Those ‘decompiling’ videos, iPhone Duo games, Bing Gordon talks EA, Zynga and AI plus plenty more

Hello, and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long, and every week I go for a walk into what's happening in the mobile games business. Here we go. Have you seen these videos from this guy, AO Ships? They are all over my social media feed, certainly. And he claims to have decompiled and reverse engineered Block Blast, Candy Crush Saga, Subway Surfers, and more using AI, of course. His real name is Ayo Awotona. He's a data scientist, content creator, and founder of ao.dev. I assume it's some sort of AI company. And he's posting very slick videos on Instagram and on TikTok in which he claims that he has decompiled and reverse engineered lots of popular apps and games to find out how they work, and most of all, really, how they track player

behavior and then use that to monetize their users. So, I mean, you may or may not be shocked by some of the stuff in these videos. Maybe to most people working in mobile, some of these techniques are probably not particularly a surprise, but they are very convincing videos. They are very well done, and he's actually written a really lengthy, very detailed post that called "How Block Blast Harvests Its Players for Ad Money" on his blog, which goes into great detail about how it sort of profiles players and then makes them fail a level in order to make them watch an ad, and therefore monetize. So, yeah, I mean, these three videos that I've picked out in this article, Hungry Studio is alleged to be profiling each player based on their preferences and serving them personally optimized ads to

maximize value for each player which in itself is not really a surprise, but maybe to some it is a little shocking how much these companies know about your behavior in these games. The game's difficulty is dynamic, eases up when you are struggling and ramps up when you are doing really well and then serves players what is effectively an impossible level so that they fail and watch an ad at the optimum time. At the end Omalewa concludes quote Block Blast isn't really a puzzle game. It's more of an ad harvest with a rigged loop built to squeeze every penny out of you. At the time of writing the Block Blast video has been liked 1.4 million times on Instagram and has 1.6 million views on TikTok. In the Subway Surfers video he claims that players are profiled

based on data drawn from 158 different attribute trackers which are then used to decide which items and prices are served to the player in the game's shop as well as which ads to serve and when. That Subway Surfers one has 64,000 likes on Instagram, 607,000 views on TikTok. The Candy Crush Saga one claims the game's difficulty is dynamic and its algorithms make it easier if you're falling behind, tougher if you're cruising and also suggests that King tracks how close players are to winning with a metric called pass proximity which it then uses to decide which in-app purchases and ads to serve the player and when. That Candy Crush one at the time of writing 42,000 likes on Instagram, 779,000 views on TikTok. So, these are getting really widely viewed and may well not help the overall

perception that mobile games are kind of cynical and tracking everything you do in order to monetize you. I of course asked Aerships himself, as well as Hungry Studio, King, and Sybo for a comment on all of these claims at the time of recording. None of them had replied, although some of them said they would be providing a comment. By the time this podcast goes out, you will see. But, until then, these videos are really worth watching, I think, and the headline for the site is Block Blast, Candy Crush, and Subway Surfers have apparently been decompiled to reveal their monetization secrets. You may well have seen many videos about the iPhone Duo in the last week. It came out a few days ago, and for the mobilegamer.biz listener, it's worth talking about through the lens of games because as ever, Apple picked out some of the games

highlights for that new device, and it seems like not many major mobile game makers have optimized for iPhone Duo just yet. The App Store editors picked out 20 games in a collection on the App Store, and it's mostly indie creators, mid-to-small-size studios, and a handful of games from major publishers. Gameloft has optimized Asphalt Legends to work with iPhone Duo. Miniclip's 8 Ball Pool has some iPhone Duo stuff in it, as does Rovio's Angry Birds Dream Blast, but really, it's been down to indies to fill out the rest of that collection. You can tell these developers are small because their name on the App Store is just a guy's name. There's a grilled cheese game where you fold the iPhone Duo over for some reason. I'm not sure why. I don't have one. There's a indie game

