TWIG #302 Epic Legal Showdowns, Ubisoft Woes, and MMO Thrills

you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because in today's mature Market you need every Edge to be successful rather than spending those precious company dollars on building game Tech focus on building your game and shipping it get into your players hands faster and grow your community heroic Labs is Battle tested partner and friend of the podcast their Tech enables you to be flexible creative and scale for success theic Labs has your Tech stack covered whether you're looking for a worldclass backend game server an amazing game development framework Fantastic live Ops tooling or reliable Mass scalability heroic Labs has solutions for all of these challenges and it's not just us a deconstructor of fun praising heroic Labs the company works with some of the world's biggest Publishers on many of the Beloved games focus on your game save a big chunk of cheese and avoid Tech risks with heroic labs [Music]

hello and welcome to this weekend game twig 302 where we read and distill all of the weekly game industry news and also write articles and [ __ ] on people which is what we're going to do a little bit later Mishka so actually that's what we're going to talk about today is Mishka has decided to poke the bear the supercell bear and talk a little bit more about why Squad Busters isn't working and does it have a path to success Phil thank you tons of game updates I love it lots of charts graphs how some games are doing and then crust is gonna surprise us later on saying that he loves ma meta's new uh AR glasses I'm like shocked by this but I actually thought they were really cool way to destroy my thunder there for a mo Jesus you can't just like throw that out there no one's going to listen now it's all over what I mean I I would want to listen to be like what on Earth is he going to how why would you have turned

that around after everything anyway all right fine so hi I'm Jen donaho a strategic marketing consultant at Jaden Ferno and beta hat today we have Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting let's cook Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting yo yo Mishka kov founder of deconstructor of fun and attacker of the supercell this is what kind of narrative this is insane narrative so yes mooy this is but false narrative we're pushing false narrative false I I I am stoking the Flames my friend this is entertainment we gota we got to build the drama because the Anna Perna drama we were talking about offline didn't have any drama so we are GNA create some drama today all right so first I wanted to kick it off and say happy birthday League of Legends League of Legends the game I worked on and you know turn 15 and so I think we forget that that is still one of of the top if

not the top games in the world tons of players tons of Esports stuff so happy birthday what else we got Mishka so you you have actually been working not just cycling through the Finish you know wood what have you been up to yeah yeah so unlike Adam's comment and it was a a justest because he knows this really well so I was in a little bit of a tour uh app Summit with Google in Ireland then I went to abest for Unity in uh Spain and then uh Cyprus Mama conference for abser so all of our partners kind of did the the full tour really excited not to travel this month apart from Spain but we don't count that I do have to say I found the Eric Crest core audience so we sometimes get a little bit of a feedback that Crest goes hard on the paint when I went to Cyprus like they said it is very good that Mr CR goes very hard on on people

we like it so so the cots is crest's core audience you should definitely visit the island uh it's populated with edtech entrepreneurs that are your fans so so it's it's basically the Russians and the Israelis is that what's happening what a demo B Russians as well and some ukrainians so you're heavily uh in in Eastern European oh all the cultures that like blunt feedback love it that makes sense yeah yeah yeah so Chris that's your place but I do have to say for Cypress was amazing like uh uh I haven't been in Cypress for forever I think I was 14 last time I went there so you know my expectation level is you know shout out to Greece great place Cypress is kind of close and I you know I'm I have a limited expectation that I have when when going to southern Europe but that like it was extravagant I I was not expecting this level of a of a place so Cyprus is uh is booming so if you haven't been go early twig Eric would

always [ __ ] on you for living a jet set life and you would deny it I mean I think we to close that case I toally gave up it's just it's over dude it's just all the all doggles did you did he mention like one actual piece of work that was done during this time no your Instagram was like four-wheelers rolling around like private chefs I mean give me a break did you raise any money did you get any deals done I even repping the podcast besides talking about being with the Russian you know what's happening yes uh oh [ __ ] so so we don't normally talk about clients on this podcast I mean we all do work with clients just to be clear last mon was was heavy so in addition to these trips we worked with with five different clients at the same time you know I can mention one company since that's that's going to be published a research project with meta we work with a PC console publisher on go to market strategy pretty big two middle siize Studios and one country so that's why I haven't been

on a podcast I've been working a lot but I'm not going to talk anymore about the work I was only jet setting and talking about Crest to Russians on Cypress so let's let's uh let's summarize it with that and yes building for my new Venture and raising for that as well so yes so we're closed but for mentioning so now we're going to continue to shill we won't talk about any of that this was the last first and last time we mentioned about this this podcast is about just fun stuff not business just the business of games um yeah not our business yeah all right so let's show a little bit of deconstructor of fun so you take this again Mishka because you wrote this first article yeah so this was kind of related to some of the work that J we did back in back last month and so I kind of continueed thinking about like what were the challenges with Squad Busters and wrote a piece thanks for Phil thanks for Adam thanks for Ken as well as Javier for kind of helping this was me kind of verbalizing why I really like that game and my prediction back one who did it with Phil was Phil

also predicted this that this is going to be a billion dollar game and uh we were wrong and so I was kind of figuring out why am I not playing this game anymore and why were we wrong at least at this point and it was very constructive and very positive but I know that when people read the headline they're like oh my God he's again [ __ ] on supercell which I have never done but anyway if that creates clicks then go for it click it it's uh an article on how Squad Busters is doing 140 days post launch but I I think Jen in this podcast you're going to cover it from a aspect that we didn't think about which was marketing right yeah I'm going to ring the Game of Thrones shame Bell on you shame how on Earth did you not call me and say again can you put in your marketing stuff on this too and let's we're one team one dream my friend yeah we got to do things together so so the previous one that Phil wrote was straight up marketing like it was go to market one month after all the graphs this was like all marketing and so I wanted to kind of give a product aspect

