TWIG #325 Ubisoft Bails Out, AppLovin Fights Back, Roblox Becomes an Ad Network

[Music] Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, we know that great gameplay is what players love, but integrating metagame features like challenges, progression, and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. But coding them is a tedious and timeconuming process. That's why top studios have turned to Hero from Heroic Clabs. Hero provides a complete suite of battle tested metagame features that are quick to implement, letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience. Ready to ship fully featured, engaging games? Check out Hero today at heroiclabs.com. Attention app and game developers. Are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games? With Sensor Tower, you get the ultimate competitive edge. Whether it's breaking into new markets, fine-tuning your UA strategies, or boosting monetization. Dive into data like never before. Track global trends across app stores. Analyze market leading inapp purchase and inapp ad

strategies and benchmark your performance with realtime insight. The best part, Sensor Tower doesn't just deliver data, it helps you turn it into action with intuitive tools and expert analysis. It's everything you need to make smarter, faster decisions. Thousands of app and game studios from indie creators to global giants trust Sensor Tower to help them win. So why not you? Start your free trial today at sensortowwer.com. That is sensortow.com. Hello everyone and welcome to this weekend games 325. The Game Industry News podcast by Game Industry Insiders. Can't wait. I am Jen Dano. I filled the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. And today we have Phil Black, Enzo 225,

Eric Crest, Hail Caesar. Oh wow. Mishka Katkov, the founder whisperer and ASMR guru. Okay, got it. We have a little bit more on GDC. Just closing out on the numbers and how it did. A quick Dark Legion update and a lesson in picking the right end date when you pull charts. He Phil, the Switch 2 has a launch date and a very expensive price tag. Roblox gets rewarded ads and a partnership with Google. Also, newly added Apploving Talk coming in there. So, a lot about ads today. Mobile Legends Bang Bang gets a new publisher to avoid getting impacted by geopolitics. Ubisoft gets a confusing bailout and thankfully Crest is here to explain it to us if we have time. Also, I am excited about first of all the power of voice to text and voice notes when you don't have an arm network. So, I had elbow surgery and just a public

service announcement for all those accessibility features that we kind of handwave. I now realize how important they are that I can't use my dominant hand in things. So if you are doing accessibility stuff, thank you. You're doing God's work because I am now using it and I appreciate it. So super cool there. Number two is Mitch Laski and Blake Robbins are back with GameCraft season 3. It's probably the number one podcast that I recommend to people who want to know about the game industry and supposedly they are just shittalking every single venture capitalist. Like it's a must listen to like I've heard. Yeah, it is. It is brutal. Like watch out Mr. Light Speed, watch out E16Z Griffin. Like the whole spiel, dude. You think I'm bad? You should hear what these guys have to say about it. These OG VCs should Should I say that the episode with Morris is dropping next week? Oh no. Well, I think they paint a sober data

impacted, you know, picture of what's going on. I'm almost done with episode one and yes, Chris, I think that they talk about the 80% decline and VCbacked studios coming out of last year and they talk about a game company that went in asking for $200 million in a series A and they were like, "Read the room." Yes. I love it. So, you know, a few clips from their podcast called Gamecraft. All right, Mishka, you want to do some shills? Yeah, a couple of shills. And I'm also going to let you on on an inside baseball. So, I found out how to trigger Jen. Everybody knows how to trigger crest. Just name just say Ubisoft or Hyper Casual or Apple, but Jen, this is the way you trigger Jen. So before the episode starts, we just put in a lot of new news into into so we have this like a list where all the topics we're going to talk about. Then Jen wakes up and starts looking at it like, "Oh my god, who dropped all these news?" And she

starts just always angry. And this is what we do on this podcast. So I start by trigger Yeah. to everybody. Because now I sound like an idiot that I don't know what my take is on something you drop in 5 minutes before we launch the podcast. Exactly. So that's how you trigger. That's how we do it. Jen, what you don't know is he's been doing this since day [ __ ] one, dude. Like this is this is and the way he operates. Yeah, I'm a last minute guy. So anyways, the shills, the shills. So we had two CEOs this week on a podcast. CEO number one, Josh Wilson, CEO of Cypro on Monday. Cyp is a growth machine in a really, really tough market of social casino. Revenue growing year-over-year since 2013. The theme of that podcast is something that he said during the podcast is like in the revelation of IDFA is like how do we grow when we can't buy growth and essentially that's what the the podcast focused on. Episode number two dropped on Thursday this week before this podcast and that's with CEO of AppSlire

Orin K. This was an on-site interview and I'd say it was the most difficult interview I've done. Orin is an engineer, a deep thinker, an entrepreneur and very excited about AI. So it was very difficult for me to interview because I felt so stupid asking any kind of questions. And then final shill is we have a new partner for DF Appcharge. I met the founder of Appcharge Mor a couple of years ago. He's the type of guy that you cannot do anything else like him. He's all smiles. He's all hugs. And what does Appch charge do? Well Dom, roll the clip. Web stores. You've seen what good looks like, but have you seen great? Appch charge is the direct to consumer platform backed by the likes of Supercell and built by monization pros from Moonactive, Platika, Huge Games and others, people who know the difference. App charge powers over half a billion dollars in transaction a year for top studios optimizing every detail. Deeply

personalized web store offers custommade design, industryleading monetization features, in-game payments SDK, and more. 70% of top grossing games already have a web store, but the ones scaling fastest, they're doing it with app charge. Learn more at appcharge.com. All right, I guess we're going to move to corrections after that lovely, lovely intro to a shill. So GDC, they released a number on the number of attendees in their blog post and for 2025 they quoted the same number as 2024 which flies in the face of everyone's experience which is interesting. There is a small asterisk or I could say a very large asterisk here is they have GDC nights which is a new event they've been running which is a separate pass you can buy that's cheaper which may inflate these numbers but even when you compare the other metrics that they're quoting the number of sessions workshops and roundts they say they're up from 730

to 750 and when it comes to what they call the top game industry teams they went from over 300 to 400 I don't know it feels like they might be blurring some numbers here or maybe it was just like the networking stuff that declined. I'm not quite sure. I don't know. All our networking stuff was super packed. So, I don't have a good personal sense on this. I did hear there were a few less exhibitors than in past years and that looks to be a little different. Epic was out and I believe Unity was also out. Nvidia wasn't there. Like none of the Chinese or any other people were there. Oh, I thought Tencent had the biggest boost. Yeah, I thought Tencent also had a big speaker presence which I think attracted very little conversation. How did I not see the Tencent booth anyway? It just seemed much less frills going on. All right. Uh, Dark Legion. Yes, we should talk more about this. And so, one thing I wanted to start with is a nice correction that when we pulled the numbers for this, we