called Art of Flora, jigsaw game, a Battleships type game, a marble maze type game.
[snorts]
But, yeah, nothing too crazy to talk about here. And they're all premium titles. Balatro is a notable one. And then you got a couple of other announcements around that. Play Digits, the indie mobile game porting specialist, said several of its games are now fully iPhone Duo compatible. Don't Starve Together, Nine Kings, Subnautica, Evoland 2, and the Delta emulator, as well. Which is always extremely up-to-date when it comes to this sort of stuff. That emulator is now fully up-to-date and works with Duo, which of course will work very nicely with the emulated Nintendo DS and 3DS games that

will work with that emulator, despite being in something of a legal gray area. So, yes, a smattering of iPhone Duo games out there on the App Store. No major commitments from any big publishers just yet. So, it's wait and see for most, I would say. And Apple clearly not really stumping up too much cash to incentivize people to bring their apps and games up-to-date before launch. We shall see what happens afterwards. Although, it's also getting a little bit of heat for screens cracking and stuff like that. Yes, very much wait and see for iPhone duo right now. The headline on the site, if you want to read more, who's making games for iPhone duo? Mostly indies for now. This is an interesting one from a freelance contributor, Matthew Reynolds, who runs the Pokémon

centric website, One More Catch. He was briefed on a game called Rocco Kingdom by Tencent, which is apparently huge in China, 300 million players in its native land. It's a Pokémon-like web game, which has also spawned various film and TV spin-offs in the last few years. Now, its creator, Tencent-owned More Fun, is trying to take on Pokémon in the West with a release of a PC, mobile, and console game. Lots in this article, but I guess the brief summary is that it's made by the guys behind Arena Breakout Infinite, a couple of other licensed games based on One Piece and Naruto. The game is already out in China, about 30 million players in little over a week when that launched earlier this year. And Tencent is spending a good chunk of money publicizing it.

Western audiences really got its first glimpse of this game during Gamescom's Opening Night Live event, which you can assume that Tencent paid a few quid to be in. And then we go into an interview with the producer and localization boss at More Fun, who says Rocco Kingdom is being made a little bit more consumer-friendly for its Western launch. And gameplay is not reliant on player spend, although we shall see if that turns out to be true. There's the closed beta starting this week and the game will be out in full in 2027. So, Roco Kingdom, possibly one to watch from Tencent-owned Morefun.
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 [music] 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 [music] to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit xsolla.com to learn more. That's xsolla.com. [music]
Bing Gordon has a book out, and you may well see him doing the rounds on the podcast and industry website circuit. He is, of course, the co-founder of EA. Started his games career with EA in 1982, served as chief creative officer until 2008, where he became an investor and also joined Zynga's board. He was on that board until Take-Two acquired the company in 2022. Now serves as an independent director at Take-Two. He spoke to us, more specifically, Vicki, our news editor, about the early days of social games, why EA struggled

in mobile, where he thinks AI will help game development, and also what Zynga got right in that explosive period where Facebook games and then mobile games happened. He talks about the importance of product management, the significance of getting the sort of social graph of your player base right and attracting more people into your game through that. He says companies like Zynga, Scopely, and Playrix turned out to be great at product management. And he also touches upon why EA has so far not been as present or as successful in mobile as it is in console and PC. He says EA, quote, "repeatedly learned the wrong lessons from success. You get successful and it seems too risky to try something new. You see a smaller competitor do something differently and you don't take

it seriously. When casual social games started gaining steam, EA didn't think they were real games. Even Take-Two couldn't figure out how to build a mobile division internally, so they bought Zynga. So, loads of good stuff in there, including Gordon's thoughts on AI and game development, in which he says he doesn't really believe in this idea of making a game from a text prompt and emphasizes the need for a human touch to all creative endeavors. It's good stuff. Have a look on the site for the full story. The headline is EA co-founder Bing Gordon on why EA missed mobile and what Zynga got right. Tencent is closing Pokémon Unite in March 2027. This is a mobile and Nintendo Switch game, a MOBA made by Tencent studio TiMi. According

to Magic, the game has generated an estimated 75 million dollars since launch from 127 million downloads, most successful in Japan, where about 30% of the game's total revenue has been generated, although it only accounts for around 5% of global downloads. Most downloads are in Brazil, India, and the US. So, yes. Pokémon Company and Tencent bringing Pokémon Unite to a close in March 2027. Stillfront has a new boss. It is former EA King and Embark exec, Marcus Jacobs. He succeeds Alexis Bonte as president and group CEO at the Swedish roll-up firm. Stillfront owns studios behind mobile game series including Supremacy, Empire, BitLife, and Albion Online. They also

posted their Q3 results last week. A 1% drop in revenue and profits down 16%, which is a little bit alarming, but yeah, Marcus Jacobs bringing over 25 years of experience in the games business to the role. He was director of monetization at EA before joining King for a 7-year stint in 2012. He was also chief commercial officer of Embark Studios from 2020 to 2022 and has been on the board of Stillfront for the last 4 years. He's going to be based in Stockholm. And in those financials, outgoing CEO Alexis Bonte blamed the decline in revenue and profitability on deprioritized catalog games. The priority titles actually grew organically, says Stillfront. So, yes, new boss at Stillfront. And Marcus Jacobs' job is to sort out these declines in revenue

and profits. Supercell was hit by a cyber attack, it revealed last week. No player data was affected, but the breach was apparently something to do with its internal video platform, the platform on which Supercell hosts company meetings and presentations. Based on its investigation so far, Supercell believes no player data was affected, but videos, including current and former employees, as well as some guests and partners who took part in internal events, their data may well have been accessed. So, if you're worried, there is an email, [email protected]. Email that address to ask if any of your data has been exposed, but other than that, it doesn't seem like a major breach after Supercell was hit by a cyberattack.

Fortnite is apparently back in the Australian App Store. This follows on from a ruling in the Australian Federal Court, which has told Apple to open up iOS after finding it violated competition law down under. Epic, in a statement on social media, called it, quote, "Great news for developers worldwide and iOS users in Australia, who will benefit from an open mobile app ecosystem." And then, there's a little bit more detail. So, from March 2027, iOS will be open to third-party app stores, and Australian users will be able to download apps directly from developers. Developers will also be able to offer only alternative payment systems, and Apple can't require devs to offer Apple's in-app purchase capabilities. Australia is also bringing in some ways to stop the anti- steering stuff that Apple has been doing for many years. So, yes, the Australian government opening

up Apple's App Store, the first benefit of which is Fortnite returning to the App Store down under. In Data Digest this week, loads of stats and figures, and a very detailed graph from Sensor Tower about ad impressions in the US for the top 15 spending games. You should take a look at the graph in the piece, but essentially there are all sorts of interesting nuggets in there. Top spender Gossip Harbor gets an overwhelming 51% of its ad impressions through AppLovin, but AppLovin is not as dominant as maybe you would imagine. Scopely owned duo Pokémon GO and Monopoly GO each see a higher ad impression share from AdMob, 47% and 31% respectively. There's a bit more commentary and analysis from Sensor Tower in that section of the article.

There's also stats from AppMagic on arrow puzzle game downloads, which peaked in the summer. In-app purchase revenue is now climbing in that very busy genre. Homescapes has passed 773 million installs, according to a video put out by Playrix. There's some stats about the puzzle game genre, again from AppMagic, who do a good job parcelling up their stats. Tencent has said Delta Force has got 58 million daily active users in China alone. Gameloft's Q3 revenue is up 6% to 80 million. Nitro Games Q3 revenue down 35% to 1.5 million. So yes, have a look every Wednesday Data Digest all the stats and figures you could possibly need every week. In the new games digest last week,

Football Manager 2027 Touch is coming to Apple Arcade on November 10th. We've also got Dispatch, the indie game that is coming to mobile on December 19th. There's a Traitors Game from Fusebox Games, the makers of Love Island and Big Brother Games. Ungodly, the Asmodee Games RPG which has been shown off on iPhone Duo in the past. Couple of other indie games and puzzle games in there. New Game Digest every Friday. And that's it for this week. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.