The Top 50 Mobile Game Makers of 2026 and Pokémon Unite ends service | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we chat about the week's news and provide some insights. Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz back after a few weeks of of holiday. No Mariam today who was hosting before. Hopefully she'll be back on the show next week. So you're stuck with me. But we do have the everpresent our features and data editor Aaron Assel. How you doing, Aaron? What have you been up to?
Hello. Uh, yeah, I'm doing well. It's nice to have you back on the podcast. It's been a few weeks, but yeah, I'm I'm doing all right, thank you. I'm actually quite excited, not in a bad way, but to finish the podcast today. Um, cuz it's sort of the end of our workday. And Monster Hunter Outlanders is finally out after like two years. So, I've got it downloaded and kind of ready to start basically as soon as we wrap up the podcast today. Um, and hopefully not spend all evening playing it, but we'll

see how it goes. Tune in next week for an update.
We'll do a full analysis next week. Analysis and review.
That would be
the whole podcast.
Just you never know. We We could do those. We tried that before.
Yeah. Other than that, I I don't think I've had anything especially exciting going on in the past week, I guess. Um, yeah, it's a while since I've spoken to you because I obviously been telling Marian what I've been up to. So, um I guess not to overly go over the same stuff for our regular listeners, but I went to Madam Two Swords a couple of weeks ago, which was quite good fun.
Lovely.
Um I was more excited by the like fictional characters. They had like a Star Wars section and a Marvel section.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Which was quite cool. I sort of joined it. Obviously, they're models. They're not moving around, but joined in on the uh like jewel of fates from like Phantom Menace cuz they had that like in progress. Posed with Anakin looking a bit cross in Revenge of the Sith. I got

grabbed by the Hulk cuz they had a massive Hulk model um that I managed to like fit into his hand. So, um, yeah, I think I said previously, but I felt a little bit like a big child cuz I sort of raced past the like sports people and the royals and stuff and spent way more time, you know, enjoying myself amongst the like Star Wars characters and stuff.
Yeah, I've been there before. I do. If people ever visit London, it's worth going to. I think it's good fun. There's actually like bits you wouldn't expect. So, the stuff that you've mentioned and also I'm sure it was Madam Two Swords. They actually had like just like a 4D animated movie for Marvel while we were there and they have like a little ride as well in the middle of it, I think.
Yeah. Yeah, that was good.
Yeah. So, that's like some There's a few things that are quite surprising. They also I'm again I think it was Madam Two Swords. They did have an alien like exhibit there from the films and uh you had to pay extra and I didn't at the time. I actually regret it because I'm a big big fan of that. Get a picture next

to
you. Go to that.
Yeah. So, yes, it's it's interesting. So, when you're all at PGC London, you're going to do a bit of tourism. Maybe that's one of the things that you could see. There's a lot to choose from, though.
And um how about yourself?
Yeah, so I've been I've been on holiday for two weeks. That's why I've not been on the podcast, obviously. Thanks to you, Aaron and Mariam, for for keeping things going. I went to Canada and I had an amazing time. So I was there for about 10 days. Did a basically a tour with a couple of friends. So we went to Toronto, went to Niagara Falls, Ottawa, Montreal, and went to Quebec City. So saw a lot, I guess, in the east. I've been to Vancouver before. I've even been to Newfoundland. So I guess I've I've seen a fair bit. There's more to see. But uh yeah, brilliant. What a be beautiful country as well. There's a lot going on there. There's so much construction going on in Toronto. They're really building like basically everything's turning into a tower or a skyscraper. And we had a walking tour.

