Scopely talks M&A, new publisher Arcade, yet more Epic news, Moonton, China and 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. Here we go. Let's start with Scopely. I spoke to Rob Ruckmann, I've never met him before. He is the senior vice president of corporate development at Scopely and effectively the man who is in charge of seeking out new deals, acquisitions, co-development deals and you know, if you go to any industry event, you may well find someone from Scopely's corporate development team there. Maybe in the shadows cuz they probably get a lot of attention, but this team is out there talking to everyone by the sounds of it and it's not just the Niantic deal, not just the Loom Pixel Flow deal. They are talking to people practically on every continent in mobile, but also PC and console, which is addressed at the end of the interview. And

Ruckmann, I think actually does a really good job of explaining what Scopely is because up until I mean recently really, it's been a fairly mysterious company. They don't really do that much press and the press they do do in recent years anyway has been on the slightly fluffier end of the spectrum, shall we say? Not too many actual interviews really, but that seems to have changed. I know that the game business has an interview with Javier this week at done at GDC. So, them speaking to the game business, them speaking to me at GDC suggests Scopely's feeling pretty good about itself and is out there talking to press in a more confident way than perhaps it was before when it was a little bit of a unknown quantity. So, that's a little bit of the context around this

chat. Mich says that because the company is both a game maker and a deal maker from the very beginning, everyone is thinking about M&A, who to buy next. They're out there doing smaller, perhaps less publicized deals than the big headline ones that you'll have seen involving Pokémon Go, Pixel Flow, etc. And as Rob's colleague, Katia, also said on LinkedIn, she posted this story and said, "It's rare that we put out our M&A thesis in a public manner. They don't really talk about this stuff very often. It's a longer interview than I would usually run, but because it's Scopely and because he speaks very well, I'll let it run a little bit longer than I would normally. In brief, I think the acquisition strategy is not one off ticking boxes in a portfolio. They're not out there buying a game in each genre.

That seems to be the message when asked there. And as an acquirer, I think the key phrase here is we want to be able to empower that studio, enable that studio, not assimilate them. So, yes, we want you to be part of the Scopely family, so to speak, but we're not going to come in and tell you what to do because making games is hard. Making a hit game is really hard. And anyone who's done that, we're not going to upset their rhythm. So, that's interesting. Geography. An interesting answer on this one. He says for M&A deals, no, geography is not a factor. I asked, "Are you increasingly looking at places like Turkey, Vietnam, China, then away from American and European studios for these kinds of deals?" And he says, "No, but also says naturally there are hot markets like Turkey and China. And

when that does happen, it just so follows that yes, we do have more conversations in those regions. But fundamentally, he says, "No, we have great European and American studios, and we still want to keep investing in those." And then I have to ask about King, of course. I'd heard this out about. And when I was writing up all the various Xbox ins and outs and some analysis of its portfolio and King, recently it did strike me as strange that King just doesn't really fit into anything Xbox says publicly about merging PC and console. And King does stick out as the black sheep of that family. And there are not too many buyers out there with the means to buy something like King and rip it out of Microsoft and let it

do its own thing. But Scopely does. It just paid 3.5 billion for Pokémon Go and some other Niantic games. It is backed by Savvy Games Group, which has billions and billions in the bank and wants to spend and wants to make an impact. I mean, what greater impact could you make than buying Candy Crush? So, I had to ask him about that. And the answer is interesting. I asked him, "Has this crossed your mind? The idea of Scopely buying King?" And he says, "Yeah, so it doesn't have to cross my mind because obviously people like yourself and many in the industry will come to me and say, 'Hey, has Scopely thought about this?' So, I don't have to think about it on my own because everyone else seems to be thinking about it. I mean, he doesn't say no. He doesn't say no, we are not buying King. Because I guess in the game he's in, you can't rule anything out. He says, "I can't speculate. You know,