were pulling a partial week when we record. And so, that's why all the games across the board look like they had just fallen off the cliff. They have not fallen off a cliff. That's one correction. I think the other thing that is a correction is that we didn't talk enough about revenue which is stabilized right now and that is a really good sign for Dark Legion. So right now daily active users have not quite stabilized yet although it looks like the rate of decline is starting to even off. They're sitting at 500,000 daily active users. I mean even as thing gets down to let's say 250,000 active users you know you still might be looking at like a 50 million a year game which would be a really great outcome. You know, maybe that's the floor for this game, but it's still pretty impressive and I think would be a win for fun plus 500k DAU is strong. Well, okay, I agree that this is exactly what you would hope to look like because it basically looks like it's stacking revenue, but the challenge is that this is not material for fund plus from a revenue perspective. Like 50 million is not a win from their perspective. Like they need something

bigger because to be clear, its run rate is higher than that right now. Yeah. Yeah. Its run rate is is much higher, right? It's closer to 120 million. So, what do you want to see out of this then? I mean, they have tough comps, dude. They were doing like a billion, you know, it's a great game. Like, it looks like it's it was really well designed. Whether they can scale it, you know, and drive additional users in and get this time of performance, that's going to be their the real question if they can scale it above 100 million. I really agree with that. And if we look at the cumulative number of downloads for some recent releases. So we have Age of Empires, Top Heroes, Sea of Conquest, and Apex Girl, Top Girl, and we see what those download charts look like. You can see that DC Dark Legion benchmarks fairly well against each of them. It's starting at a much better place or it's had a much higher acceleration. Now, one GM at Scopely referred to this as the Scorch Earth strategy where you just boost the game to number one. And the thing that I've been confused by is that there doesn't appear to have been a really long soft

launch period for DC Dark Legion. So I have a hard time imagining they got a good understanding of what that LTV curve looked like. So what is it that you're bidding when it comes to UA traffic? Do you really know what those LTVs are going to start to look like at day 360? You know, maybe they do, maybe they don't. But if you look at something like Top Heroes and Apex Girls, you can see that they've had different points of acceleration in their download curve. And I would argue that's because they've had a longer discovery process and scaling process. They understand the shape of their LTV curve and they've been able to react to it in a UA way. Yeah. But Phil, Fun Plus has had multiple Forex games. Do you not think that they wouldn't know how or couldn't predict what the LTV curve is based on the previous titles? First of all, I think that's an interesting observation. I would say it really depends on what you think of this game when it comes to genre, either squad RPG or 4X. And so right now we're looking at a daily revenue chart for Genchin Impact and Last War Survival. Last war Survival as we know is 4X and Genchin Impact is very much a squad RPG. And what you see in

the difference is that Genchin has much higher tres and crops in its revenue wave because it's completely meta collection driven, right? It's completely driven by, you know, the two or three hero drops that they might have per month. Whereas you have a lot more steady revenue when it comes to 4X because conflict is more persistent. Don't me wrong, there's still spikes. There's still live ops. Those things are still happening, but the revenue of squad RPGs and meta collectors is just much more spiky. So, I think like, okay, what if this was the thesis, right? What if combining these 4x elements and squad RPG basically helped shrink the floor of revenue on a daily basis because you have a lot of 4x med monetization elements, but you're still having those spikes when you drop characters. And I don't think we've seen what the character effect in Dark Legion is going to be. Like they've had the Superman draw event right now and I'll be very curious to see when they start to introduce additional characters what those revenue spikes are and what the shape or rhythm of this curve starts to look like. Squad RPG or 4X. Well, just

pull up white out survival. Like that's part of their strategy. They were one of the first to kind of include that, you know, squad RPG character collection component. It's just so much stronger in this game, you know, even than Star Trek Fleet Command or what we had in Breaking Bad Empire business. It feels like almost like a squad RPG first rather than a 4X game, at least in my first week experience. And just the one other note here is that there is another Squad RPG based on DC coming Worlds Collide, which actually soft launch this year in January. So there's going to be CPI competition. If you put all this aside, if this game works and I'm scopely, I'm immediately putting Marvel Strike Force and Fleet Command teams together and saying like [ __ ] [ __ ] something out like this like immediately like do not delay. But like what's the likelihood of that DC squad RPG game launching? Like how many DC squad RPG How many DC games have launch? Sorry. Sorry. It's made by NEI. I actually played the game. It's actually quite good, but it's very traditional old school like Star Wars.

This is at least a little bit more innovative in in its approach. They have branching storylines or in Worlds Collide, like the branching, you know, main campaign, but that was the only thing I could find that felt innovative. But back to Jen's point from last week, no one gives a [ __ ] about DC. Yeah. It's like there's like two characters that matter, right? And the rest are just like they're like, you know, Superman, Batman, that's it. Yeah, exactly. Nobody cares. Joker N. What do you guys think is the minimum guarantee and the revenue share for DC Comics? Well, they're going to blow through the minimum guarantee. If it's more than 15%, I'd be shocked. I would say 10 to 15. Share. Okay. Royalty rate or share. Yeah. I mean, in licensed games, I would say it's between 12 to 25. If you're Star Wars, you could be 20 to 25. Not anymore. Not anymore. Disney has [ __ ] destroyed that franchise. Ain't worth It ain't worth [ __ ] I think they're still asking how much Snow White is these days. Well, yeah, Chris, I I'd probably guess

around 15%. What I hope they're doing is a bit of what, you know, taking note from like what Scopia and Hasbro have done, which is figure out ways to do deductions for marketing spend so that the marketing can continue to go and continue to pump. You know, clearly they're spending a lot of money on UA on this. And it's that old school launch strategy, right? Like, you know, Phil to your point is scorched earth, baby. Yeah. No, it's old school. That is not the way of the force anymore. slow and steady wins the race on launches. And so we'll see where this nets out, but um I expect to see some declines as we continue to follow it just because, you know, again, strength of the IP. Does this have the components of the, you know, RPG meets forex that we think is going to win? I don't know. I like I said before, I thought this looked like actually dated to me, but maybe I could totally be wrong. I haven't been playing it, so I have to keep up. I should go back to it. All right, moving on to the big announcement just this morning at a

6:00 a.m. PST conference. The Switch 2 has been announced officially, finally. And actually, there are absolutely no surprises whatsoever. It's like all been leaked. We've been all been talking about it forever, but quickly, Switch 2 will be launched June 5th, and Mario Kart 9 will be a launch title, which everyone expected, which is going to be called Mario Kart World, actually, not Mario Kart 9. It is a 1080p screen, which will disappoint some people who really want the OLED 4K, which makes no [ __ ] sense in a small device. The 4K, I mean, the OLED is fine, but it does do 4K resolution and HDR on a big screen. built-in microphone, noise cancelling technology, 3D audio, blah blah blah blah blah. 256 GB of storage, which is exactly what it should be, honestly. I mean, I thought it could have been 128, and I was going to like throw up all over that, but 256 is good. But the only real surprise to some, I think, is a $450 price point, and that's pretty