They explained like they're keeping some of the old like a little bit of the old architecture but only as like a facade. So you get like this old brick work maybe from like the British Empire days and then but behind that or on top of it at least is like this brand new massive building hosting like businesses or or or homes. So it it's quite on that scale is kind of really kind of interesting to see that. Niagara Falls is obviously amazing. I again highly recommend if anyone's lucky enough to to get to go to see it. We actually did like a little boat tour as well. So they basically almost takes you into the Niagara Falls. So you get splashed water. We had ponchos on. That was really quite amazing. And even while you're in the in the boat doing the tour, if you like look at a certain angle, you even see like a rainbow within like where you are. It's really really amazing. And apparently the Niagara Falls can never freeze is is what I've been told because of the water flowing so fast at least like at the top. So something like that. I think it's but it has frozen once and there was a reason for it. I can't

remember what it was in history but random fact. Then we went to Osawa which is interesting in that that's like the capital. It's the seat of power where the government is. But it was really strange that compared to Toronto and Montreal, everything feels smaller. There's still some big buildings, but a lot of it feels a bit more small scale. Uh, still beautiful city though. And Montreal was great. That's where you get to more French speaking. We went to Quebec City a few hours away. That that was amazing. Went there for a day. Absolutely loved it. So in just one random fact in the city. So we did a tour there as well, a walking tour. I guess it's very touristy these days, but there was a street that we went on and the tour guy was like, "Right, if you look this way, and this is all one street. If you look this way, all the houses, they're all old French architecture. If you look this way down the street, it's all British, which explains like, you know, there France and the British Empire at war and fighting over territory in Canada." But

yeah, it just explains some of the history. It's really fascinating and it looks kind of beautiful all together and really amazing to see. So, as as usual, I ramble on. That that won't change. [laughter]
It's quite a holiday, but
yeah, it sounds like a good trip.
Yeah, it was great. And the but the hilarity of I was I was in Canada for 10 days. I've come back and we're doing an event there in about a week, just over a week. And I'm not there for for Pocket Gamer Connect and and Migs. So, our events on November 10th, but yeah, lovely time. Highly recommend Canada. It's awesome. Right, we're actually going to get into the point of this podcast, which is talk about the week's news. Couple shout outs for our events. We've just closed Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics. Thank you everybody for coming. There's about,00 people in attendance, I think. Great show. We will be back next year. Up coming up, we've got PGC Jordan November 7th and 8th. We've got PGC Summit Montreal on November 10th, as I just mentioned, which will be taking place as part of Mix Montreal International Game Summit. And we got

the big one PDC London January 18th and 19th. Definitely want to come to that. Right, the first thing that I wanted to jump into was so we recently announced the app pocket game on last week. Our annual top 50 mobile game makers for 2026 lists. We do this every year. We've been doing it for a very long time and it we try and basically rank top 50 companies and we try to take into consideration a lot of factors. So kind of chief among them is games. So, are they doing interesting stuff with live ops, adding new features, growing a game or keeping it kind of running steady for a long period of time? Are they innovating with either live ops or brand new games? And then revenue, how many users they getting, M&A, business expansion? Loads of factors kind of come into play and we try and put together like this almost power list. So, we did that again. A quick rundown of the top 10. I will just reel them off. So, at number 10, Grand Games from Turkey. Number nine, Supercell. Number eight,

Hungry Studio. So, as Block Blast number seven, Voodoo, now a hybrid casual specialist. Number six, Take Two and Really, Zingga is the key part of that. Number five, Dream Games. Four, 10 cent. Number three, Century Games. This is our number one last year. And number two, Microphone. And number one, Scoply. So, congrats to all them. It's a big top 50 list. I won't go for the whole thing. Couple things I want to just point out. A few things. So, Scoply number one. So I there was quite a few I feel like they could have been number one this year and we did have discussions about that. Scope is number one again because you know monopoly go is still immense and if you were to look at app magic estimates etc or or sets tower estimates sorry both those you might see revenue is in decline and I'm not saying that overall maybe revenue is not in decline possibly probably is but the game is still wildly popular around the world and there was a really interesting uh presentation done by Shira at sensor tower at gamescom and I can't remember what the event was called it was a diff it was a uh it