we're always looking. We're always in the market. We're always thinking about if it's good fit. If it's long-term value for Scopely, for the partner of Savvy, for PIF. So, you know, it remains a possibility, which I think is fun. And then the other question I thought was interesting. Again, maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself here, but EA being owned by PIF, which also owns Savvy Games Group, does suggest that EA and Scopely are soon to be stablemates. They will have the same owners. And EA has never really truly cracked it in mobile. They got EA Sports mobile. They got Madden. They got Golf Clash. They tried and failed with Apex Legends. Given the scale and success of that company in PC and console, you would expect a company like that to be pretty major presence in mobile. Scopely is from the ground up a mobile

company and could probably do a pretty good job running EA's mobile games. So, I asked him about that. He said, "Yeah, obviously it's too early to speculate, but it's an exciting prospect essentially." And then, to round it out, I asked about PC and console, the deals Scopely has been striking thus far. All mobile. But, there's PC, there's console. What about those platforms? And do they have little less potential given the lower investment in those categories? He says, "It's something we're looking at. They bought Stumble Guys to PC. They've got a few things for PC in the works. Star Trek was one of the first Scopely games to move over to PC. So, this will happen, but for now it seems like mobile is the focus and that's fair enough. That is

Scopely's area of expertise. So, yeah, fascinating interview. Rob speaks very well about the business. Have a look at the story on the site. The headline is Scopely on deal-making DNA, its next studio swoop, and chatter about buying King. Have a look. Xsolla connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally. With Xsolla Web Shop, sell virtual items, in-game currency, subscriptions, and custom offers directly to players while driving up to five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number-one web shop solution, Xsolla provides the tools for developers to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit xsolla.com to learn more. That's xsolla.com. Another story from many conversations at GDC is one with Alexandra Salomon of Arcade.

He set up this new publisher in January after some discussions stretching back before that. And it's basically a new hybrid casual publisher taking on the likes of Voodoo, Supersonic, Say Games, and Supercent. Salomon is a former Stillfront, Huawei, Google, and King executive. And his new firm, Arcade, is backed by adtech giant and startup incubator ai.tech. Not a company had come across before, but some Googling tells me that it also owns a user acquisition business, advertising.tech, and an ad tech company, media.net. So, pretty ideal sister companies for a hybrid casual game publisher. Salem couldn't disclose the financial backing and terms

of its agreement with ai.tech, but he did say that they have, "a very high bar." And, "quote, amazing financial and operational support from ai.tech." So, they have nine staff. It's headquartered in Dubai, but Salem is based in London. They have people in other countries, too. And they are half taken from mobile game companies like Zynga, and half from real money gaming companies in India. But, it's not a real money gaming company. It is hybrid casual. And the thesis for the company, I think is quite interesting, so I included Salem's synopsis of it. He said, "Development of games is becoming increasingly commoditized with AI, and with the game engines." And anecdotally, he said,

"He's got some friends who are just making really high value games with Caster and anti-gravity plus Unity. So, the bottleneck is distribution and user acquisition, and publishers with that kind of know-how will be in demand as these AI-assisted games come online and try and get out into the market. They want to get to about 20 staff by the end of the year, and they are laser-focused on hybrid casual. And of particular interest to me, maybe not anyone else's, but they also own arcade.com, which is an unbelievable domain to own. So, I asked if they were doing web games as well. They have thought about that, but it's not the focus right now. Maybe further down the road. That will become part of Arcade's offering. But, yeah, for now, Arcade is the new hybrid casual publisher on the scene. More detail on the site if you want to read that story.

A bonus snippet from my chat with Epic Games Store boss Steve Allison at GDC. Following on from the kind of more general update of how things are going with Epic Games Store on mobile that was posted last week. I also asked about how the company is getting along with web shops. So, Epic announced it was moving into the web shop business in May 2025 and said at the time that it would be launching next month. Nothing happened in June, but it did technically launch in October, but company's been very quiet about those efforts since then. So, I asked Steve what was going on with it. And he said, "It's early days. They've got a few smaller developers trialing these web shop tools and offering feedback. And overall, it's at the minimum viable product MVP stage." said Allison.

