Tencent, Playtika and SuperPlay shenanigans, further Google Play changes. Monopoly Go, MTG, 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. A report from Calcalistech on Monday suggests that Tencent could be acquiring Playtika owned Superplay for up to 1.5 billion dollars. This is quite an odd one in that according to this report Playtika is looking to divest Superplay because it's been too successful. Playtika acquired Superplay for an initial 700 million dollars in 2024. Since then it has launched Disney Solitaire and also has Dice Dreams and Domino Dreams in its portfolio. The deal included a 1.25 billion dollar payout if the team met performance targets between 2025 and 2027. And this report suggests that it has been so successful that Playtika

is struggling to meet the conditions of those earn-outs and it would rather divest Superplay to Tencent which owns obviously lots and lots and lots of mobile game and PC and console developers and publishers. So yeah, I mean I think there's maybe two things going on here in that Playtika maybe doesn't have the cash on hand to pay Superplay and acquired the company not quite realizing how successful Disney Solitaire Dice Dreams, Domino Dreams would be in the future. But also Superplay just absolutely smashing it. In what is quite tough market, I think Superplay once acquired by Playtika almost immediately became one of its top earning divisions. Obviously, Playtika owns Supertreat and

Wooga and a couple of other developers. But, yeah, fair play to former Playtika employees, Gilad Almog and Alon Netzer, plus Elad Drory, who set up Superplay, having been acquired once by Playtika, now potentially bought by Tencent. So, whatever they're doing, it is clearly working. There were more Google Play shenanigans at the end of last week. So, seemingly, Google's agreed to drop part of the ongoing court dispute with Epic Games, meaning the Play Store will be open to distribute third-party app stores, including, of course, the Epic Games Store this week, at the time of recording. So, as of apparently today, Wednesday, 22nd of July, third parties will be able to run their

app stores out of the Play Store. They'll be discoverable, downloadable, and fully operational through the Play Store. So, that opens up the way for, of course, Epic with its store, but also the likes of Samsung's Galaxy Store, indie stores like AltStore and Sketch, and potentially an Xbox app store. There's a fair bit of legal, what I'm going to call mumbo jumbo here, but in short, Google had previously agreed to a 2024 ruling by a US judge that meant it would be launching a registered app stores program to ensure it could basically control a little bit of what happens in terms of third-party app stores on the Play Store. They've now dropped that part of the settlement as part of its ongoing in with Epic. A spokesman told The Verge, I'm paraphrasing, but they said this allows us to concentrate on the new App Store fees and

business model around Play Store fees as related to in-app purchases. And naturally, of course, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney had his say on X. Third-party stores are coming to Google Play Store, he said. Epic Games Store already hosts third-party stores, including itch.io GOG Galaxy. And here's the swipe at Apple. When will the other guys finally open up and stop blocking and taxing competition? And this links back to further explanation of the new Google Play rules with the help of Google Play Games GM Arash Maybod, which we published last week. Those new changes have rolled out in the UK, US, and EU now, and they are to come in other markets soon. See, yes. Read the story for more detail, but essentially, it will be easier to run a third-party App Store through the Play Store from now onwards.

Monopoly Go continues to do the business for Hasbro. It has earned the toy company $44 million in the last quarter. That is up slightly on the $41 million Hasbro earned from Monopoly Go in the previous quarter. That, rounded up, is about $86 million year to date. So, easy money for Hasbro. Possibly the best licensing deal ever. Hasbro's Q2 earnings saw digital and licensed gaming revenue overall grow year-on-year 17% $135.5 million. So, tabletop gaming, 30% growth there. Hasbro didn't mention any other mobile game by name or really any other PC games or console games, but it did reconfirm that Scopely expects Monopoly Go to exceed 8 billion

in lifetime revenue this summer. Said Hasbro CEO Chris and the toy firm will continue to work with lots of different partners with its brands. Some of these were name-checked here: Scopely, Aristocrat, triple.dot, Marmalade, Gameberry Labs, Ubisoft, and Gameloft, all working on licensed titles with Hasbro. So, more to come from them.
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MTG's latest financials

really show Raid: Shadow Legends dominating in terms of revenue, but its casual division Play Simple and its rising direct-to-consumer revenue were also worth shouting out. Q2 revenue for Raid up 9% year-on-year, 111 million in the last quarter. Warhammer 40,000 Tacticus revenue was up 5% year-on-year, 17 million revenue in the last quarter. Forge of Empires continues to shrink, 22% decline in revenue year-on-year, 19 million dollars earned in the last quarter. Overall group revenue, 306 million in the last quarter. Profits as measured by adjusted EBITDA, $73 million, 24% profit margin. Play Simple is in the process of being listed on the stock exchange in India where its games are most popular. And 38% of group revenue

across MTG comes through direct-to-consumer channels, up from 24% a year ago. More stats and figures on MTG in the article. Mighty Doom developer Alpha Dog is back as an independent studio after being closed down in 2024. This studio was part of ZeniMax, Bethesda's parent company, which was acquired by Microsoft in the $7.5 billion acquisition acquisition of ZeniMax in 2019. But, in one of many rounds of cuts at Microsoft, Alpha Dog was closed down in 2024, around the same time Arkane Austin was closed, and Tango Gameworks was sold. Mighty Doom was therefore pulled from the app stores. But, Alpha Dog Games it has returned. Studio founder Shawn Woods updated his LinkedIn profile claiming that as of May