There's a event from Appsflower and Settle and it basically showed so going to start trying to do estimates for direct consumer which is a very very big deal because we're missing that now. So when everyone's like the market's down and we don't we kind you can you can make assumptions but we don't really know what's going on with certain games and so unless public company and so uh it was interesting to see kind of estimated revenue on the stores going down and and DTC going up from OP and they estimated like maybe a third around that or 30% was going to D2C don't know the actual figure but that was fascinating and obviously over the over recent years they scopely acquired Niantic so they're really growing their business and I think a couple years ago they actually open sorry acquired I can't remember they they acquired a Chinese studio basically which is a really big surprise in that industry and then the big one this year they're kind of breaking into the casual space with Loom games from Turkey in a deal that valued it was a majority stake in a deal

that valued the studio in excess of $1 billion and Pixel Flow huge game and it really was kind of the post it's kind of become the poster child for what's going on in Turkey has loom games. So yeah, Skoley doing really well. They're keeping hot on industry trends. They're kind of at the center of a lot of them still and growing and getting into they're now at Loom Games. So I think a really worthy number one. They were number one two years ago and we we've done that again. Yeah, I think to add as well on the um like Niantic acquisition point because obviously although that was kind of more than a year ago and would have maybe been more of a factor in 2025's list like the summer this year has been massive for Pokémon Go which obviously is now a scopely title ultimately and again even with all the direct consumer stuff kind of muddying the the waters a bit just looking at the estimates for like Google Play and the App Store like Pokémon Go has back to

heights it hasn't reached in a long time. So, I think that was a factor as well.
And I think Pikmin Balloon growing.
Yeah, like constantly growing. Yeah,
they're doing lots of great stuff going on across across the company. So, yeah, really great stuff and congrats to to Scopley. A couple other things within the top 10. You might notice there's quite a few links to Turkey and China and not just in top 10 but in the whole list. Grand Games at number 10 doing repeat hits actually. So that's very rare in the industry. So in just in the top 10, Dream Games obviously from Turkey with with Raw Match and got Take Two and Zinger obviously has made major acquisitions before. So they acquired Peak Games for Tomb Blast, Graham Games with Merge Dragons and Rollic Hyper now hyper casual publisher with Color Block Jam. So Turkey really significant part of this year's top 10. And then China Microthon so interesting and Century Games. So Centry Games amazing. They keep bringing out hits. Microphone

really it does actually have multiple hits but obviously the big one is Gossip Harbor and but what's fascinating about that was at least at the time we were doing it I don't I haven't actually got the latest numbers in front of like microphone kept growing. So now I'm not looking at off store revenue or third party Android stores in China which could be significant but uh if you look at apps or Google Play like Century was kind of plateaued an an incredible level by the way it's fine but yeah microphone just kept kept on growing so yeah and we've also got Tencent releasing the likes of Valerant mobile and Delt Force over the years doing really well at the moment hungry studio with Block Blast is like one of possibly one of the most played games in the world that is the one of the ones that I my friends or I see r of playing. Very rare to see that. So, yeah, very impressive top 10. And then the rest of the list, just real quick to round it up. Again, like I said, some other some other Turkey studios in there. We've got Good Job Games. We've got Spy Games. And then China is just everywhere on this list. First one is 15. We have top 10 last

year. They've actually the games actually, you know, quite a massive decline. Haven't looked in the past month. Maybe it went back up. It was in the game being last war. still generating a crap ton of money being played I'm sure by lots of people who are having fun but it's just interesting got perfect world games in there of course griff lion brand new game ark knights so Southeast Asia another big one is is represented got a in there and the other thing I did want to mention was so there's two things I had a quick look eastern influence so if you I'm considering middle east Asia and Turkey you could argue Europe but it kind of straddles was all I think it was like at least 37 of the top 50 had links to them whether that is owned by companies from there they're based there or like they've done or say a western company has done acquisitions and has studios there or some kind of partnership which I thought was really interesting but I think it is true that there's a lot of the industry is growing in these places