I think Epic is a little bit like this in terms of we're going to announce this thing, technically get it out, but maybe build as we go. That's the impression I get with Epic Games and web stores with Epic seems to be that kind of project. But, yeah, work to do. Early stages for Epic and web stores, but as I've said on this podcast before, I think it's a good idea if the engine maker you are building your game with also offers a suite of monetization tools. If they're easy to use and well-executed, then that is a no-brainer to do your monetization through them as well. You would think. Same with Unity, as discussed before, Unity moving into web shops. Given that most mobile games are made in Unity, that feels like a pretty solid proposition as well.

But, like Epic, Unity have not said a great deal about its web shop efforts since announcing it was doing those, so I will try and check in with Unity about the status of their web shops, but they very rarely respond. So, don't hold your breath there. More Epic. I ended up putting Epic's 1,000 layoffs in data digest this week in the blog. Announcing those cuts, Tim Sweeney did say they're nothing to do with AI, but also did seem to reference the expensive court battles Epic has had with Apple and Google in the last few years. The quote here is, "We're only in the early stages of returning to mobile and optimizing Fortnite for the world's billions of smartphones. And in being the industry's vanguard, we have taken a lot of bullets in a battle which is only in the early days of paying off for

ourselves and all developers." So, yeah, those court battles taking their toll a little bit. And, you know, a lot of speculation out there about Epic maybe getting itself ready for an IPO or some other big deal and getting profitable, or at least profitable enough to go public or attract a buyer would be part of that for sure. So, yeah. Elsewhere in data digest, you got February's top grossing games in the US according to Circana. They don't actually put a number on these, but Monopoly Go was top in the US once again. I think it is top pretty much every month. Last War Survival, Royal Match, Candy Crush Saga, and Gossip Harbor the rest of the top five. King Shot hit a billion in lifetime consumer spend according to AppMagic.

PlayStack's pre-tax profits jumped 59%. A lot of that is down to Balatro and the mobile editions of Balatro. It's also an Apple Arcade. Given that it is a very sticky game that likely inspires some very lengthy play sessions, I would imagine. PlayStack is doing pretty well out of that. Apple Arcade version of the game. Another AppMagic bit of data, match-three dominates in terms of the top puzzle subgenres. So, match-three represents 5.1 billion of the total 9.5 billion puzzle market from February this year to February last year. Farm Heroes Saga surpasses 2 billion in lifetime spend. That's a stat from pocketgamer.biz. London-made game from King. And Glow Fashion Idol hit 20 million

downloads. Not a game I'd heard of before, but I like including these games because, you know, a game that you've never heard of has 20 million downloads. I think that is interesting in itself. For more nuance and detail, check out the article on the site. A quick one that came through on Friday afternoon, so after last week's podcast, Savvy looks like it's buying Moonton for 6 billion dollars. Savvy is, of course, the parent company to Scopely. And Savvy has an awful lot of money because it is backed by Saudi Arabia's public investment fund. So, 6 billion deal likely here, according to Bloomberg. It's not confirmed yet, although it may do by the time I've edited this podcast and put it out. Also, posted after last week's podcast came out,

there's an article about how to seize the $50 China opportunity with experts in the China market offering their tips on how to crack China. That's an article written by one of my freelancers, Alex. So, that is well worth the read. Last week's new game digest includes, of course, the return of Fortnite on Google Play. The new Coin Master game, Board Adventure, which is effectively Monopoly Go. That seems to have launched worldwide and got a nice little feature from Apple on the Today tab. Mattel Match is a new puzzler from Mattel, which seems to be making moves in mobile games. Puzzword is the new game from Wordle creator Josh Wardle. Appears to have been made outside of the walls of the New York Times, which bought Wordle for uh a few million couple of years ago.

And there's Dragon Quest game, another bacon game from the excellent indie author, Philip Stollenmayer. Interview with him coming to the the soon. And that's it for this week. Recorded in St. Albans and London this week. Next week we'll be coming to you from Norfolk. How exciting.