[ __ ] steep, I would admit. But still, I think it's within the realm of acceptability given what the device can do. There's a [ __ ] ton of games, first party, third party that are coming to the device over the next six months. All of which was kind of expected. Donkey Kong, FIFA, Madden, you know, Cyber Punk, like there's all kinds of third party support that we really didn't see with the original Switch. And so I think it looks actually a phenomenal launch in my view. Anyway, can we talk about the price for a second? So yes, you're right. So they came out no game. It was $450. I think these are US dollars. so forgive me. And then $4.99 with Mario Kart World. So OG Switch One was $2.99, you know, ages and ages ago. OLED was $350. And you know, I just I was like, crap, how much is a PS5 and an Xbox these days? And those are $4.99 each. Now, they launched in 2020. There are

some that are cheaper without the discs. There are slims or all that other [ __ ] But I guess I'm a little worried for them knowing that the core target for this is a little bit outside of that core console. It's families. I think this is going to start to be a little bit too high for a lot of families. And I don't think a lot of people are going to upgrade. My wife is one of them. I was like, you know, the Switch 2 is coming. She's like, I don't give a [ __ ] Like, why do I care? I It sounds like the same exact thing. It doesn't get me anything more. And you want 500 bucks for that? And then not to get political, but do we think this is impacted by tariffs? Does this, you know, reflect the current price or is this a tariff boosted price? I I just I don't know from a consumer perspective. I'm sure they did some pricing studies, but I think this is going to impact unit sales and the ability to upgrade. Well, the only thing I would push back on is that the people that are buying it the first year are not the 45, 50year-old moms that have a 8-year-old, right? Like the people that are buying it day one are

the Zelda fans, like the super hardcore Nintendo fans, okay? And they don't give a [ __ ] what the price is, dude. It could be like $600 and they would buy it. You know what I'm saying? Like, so yes, I think over the longer period of time, like it hinder adoption if it's this price, but I think for the first year, I don't think it's going to have any hindrance whatsoever on that core fan base. The ones I talk or listening to anyway, they're like so underwhelmed by the current Switch. like it is such a piece of [ __ ] device for them that despite the fact that they absolutely love it. They know that they need something new because the thing is just not running well anymore. So, and they're going to buy whatever Nintendo comes out with regardless. They [ __ ] bought the Wii U for Christ's sake, you know? That thing is a horrific, you know, so I'm not too worried about the launch, but I will admit that like that price point is too high for the mass. Yeah, there's always, you know, early adopters and fanboys and girls. A couple of the analyst articles I read were like retro, you know, this could potentially have an impact on, like you said,

holiday sales, long-term sales, and upgrades. Oh, well, I got to play the econ card. It's 386 the Switch launch price if you adjust it for inflation in 2025. No, no, no, no, no, no, no [ __ ] adjusting for just I almost shouted in the podcast, Mike, as you were saying it, but yes, it is more expensive and adjusted for inflation. I think this is good price discrimination to Eric's point. Like this is classic price discrimination. I would say the thing we don't know yet is what the margins are. And that's what I'm curious about is when we get a strip down of parts whether or not their margins are lower or higher for the new launch. I mean that should be really relevant to shareholders, right, Eric? I mean this feels like a key part of this puzzle. Ironically the price point is actually good for shareholders because they thought it was going to be 400. So that means the revenue number is going to be higher in theory. So, but that assumes like your demand like your trade-off in elasticity makes it profitable, right? So, you just think they're always underpricing. There's no elasticity of demand for gaming. Then they should set it at $1,000 if that's the case. You know, if you truly believe that. Okay.

There's also elasticity along the curve, which we can talk about. Let me pull that back. Let me pull that back. There's no elasticity of games within a range. Okay. Well, and at launch to your at launch at launch. Yeah. to your perspective. Launch is going to be the same people that are excited about a new platform all the time. You know, it's the holiday piece. So, okay, I don't agree with you adjusting for inflation in this comparison, but I do think that your margin question is a good one. And like I said, like I I don't know what the tariff impact is going to be on this and it's going to go up or not. What do you mean? Who cares about who cares about the whole damn thing, right? Like it's always just first it's a first party machine. Like the only people who care are Nintendo shareholders. as an industry, why do we give a [ __ ] I mean, I'm playing my Eric Crest card next, but the only thing I want to see is I want to see Supercell put Brawl Stars on this machine. I don't understand why they haven't already done this. This is the most obvious play in the book. They should absolutely do it. It's very similar target markets or TAMs. The Supercell engine should be able to do this at the click of a button. They should totally put it on there. What do

you have to lose? This is what North America should do. You have to lose your revenue on think about what do you have to lose. Okay, so you're operating on multiple platforms. Let's say I have to do an update on Nintendo [ __ ] Switch. So update is going to take longer because their review cycles are probably totally different than Apple and Google. You have to have more QA. It will slow down your velocity. It's not like Supercell has big teams. You need external partners for just this part of it. You need Nintendo as your partners. You have to actually, you know, have a conversation with those guys once in a while. And then we have a case of Scopely Stumble guys. They are on PS. They're on Xbox. They are on Switch. I think putting that game on this Switch is a stupid idea just to be clear. But what I will say that's very good is that at launch Fortnite is going to be there. Now that that may not sound like a big deal to everyone, but the fact is that even if it doesn't work very well, the fact that they are committing to launching with something like Fortnite, which is an online enabled game, and so that the online functionality has got to exist within the [ __ ] platform, unlike the Switch original, which was

[ __ ] horrific for Fortnite and every other online game that you put on there. That's good news. that means that they're actually confident. The company, the organization is thinking about this [ __ ] And so I don't even know if you can do microtransactions actually on the Switch. I don't even think the Switch is capable of doing that. Like unless they sell MTX unless they're using external systems like from the games themselves, right? You could do MTX. Well, let's keep going. Lots to talk about. Any uh Roblox? Yeah, Roblox. So today they announced which I thought they already announced at GDC. So I'm a little bit confused about this or maybe I was just hearing it from people but they announced that they are launching a new form of advertising a new form. Yeah. Well for the platform right for the platform is rewarded video ads and they're partnering with Google advertising solutions to make that happen. This is a big deal, right? And for me, it's a big deal because they have completely capitulated to the idea that you need advertising on their platform. And this is like something that, you know, obviously they've been talking about for about a year, but this

is like really kind of going down a rabbit hole of of actually monetizing the unmonetizable. And I think it's actually really really strong for Roblox in general. and rewarded ads are obviously so much so much better than the [ __ ] like you know static ads that they had inside the experiences that so anyway I think this is huge for them here here here you know transforms it into an ad platform right you've got crazy DIU low monetization and if we look at the monetization that they do disclose because remember they do that in their quarterly earnings they tell you what the average bookings per monthly unique payer are and so that is about $20 on average it's been remarkably stable. There's cyclical trends here, which is why you see Q4 always spike, but they haven't really been able to increase it, which is an achievement because they've scaled to a lot of tier 3 regions, as you're quick to point out, Eric, like the fact that they can maintain this level of monetization despite scaling with that DAU, I think, is still impressive. But regardless, it hasn't grown. So, I guess if you're looking at this from financial