Alpha Dog Games is independently owned. Kotaku followed up to get a statement from Shawn Woods. He says, "It's true that Alpha Dog Games is once again independently owned by its founders. We're grateful to Microsoft for working with us through the transition and enabling Alpha Dog Games to return to independent ownership. And they are looking for opportunities from partners, publishers, and licensers." So, makers of Mighty Doom, Alpha Dog, back in business. Buried in the announcements about Elder Scrolls games, other Fallout games, was the news that Fallout Shelter is getting an unscripted TV show. Unscripted suggests it's a reality TV show type format. And we have assumed in this story that maybe it'll be a kind of survival Fallout Shelter show where people have

to actually live in a Fallout Shelter and hilarity ensues. Bethesda also said Fallout Shelter is the most popular way to experience Fallout on the go. And it has clocked up more than 250 million players worldwide. That magic suggests about 130, 140 million dollars in revenue since launch in 2015. Most of that money is coming through US players. But yeah, Fallout Shelter TV show in the works. Unity 7 is coming early 2027 with a beta in December. Unity announced the news at Unite Seoul and said that the new edition of Unity is built on how developers, artists, producers, and coding agents increasingly work together across the full development cycle. They promised no rebuilding, no new language to learn, nothing broken in transition. New graphics bits and bobs, but also most importantly for mobile

devs, smarter growth and monetization systems with native direct-to-consumer in-app purchases, no code web shops, and unified catalogs which feed data back into vector, the AI engine behind Unity ads. So, Unity 7 coming in early 2027, Q1 for that one. This story's been really popular on the site. Former Kabam devs drop fake reveal new DC Universe fighting game DC K.O. This looks like Marvel Contest of Champions but in the DC Universe. It's coming next year on iOS and Android and the part that developer Drop Fake was keen to point out in the press release was that it's 2v2 tag team game PVE and real-time PVP modes. It wants the game to be both approachable and have a high skill

ceiling and they want to bring back some old school arcade vibes. So, DCK coming next year. Another popular story from last week the closure of Scopely's Looney Tunes World of Mayhem. That is closing in October. As spotted by gamesindustry.biz, a post on the game's official site says the game's being removed from app stores on August 23rd. The game will go offline permanently on October 15th. App Magic estimates suggest the game has generated over $106 million in lifetime in-app purchase earnings. 62% of that revenue is players in the US. Downloads 41 million. 19% of the installs from US followed by Brazil 10%, Mexico 8%, and Russia 6%. It's been earning about 350,000 per month since January 2026 according

to App Magic. So, Scopely obviously decided to call it a day on this one. Looney Tunes World of Mayhem closing in October. In data digest this week three lead items all on learnings {slash} OK VR games the Chinese maker of Amaze Go, Meow Doku, and Vita Mahjong. So, first item is this App Magic report about the company's sudden rise. Vita Mahjong, 237 million lifetime downloads. Amaze Go, 68 million. MeowDoku, 10 million already and counting. That's games just only just come out. 40 million downloads in a single month from just three games. It also spotlights Mystery Town, a merge puzzler, which almost overtook Merge Mansion in the last month in terms of in-app purchase revenue. So, learnings {slash} Okey Fun Games

really going for merge puzzle as well as the more casual end of the market. MeowDoku was also June's fastest growing game, 8.9 million downloads according to Sensor Tower, way ahead of Pokémon Champions, which was released around the same time. 5.1 million downloads for that one. Learnings also dominated June's ad creative charts, which Social Peta put out every month or so. They're really spending a lot on user acquisition. Tile Explorer and Zen Word lead iOS and Android respectively. But, on both iOS and Android, Tile Explorer, Vita Mahjong, Amaze Go, MeowDoku, Zen Word, Jigsaw Scapes, and Jigsaw Card all knocking around the top 20 in terms of number of ad creatives out on the market. Elsewhere in non-Learnings related matters, Honor of Kings helped Tencent

Games to earn $5 billion in in the first half of 2026 according to more Sensor Tower data. Disney Emoji Blitz, 54 million installs for that one. There's a report on gaming investments looking up according to Drake Star and Netflix Playground. Engagement up 600% on that one, although as we note, that may well have come from quite a low base. So, yeah, pinch of salt with that one. In soft launch and new games, we've got Tencent bringing back the Gangstar games in time for GTA 6, Scopely's next WWE game, further incoming titles from Century, Zynga, Rovio, Miniclip, and more. And in new games, there's Ratchet & Clank, Madden, College Football, Digimon, Word Play, Animoca, and new titles from ByteDance, Century Games, BoomBit, and Easybrain. Have a look at the soft launch article

from Monday and the new game digest from the last Friday for more details on that. And that's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.