That EA-Scopely supergroup, Reform's mobile game, King strikes, Mattel, Roblox, Mizuguchi, 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 business. Here we go. The big story from the end of last week is Saudi boss is considering merging Savvy and EA to create a new gaming super group. According to Bloomberg reports, this potential merger means that the Saudi Arabian public investment fund could bring all of its gaming assets under one roof, meaning Scopley, its esports arm, EA, and reportedly soon the makers of Mobile Legends Bang Bang Moonton. They could all come together under one big Saudi owned gaming super group. So Bloomberg seems to be really following what's happening in the Saudi Arabian gaming scene. It keeps breaking stories related to Savvy. It also broke the one about Brian Ward leaving as CEO

recently. And then a week and a half week or so later, this one emerges. So some wild speculation here. Maybe Scopley will merge into EA, as will Moonton, and Andrew Wilson, the boss of EA, will assume control of this new giant gaming entity owned by Saudi Arabia. Maybe they've got other plans. But that would be my reading of the situation. We'll see what actually happens. But yeah, this does make an awful lot of sense. There is no real reason to have these companies separate. And if they are all run by one person rather than separate leadership for Scopely, for Moonton, for EA, for ESL Facebook group, the esports wing of Savvy Games Group, if they're all pulling in different directions, that doesn't make too much sense. Some of the sources in that Bloomberg story suggests that part of the motivation here is to beef up EA's mobile output, which has

traditionally been its weak link. And of course, Scopi can certainly help with that. In our report, we refer back to when I spoke to one very senior EA mobile staffer who said much the same thing. EA's been pretty weak in mobile. It is on the 90-day clock for earnings calls and it can't invest long-term into mobile user acquisition in particular in the same way that a private company can because these investments are increasingly over the course of years rather than months and the payback windows are similar. So there could be a future where Scopely assumes control of EA's mobile assets and scoplifies them. We shall see. That is all speculation on my part. But yeah, this potential merger of all of those Saudi owned assets does seem like a pretty logical next step for

the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And I'm sure Bloomberg will have the scoop as soon as anything does happen. Another grim story about the use of games for political purposes. On Wednesday morning, Reform UK, the far right party here in the UK, released its small boat watch app, which purports to track the number of small boat crossings across the English Channel, which is uh a bedrock of that party's campaigning. They really do want to stop the boats. And within that app, there's actually a game called Small Boat Scramble. It's quite badly done. Of course, the game actually only appears once you've downloaded it, given them your email, closed the app, and then started it again. And then at that point, a tab

appears that says play. When you hit that, you get this small boat scramble game, which is a very basic sort of shooter type game where you are the Royal Navy and you bounce these small boats back to where they came from to get a high score. Reform UK said in the very splashy tabloid press coverage of this app's launch that there is a £5,000 prize for the game's top scorer. checking the iOS version of the app, there doesn't seem to be any way of claiming that £5,000 or any mention of that incentive in the app itself. It's obviously incredibly grim and insensitive and disgusting and it appears to be made in Claude or something similar because the UI of the whole app is very similar to some of the hobbyist apps and games that have been popping up on the app stores since

things like Claude came to prominence. And of course, it follows on from the Trump MAGA games that appeared on the White House website, which took popular mobile games like Snake and Flappy Bird and gave them far right themes. I guess Reform went one step further in that they got their app through App Review on iOS and on Android. And the game is now freely available on app stores. At the time of writing, the game had 6,000 players on its leaderboard. It's also been a big story for most of the tabloid press because it's good outrage bait. Yes, if you want to see a bit of video footage of this game being played for some reason, it's on the website. Within the

story headlined, Reform UK has launched a stop the boats game in its iOS and Android app. King staff in Sweden could be striking at the end of the month. This story came through a post from two different Swedish trade unions who have issued King with a strike warning. They have been negotiating with the Candy Crush maker for about a year over a collective bargaining agreement. King rejected that agreement in June according to a Kotaku report. So this could potentially mean strikes at the King Stockholm and Malmo studios on September 25th unless an agreement is reached. So we'll see whether that happens or not. But one of the unions says it represents about 100 staff at King and their chief negotiator says there is no other option after failing

to reach an agreement. So yeah, potentially strikes at King's Sweden offices. Mattel is upping its game in mobile. I published this one on Monday. This has been actually sitting in the can for at least six weeks, maybe even two months. So, apologies to Mattel for dragging my feet on this one. I spoke to COO Devon Nambia about Mattel's gaming ambitions back at the end of July. The gist of it is that just like Hasbro and more recently LEGO, this is a toy company that increasingly has its sights on mobile and wants its own Monopoly Go sized hit. I think most companies would also like a Monopoly Go sized hit, but you get what I mean here. They want their flagship hit game based on their IP. They may well do it differently.

They have an internal studio. Mattel Game Studios is actually mostly Mattel 163, which was a joint venture with Netis setup in the early 2020s. Mattel earlier this year bought Netis out of that joint venture, took full ownership of [snorts] Mattel 163, rebranded it as Mattel Games Studios, and now they are looking for developers to license out their properties, too. But they're also making their own games. They made a Masters of the Universe runner to coincide with the film of that property coming out this summer. And the plan here, according to Nambi, is to have a major mobile game at launch with any new film or TV project or toy line. He also picks out the several Uno games that are out on the App Store as being pretty big hits. Uh,

a lot of organic interest in those games. There's one of them on Apple Arcade. I think two different Uno games on the App Store proper. And Barbie is also singled out as a big opportunity. Merge Mansion is referenced there as well as a Sims type game. The potential there is pretty obvious. So yeah, more to come from Mattel in the world of mobile. Lots more details in the article. The headline if you want to read it is toy giant Mattel has set its sights on mobile and it wants a monopoly go of its own. Exola connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally with Exola 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, Exola provides the tools for developers to focus on what's [music] most important, creating great games. Visit exola.com to learn [music] more. That's