perspective, you know, what do you add on top of this $20 in terms of ad revenue? And we know the platform already kind of plays hyper casual-ish. people play as though there's a feed, you know, there's an update, I go to that one, there's another update, I go to that one. So, like, why not just like embrace the hyper casual playbook and put more and more ads in. I think this is a good thing to do. Yeah. Let me just plus one everything you guys are saying. This is going to be a boring segment because we all agree. This is like when the Supreme Court goes 70. Like, this is awesome. I know. Yeah. This is this is crazy. This is this is the liberals and the conservatives unite. [ __ ] huge. And so let me a couple of different things I want to break down. Their current ad business has not worked really well. It has been an immersive you know them showing billboards but not only from a player perspective from a platform perspective. So here is like the amazing thing that is happening. This partnership with Google ad platforms with this kind of immersive ads does a couple of things. It gives them programmatic advertising. So

programmatic means you can automate as a brand, as an advertiser. All of this is automated. You're not doing anything manually. You're going in and you're bidding. So the entire business can start to almost in a sense run on AI, which means a lot of money. So they also have the ability because of the partnerships to track the KPIs in a way that the brands can get the data they need to go improve the ROI of these ads. From a player perspective, here's what's also fascinating. They've run some tests. This is Roblox saying this. They said they had an 80% completion rate. This is a full screen ad. So, you're playing on a mobile screen. You click the ad comes up full screen for a 30- secondond ad, it goes away. So, people actually watching the full ad to get their reward, just like we know in mobile, is actually working. In some cases, they said they had a 90% completion rate. So from a player perspective, right, these are kids who often don't have a lot of money, who are like, "Sure, I'll watch an ad to get my

thing." Advertisers who want to hit this highly, highly valuable Gen Alpha target or early Gen Z target. So this is like win-winwins like all across the board. This got announced at what's called the IAB, which is the interactive ad bureau. So there was a big kind of like ad conference crest, which is why you're hearing about this in addition to GDC. So, a couple other things if you're a parent. Number one is so many of the Roblox developers are under the age of 17. As a developer, you have to be 18 years old to put ads into your game. So, it's kind of interesting that, you know, you've got to be like an adult to as you're building your games to make money off of ads. That was really interesting. And number two is they're not going to show ads to under 13 kids, which I think many of us, press included, will laugh at because we all know, as any of us that have kids, everyone lies about their age on that platform. And it is really, really difficult. So your kids are now going to be, you know,

consumers. Yeah. Of a new ad product. Get ready. Yeah. Every time I hear this [ __ ] it gets me Eric Seer's [ __ ] voice in my brain. Everything is an ad network thing. I [ __ ] hate that [ __ ] But yes, everything is everything is an ad network. Anyway, two challenges. One is that the sophistication of the developers are relatively low. So integrating ads is a challenge, right? So that is going to be the one roadblock and the second roadblock which is not a roadblock is this 13 age requirement as you suggested is that this actually helps them because they're 13 and over group is far exaggerated in my view like everyone is opting in. There's no age verification whatsoever. So, their audience is going to look a lot bigger than it really is when it's a bunch of eight-year-olds that are saying that they're 14, you know. So, but the relative share has increased, right? Like that's the thing. Like, I agree with you that maybe that's a level change, but you have to explain the rate of change. There are more older kids playing on the platform. And the third

problem again is the majority of their MAU or DAU is from third world countries and tier three countries that are not tier one English countries which is where advertising is the most valuable right so that is the other challenge from that perspective is that I don't give a [ __ ] about advertising in India right like it doesn't matter how many DAUs you have in India that advertising unit is not worth as much as the US and so But other than that like this is a great addition to the platform. My regional DAU is the US is 22%. Europe is 24% APAC 30 or 25% rest of world. So US is about a fourth of the overall DAOU. To your point they still are going to have lower ECPMs because their monetization just overall is still bad. I mean, if you look at the difference in average bookings per player per region, they have a sub

breakdown of that. And the difference is like $40 for the United States, and I think it's around $6 for one of the lowest performing regions. So, I mean, there's going to be huge differences by region. I mean, Eric's not wrong about that. Yeah. But still, like what are they at like 90 million? What's a fourth of 90 million? You know, you've got Yeah. You know, 15 to 20 million DAU getting ads. I'm just saying if if people start putting like ECPI or whatever the [ __ ] times 90 million or whatever the [ __ ] EU they have, then they're going to get these numbers that are so ridiculous. That's what they were doing. That's what they were doing when back in the day with with Candy Crush, right? And King stuff when they started talking about advertising and they were expecting like three or four billion dollars of revenue. It was like five to 600 million, you know, like at the end at the peak after like six years, you know. Yeah. And they built a whole organization to manage those ads. I remember when King was like, "Oh, we're not going to do programmatic. We're going to have like, you know, salespeople handling the ads. It's like an old school, so it's probably expensive and not very efficient." So,

what's this Roblox? Like, is it going to be that powerful? Because like you're advertising to kids. Well, there are 13 plus. So, so technically, okay, Roblox, but there is almost no other place that advertisers can advertise to get to this audience. So the CPMs are going to be likely a little bit higher because you know everyone's looking for how do I show Red Bull to a well probably about how does price picks advertise to the next level you know they got a big deal you know to get the next like the generate gamblers. Oh, I I do imagine typically ad platforms won't allow gambling, tobacco, you know, there's a lot of product once you get into this business, dude, you get filthy, dude. You get filthy. Like everything's an ad network, right? Because it's [ __ ] dirty birdie. And speaking of which, let's get moving on. Let's talk about Yeah. Applovin. A prominent adtech company having sold its games business to triple dos has

recently been a target of multiple short sellers alleging fudent practices and violation of platform terms of services. In response, Applovin has taken significant steps to defend its reputation to reassure investors. So let's talk about it. The effects of the short sellers. In February, Applovin was worth $150 billion. That's insane amount of money. But in April 1st, the figure was decreased to 96.11 billion. So this represents a reduction approximately well almost 54 billion equating to drop of 36%. And this is due to the short seller report that came out. So what actions have Apple been taken? It it has taken illegal actions. So it engaged a law firm to conduct independent investigation to claims made by the short sellers demonstrating the company's commitment to addressing these allegations head-on. And of course there was the PR rebuttals. So CEO Adam Froggy

and CTO Basil Shikin, they've both published blogs. They've really been blogging hard, explaining the company's stance on data collection and advertising practices and so forth. taking this really serious with multiple blog posts. Now, the takeaways here are, in my opinion, pretty interesting. So, number one, short sellers have power. We saw this with Roblox. They had power for a hot minute. Use the P word. They came pretty hard all until the Hindenburg kind of selfimploded on that attack. But in this one, it seems to be sustained. And that means that the companies have to really especially in the ad tech space have impeccable compliance and communication strategies perhaps even other than blogs to mitigate such vulnerabilities. And also this is a little bit of a cautionary tale for adtech industry because it really emphasizes the importance of transparent data practices and adherence to platform policies as deviations can lead to

severe reputational and financial repercussions. And one one additional thing for a long time now ever since Apploven started growing many prominent platforms have somehow trying to ask me do you know what Apploven is doing like like whispers like what's going on? So it's clear that they had a lot of opposition and I think that helped with these coordinated attacks on the company. So Eric, what do you think? Well, first of all, you have to like actually articulate what these short sellers are saying, right? Because that's what they're trying to defend themselves against. So, they're basically saying there's unauthorized data collection, which there is, and misleading advertising practices, which there always are. Retargeting of and incrementally concerns. This I don't really know quite well, but I'm sure this is going on as well as which I don't know. Yeah. Every UA person is like, is that really an incremental ad buy? Yeah. Right. high client churn rates like I don't even know why that's an issue but like nonetheless yeah of