rapidly but it's easy to forget like how big the industry still is in the west even though like a lot of layoff studio closes closures been happening in the west and there's a particularly high concentration in the US and California there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on scope is number one right of course back by savvy games group two of the companies I found really interesting this time and New York time New York Times games I play that every day and chess.com which you might think is a bit odd to have chess in there but they've done such an incredible job of actually scaling that as a platform to be the destination for chess like it's not just this is I don't know it's not just this is just chess and no one's behind behind it, right? This is a company that's done an incredible job and they got their their mobile app. So, yeah, like companies in the US are still very strong, but obviously there's a lot of problems there, but I think we can get carried away with saying, "Oh, now the the the industry is only successful in these other areas." You can find successes everywhere and then there's a lot of caveats and trends for another time. But yes, please check out the top 50. We do

it every year. And obviously this year we're doing a lot of regional guides, top 30s, various countries like Turkey, China. But yeah, really, really interesting to go through. We'll have more content around that coming soon as well. Any thoughts on the top 50, Aaron? Any last thoughts from when you were when we were kind of compiling it together and writing it all up?
Yeah, I I was going to say actually it's um it's sort of a challenging but quite enjoyable process of actually trying to rank all of these companies. obviously even deciding who's going to be in the top 50 and then you know who ranks above or below who within that 50 they're always quite interesting conversations and I think um it's useful hopefully that we you know who write a lot of the news and do features and things are so involved in that process because we obviously see kind of a lot of what's going on in the industry over the years and um so hopefully actually have some decent insight and obviously additional

research goes into stuff, but even just off the top of your head knowing stuff that a company's done in the past year is helpful. So yeah, they're I I quite enjoy doing them. So it's it's nice to that they're always an annual thing that comes around. It's just scary how quick they come around. I think
quite especially this year. So many of this.
Yeah.
But yeah, like it's something that's on like I think on our minds like the entire year. So the next list is already on like on my mind. Okay, be keeping an eye on who's doing what rather than last minute we'll come together like oh no who who's the top right? It's something that a lot of work goes into. Uh but of course if you disagree always open to feedback please do drop me a message because that will help inform like the next list. Right. So yes once again rambled on. So welcome back to me Aaron you've got some news. What have you got? Uh yeah, so my my first story this week um is quite closely tied to the iPhone duo which um was very recently released. So I spoke with Azra Games CEO Mark Oro

about Ungodly which is his RPG which is coming out soon. Um, and we ended up speaking because in the kind of keynote presentation where the iPhone duo was revealed in September, um, just two games were actually shown on the new hardware, which coincidentally was Monster Hunter Outlanders, which I mentioned at the start of this show and yeah, Ungodly. So I spoke to Marco Tero about the game and kind of developing for and it's coming to a lot of platforms including Apple hardware and obviously um yeah was kind of one of the first things ever showcased on the iPhone Duo which is like Apple's foldable first foldable phone. Uh it's their largest iPhone display to date. Um and yeah so we kind of talked about development which was quite interesting. The game's been in the works for about four years. And yeah, he he claimed that um Azra Games didn't actually know that Ungodly was going to be shown running on it um in the showcase. Um

that seems so unlikely, but I don't
Yeah, I was going to say I'm noting your silent expressions there
for non visual listeners.
Yeah. Um and yeah, he sort of talked about having quite a good relationship with Apple and kind of whilst not speaking on their behalf, he said for for like Azra games, it's great to have kind of this high-end hardware that they can try, you know, develop a console quality RPG for. And yeah, he thinks that for Apple, it's probably nice to have people developing for mobile who actually want to utilize the kind of high-end hardware. But as I say, it's coming to a lot of platforms. So, we also talked about making it um kind of optimized for kind of older devices and like Apple, Android, uh it's coming to PC as well. Um so, yeah, it it was quite an interesting interview and um as it's kind of framed around the iPhone Duo um I suppose because I say that was I just thought it was quite interesting that they um only showed

like two games running on it. I think like previously it's felt um in maybe some years ago now that Apple maybe didn't take like games that seriously like some showcases of their new iPhones and things didn't really show much games. I mean I mean
yes
sorry is sort of the anger [laughter] I'm trying to hold back around Apple for many years a long time ago they they've often shown games you know they did the big Super Mario if you go way back they did the big Super Mario Run they did like clumsy ninja they had Natural Motion CEO Torsell on stage for that they've done like various things over the years but it's always quite small like they don't really care
I don't think Steve Jobs cared about games at all. I could be I could be wrong. And like this is, yeah, sure, this is a little way to promote the iPhone Duo, but like and and it's great that they did give time. And sure, there's been some other things going on