of it but like this could have been 100 pages long because there's so many elements and so I think we're going to get a a live review on their marketing Endeavors all right what else we got so oh actually let me go really quick um I did a podcast with three game industry folks kind of 30ish and under to talk about what the next generation of game makers is really going through how do the break into the game industry some tips for those of us that are a little bit more senior in the industry of what does this generation need so thanks to Pedro Laura and bl for coming on the podcast for that so I just want to by the way say about that podcast I think it was really good J like uh I listened a little bit to the VCS but since I hear them all the time I could skip the last one but this one I remembered that I'm old by listening to this one so so very valuable look from the dinosaur crew of like what's what's really happening last week by the way before that one we did a an indie podcast again something that that we don't maybe often talk about on the

Pod is is the indie game so I had Sebastian forstrom from Paradox interactive I think they were doublea publisher but they also set up a new sort of a Indie publishing arm and I just read a news somebody else uh set up an indie publishing so this seems to be sort of a trend and I was very curious to hear like how are they building essentially business from publishing Indies which is kind of independent against publishing but with publishing so that that was the podcast and uh interesting one if you're into understanding indie oh cool Phil speaking about our clients I'm just really happy to see my client moo here in Sweden announc heart electric and new shooter talking about Innovation last week not enough Innovation really excited to see more of this game revealed tons of interesting mechanics are coming keep track of this one what's up with sweds and Shooters like like so aggressive just any corrections I I have a I have a correction also of a correction So Adam

covered my AI piece uh we talked about it I was a little bit upset I'll be honest we had a call with Adam not angry just upset because I I appreciate his View and his feedback and his Insight a lot and what my point of the text that maybe didn't come through well enough I had essentially two points one was that the point that I took from Mitch ly and Blake robbins's podcast the green gamecraft if you haven't listened I think most of the people who listen to this have listened to it they had a really interesting AI episode and there they sort of were hyping be and buold cases of AI in the near future and it was and both of them were of the opinion that there will be a flood of sort of a lowquality game that is going to be problem for everybody else except incumbents those who don't have an IP they won't be able to stand out as as the market gets sort of hyper casualized with games that are just multiple iterations coming really fast so I kind of reiterate their point and it was of the same my own personal point is something that I've heard through these boond doggles if you will

Chris puts them actually presented those as well so part of my presentation is talking a little bit about AI my own personal views of it and one of them is the sort of a layoff aspect that I think is very clear in the tech world where the public tech companies are very open about how they're driving efficiency and part of that efficiency is actually layoffs or not layoffs but but the head count going down like clar CEO was very open about it and then in the gaming World we're expecting people to adapt inside of studios in all aspects AI but at the same time we're not being very Frank about what the sometimes even the desired effect of that is and that is reduction of the head count and increasement of of profitability and efficiency through that and so that was kind of like my point and my point there was also for these Studios to be open about if that is your end goal just say it don't kind of like bamboozle people to adopt Ai and be like oh you know what actually we can now reduce the headcount

by 30% if that's the case so on cynical I agree I have a news detox going on I'm much more happier uh you should have seen my presentation at Unity I was like goddamn like like the the rosiest pictures ever so uh no more news for me I'm detoxing all right well I will get into the news then so let me do a couple of really quick hits uh first is there's a new California law and so you're like Jen California law so I think everyone actually needs to pay attention to this because this California law compels digital storefronts to inform players they don't own their games and so this legislation has gone through there were examples where you know some games have shut down primarily it was on the Sony PlayStation and so just if you do have content and you might want to talk to your lawyers and see if you need to do any changes to terms and conditions and what you need to put up in front of your games on those different platforms so the public service announcement is talk

to your legal team about that new California law Tokyo game show highlights um I didn't really see a ton of highlights actually U the main thing that I saw was that Xbox returned with a showcase and they seem to be getting some nice press for all of the indie games that they're supporting from Eastern game makers I don't know anyone see anything else from Xbox that was particularly meaningful by the way the yeah the Tokyo game show is no longer relevant really anymore like it's really just Gamescom is that matters and from Big releases and big announcements Tokyo game show is kind of a a footnote it's been that way for like almost a decade it felt that way and so as I was researching I was like oh expecting to see links from really big outlets and there really wasn't um not a lot of coverage so PlayStation did run a state of play that had a few things that were interesting I the biggest thing for me is that the 30th anniversary PlayStation Pro that looks like it you know kind of

like they designed it like the OG PlayStation one it's sold out so if anyone knows where I can get one let me know I would love to actually finally have that because it looked really cool the other two things that I have heard from folks were Monster Hunter Wilds that's coming out on Playstation looks like it's going to be pretty big and then I never played ghost of Shuma the spiritual successor ghost of yote is coming to Playstation and that trailer looked really good a really interesting Innovative you know female Asian woman Samurai lead in feudal Japan looked like a story I had never played before and so in a world of everything looks cookie cutter and it's like the Recycled like oh look it's another Battlefield in you know current gen military um this seemed really interesting to me but maybe I'm weird Phil what's going on on Steam it's another steam record uh wow they just keep piling up piling up piling up I think they've had like three or four