course like people come and go from different platform I don't know and then targeting children with inappropriate ads right yes like this happens all the time right regardless of it's not like a a something that they're trying to do but it like happens inappropriate ads are going to children right so like when I look at the list and I listen to what people are talking about like this is like a walk in the park for these ad tech guys this is their business is to manipulate and to adjust just their systems in order to take advantage of any type of like loophole within the system. Right? So again, when Apple says no more AT, no more fingerprinting, fingerprint is not allowed on my system and Apploven immediately adjusts all their systems to go fingerprint, right? That's exactly what these guys are talking about, right? And so they're all dirty, right? And so every time I see these short sale reports, I'm just thinking the same thing. It's like, yeah, this is advertising. That's why this business is [ __ ] gross, you know? Like only one level above like gambling, you know? It's like this is

what the business is, you know? Apploving just does it better. Like why are you blaming them, right? They [ __ ] are destroying Unity. They're even destroying Facebook. Like they're beating Facebook at their own game and going after e-commerce. At the end of the day, the other point that I want to make is the market corrected during the same time frame as these short reports, right? And I will say again that these are [ __ ] hedge fund hotels. Okay? These people are trading in and out of these things in the hundreds of millions of dollars and betting against themselves, against each other, and against the market. So, it's like do not buy these stocks. Like, these stocks are not for the faint of heart, right? I will say though that Appven looks like they are in [ __ ] command control right now, right? Regardless of all this [ __ ] like they are [ __ ] owning the market. Like the e-commerce stuff, like I heard all kinds of great things from GDC about what they're doing with e-commerce stuff. They still own the UA market. Unity is like nipping at their [ __ ] heels, but they got no chance to compete against app level because they are just so entrenched, right, in terms

of of their position in the market. So, a lot of this stuff is just noise, right? And things will correct in the wash. And man, I would not [ __ ] with Adam, dude. Like, you don't want to [ __ ] with that KKR [ __ ] He's going to go after these guys like like with a vengeance, you know? Like, he he doesn't mess around. So, yeah, I'm all about app loving even though I think it's [ __ ] dirty as [ __ ] their whole business. So that's my thing. Chris, I think there's a song to summarize your feelings which is like hate the game, not the player. Yeah, exactly. Something like that. Yeah. Fix the [ __ ] dude. Yeah, you're right. Like they know how to play the game better than anyone else. And I think we should call out these short sellers to your point. And actually, somebody did like Mishka, the Heisenberg people who went after Roblox, they're out of business because it didn't work. I mean, yes, everyone would talked about it for a couple of days, but Roblox rebounded right after because there was really not a there there to what they were talking about. And so, I kind of feel like it's the same thing here, which is, "Thank you for telling

us everything we already knew about the ad networks. There's nothing new." And they were just trying to make money off of calling this stuff out. So, yeah. Yeah. This is just a day in the life of Eric Seaffort, you know, and he loves this [ __ ] right? you know, like, yeah, big deal. Whatever. I wrote about this last week on my [ __ ] blog. Yeah. Yeah. We actually talked about this when this happened back in February. We love what AppLaven does for the industry. I mean, if you're a marketer, you cannot do UA without having AppL, if not top two channels. So, it's meta, Google, and AppL. And sure is you know you know unity there maybe a little bit but applov like if that goes away our ability to market this industry also goes away on mobile on mobile. All right what else we got? Mishka do you want to talk about yes mobile legends bang bang mobile legends bang bang. So the skeptical hippo. So this so China based mobile games developer Moon Technology a

subsidiary of Bite Dance has sold the publishing rights of mobile legends to US-based PC and console games developer Skystone Games for an undisclosed sum. The transaction follows increasingly regulatory restrictions on China owned companies operating in the US including those affecting by debts. So sounds all kosher. Let's let's take a look at what is this Mobile Legends Bang Bang. Oh, okay. Got it. So, year to date, we got $200 million in revenue and $100 million installs lifetime revenue. So, this is sensor tower numbers. So, they're probably a lot smaller than they are for real. 1.5 billion and $750 million installs. So, this is net revenue. And you'd be like, well, this is only big in China. Well, last year, Tier One West, $60 million in revenue for 3 million downloads. That's a good game, right? It's doing pretty well. Well, Skystone for sure is a great publisher to be handling this and I believe they will be also handling Snap at any moment. So, I

went to LinkedIn did a little bit of a journalism again. I was like, what is this Sky Stone publisher? Cuz I've never heard of them. I went on their site, it says empowering independent developers. So, essentially working with indies. They don't have any mobile games. It's only Steam games, like very very small Steam games. They don't have any freeto-play games. and they have three employees at the moment. So, there's one PM, there's one president, and there's one co-founder and CEO. CEO's name is Bill, also known as I'm going to butcher this name, W Chang Wang. So, yeah, nothing to look here. It sounds like a super credible publisher for big games. Let's move on. This is how it works. They just needed somebody to put their name on it that wasn't Bite Dance and Tik Tok to get out of the US stuff. So I'm thinking we should be publisher like hey like like what's a hyoverse do you want deconstructor of fun to publish your game like we're four people we'll do it we probably have more credibility than no offense to skystone games but we

at least have more diverse group of expertise we got game economists we got corp dev we got marketing we can do this so we can publish Hoyo versus titles from now on in the west have you ever met Bill Wang by chance no he is he is a character Dude, he was a perfect world. I met him like ages ago. But yeah, I could, you know, I could see him doing this. Isn't this just a front? I mean, I would imagine it's like long, you know, like it's like, you know, mobs doing laundry. A mob job is the type of job that you get paid but don't show up. Yes, this would be correct. It's just Yes. No, it's it's just a front. So, that again, it's the Tik Tok thing. All right. Yeah. Love it. I'm I'm surprised crust didn't go off. It is. It's a moa that works. Guess where it works in the east? Southeast Asia. They they also have a squad RPG. Always gets forgotten. Poor little Mobile Legends adventure. [Music] This podcast is brought to you by