maybe this year that points to making a bit of an effort, but the the again you can show a couple games to promote your iPhone duo and and congrats to Azra Games for and Godly for that, but like it doesn't change what Apple has done to the industry. bit of that.
Yeah. Anyway, I guess to kind of try and brighten the end of this little segment back up, what I was kind of getting at was like at least they did actually show like multiple like upcoming mobile games. It's a little bit of kind of promotion for those. Obviously, it's showing off them running on the new hardware. Uh like it's better than, you know, I think you'd be even more we'd see the Steam coming out of your ears if they didn't show any games at all.
So, so credit where it's due. Of course, I could they Yes, they did do it. So, yeah, that's great. So, the other one of the most interesting things in the interview though, I thought was the the cost to make this game $50 million. I think he said more than this kind of game cost more than $50 million. Marko is the guy that is famous for Star Wars

Galaxy of Heroes. And so he's kind of going back to the action RPG genre with with Ungodly and they raised $42 million in 2024 for this game. And if I look at actually the history now in 2022 they raised $15 million. Such an expensive thing to do. Uh and they're doing this in the US. Really interesting. Good luck to them. I hope it all works out. But it it's just it was just fascinating. That's the scale of this. I don't know. I I would presume that part of that is UA cost. I don't actually know. It kind of actually sounded like it's development, but yeah, they've got a big boost hopefully with this iPhone Duo Showcase at least getting it on people's minds if anyone's looking into that. So, good for them. But he said like these games cost used to cost
it was 10 to 20 million I think he said.
Yeah, these games used to cost 10 to$20 million a generation ago. So 5x 2 and a halfx up from what it used to be. shows the challenges that developers face on

mobile these days. Yeah, tough but hopefully they can do it right. Thanks for that Aaron and so gonna move on to the next story. Uh so we had Next Games. We had the MD Sara Bergstrom at Pocket Gamer Connection Audits last week and Next Games is famous for kind of entertainment IP games. I think that was really the reason for their founding. And they made games. The games that made them famous, Helsinki Studio, were The Walking Dead, No Man's Land. That was their big one. And they also did The Walking Dead: Our Worlds, which was a location based augmented reality game. It actually this is an actual This is a game that actually used augmented reality. Like you would play it like that. Uh so that was interesting. Then they did a a Stranger Things puzzle tales game. And then kind of shortly after, not that long after that, they were acquired by Netflix. So this session that Sar Bon did at PGC was like basically lifting the lid on what they've been doing because they've been very quiet for the past four four years, four and a half years after that. And it

was just very interesting to kind of hear it from their point of view. So one quote she said that well this isn't this bit isn't the quote but like she was saying that the job is now not to continue where it left off but now to kind of do something new and then to actually quote our job as a first party studio is not to fill a catalog it is not to fill the shelves with lots of products. Our focus is really on the quality not the quantity. Every single game that we make of course needs to be delightful fun experience that deserves the audience that we're creating these games for but it also has an ulterior motive. So we always take at least one or two or sometimes three of the hardest problems that Netflix needs to resolve to make games work for Netflix. Whether that's technology challenge, whether that's a new type of collaboration between different teams at Netflix, whether that's an engineering, trans media, creative challenge, and so on and so forth. So far, Next Game has done seven games with Netflix. That was underwater melon. So they did that for mobile, but they've basically also got

games that you can play on TV and through streaming. And so games, their games include Netflix Star Daily Trivia, which they hope to expand outside of the US soon, Miniolf, Netflix Puzzle, Bogle Party, Pictionary Game Night, and Party Crashes. They currently have 150 staff. They've actually grown from around 90 to 100 that they had when they were acquired. They have five internal development teams, a live ops team, a platform team, and they work with two Helsinki based co-development partners as well, which is very Finnish, which is if you get some success, share it really, which is an interesting so many other gaming hubs are so highly super competitive and a lot of companies are very secretive. So, it's just an interesting strategy. You can argue how well it works in general. So I think one of the interesting things it it's just fascinating to hear how so when Netflix acquired Next Games to me it made sense because here is a developer that has a history of adapting IP into successful mobile games right and and then they did