records where they beat themselves this year they are now at 38.4 million users online with 12.3 million users in game on September 22nd China China China but super impressive or steam will continue to report on these records but the platform cannot be stopped until China blocks them yeah until China blocks them until the CCP does well they're gonna have to block a lot of games because apparently the China license approvals are on track to surpass the numbers from 2023 so it looks like they're currently at about 960 there was 977 last year so lots of games going through there on mobile that's a mobile thing by the way just is it a mobile thing yes oh all right so it's not PC Epic News so two things going on first is the epic games store has crossed 10 million mobile installs in its first month and a half

so interesting that feels a little light I mean is it me is it Europe only Europe only right Europe only well um actually on that theu no no you can download it you can sideload it in the US I mean I did I side loaded it on my Android in the US and I think maybe because that number is what it is we're going to get our second lawsuit of the deconstructor of fun podcast it's going to be our new segment where we just cover lawsuits um so epic sued Google and Samsung for auto blocking the epic game store so apparently there are 21 steps that you have to take on the Samsung device to sideload the epic game store and in their post the blog post they actually like show you every single screenshot I remember talking about it like I saw so they advertise like it's nobody's business but I I just wonder what the PM so installs per th impression is for

that one because it is so difficult to install like I remember just giving up at one point like oh you have to use Safari for install this and then you have to do this and then you have to do that and and then when I got it finally I open up like oh there's three games I'm like yeah I'm good I know I don't know what's harder uh trying to get money out of my web three currencies or uh sideloading the epic game store aesome I've been hearing that uh that epic team has been actively hunting for developers to join the rebel lions and Publishing this store but I'm also hearing that the developers are not so eager cuz if you join epic you're gonna get a opposition from a fruit company and that's not goingon to be that's not going to be easy on your life the Apple Mafia is gonna come after you kill all your kids you know um so their target is a 100 million by the end of the year for the Epic store so that makes the 10 million look very very very very very very like

like the early adopters right I think I have to for for any legal reasons I have never heard Apple to threaten developers to join epic this is just they are thinking I know this is what the developers are thinking like if I switch on Epic side what would you know my main partner say yeah this is based on 20 years of History right Le speculative but yeah they're projecting they're projecting this is so totally not true but yeah just to be clear because we I've you know I've realized that we've been summoned to a couple of different uh at least I myself to as a testify in a couple of different gaming legal cases because we' written or said something and then that is used as material by lawyers so just making clear I have not heard I'm not coming to Tes this is this is developers projecting projecting got it all right investments in m&a are we ready all right um give it to so

Ubisoft has delayed Assassin's Creed till early 2025 basically when you delay something out of holiday it's like a 40% haircut almost automatically automatically right no matter what game it is well except it was GTA GTA doesn't matter right but like for Assassin's Creed this goes makes it from 10 to 15 down to like 6 to 10 right just almost by default so I'm not ranting about Ubisoft anymore I think everything that's been happening is kind of proving my case as to why Eve and the rest of his family need to leave that company and and give it over to someone else because they are really screwing up there's no reason no reason that Assassin's Creed should be delayed that game has been in development for four years I think from their best team in Montreal that this is basically showing that this whole organization is in complete disarray so anyway that is really bad for UB UB is just getting absolutely annihilated right now as it should and so it needs to be bought or

they need to get new leadership full stop so would you give a buy recommendation on Ubisoft like it's a public company should I get some stock look how about this if they announce that Eve is gone and that new leadership is coming this stock is up 50% in like a week right or it gets AC obviously gets acquired for a premium right so those those two scenarios are definitely possible you know the board is looking at the company you know so they're getting a lot of scrutiny from a Mis management perspective finally after all these years of mismanagement so yes in some sense it is at a bargain again as I've said many times for the IP that they have and the teams that they have is definitely not worth $ 1.5 billion dollar it's like insane it's insane inanely low the Saudis have just [ __ ] grab the money off from under their mattress and pay for this [ __ ] thing you know what's I was going to ask you like is this like a a takeover like even a hostile takeover is this you can't hos take over a French company

particularly one that's closely owned see now you're getting me on going this is why I was so frustrated with that 10cent deal because this cemented the ability for the Eevees family to maintain control no matter what happens to the company they can drag this thing into the ground right you know which they are and they there's nothing that anybody can do because they have complete control and ownership stake on all decisions so again this is just the worst type of fiduciary duty to shareholders that ever seen in publicly traded companies like I want to clear it's not criminal it's like they would be sued into Oblivion in the US by shareholders if they were a US traded company right but because they're not the rules are not as uh strict out there yeah it seems like the worst that can happen is what happened a couple weeks ago where the activist investor put the letter out kind of calling them out like I guess is that their only recourse is to say nasty things in a letter

the blog post is the only thing you could do just yeah seriously it's like they have no recourse right right now well let's talk about other French Canadians so uh Canada based multiplatform games develop actually I don't know if Behavior interactive is French Canadian but I would assume it's from Montreal got it uh has acquired red hul studios at PC console games developer from Canada another Canadian for an undisclosed some Red Hulk stud Studios is of course the makers of darkest dungeon which is the studio both developed and self-published in 2023 the studio released darkest dungeon uh combined the series has sold over almost 7 million units worldwide for somewhat reason in May of 2024 people come in droves to play the first darkest dungeon so just a couple of words about Behavior interactive since we're talking about Ubisoft and and strategies and so forth so this is the fifth Studio the behavior interactive has Acquired and behavior

interactive is of course known for dead by daylight series they have expanded from 575 employees to over, 1300 over the past year so you know a good expansion rate they have laid off some people probably because of synergy reasons but last month they actually cancelled their dead by daylight spin-off project T they also shut down midwinter entertainment a studio they had acquired just two years prior so I'm kind of reading this I don't know Behavior interactive too well my hypothesis is is that they have challenging in building and shipping their own game so they're acquiring companies that are able to ship or have shipped and their behavior interactives expertise is more in life services and DLC so they're kind of acquiring these smaller Studios with games that are known uh in the market and then they service those games and through that grow the company but it seems like you know based on this very light hypothesis as I was reading this is that they have

challenges in postacquisition and integration uh they have probably Rising costs and volatility with the sequels and that's why uh they're probably going to pump the breaks on the Acquisitions and expansions so I don't know if anybody else is very familiar Behavior interactive but um seems like a a pretty sizable independent publisher in ablea I mean the only thing I I really know about them and what I think is interesting is that they position themselves around the horror genre and they've really established themselves as the go-to for experts in that and I think that's an interesting way to kind of position yourself and that way players know what they're going to get when they come to your games however it's a very very small n genre and so I I think CR would might call it mice nuts or something close to that I think that's where they're going after and probably why they're looking to acquire people to help in that genre and I think the perfect segue also remedy news saying that they uh secured six almost

$17 million in convertible loan agreement from China based tensent so convertible note means that it grants the lender the right to convert the debt into Equity at a later stage so essentially this can turn into shares of Remedy which is a public company if they're not paying it back or if they choose to do so and remedy is of course known for horror games of of its own I think Allan Wake can be viewed as a horror game and the Allen wake 2 was released in October 2023 it had a Metacritic score of 89 like it seemed to be the the the critic favored and at the same time since this a public company they actually announced that Allen wake 2 had sold one million units by the end of December 2023 and 1.3 million units as of the beginning of February 2024 so despite these incredibly good Metacritic scores not sure if it's it was limited to a specific store because this looks as like a really low number of sales

right Chris oh it was terrible absolutely terrible CU it was like it was like a darling I mean it was really well reviewed it was Game of the Year and those numbers are horrific because they probably only got full price on the first million or so and then the rest are at a discount so this year it's not a good result for them yeah even though the game is amazing I actually played the game for like I don't know four or five hours not my thing actually yeah I mean yeah pretty crazy to get to get 89 for metac CRI and and do so poorly that you have to lend money from from tensen I mean like like not nothing against tensen but that was the situation of that so it it hadn't paid back yet maybe maybe there were limitation in stores maybe it was launched an epic store or something like that uh but I think it's available on all stores and maybe they might be getting more Revenue now post uh launch but but definitely lost the uh the window of opportunity if it was 89 at that time so that concludes my happy Finland news they have a Swedish office they just opened up so Swedish good news

um wasn't that Swedish office focused on the multiplayer game that they cancelled I don't know but they're still around I walked by their office today okay well go to visit while while nooke Phil let's go to games throne in Liberty is out and is cooking right now so it's only been out for two days this is the game from Amazon game studios in NC soft it is an MMO it was first released in South Korea in December 2023 right now it clocked in at around 330 Max CCU yesterday so we don't have a lot of data right now and we're looking at a chart comping it to the first descendant which it certainly beat in terms of Max CCU first descendant topped out at around 225 Max CCU it's coming in below new world it's coming in below lost Arc but those were pretty exceptional launches we'll see how this one does this was supposed to be a lineage sequel the game has really struggled in Korea if you look at game which is a pretty good source of Korean

game rankings the last time I was in the top 50 in game Mecca was from September 4th September 10th it's had an up and down history and we'll just see how this does when it comes to CCU next week something interesting for new world is they're launching on Console in a week or two weeks or something like that the whole Rebirth of the game yeah it's gonna much more action RPG focused we'll see how that does yeah I saw the trailer and it was like it it was the first time I had heard this positioning a classless RPG open world game and I was like oo as a marketer who has to come up with these things to call games I was like I didn't know classless was something people really wanted and so I'm I know I was kind of interested to check it out Throne to Liberty is an absolutely gorgeous game I I played for like the first 10 minutes but I definitely going to get back into it once I get off the uh cocaine binge yeah world Warcraft um I actually played uh the other new world

as well um I'm actually I might actually kind of bring it up again I I thought it was really slow in plotting a problem with that game it wasn't that well done in in terms of like pacing but it it seems like the new game is actually much much much better much faster paced it has like everything in it I was watching the trailer and I'm like oh my God how many people are working on this game and how much are they spending on it because it has well it has open world it has PVP has like battle it has all everything in it and it's launching on Console so anyway the big problem with this game is my understanding is it's primarily PVP focused it's not a PVE game and I'm such a Care Bear that once PVP is introduced at the end game you can count me out so right things I never thought I would hear Eric Crest say is I'm such a Care Bear um and cocaine binge I would but um no I'm with you uh I think I did see PVE on like I said there was

like so much on the trailer but I I agree with you I don't do I don't like PVP I don't like getting my ass kick by 14-year-old so it's annoying it's just too stressful I don't come play games to be stressed agree yeah me too this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's a enter apps fer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps sler where your app's potential meets performance step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to

expand their reach in Revenue exola provides a robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition maned subscriptions and streamlined Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global success [Music] all right um let's talk sports EA Sports fc25 is out and on Steam it's out to its strongest start ever according to our friends at VG insights so it's only been a couple days since launch but its Max CCU has already been 110,000 you compare that to last year's title which was at 80k that's over a 30% increase where does the growth for this franchise stop super impressive I I just

wow wow they're crushing it I have to imagine some of this has got to be China but you know the game itself I mean soccer in general just gets more and more popular every year and since they you know overcome the FIFA to FC type change I think that was huge and now it seems like they're Off to the Races and they have a lot more flexibility to do lots of different things so yeah this is the the game that keeps delivering for EA a note on the China situation we do have breakdowns by country from VG insights and so when you look at fc24 and you look at the China share was around 18% of the player base for fc24 and then you look at fc25 so far China's at 14% so it doesn't look like China is a factor here as much as we thought it would be the other thing is that EA has FIFA online which is the free-to-play version of FIFA in Asia which gets very little attention and I can tell you as

someone who's looked at those numbers it makes a [ __ ] ton of money a [ __ ] ton of money gets very little conversation so they they have their own skew so I'm not quite sure why they would play this skew and if if there is a you know listeners out in Asia I would love to understand more about this Dynamic so on this chart there's also 10% of the market evidently is in Poland I can tell you with almost 1,000% certainty 10% of FIFA's Market is not Poland okay so there's something going on here with these numbers I question I question your BG insights numbers you know I mean I love Poland and all but that's a freaking tiny country would it be a similar thing that we talk about where you know because they don't I don't think they sell in Russia although it's showing up on this chart I was going to say is it a VPN issue from certain territories that might not have access to it so to talk about a little bit about methodology usually what people do on Steam to figure out country distribution is they

check profiles so if you go into a steam profile like we're seeing right here you can declare a country and so that's usually how you're coming up with country estimates for sales so what I would point to when we think about like the really weird country distributions my primary hypothesis would probably be that there's something going on with VPN and local localized pricing which has always been an issue on Steam they're trying to lock that down but like hey you know if there's a lower price in Poland I'm just going to log into Poland or there's some exchange rates you can take advantage of that would be my hypothesis that's very smart very smart Philip I know we we have you on this podcast for a reason yeah very good I cyers on that list we cypers the fan crust's fan base well cool it's good for them and you know I think that makes a lot of sense what else you got Phil do9 games faug shooter focused on Indian military gets a milli pre-registrations I thought this was an interesting one to pick up Jen I know

you've talked about India beforehand I've been looking to see whether or not we're going to see more localized games out of India there's a battle royale one that's coming down the pipeline and of course we know the drama with pubg which was taken down in India due to Connections in China but got relaunched and when I ended up polling was looking at the number of pubg downloads from India and it was absolutely baffling how many downloads from pubg has actually come from India it's 26.5% of Lifetime downloads from pubg Mobile have been from India so 300 million downloads I mean that is nothing to Snuff at of course like the monetization is nothing all the normal things we talk about but there's still scale there and I'm interested to see whether or not these localized games are going to have any pickup they're very India specific and so um it's called pubg Battlegrounds India like literally that's the name of the product it's a little bit like China cres how we always talk about how you know if you're not a developer from China making a game from China the chance of you being successful in that region is very low so it's the same thing for India where their Market

behaves very very differently and folks that are either based in India or making games specifically for India are having success especially in these shooter Esports games and then the other success is you know real money gambling that's what's really working there anything else you know it's very difficult to be a western company having success in India so just a cautionary tale again like this is not magically a market you can unlock yeah every time I badmouth India people get upset but it's a tiny Market with very specific tastes and specific requirements and you have to and a lot of people a lot a lot a lot of people things are unlocking and you know we've talked about this before how some of you know Google is allowing some of the monetary systems to unlock where now you can make purchases is using different type of payment systems that are allowing things to monetize better

but again like you know for our audience that is more you know focused on Western gaming whether they're us-based or you know Western Europe based um it's very difficult to find success for the for that audience unless you are like really dedicated to go after India from almost inside if you're building a product you were designing for the US and Europe right and that's what your focus should be if you get to a big enough scale in which India actually could be interesting it takes quite a bit of scale to make that happen and as well as Africa or even Brazil you know I mean maybe third party Publishers out there will take your game and whatever whatever and and localize it to like the gajillion languages and and put the different types of monetization methods that they use so it's a nice to have it's not a musthave focus on us and Europe yeah match Factory back in the news another month another record for match Factory as it crosses 177 million

in net revenue for the month of September now it looks like it's on a $2 million run rate I think last time we checked in with it it was about $160 million run rate and this is of course all sensor Tower estimates the revenue graph is up and to the right as we've seen here downloads have stabilized a little bit around 2.52 million downloads but they're continuing to stack active users wow it's just like very impressive and of course when we take a look at the broader genre implications this is what sensor Tower is calling the match pair genre and match Factory is Far and Away to leader in this triple match 3D is a very very distant second we look at where it is from a genre perspective it has doubled in market share from January 2023 from four to 8% of the match Market also interesting that linkers have like completely died out if you go back to you know January 2017 they're nothing now but I guess like the question here is like whether or not this is going to continue to open up a whole new genre or this is just going to

take all the the genre share um so I'm very interested to see how that number two title performs cool it's our favorite topic it's Monopoly go and we've been checking in on this game here and there it's actually been looking a little bit soft these days especially since 2024 Mau according to sensor Tower estimates is at an all-time low it spiked in September last year around 17 to 18 million it is down to around 12 million so that's a pretty steep decline the other thing that's been interesting to watch is the decline in downloads that has been pretty steep as well and it looks like it hasn't necessarily leveled off maybe in the last couple months it's leveled off things are just looking a little bit soft don't me wrong this game is going to make a [ __ ] ton of money but it looks like it's not in growth phase anymore and it's in a management of decline yeah I um was curious after you you posted some of this so I I went and and in a little bit well first is they just announced their marvelall collab

last week and so let's see if that helps you know they're starting to do their liveops magic I think a few months ago they did that racing mode and looks like that didn't quite help as much so let's see if Marvel has any uh superpowers to pull it out of the decline so I pulled up some charts as well so I looked at T1 West because as we just talked about that's what we care about so I looked at Ma across Monopoly gocoin master and dice dreams uh I just wanted to see a little bit from a competitive standpoint is this a Miho yo verse thing where there's cannibalization across these kinds of games you know looking back you know Monopoly go really overtook coin Master just a few months after its launch everything grew like alai grew on these types of games but since the beginning of the year Ma's really declined it seems to have leveled up for all the games in about May of this year but what surprised me is just kind of how table Ma has been since the middle of the year so it looks like the games

have found a little bit of an equilibrium and they're not as cannibalistic I don't see a lot of share taking from each of these so I don't know Phil I didn't get a chance to get your thoughts am I looking at this the right way what do you think I I don't know let's let's continue to check on this one I just see a downward arrow for Monopoly goh since the start of the Year this doesn't mean that anything bad happened on the sculle side like they were extremely aggressive with UA they were extremely aggressive against spending with this game just seeing a chart that's up and to the right sounds good but if they basically accelerated the game to like basically the top of its growth very early on and they made a bunch of money now rather than money later on that's valuable right like you're trying to maximize Net Present lifetime value of a game and so that doesn't always mean growing it over time it means maximizing Net Present revenue and so if you can make a dollar today that's way more valuable than a dollar later on so I don't think this necessarily says anything right or wrong wrong about scopely strategy I think it really speaks to whether or not this

game is going to continue to grow over time and I don't think there's any indication that this game is continuing to grow that to me is the takeaway here is it's not growing yeah that's kind of what I saw was like it's stabilizing the I don't know genre or these kinds of games to be stabilizing you know to your point about that other what did you call the 3D pick up [ __ ] and put it on the bar games what do you call those sensor Tower calls it match pair that that you're try to match three against the dock so you get an object from the level it goes to a dock you get three of the matches on your dock then it goes away I like it used to be a mini game with most of these like it was always on on the side like yeah exactly the UA then they put it in that mini game like T Busters had that and I remember playing I was like oh I hate this and then they made a whole game out of it well there's a Candy Crush one in soft launch too that we might see soon so this is a slow yeah I mean it listen it's it's a certain

need State some of them are under time pressure like match Factory but that genre seems to still be growing maybe there's a case where we talked about last week how it's difficult to understand exactly where these players are going to like are these players just playing other social casino games are they going to other casual games in any event it looks like this is starting to stabilize in a way or maybe even decline a little bit more but it's still the volum volume of it the ma and the revenue of this is is still going to be this ongoing killer genre two points here real quickly so one is that sensor Tower and app an both have a difficulty in terms of predicting and estimating top three games so there could be some of that going on but but more importantly I think like if you look at the downloads right we're at like you know three and a half four million downloads 5 million downloads versus like 108 nine you know just over like a year ago so they're generating significant amount of Revenue on far less downloads so that means at least

the revenue is stacking from the early cohorts is kind of what that implies anyway so they're still making money from the early cohorts that are driving profitability because they're spending Less on UA in theory so so the game is probably likely getting more profitable is what I'm trying to say they're spending Less on UA yeah all right what's the last one Dragon Ball Z yeah I think this is just a game to watch this is Dragon Ball sparkling zero this is out on October 11th with definitely have an update when this comes out I mean talk about franchise management I mean this franchise has been around forever and it looks like this game could do absolutely Gang Busters in terms of Revenue it's already selling very well on Steam and just credit to the Japanese there there are five editions of this game there's a standard edition a deluxe edition Ultimate Edition a collector's edition and a premium collector's edition just love the Playbook that they're running [ __ ] awesome Japanese dude they're they're they're like stacking this [ __ ] dude they this is like your thing man well there are pre-order bonuses too so we can create like a nice matric I mean don't get me wrong like two of the additions are physical editions that have diaramas and

those are usually marketing tools you usually don't get the revenue like the whole point of the skew strategy is that doing additional digital Deluxe editions are very low marginal cost and generate sizable amounts of Revenue if you don't have Deluxe editions you're doing something wrong it's it's about as close to free money in games as you can get every game should have a deluxe edition on Steam digitally but still five editions is impressive props them yeah that's a lot all right Crest uh meta comes out like so first of all Zuck is on fire meta is on fire they come out and showcase these new AR glasses and everybody's in love with it like everyone's [ __ ] on Apple Vision Pro and you know the really ugly ski goggles but you know the really geeky looking giant thick glasses impress you so tell me more tell me more so look first of all they came out and they basically introduced the Orion a brain powerered true AR glass glasses right and according to Zuck they're the most

advanced glasses in the world has ever seen right and they have like tiny little projectors embedded in the temples they create this heads up display for users a really expansive field of view and he's basically saying oh you know these glasses exist they're amazing and of course there's some fine tuning they need before they can bring it to customers plus they cost like 10 grand each to make right so anyway I think we're pretty far away from like a consumer product the costs related to these things are dramatic because they're primarily because they're trying to make them micro right the HT projectors the sensors the processors and all these different things that were required for like environmental awareness with um AR activities Etc so what they said was that they're going to provide them to developers initially but a lot of people are speculating that they'll actually make a consumer device that's going to be insanely expensive in the next two or three years but again this is not something that's happening now and I think the reason that I'm very

very excited about this thing is that rather than iterating on something that hasn't worked over and over and over and over again similar to what Apple did with the Apple Vision Pro to come out with a better version of something that's not [ __ ] working right they are actually developing something with the end in mind right this is where we're headed and this is what the ultimate thing will be right and that's far more exciting because that form factor is far more interesting I think from the consumer perspective in my view anyway so it gives me some hope that AR will actually come to the masses in a way that is actually digestible by the masses but again I I still don't think that gaming is necessarily the killer app for AR I just don't I think productivity you know social things like that are going to be the primary reasons that people start doing AR but they will bring out some entertainment experiences so I'm excited I I feel absolutely excited again because we need some new platform for new

experiences who cares I've always want say who cares mut who cares it's not a [ __ ] thing why do you keep talking about it first of all I don't sound like that at all if if you're gonna mock me you got to do it in a better like more legitimate voice I'm workshopping my gen my gen and Eric voice yeah keep going on that so my big question is like did Laura put this in and she just wasn't able to show up like she she needs to collect some W's that a good one for her why I like I need her on this podcast right now who the [ __ ] are you Chris like look people people keep giving me a hard time because I keep saying that the console and mobile business is kind of like Flatline right like this is it man we're not no one's innovating anymore it's just basically this like three to five% kager for the next decade right and winners and losers like it's that's the business that we're in right it's hard to innovate on something that's so mature right but we need again is another platform to help facilitate new

ideas and new interactive experiences and that is possible with this type of Technology while the VR headsets are stupid right because no one wants to be in VR in that way right so at the end of the day I think this is very exciting and on a side note I must say you got to respect Zuckerberg dude he is one of the most hated Executives in technology and the guy just doesn't give a [ __ ] right he says I'm smarter than 99.9% of you [ __ ] I'm absolutely shredded absolutely shredded dude he had to wear a baggy [ __ ] shirt to cover up his [ __ ] shredded this it's unbelievable this nerd is super shredded right he's gonna do whatever the [ __ ] he wants with his 1.5 trillion companies no matter what people say and even I was amongst the ones Throwing Shade on him about this VR [ __ ] but now I think I have to change my tune I I mean I think all this money that he's invested is actually this product has the potential so yes

yeah I am bullish on a serious note I'm super impressed as well I love seeing people you know stepping up at bat sorry for the baseball analogy and taking swings like this and trying to push the way that we think about Computing forward I don't want to stare at my phone all day long I do remember Google Glass being out and I do remember working with those people and thinking that they were tools and annoyed that I didn't know if they were taking pictures of me or not you know while they had that on however I do think that if you think of a form factor that's going to potentially change the way that we interface with computers this is likely going to be it do you listen to the acquired podcast Crest that seems like something you would listen to yeah so this podcast is huge they did an event in SF couple weeks ago where Zuck actually comes on stage and does like an hour or something interview and talks a lot about about this and talks a lot about taking swings at AR kind of what

snap is doing too like what Evan Spiegel does is also take big Swings with these types of form factors in this AR and Tim Cook even though Tim Cook is missed at Apple with Vision Pro I think everyone thinks AR is a thing and spatial Computing is a thing and so if you haven't listened to to Zuck do that it's just it's interesting to see how he's evolved and how this might be what's next in the idea of tech for gaming unclear yeah the other point here is that like these glasses are such Hightech that they make the snap glasses you know look like Tinker Toys you know they like ref 80s reference dude out of nowhere so like like the feel of view is like absolutely amazing and what's even more gangster to some degree for Zuckerberg is like he's like [ __ ] you guys I'm throwing this thing out there I'm telling you where we're headed there's no way you can replicate this Tech in time we're gonna we're gonna be first right at least that's kind of some people's expectations yeah that was pretty cool too the open platform thing

that they're doing is pretty cool with like their models are open sourced and oh did you see Matthew ball he posted on LinkedIn was he was wearing some of the glasses I think or it was somebody or him posting about somebody else wearing the glasses but they got the vomer king to come in and try this stuff out no he's the metaverse jester so [ __ ] wrong it's like ridiculous look I think it's something to watch I think again we're five to 10 years away so it's not going to be material in my career probably but it's definitely something to watch in terms of how they leverage this type of AR technology for new experiences both interactive and passive and whatever I think it's it's exciting and and it's finally kind of a proof of concept of what he's been spending gajillions of dollars on for like the last decade you know just and getting so much Flack for it so I you know he stuck to his guns right yeah all right ginin impact has some big

numbers Phil ginin impact it's celebrating its 4th anniversary it has done $4.2 billion in net revenue according to censor Tower and of course our usual asterisk that does not include PC that does not include PlayStation and of course that does not include Android China so you add all those things up I don't know Eric where do you think you take a $4.2 billion estimate what does that get you to six seven eight maybe if you all those things two right five uh six six do I seven seven seven seven do I say no I've been about around six and a half for this game it's amazing and I would say the impact of this game and its almost its Legacy it's only turning four cannot be understated even when you just look at this inside the United States so you look at kind of these action RPG genres MMO RPG open World adventure shoot them up Hack and Slash and what sensor Tower actually calls action RPG although kind of put these all in the same bucket you look at just the incredible spike in Revenue basically dominates all of these genres you know there's some follow-ons with

Survivor Dio and Diablo Immortal of course but just has this huge wave in the United States it's had $21 Revenue per download it's done 200 million downloads it's at five to six million Dau right now and of course when you talk about the marketing and the development budget for that for gench and impact it had a $200 million in ongoing development budget which is an an insane number and out of 100 million initial budget and even when we look at the US metrics in terms of Lifetime Revenue the United States and and again you know our usual asterisks as we were mentioning beforehand the United States is responsible for 14.7% of Lifetime Revenue Japan number two at 22.5% and of course China at 38 um so again huge huge impact in the west we look at some of the tack on Canada and Germany it has pickup in the west as well and of course you know when we look at when we look at it more recently uh it has been it has been on a steep

decline it's at about a $600 million run rate and the trend line does not look good really since 2023 it's been on a downward eror but I think the other thing you just got to give it up to is is what it's inspired so these high budget open World Games you know we're looking right now at a graph that compares it to weathering waves and solo leveling a rise which have been recent releases which are other high budget games that have had huge impacts right now in in Asia and in the west it's had a lot of nibblers come along but still it's had an incredible impact I think just on Eastern development it's change the game in terms of expectations in ter yeah in terms of fidelity expectations I think particularly in Asia right I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer here because you know that I guess that's my role so I'll live it love it do it whatever but ultimately even though this game has done extremely well and it's remarkable and it's really welld designed the fact is that they've released two other games since then and Mio is actually down 26%

year to dat even though they have three games in market so oh despite all the success that they've had they're basically flat to like three years ago and again down year-over-year and that's like three teams supporting three big games and building continued content for that so likely they're becoming less profitable with slower Revenue growth which is not a great thing for the company per se and it's just like these these games are just not stacking they're just cannibalizing it's seems oh it's it's sad to see that that they didn't really understand the market well enough to think about cannibalization right so a little bit of supercell has the same challenge where they when they launch Squad Busters and it's very close to brawl stars and a lot of those games are they're all in the strategy genre and very close and and how much of that is cannibalistic here in this case I don't think they differentiated enough while they have this great gotta system and the great metagame system it looks like they didn't find really unique enough propositions or value props for players to want to play multiple games I

also think that they're so expensive and they're so deep how do you how do you even think about playing multiple of these games and growing the audience so it looks like you can't I think is the answer to that zanla zone zero performing Pretty poorly has been the biggest surprise to me because that probably is their biggest genre shift going from you know RPGs and hunai star rail was a turn-based RPG whereas genin was real time so there's something there but by and large those are I think fairly fairly easy substitutes for one another but it's really about this fourth game which we saw them get a license approval which we reported on I think a couple weeks ago which is some sort of Animal Crossing like game that to me is where I think a lot of this company is riding on I think that that's going to be a big watershed moment for them dude I've been saying this for years if someone can execute against that kind of game and make it like with like super predatory monetization practices I mean it could be huge absolutely huge if they could do what Philip does for and make that work Animal Crossing plus predatory

monetization equals the next biggest game and a different completely different Market potentially right well the audience demo yeah I mean I don't know dude I'm yeah let's see I'm I'm I'm excited for that that's exciting Philip you should be [ __ ] Consulting on them yeah teach them your ways I would absolutely love to get a call from y hoyo nothing would make me happier it's actually you know what's funny is that they don't need any lessons in monetization these guys are [ __ ] yeah they've been running they've been running the Goa playbook for a while they got they got nothing on that I think it's just more of different types of product strategy that and what I've been super impressed is I don't think there has been a Chinese developer that has succeeded in the west like they have on mobile yeah can you think of anyone else no I I think that's one of the big takeaways I think I think the Dual skew strategy of mobile and HD although I I've yet to see many follow on from the strategy like genin genin fouryear anniversary where the Dual skew titles

it feels like the West is really lagging behind there and the east no one no one's really internalized that lesson they're they're really expensive yeah to make right in the US and run it's not I'm just surprised we haven't seen more AAA Western Publishers take a shot this I mean I guess war zone war zone is kind of the attempt at that and that was a bomb so that's like it's not a true dual skew but it's as close as you can get that's cosmetic though like that's a terrible yeah model there's a lot of Chinese developers that have success in the west like fun plus and Lilith and like I'm not going to let that go so it's like no that's a good point that's a good and then isn't last war Survivor like topping the like aren't they overtaking everyone I haven't looked at the top of the charts lately but I think last war of rival that's fun plus right oh no no first fun I think there's a lot of success of Chinese companies in the west it's just the West to the to Asia tougher okay yeah but it does feel like mihoyo is captured a lot of that magic uh sadly it looks like it's

fading all right let's go ahead and wrap up so hey sorry everyone Mishka had to take off so we're going to tackle the squad Busters topic next week so that I can talk about all the stuff that I took the time to write for today's episode and um there there you go all right we'll see you next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com slack and apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for listening