Appsflyer. In today's digital world, understanding your app's journey from discovery to download is more than just insightful. It's essential. Enter Appslier, 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 Flyier, that's your new reality. Dive deep into datadriven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app. Appsier, where your app's potential meets performance. Hey game devs, are you tired of dealing with complicated payment processes all over the world? Well, Exola's got your back with Exola Paystation. It has a simple user-friendly interface that makes it easy for players to pay for your games and in-game content however they want. And because the Exola PlayStation user interface is adaptive and accessible on smartphones, tablets, and PCs, your players will have a seamless experience no matter their preferred device. Players can save their favorite payment methods for future

purchases and on mobile even charge purchases directly to their phone carrier bill. On the back end, you can customize your checkout with game specific integration options like sidebars and iframes, as well as change colors, fonts, and images to make paystation look and feel like a natural part of your game. Ready to see Exola's PlayStation in action? Visit exola.pro/payments-doof or visit the link in this podcast description. [Music] All right, let's do more games, Phil. Yes. So, first, just like a heads up, Clash Royale and Clash of Clans had huge economy updates, like earthshattering economy updates where they significantly changed their core metas. If you remember, everyone in Clash was copying Clash Royale's meta a while ago. They removed chest timers and Clash of Clans removed timers for troops. We'll talk about that next week. We just have a lot going on. And also, schedule one, a drug dealing game that's blowing up on Steam. talk about that next week as well. But Mishko, you wanted to return to our

favorite Supercell game, Mr. Moco. We didn't really talk, we talked about Moco launch before we had a chance to play it. So, I've been playing it a little bit on and off for the past week. And this is just the first impression. And for me, the positive is of course the launch campaign, how they literally created virality through it. and the fact that Supercell continues to be bold with these very unorthodox launches. The game itself, personally, I felt, you know, underwhelmed playing it. The characters feel quite generic. I mean, there's a purple-haired girl, like the most generic Gen Z character you can find. The game play is action RPG, but it's really hard in the setting that they have. It's hard to understand like what weapon does well against what because the setting is so weird, obscured. Like there's a reason why fantasy rocks and sci-fi sucks. The narrative feels really, really forced. Like it's like you're reading texts from an angry teen that makes no sense. And

music I typically really love Supercell games with especially the music and sound effects is here. A little bit not so much. In short, this is weird. I was talking to a person very familiar with the company's games and I told him that that to me it felt that this game is made by people who don't really play mobile games like Squadbusters. So, it's really stripped down for what makes a powerful free-to-play game to more like, hey, this is a fun game that could be played on Switch or something. And yeah, I started a thread kind of like, is it only me on the extructor fun slack channel? And it felt very overwhelmingly that people agree with this. And there are some folks saying that the game gets a lot better once you get to PvP. But I am struggling. I'm struggling playing this game. I would have uninstalled this if it wasn't Supercell game, but I will make it to PvP, grind through it, collecting these weird items in a weird world that is

hard to understand and a lot of text. So that's my experience. And then, oh, by the way, the startup fantasy sounds really weird. The whole startup fantasy feels extremely niche, especially if this game is kind of for kids. It's like, hey, you're working in a startup. What? They should put it on Switch. Have they thought about that? Maybe. I think that would be that's This is This title needs to go to Switch 2. That's I agree. $30, dude. That's where they see the They find see the light, dude. They $30 Switch game. Yeah. And then don't worry about monetization. Don't need to, you know, really think about this. Just honestly, like Yeah. If I were to characterize this game, this is basically a single player premium game that's should be on Switch or Steam. Done. Yeah. Moving on. I just looked at Sensor Tower. $3.2 2 million downloads and a million net revenue all worldwide the last 30 days. And I know that they're they did their invite only thing.

The golden golden golden cohort, right? They can't only get a million bucks out of these guys. Come on. That's like pathetic. Yeah. Switch too. Speaking of anything but pathetic. Yeah. We have Enzo's cumulative estimates sold on Steam. This is the only thing that matters. Maybe it doesn't matter that much. Are they paying you? Should we have like hashtag? This is a client. Yeah, you guys are always bearish on [ __ ] You never get hype about anything. You got to take some big bets. Enzoy is certainly something. Has done 400,000 units since it launched March 27th. And I would say that's an okay launch. Maybe 12 to 15 million in Steam revenue. Remember, it's not available anywhere else. They do have a console launch coming later. It's $40 at least in the United States. Most of the prices are less than that by the way when you look at the regional store prices. So may maybe 12 to 15 million. I think it could get to a million by the end of the month. You know, let's see what these legs are. Let's see how this curve bends. I don't know, Eric. Like if this thing gets to a million by the end of

April, you still poo pooing on it? I don't think that's an outside success. I think that's a decent run. Look, I'm just gonna say Enzo has never skipped leg J. I think this thing can come back and absolutely crush it or at least have the legs to continue to walk. The reviews are super positive. All the Sims influencers or people who play Sims games have loved it. They're finally getting features that they asked for decades, which is the drone we've been banging. Like the ability to go in cars is crazy. They have an AI freaking printer in this game where you can upload a 2D image and it will render it in 3D in the world. The creation tools are insane. You also have AI textures. So, I saw one YouTuber remake all of their clothes and wallpaper in their house as meat, as just like raw meat, which was fascinating. So, it seems to have nailed a lot of the features. It is, however, extremely buggy. I think that is one of the main pieces of criticisms that come up. It's clearly an early access game. And when we look at

the numbers so far when it comes to daily active users, it has not taken a chunk out of The Sims. Again, The Sims is mostly distributed through EA's app rather than on Steam. And so, we're looking at a partial audience. That being said, we still don't see a trade-off between Enzoy and the STIMS when we look at Steam numbers. And the Sims numbers are been incredibly stable on Steam. It is always hitting around 100,000 DAU. And so, Enzoy has falling rapidly right now, reaching a max of around half a million a couple days ago, but quickly sliding down to around 250. And I think there's more to go here. Remember, it's early access, but early access is launch. We talked about this on the shooter podcast with Adam and I. You know, the global launch numbers are usually lower than your early access numbers for a lot of these early access titles. Like Steam doesn't penalize you for being in early access. You're available to be in all the recommendations, the feed, everything is still available to you in early access. Same thing with Power World. Remember, Power World is in early access, but do we really think the global launch for that is going to be bigger than its early access numbers? No. So, I think if

you're a marketer, I've always struggled with marketers jointly to figure out how to think about early access, especially if your brand and your guns blazing. It's all about the, you know, confluence events at launch. How do you think about early access? It like sucks the air out of the room. The thing I will say, this project began in 2023. They got this thing out the door. They got this thing out the door in like 2 years with this level of graphical fidelity, this level of features. Bravo. Bravo if this is true. Bravo if this is true. I would love to hear from someone at Craftton confirming this. It is a challenge I would say for Craftton going forward. I think this is on Craftton to get this game to the next level to get this game to really take a bite out of the Sims. So, first of all, no direct to consumer distribution. I think that's a miss particularly with the Sims audience. I don't think the Sims audience is on Steam. Although, this is another great place for CI. Call Stan. Call Jen. Like, you need to empathize with this audience, right? There also is a Korean city in the game is one of the main places you can play. But when you look at the country distribution for this game, the South Korea is about 3%. So they didn't even

go to like Korean specific MMOs, which tend to have distribution channels outside of Steam, and put it on those channels if they thought Korea was going to be a big part of this game. And if Korea is only 3% of this game, localize the damn thing. Like it's the normal Steam distribution. It's United States, China, Germany, Russia, France. Like that is who you need to be appealing to. So why do you have a Korean city in there? I get the games made in Korea, but like you got to empathize with your audience. There's no Mac distribution. that actually matters for Steam. For the female audience, the recommended spec for this is a GTX 3070. That's a pretty advanced card. Again, I would argue for this audience. What 40 plus Sims player has a 3070? The road map is incredible for this game. They have extended the road map to 2025. I'll have Eric know that there's a Cat City update coming in this game, so get ready for that live ops bump. Heaven help us. The story's not done with this game yet. It didn't look incredible off the bat, but Craft and let's go. Do not give up on this. Do not give up on this. I think they really really missed the mark with the graphics