that with Walking Dead in particular and then they also adapted a Stranger Things game which got this partnership and acquisition rolling n their games aren't really IP related now and Sarra Brom even says the quote is we've gone from a publicly listed free-to-play mobile games developer with a knack for RPGs into a fully Netflix owned full part of Netflix family totally different business model completely different context a full 180 on our creative direction in terms of who we are of who we make these games for which is a more casual audience and then she says all the while they've been trying to they've actually been getting some tangible results like what was the the thinking really at the time of of acquiring next games when you when you want the studio to kind of in the end do something completely different. I'm not like obviously talent can do different things, people can learn different things and ultimately what next games gives is expertise in game development which when Netflix went into games you just didn't have right and of course in

the meantime Netflix's game strategy has completely changed possibly a few times which I'm sure then affects the direction of next games and Netflix has also either kind of shut down or divested studios in this time but yeah I I so I thought that was really interesting. And next games for basically taking this challenge and by the sounds of it kind of educating Netflix on how things work and help really building out that games business within Netflix. I always say like how how long is a tech company going to be interested in this kind of thing. We will see the TV streaming stuff does make sense. Said that the team is going to increasingly focus on party games. Makes sense. Do they need to be IP games? Probably not actually if you think of what people would actually tune in to play. Random example make this will make no sense. So I'm just gonna say it top my head like Nintend what is Nintendo Wii most famous for? It's not Mario. You could argue Mario

Kart but like it's most famous for Wii Sports which is not an IP. Like it's it's the Christmas time thing of what should we do? Let's play bowling. If you can get something like that through Netflix, how however you do that is interesting. But anyway, it was it was just a fascinating kind of insight into what's actually going on at Netflix and what Next Games are doing and hopefully we hear more from them over the next year. Aaron, what else have you got?
Yeah, so next from me, a bit of bad news really for any fellow Pokémon fans. um that Pokémonite is ending service in March on mobile and on Switch, which this isn't a game that I've stuck with, but actually um my first year here with Pocket Gamer, so in 2021, Pokémonite was my like mobile game of the year um that year. So, you know, that's a little bit of um history that few people probably know. So, yeah, like it's it's a shame that it's um ending service. As I say, like personally, I didn't kind of stick with it. um long term

perhaps that's been a bigger problem. I think the the like monetization was quite um sort of strong shall we say. A lot of things were just kind of quite expensive and you couldn't you couldn't really work towards them. It was either you spend money or you don't for a lot of the kind of cosmetics and things. And then there were like, this may have changed, but at least when I used to play it, there were even caps on like there was free currency that you could get by like winning games, but you had a cap on that every day that unless you pay, it's like you can play as much as you want. There was no stamina system, but you won't get any rewards for doing it beyond a certain point. So, so I wonder if the fairly kind of aggressive monetization hasn't helped. But at the same time, obviously, it has run for kind of more than half a decade, which not every mobile game achieves. Yeah, it's been part of Pokemon sort of live service mobile lineup for quite a long time now really. Um, obviously, it's

sort of didn't reach the cultural or revenue heights that like Pokémon Go and TCG Pocket have done. Um, Magic Estimates put it at sort of just over 100 million gross between the two major stores. and say that's in five years. So yeah, it's not kind of done the billions that um you know some of the biggest Pokémon games have done. Um but I think they're kind of exceptions more than the rules. Yeah, it's um a shame that it's going going down like people still have a few more months with it. There's new content planned for November and apparently there's going to be so you won't be able to play the game beyond March when it shuts down, but people can sort of do a data download beforehand. And it sounds like you'll be able to use like a library feature to I think look at the content that you have in the game even though you can't play the game anymore. Um, so I'm not sure I'm sure some people will appreciate that. Ultimately, if you can't play the game, I'm not sure how long people will want

to just be able to look at this is what I used to play with. But, you know, it's better than just totally disappearing, I suppose. And yeah, kind of as the end of service approaches, players are going to be able to get like a range of old items. I think like Pokemon kind of licenses, so how you unlock Pokémon, some of those are coming back. Uh, previously available cosmetics for the Pokemon are coming back. Um there's also going to be a tournament in Tokyo um sort of in November and December. So I think it's nice at least that they've not said like end of service has come in like all the plans are off like they're kind of it seems like they're trying to go out with a last harrah but yeah we are kind of in the last four or five months of the game and then um I'll have one fewer kind of Pokemon title to write about in the usual kind of Pokémon day roundup. Here is everything that happened.
If you were to look at App Magic estimates of just apps or Google Play spending, there's not it's really been

consistent for years getting around in net revenue in a year somewhere between 13 to 14 million. So what what changed? Like this year it did go down by about a million between January and September I think is what I looked at. It could be January to August. Yeah, that's not nothing. That's quite significant. But I I just thought is is this not a game you could keep the lights on for for for longer? Like
I guess a couple things within that. Is it worthwhile 10 cent doing this game? This is a company that makes massive billion dollar hits of games that bring in hundreds of millions. So from that perspective, no. But it just seems odd that they just chose R. It just feels random. I don't have any insights into the thinking. It just feels like a strange time to do this. Just a reallocation of resources, I I guess. I don't know. It's live ops. I'm sure they were making money. It's just it's just a shame for especially for a game that for all intents purposes doesn't look like

it's died, but yeah, they move. I'm sure they see something we don't, but they've taken this decision.
Yeah. As you say, maybe it is just from 10 cents point of view of like they'd rather put the the staff on a different project that might make more.
Yeah. I don't know. It's just it feels like an odd one, but I'm sure that is probably the simple answer, right? It's a shame. And I I'm sure that will fuel kind of seriousness. I'm sure this will be one of the things that again feels kind of the stop killing games movement like doesn't doesn't need to be shut down.
Curious people spend money in this. Again, these things happen all the time.
Just forgot it. All right. Thanks for that, Aaron. So the last thing I wanted to quickly bring up as we're coming up to time is the uh there's a report from game makers mobile gamer on it and there's been on LinkedIn all over it really there's a creator called ships who's data scientist he's basically and I believe it's he's used AI to effectively he's used AI to effectively

kind of decompile certain games and they include blockbust subway surface and kind of crush saga and he goes really it goes really into detail on like the things that some of these games can do, but it's in the background. So, like how they surface a level, what is apparently the thinking that goes on behind that. So, like if this game if this person might be risk of leaving, you know, do this or here's how you might be able to monetize this person by frustrating them. this I read a LinkedIn post that that one of the most interesting things of this is not really just the takeaways of that was that how this could happen thanks to AI within like minutes or like of ease that you could do this and they were saying that you know it would previous could previously take someone doing the research of a rival or a big game you know weeks months to kind of get all this really interesting kind of insights. So it's fascinating or even yeah days weeks months. So it's fascinating that you can just do this. It sounds I don't know but it sounds illegal to do this and then share it

like surely that breaks terms and conditions of these apps and also would be at the heart of like a cloning issue which I would have thought if you've done this create a clone for example. This is not what's happened here. If you create a clone had this information published it you're not allowed to do that. I I just didn't think you'd be allowed to do this but hey maybe you can. Anyway the whole thing I thought was very interesting. So yeah, that was that was one of the that was an interesting topic with this week. Anyway, I just thought I'd leave it with that quickly cover that. So that brings us to the end of the week mobile games. Thank you everybody for tuning in. It's great to be back. I do enjoy doing this. It's one of my highlights of the work week. Thank you Aaron for being on the show as ever. Thanks again everyone tuning in. Please, if you enjoy this, like and subscribe. Leave a comment. We do appreciate it and we'll see you on the next show. Have a good one. Have a good weekend. Goodbye.