xsol.com. The Roblox Developers Conference took place over the weekend. Lots of news coming out of that. There was an award show, but I think most relevantly for the mobile industry is this new Roblox Everywhere initiative, which apparently makes it possible for creators and developers to turn their Roblox games into standalone apps and games and then ship them on mobile, PC, and console. Not too many details on how exactly that works with the mobile app stores, whether it's maybe a web app or what have you. There's also no date on this either. It just says soon in the announcement. So, more to come here, I think, but yeah, a pretty notable addition to the Roblox feature set means that if you do have a hit Roblox game, you can put it on different platforms

and monetize it there more easily. I'm sure Roblox will want a piece of that action in terms of a commission. But yes, like I say, to be confirmed on how exactly all that works. Some other details announced at the developer conference. Roblox is also introducing Roblox Wallet, a financial account with a third party partner that pays creator earnings out daily in real currency. That's expected to roll out in the US later this year. that will expand to other countries in 2027. Build the promptbased creation tool that is getting rolled out beyond New Zealand into Serbia and Singapore. So more people will be able to try that new beta tool. And there are other sort of technical and tools based updates coming to Roblox. I would recommend of course reading the full article on the website for more details.

the headline, Roblox plans to let creators turn their games into standalone apps. Quick word on this commission calculator that I made. This is kind of in response to writing up a load of stories about app store policy on iOS and Android in the last couple of years, which seems to change every month based on geography and court rulings and so on. And I started to think that someone should make a calculator that pulls in all of the details and criteria from Apple and Google's official documentation on app stores and makes it more easy to understand. So I asked Claude code to scan those documents and build a little calculator where it's super easy. It's just multiple choice. You just tick which store where you're doing business, what your business model is, whether you're using web shop or

native inapp purchase or something else, and it will give you an idea of how much commission you can expect Apple or Google or a web shop provider could take out of your revenue. It's not the finished article, so if you have used it and there is a bit of nuance or some other detail missing, let me know. Give it a go. See what you think. I'm hoping it is useful to people confused by the many different commission rates that Apple and Google take. Just go to the site or just Google mobile gamer.biz commission calculator and you'll find it. Our man in Japan, Gendel Gento, a freelance writer, spoke to Tetssuya Mizaguchi recently about the arrival of Lumines Remastered on mobile, a legendary game designer, the mind behind Rez, Space Channel 5, Child of Eden, Lumirez of course, beefy interview on

the site, so I would recommend you read the whole thing, but the highlights include him saying he'd like to bring more of his games to mobile. And he sees players on mobile as being increasingly more likely to purchase premium and premium style games as opposed to what has been dominant on the platform for the last few years, which is very profitable free-to-play games. There's also a bit in here about sound games. So this is a VCbacked publisher who specializes in crossplatform game publishing. But yeah, the story goes that sound games whipped up a prototype using its crossplatform publishing tech and enhance were wowed enough to say, "Let's go for it." And now Lumines Remastered is live on the iOS and Android app stores as a free to

start game. So yeah, lot more detail in that Mizaguchi interview on the site. The headline here is Tetssuya Mizaguchi on the return of Luminires and why premium games could bounce back. Another one from late last week. A load of European developers and trade bodies have ganged up and co-signed an open letter to Apple about its new EU app store terms.
[snorts]
This was co-signed by the Coalition for App Fairness, whose founding members include Spotify and Epic Games, and the Match Group, maker of lots of popular dating apps, and the European Games Developer Federation, which represents 27 national game trade bodies and by extension 2,500 European game developers. So, they signed this letter complaining that Apple's new EU app store terms, which come into effect on October the 1st,

do not comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act, which is designed to open platforms like the App Store up to greater competition. That's the gist of it. If you want more detail, you should go to the website mobilegamer.biz beers. And the headline here is Apple's new EU app store terms still breached the DMA, says European Developer Coalition. In data digest this week, lots of stats and figures as ever. We got New Zoo's 2026 global games market report, which suggests mobile game revenue will hit $121.1 billion in 2026. But downloads are down 25% yearonear. Roblox shares have jumped 11% following its Roblox developer conference announcements covered a bit earlier in this podcast. Nine of the 10 fastest

growing mobile publishers in August were based in Asia, says a new sensor tower report. Story Toys, the kids app and game maker owned by Everplay, which also owns things like Team 17. Their revenue is up 43% in the first half of 2026 thanks to things like Lego Bluey and Disney Coloring World. Htopia, according to App Magic, has got off to a good start. 20 million in monthly inapp purchase revenue, which is a new record for the simulation genre, apparently. Pocket Worlds has acquired Hotel Hideway, the [snorts] 3D social world built by Sulaki, the Finnish studio behind Habbo Hotel. And this Clash of Critters game that I keep seeing advertised a lot has broken into the top four coin looter games according to Magic. There's also a stat from Playcott's Age of Magic, which

has hit 120 million in lifetime revenue after eight years on the market. get lots of graphs and figures and more context in that story in data digest on the site every Wednesday in our regular look at soft launch games and new games. There's updates, release dates, and other news on Monster Hunter Outlanders Warhammer Bulk Gun Boom, Pixel Gun 2, Studio Atletico's new beta, plus more from Play Digitious Supersonic Popcore, and Rolex. That is new game digest every Friday on the site. And in the soft launch update, there's a peek at what's coming from Blizzard, Scoply, Zingga, Supercell, ROIO, PlayStation Mobile, and more. that is updated and tweaked every other Monday. And that's it for this week. Thanks for listening.