy and interesting. So, I hope it all continues here. I hope it survives. And you know, a lot of the issues related to people coming to America in the first place are not really GDC's fault. So, there's that. Hopefully, that will maybe come to an end soon, too. But, who

knows? Some quick ones I put together in between meetings and sessions and other bits and bobs at GDC this week. The makers of Squid Game Unleashed Boss Fight have come back and not long after they were closed by previous owner Netflix. Boss Fight developed Dungeon Boss as an independent mobile studio before being acquired by Netflix in 2023. Later launched Squid Game Unleashed, which was a four guys style party platformer type game based on obviously Squid Game. Massive IP at the time. This game was talked about by Netflix as a big success. But the studio was closed by Netflix in October 2025, leaving an estimated 80 staff out of work. But the trio that led the previous incarnation of this studio are back as boss fight CEO David Rippy, chief product officer Bill Jackson, and

COO Scott Windsit are leading the team in Dallas, Texas. And they are now developing an unannounced title for PC and mobile platforms. that quote reflects the team's long-standing approach to building accessible, engaging games with lasting communities. So, good luck to them. Fun one about NCOFT. I happen to be having breakfast with NCOFT's PR person as I published this story, which was not planned. It actually leaked out through a local report in Korea, but NCOFT is buying a 70% stake in the rewards platform Just Play, which is based in Germany. It's one of these play to earn apps where players are rewarded for playing mobile games with cash or vouchers. At Magic says about 33 million installs to date for just play. NCOFT

is moving into mobile. It launched a casual gaming division and appointed Annel Saman, former outfit 7 wildlife and triple dot exec in August 2025. And November last year, NCOFT announced it is working with Sony to launch a mobile first MMO based on the Horizon series console game series, Horizon Steel Frontiers. So that was announced November 2025 and they've now bought a big mobile game rewarded play outfit in Germany. So things moving along with NCOFT's plans to move into mobile here. 204 million spent on just play. Data Digest this week contains that very convenient Scopely 15 billion dollars in lifetime revenue figure on the occasion of its 15th birthday. Another

interesting stats in there about Scopely. Two billion lifetime downloads, hundreds of millions of players each year and over 3,000 staff across four continents and over 30 countries, says the infographic scope we put out. It has also acquired over 10 teams and games and owns $6 billion plus game franchises. Elsewhere in that data article, Fortnite V-Bucks prices are rising. So, Epic can quote pay the bills. Apploving and Axon put out some research saying over 1 billion people play mobile games daily. And there's some other demographic and ad data in there. Unity China is reportedly being sold off. Apple is collecting $41 million in iOS commission every day according to estimates from App Charge. Mini Golf Club hits a million downloads on Google Play. And there's a Unity survey states

that mobile game makers feel competition is the biggest hurdle for the success of their games. some graphs and data in there to chew on. Have a look. And finally, the latest jobs update has moves at Scopely, Small Giant, Lego, Mini Clips, Playside, Voodoo, Supercell, and more. The LEGO one is interesting for me personally at least. John Ner, formerly of Space Ape, is now an adviser at LEGO. And I've heard some interesting stuff about what LEGO is trying to do in games. It has a digital play office in London and they are hiring a lot of mobile game talent to help them out with whatever they're working on there. Maybe more to come on that one soon. Not sure. I have to say, I've had a great time in San Francisco so far this week. Uh tonight the Scopley party and a party on a boat and then flying back Thursday

evening. So gonna miss the Friday action here, but it's usually pretty dead on a Friday anyway. So yeah, really good week in GDC. Load of interviews and other interesting stuff from this week will end up on the site at some point next week. And I'm sure I will talk through it all in the podcast next week, too. But yes, for now, thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.