requirements, right? Like they really didn't read the room, you know? Like the Sims player doesn't have discreet [ __ ] graphics, dude. They're running it on laptop. Yeah, it's like it's like Yeah, it's that's I am talking on both sides of my mouth because I do want an innovative new Sims and you probably need to have like these type of features in order to make it work, make it more innovative, but the specs are all out of whack on this one, dude. So, yeah, I think distribution is just channeling the GameCraft podcast I was listening to. This audience doesn't know what the [ __ ] Steam is and I'm worried about them being so beholden to Steam. I would probably would have investigated direct downloads. How do you get this, you know, playable on the web? How do you, you know, this isn't at all on mobile? Obviously, I would have really liked to sit down with them and talk about distribution strategy. And like you almost have to do like a Steam campaign of hey 22year-old woman who loves The Sims that probably doesn't know what Steam is. You

have to go download that first and here's what that is. And I don't know. I think that is probably a big part. And you're right about the graphics card. That's a big deal. Hopefully you get paid for that segment, Phil. That chill. I'm totally I'm kidding with you. I I love that you're in love with something. All right. I guess I have to go through this a [ __ ] again eating potato. Yeah, Ubisoft. So I hell have frozen over. I am now agreeing with a Gotakaco headline where they say Ubisoft is getting a 1.25 billion bailout from 10 cent which is 100% true. That is exactly what's happening right now. So basically what they're doing is they're spinning off their biggest franchises including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six Siege into a separate sub subsidiary with a $1.25 billion investment from Chinese conglomerate 10 cent. This also allows the Gilibon family to maintain control of the publisher despite struggles and creator share price. They

were on a conference call where they basically said there will be a dedicated management team under the supervision of the board which will all be controlled by Ubisoft's CFO and CEO. And so that is complete [ __ ] [ __ ] Anyway, so Ubisoft will continue to manage the consolidated entity. All right, my take on this. As you can imagine, I am not very happy right at this moment. This is exactly what I've been saying for the last [ __ ] three years since they did this deal with Tencent to begin with is that this deal with Tencent originally for the $300 million was to basically secure their ability to do whatever the [ __ ] they wanted with the company despite the shareholders and the employees. And this is a very very complex deal that's not closing till the end of the year. So we don't know a lot of details. And in the emo they said that we will hash it out in practice is what they said which is code word for we are [ __ ] anybody that we want to [ __ ] with to get what we want. So this is a

lot of speculation because we really don't know exactly what will happen particularly with the leftovers right which we'll call the remainder of the company that is left over. So here's the good news. Here's the good news and I'm going to start with the good news because there is good news on this. First of all, this ensures that we will not see massive layoffs at Ubisoft at least in the short term, right? Like they have secured the money that they need in order to continue. So this is in some ways good for the employees of Ubisoft. Also good for the customers that we will at least get one or two iterations on some of these big franchises, which is great, right, for the consumer. I think this is also really good for Tencent because clearly Tencent's in this for the long game. And this is what I keep hearing from investors over and over again, like they kind of know what they're doing. They are very sophisticated in their approach. And so they're basically doing this to ultimately buy this company in the end when Eve realizes that he has completely [ __ ] this thing up. He needs to let go, right? Yeah, dude. They bought this thing for $80 a share the last time, you know, for $300 million. $80 a share. It's like a 10 or 12 now or

something. So they don't give a [ __ ] about the money is what they have like more money than they know what to do with. And so this is probably a long game to get this thing. So and this deal is like a masterclass by the way and to Eve's credit and his team of navigating foreign investment laws, right? So they are basically monitoring this for the legal thresholds of ownership and control so they don't go against French law. Right? The French regulatory system is relatively ownorous and so they are doing everything they can to avoid getting problems with the government. And in some ways, as I've been saying, it's kind of achieves business objectives for both companies, right? Both Tencent and Ubisoft. The bad news, and there's a lot of it, right? This is just kicking the can down the road, right? They're just not doing what they need to do. They're postponing the inevitable, which is either a sale or a complete restructuring of this company, right? And the management. They are basically precluding any other company from ever acquiring this thing, right?

It's basically 10-centent or nobody, right? So, the asset is not valuable. only to Tencent now because of of their ownership. It's the same leadership, same problems, right? They there's nothing changing in terms of how they're managing this company. They're they don't even talk about it, right? They're just running this company into the ground. And the big thing is that the current shareholders get absolutely rack [ __ ] Like they are totally screwed in this particular thing. Like they have no value or say, it seems in this transaction, which is part of the reason I didn't like the 10-centent deal to begin with. And employees with shares are totally [ __ ] too, right? because those shares are going to continue to go to zero, right? And the debt holders will maybe get screwed, but unclear. They may get paid back. You know, it is it really depends. That that's really unclear at the moment. Hold up. Hold up. That's if I'm understanding this correctly, the shareholders of Ubisoft are about to lose their most valuable assets and it's being acquired by a subsidiary, which means they should be compensated in some way, right? Like they're not going to get zero. They got to get something out of this, right? No,

you can't. That this that Eric that is not possible. That is ab that is actual robbery. If you're telling me that they basically just broke into the house, stole the crown jewels and are now walking away. That's got to trigger a million court cases. There's no way. There's no way there can't be litigation if that's the case. That's unre What do I get? You saw [ __ ] mobile now. Is that what I get? I get green panda. Let's So So is that your safe word? M. Yeah. So, so what was written by some of the coverage on this, but this is also very unclear, I want to be clear, is that they likely are reviewed and consulted with the French government, the French direction, general, whatever DGT in advance in order, it's more convincing in order to get like the not approval for this, but they kind of implied that they the government's already looked at this and agreed upon it. Otherwise, yes, they would be worried about getting lawsuit. First of all, this [ __ ] would be so [ __ ] illegal in the US. Like,

this is never going to happen in the US. Like, the $300 million deal could have never happened in the US. Like I said last time, like this is [ __ ] criminal [ __ ] like in in most countries like in the free world, right? Where's the in capitalism? You mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody that Yeah. Anyway with the capitalist systems. So, so here's the rant. Here's the real rant on this, right? This is like corporate malfeasants, right? like like he's had nearly 40 years of power and he's still orchestrating every major deal to ensure that the family stays at the helm. Like this is what he's doing. Can I get a HBO series out of this? Is this our session in French? Rather than exploring like a a clean sale or a merger or a restructuring that actually could benefit shareholders, they have basically structured these defensive maneuvers over the last few years. first with Betheendi when Vendi tried to acquire them and now with Tencent and so basically in essence Eve is like

subordinating shareholder values and employee welfare ultimately like longer term in order to like maintain his personal legacy and control and obviously I've been saying I'm very critical of him over the years is that he's not doesn't know how to manage this company. So Bobby Cotch, I think, was in the exact same position to some degree in this where he was went through a really tough go, right? And when he was confronted with like these impossible odds, he did what was best for the shareholders and the company and he sold it to Microsoft, right? Rather than like suffering through this [ __ ] right? He even he who was an egoomaniac narcissist knew that his time was over, right? And in a podcast, he actually said that he was worried about like other competing things. But Eve has become like the Gaddafi of the gaming industry, right? He wants to hold belong to power at all costs. He's like Franco of Spain, the Emperor Palpatine, dude. Darcy himself, you know? He's like he's playing this long game to stay in power. He's like the Julius Caesar, dude, of gaming industry. He's like dictator for life, you know? It's like crazy. Like

long live Caesar. Are you Brutus in this analogy? I don't know. [ __ ] heave, dude. Just let it go, you know? Like anyway, that's all that's all I got for this. It's just it's so mindblowing that you know like again in in what I said earlier with read the room. It's like why don't you elegantly craft this as a because you could say hey you know we're getting out you set up the shareholders you set up like players and you're like this is you know you're John Elway to do use an NFL term well actually they're not even winning right now so I can't even use that analogy but like this is like so power hungry power grabby again if I'm a shareholder not to [ __ ] on what's left but like honestly what is left like what is left? What is the value of those shares? If I'm a if I'm an employee that you convince to go if I'm an employee, does my stock change to new subsidiary if I work on Do you think

they Okay. I mean, do they not? I I guess I don't know. I assume if they do this type of stuff, they wouldn't give stock like that doesn't sound like a company that gives RSUs. All these details are unknown at the moment. So, it is possible that the employees will get shares of the Duko like you would hope they would anyway, but we don't know. The stock has gotten crushed again. I mean, it's already so crushed. Like, you know, to be clear, like they're giving $1.2 billion for a company that's only worth 1.5 billion, right? So, they're literally I think they're getting a 25% ownership. So, they're like I think paying four times or three times what the company's actually worth with this investment. 10-centent. Again, Tencent could give a [ __ ] about the money. It's just about the long game. Don't French startups lose then? Because if I'm a French startup and eventually one of my outs is going to be to IPO. If I'm an investor, I'm looking at this. I really need to build this into the price of every single French company that basically I really can't sit on the board. We don't own it and I could be robbed at any moment, right? This depresses the whole

French ecosystem. Anybody that starts a company in France has got to be out of their goddamn mind. Like there's just no reason to ever I don't what [ __ ] voodoo you guys are nuts. Absolutely nuts. Can they list and elsewhere though? Can they list on like the New York Stock Exchange? Monaco. So I guess we need a lawyer, but like can they be governed by another like why would you always just I'd rather be in Nicaragua, dude. I rather be in Nicaragua than this [ __ ] dude. [ __ ] This is crazy. This is so crazy. Oh my god. I've never seen it founder friendly. To me, it sounds like founder friendly. No, no, that's true. That's true. Employer friendly. You should start a company in France because it's incredibly founder friendly. You can do whatever. Even if you're public, do whatever. Just sell assets and then leave a corpse to the investors. But all the upside is gone, right? All the upside is gone. All the shareholder value that you're trying to create, all the like it's gross. It's criminal, you know, in its own way.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not do it in reverse and keep I guess they have to have a new company to get the new valuation. Why wouldn't you get rid of the spin-off is all mobile and all the other stuff and you keep the crown jewels in the original one. This is why it's so criminal in a way is that if you own too much of a company within France, then like all kinds of regulatory problems happen. And so by doing this with a subsidiary, it circumvents those rules. And so if they were Yeah. And so like it's the change of control provisions or something within the with the government is so rather than doing the getting a controlling interest which then would create a huge problem for them from the France government they did this to circumvent it. Ah okay. So this is their sneaky side quest solution to do the spin-off. The spin-off deal basically avoids triggering the foreign control concerns from the French government. That's how they could have tens. So, so basically this can never be sold again cuz no one's going to ever want to give the

multiple to buy something. So, it's going to be 10 cents for life. I guess that's what you're saying. Well, they're prohibited from selling it in 5 years. So, they have 5 years to figure out what to do with this thing. Anyway, we'll get more details over time, but I'm actually at the point where I'm not covering this thing anymore because it's so [ __ ] dastardly. Like, I it's just not even worth it, right? Really. Like, I'll cover the games, but these guys are just despicable. Like, absolutely despicable. And Tencent's not despicable. I want to be clear here. Tencent's being brilliant at this thing. Like they're just like the puppeteers, you know, and they just are doing whatever it takes in order to get as much ownership as possible. Like they're doing the smart thing. So So what is their angle though, right? Are they vultures just waiting for the animal to die and to like eat it? Basically picking up IPs. Yeah. I mean, they pick up some amazing IPs that may or may not have any valuable. They're feeding the brothers drug to like have them OD and then like take take like all their assets. Like this is also [ __ ] from Tensson's perspective, right? I'll give you example. I'll give you example. So they spent 300 200 to 300 million I

can't remember exactly when for that initial investment in order to get access to some of the IPs for mobile, right? And what I'm hearing from sources is that those games that they are building for Ubisoft, they're not even focusing on those. Like they don't give a [ __ ] if those games ever come out, right? It's not a focus, right? So again, they are in the long game, dude. They are like long-term on these type of investments and keeping these guys alive and building up their ownership and circumventing all the rules and regulations around what French have done. And so maybe through this subsidiary, they'll be able to actually acquire those assets that are the most valuable ultimately. And the French government is going to be screwed too, you know, like I don't [ __ ] know. You don't know, you know? But like the Tencent guys are brilliant. What's interesting is so remember how we talked about NI actually divesting from Western Studios recently and you know NIS going through that cycle of you know we want to buy Western now we want to get out of it. So is 10 cents idea here kind of

what NIS was a year ago which is maybe getting some of these AAA teams would allow us to expand you know in western markets. Do you think that's kind of at play? Because you just said that they don't give a [ __ ] about the mobile like that Assassin's Creed game didn't launch. No. The game theory here could be that they want to just acquire the licenses, right? And they want to develop the games themselves and shut everyone else down, right? That could be the end game, right? Which actually makes more sense because then they can have teams of thousands of thousands of people building out Assassin's Creed in a more modern way and then, you know, Ubisoft just goes away. You know, they just expire, you know. So rather than do a licensing situation, are these licenses worth it though? Like Yeah. Yeah. Genchin asks Creed. Let's go, baby. I need to understand who's going to make the movies. I mean, the division movies and like call Michael Fastfound want to retain her. I think we're done. But I just I want to say much respect to the French founders. Very much like visiting Paris. I don't agree with

anything that Crest said about France France Paris or anything. I'm just kidding, dude. If you if you have a multi-billion dollar company in France and you have to work like 30 hours a week, [ __ ] dude. You're living large, dude. What am I I'm just complaining. I'm just like I'm jealous. I'm [ __ ] jealous, you know? Like these voodoo guys, the the homa, like they're living large. They don't give a [ __ ] right? Like good, you know? Yeah. Vib on Banana Republic. God, it's not a banana. It's past our due date. All right, everyone. Thank you and 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'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice.