TWIG #336 Candy Crush Veterans Return as Marathon Runs Out of Steam

[Music] Hey, are you building a game, launching an app, or considering an acquisition? Well, in that case, Destructive Fund Consulting is here to help you out. We do everything from market research to go to market strategies to live ops optimization and due diligence. We're trusted by some of the most beloved game development companies, makers of tools and tech, as well as some of the most renowned investors. Now, if you are building, launching, or buying, don't do it alone. Do it with us. Connect by emailing to consulting at deconstructorof.com. 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 Claps. 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. [Music] Hello everyone and welcome to this week in games 336 game industry news by industry insiders. I'm Jen Dano. I fill the marketing and publishing role on this crazy podcast. First we have because I demoted Phil Eric Crest on point strategy investing Katovas amigos. I'm here in Spain again. So, good to be back. Excited. Have been out for 3 weeks. And yeah, friend of the founders. Friend of the founders. Love the show, by the way. Listening every week, laughing to myself like a crazy person walking around. He should be demoted next week. Phil Black

Monizations are all right. I'll I'll do that just for you, Phil, just to do that. All right. Here's what we got on the podcast today. We're going to close out the note E3 events. Did players watch or care? like there was a lot going on. Switch 2 breaks console sales records in an impressive launch. 10 cent is potentially in talks to buy Nexon. Things are in constant flux, so we'll cover that. New mobile game studio investment announcements. Mishka must have friends and must want to talk about it. So, I saw that. Hot off the presses marathon is delayed. Holy [ __ ] Is it because I [ __ ] on their gameplay trailers? I think so. is more of the gameplay behind the gameplay trailer and probably that what's going on with Minds Eye. We always talk VC, but what about PE? Private equity in games. Mishka has a ton of blog posts and chilling for Gamescom begins. We'll get there in a second, but first I want to share my screen and do a like YouTuber timelapse

video. I have a saltwater fish tank update. So, I did the YouTube thing and I put my camera. People are going to want the cats now. They're going to want to cats after this. Yeah. Well, actually yours I would love to see your videos, but first I was just impressed I could figure out how to do a time-lapse video. It's actually not very hard. So, the tank is Australian, which is badass. Also, the Germans know how to do their reefing. By the way, reefing is the term when you have a saltwater fish tank, not the other kind of reefing that people might be thinking about. What's the other type of reefing? I'm not a native English speaker. Do I need to Google this? Oh, yeah. Someone not from California. What could you be talking about? Yes. Now, it is legal in California. So, smoking pot, dude. Do you not like I guess that's a very 70s thing. What's happening? What What's happening here? What are we doing? All right. All right. Fish tank is done. So, there you go. Congratulations. We have a fish tank. So, I will now stop and move

to shilling. Okay. Shilling. I haven't done shilling in many weeks. So on the blog and podcast one mobile gaming in 2025 10 trends that matter we had sensor tower on the podcast Sam anie he joined the podcast to talk about the trends that are shaping mobile games market there's a blog post there's a podcast on that number two outsourcing is dead long live co-development we had Carla Rylands from Vancouver she is chair of XDS so external developer summit she going to talk about how external development has changed since co they had this massive report 50 60 pages with so many graphs that I felt stupid looking at it. So Carla came in and explained everything. Very interesting things happening on co-development side. And then this week we had what AI is really doing to games and the game industry. We had George Ang from GGWP talking about the ethics of AI. So not a typical AI podcast, but more about the ethics, the different side of it. So not shilling on the AI will change everything and then on the event side.

So, Gamescom is approaching fast August, mid August. We have a couple events coming in. One is going to be the whiskey and water tasting event. Thank you, Jen, for correcting that one. This is the third year in a row. I was like, I think we're done with it. But the sponsors were like, no, no, no. Last year's event was so good. We need to do it again. So, we are doing it again. Absolut. We're all going to be for the whiskey tasting. That's going to be a and water. whiskey and water tasting. So, that's gonna be a fun one. Actually, the water was excellent. And then there's a big one, a big big event that's with Heroic Labs. They're turning 10 years. Wow. And we are organizing, I'm helping out on this one. We're organizing a casino style event. So, there's going to be casino tables. There's going to be the guns that shoot the t-shirts, the ones that Phil is always talking about. Like, you name it. Everything is going to be be there. Zambon, it's Zamboni is going to be there. It's on the Cologne Tower, the one where the AWS had a live ops

symposium event. So, it's right next to the place. It's going to be so awesome. So, if you can make it, this is going to be one of the biggest parties at Gamescom, if not the biggest link in the newsletter. So, yeah, you should join that one as well as the whiskey and water tasting. So, that's in for Gamescom and last shell. We're filming this next week, London 24th. I'm going to be in London talking about Meta Marketing Summit. I don't know what happened. I've been doing too many of these marketing podcasts. What the hell is going on? Do you put on like a cosplay costume and show up and like I'm a games marketer everybody and they just like buy it. Exactly. I'm saying I'm NextGen and then um then I identify as a marketer and I come in and tell about marketing trends. So I got invited. I'm like I can play a cosplayer marketer for a day. So if you are in London, Meta Marketing Summit 24th, we're doing a major gym workout with John Wright before that. So you'll probably see that on LinkedIn cuz he loves LinkedIn. I

love that you're adopting NextGen Jen. And NextGen has two meanings now. One is I'm cool and I'm thinking about the next things. And two is it's your way to impersonate me, the next. Got it. Exactly. The next marketer on the podcast. Okay. Uh you have a correction too, Mishka. Please. Oh yeah. Yeah, correction. So, this was what 3 or 4 weeks ago. I mentioned something about Candy Crush Solitaire that Two and a Half Gamers were bullish and I'm supposed to correct that no, they were bearish. In fact, they wrote an article on Candy Crush Solitaire that it's not looking as hot. So, I remembered incorrectly and I'm correcting that I was incorrect of what Two and a Half Gamers thought about Candy Crush Solitaire. Cool. Okay. Yakob is happy probably now. Yes. Yes, he is asking for that correction. But I haven't been on the podcast for three weeks. So, Jakob, hope you're happy. Okay, cool. I wanted to first go into a new report called the state of mobile

2025. This is from Sensor Tower and Tik Tok who did a Voltron together on their new report. A few just key things to cover here. One is game revenue slowed. So, from what Censor Tower tracks, we know this doesn't have web shops or ads. I actually have a huge question if the game revenue is actually slowing when you add all of those things in, but there's no way for us to know right now. Mobile game AP revenue grew just 4% year-over-year. We would have Phil in our head saying inflation, right, Phil? Inflation. So flat. Yes. Reached 84 billion. In contrast, non-game apps surged 25%. The mobile games category remains massive but clearly maturing with growth plateauing and competition intensifying. Second, downloads are down. This has been a trend for a while. We've been talking about this. Engagement is up. Global mobile game downloads declined by 2% in 24, but the time spent is rising. Obviously, you

know, we're trying to find the whales out there. The third one, of course, it's a Tik Tok point as it should be. Tik Tok is powering game discovery. Tik Tok ads drove 42% lift in install intent for games in 24 making it a key part of the strategy. A lot of the people I talked to Tik Tok's right up there as one of their core channels where you know even last year year before it was still like it's okay. So it is very very effective on the UGC trend as I talk to people as well UGCUA is a huge trend that seems to be really really working. So, Phil, I think you you wanted to call out something as well from the report. So, I totally agree with you that when we factor in things like inflation, games growth looks pretty much flat, which is what I've been talking about is that essentially we're tied to like US growth right now. But the other category that's been peing interest has been the apps category, which we've been spending a lot of time talking about whether or not they're going to eclipse the 50%

revenue share of total app store spend over games. and games actually I think it looked like they took back a little bit of share this quarter but the growth that they ended up breaking down in the report which I thought was well done is of that 13 billion that non-games have added in 2024 what is the subcategory of the app that's added that and overwhelmingly 4 billion of the 13 billion that they've added in the last year has been entertainment when you start to look at the category leaders for the non-gaming apps it's stuff like Disney Plus which is what we'd expect a lot of those apps are now like onboarding back into the app store. But I also would point out that there isn't a lot of these like homegrown wins, which is what I want to see more out of from this category. Like we normally talk about apps having this opportunity to expand IP. You know, we've talked about Play Ventures them having this thesis and like Duolingo is like the poster child for this. You know, Dualingo is a company that's what are they at 20 30 billion? Like they get some crazy multiple 10 billion 10 billion just under 10. No, they get some crazy multiple on their subscription

business. But they're a company that I think has really grown up with IP based revenue rather than using mobile to leverage some other aspect of their business. And I would love to see more of those type of companies rather than like let's say Disney Plus or like the New York Times is just moving their subscription on platform. LinkedIn I guess maybe NordVPN like it's a lot of strange things that end up popping out here rather than you know I would say more organic IP non-game experience like Delingo games like apps haven't gone over 50%. But looking at just app store revenue excluding Google Play, then we're seeing that actually games are taking now less than 50% of the revenue in inapp purchases while the games revenue has been stable. So this kind of indicates what we saw in the data that app revenue has been growing while games revenue has been stable. So at least on app store which is an indication for monetization and of the sort of a tier one west countries we can see that apps

are already beating games. I I still think you got to imagine that when you factor in web stores to your point, Jen, that games still have the lion share because I'd also imagine games have an higher web store share than apps launch especially for the entertainment apps. But when I think about Dolingo, Duolingo does not have like a higher web-based store than IP. But Netflix, Spotify, like Audible, like all these things all have far bigger web store presence. So yeah. And I think it's weird that we would say okay but there's a web store there's let's say another one is inapp ad revenue like that's of course not calculated. Yeah. But at the same time we can say that YouTube alone makes what $36 billion through ad revenue like just for context like if we start calculating all the revenues that these apps are making and it's actually much larger. Yes. Yes. That's yes agree. Yeah. That's why I'm like I think if we can find a way to combine everything I don't I would imagine games is actually growing is what it feels like. I don't know at the Google event Churro suggested that

they are actually going to make an attempt in the database to track for at least for gaming. He wasn't very specific. So, we'll see. But that's in the next couple months. They'll be able to track web stores, right? Web stores in theory and but no inup ad, right? We used to have the sort of a a formula that we did for hyper casual on how much revenue they're making. It was fairly good. Like we actually tested out with a couple of big ones like the wood and one. They were like, "Yeah, this is quite accurate." But we haven't done that for a long time. It's pretty simple per genre or two to say how much ad revenue the top games are making. Yep. All right. Moving on to all of the not E3 events. And so right now it's just super fragmented. So here's what we had in June. PlayStation say to play on June 4th. Nintendo Switch to release on June 5th. Summer GameFest on June 6th. That was a busy week. Oh, Xbox Games Showcase on June 8th. Steam's NextFest actually happened as well. I think that was last week. And then June 18th is a Nintendo

Direct that looks like it's mainly about the Donkey Kong game. This is a lot. This is a lot. In the same time frame, it would be great if there was a little bit more kind of consolidation around it. But just on Summer GameFest itself, Jeff Keelley announced that 2025 was the most watched SGF to date. The live show had 50 million live streams, peak concurrent of 3 million, up 89% year on year according to Steam Charts. This doesn't make sense. What do you mean it doesn't make sense? Michigan, go ahead and take these numbers to town. 50 million live streams, but only 3 million came. Just to be clear, I was pretty impressed by these numbers and they are very impressive numbers. So, I went to YouTube and I looked at how many streams the Summer GameFest 2025 4K 60fps has gathered and it's incredibly impressive. It was 8.5 million at the point when I looked at it. You know, not 50 but 8.5. And that's huge. That's amazing number.

And I was a little bit surprised by the 50. I don't know which platforms are bringing those views because it's like over what six time x what's being reported. I also have never watched gamefest and I watched the summer gamefest and Oh, you haven't? No, no, I watched it for the first time and it's like it's a trailer porn. It's like trailer on trailer on trailer on trailer and then there's a bunch of couple of old dudes come in and talk, you know, a few words about the game and then trailer trailer and then a founder comes in and says something that is really rehearsed and kind of like clichéish and a little bit janky but kind of fun way. And then again trailer and people are clapping with their like hands bleeding. they're just clapping more and and it felt there's a lot of like smaller games which is really cool that not that the a lot of games that you would see normally but yeah nevertheless I digress I I I don't understand where this 50 million comes from but the number is incredibly impressive 8.5 million views at least on the main one and then a lot smaller for the for the Yeah. No, so your your question it's a fair question on on the

number. So, this came up last year because Yoast from Super Yoast put a kind of a chart together and made an assumption kind of what you guys were doing was a 50 was on one channel at one time cuz I think his chart was against like the Super Bowl or against other major events. So, the way that they calculated it and what they said last year was it's all the different kind of like streamers out there that are streaming it and having conversations on different streamer channels. So they went like they have a way of like aggregating all of that. So it's not just through you know one destination it's all of it aggregated is the number they put out. And I believe a view on YouTube is 30 seconds for a live stream. At least 30 seconds of interrupted viewing. So that's a pretty low bar at 8.5 for a three and a half hour stream. Well a lot of it was on Twitch too. So remember like streaming happens on Twitch and then all of the other kind of you know platforms around the world. If you go viral on Tik Tok, they would add like 10 million. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes,

it's also a trailer fest. I'm surprised you haven't seen it. I'm also surprised you didn't see the Muppets. Typically, the Muppets are are on there. I understand why it's so successful with a little bit of a younger audience cuz it's like non-stop. I'm an old guy. It's too much. It's like I can't take it. Like, you're not the audience anymore, dude. Yeah, I know. I know. And that's what I'm saying. I'm an old guy. I was like 10 minutes. I was already like I need to read the reviews on these ones. like there's too many things coming out my way like I need to I need to digest. Yeah. The point of it is all of these new announcements. The challenge for them is that they don't have a lot because everything is fragmented. There wasn't as many like big announcements in SGF Summer GameFest because everyone is keeping things to themselves. So it's almost doing what E3 did back in the days. Everyone used to be at E3. Then it's like, well, we want to do our own well, we want to do our own event. And so, everyone's starting to kind of be spread out. Cool way for smaller games to get a lot of visibility. That's what it is because like they can't do their own show. And so, now you can be part of

this trailer fest. To give him credit, that is something he focuses on, which is trying to find underrepresented groups or indies to give them. I think he does some of that pro bono or really heavily discounted and then he obviously takes money from some of the bigger folks and that might also be why the bigger folks are are out. The only comment I have is that this these actually all these shows have replicated E3 relatively well online. Like it's actually, you know, you're getting the visibility into what's happening, but dynamics have changed significantly in terms of the type of content that they can provide or the people that are participating. you know, like EA was like nowhere on this [ __ ] and take two barely, right? So, they're basically doing their own shows, but when you can get access to 50 million people regardless of how this is calculated, that's way broader than anything that E3 ever did. So yeah, I think that in some ways, even though I miss E3 tremendously, I think this a good Yeah, the the direct to consumer piece is

really valuable, I think, and the media value behind paying to play to be a part of that for many people might be worth it, especially if you're not doing your own show. All right, Switch 2. All right, it broke records. 3.5 million sold in 4 days. This was according to Nintendo. Somebody else reported sales have reached a million units in Japan, making it the country's biggest console launch to date. The US week records 1.1 million units. It's weird that the US was only 1.1 and Japan was a million. It's an allocation issue, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, most people I know haven't gotten theirs yet. Previous record was held by PlayStation 4. according to Cirana which is in the US the top three bestselling Switch 2 games Mario Kart World Cyberpunk 2077 and then a enhanced Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. So fan boys and girls probably got their pre-orders versus any kid by how those games are

stocking up. Nintendo on track to keep its 15 million forecast by March. They're going to blow that [ __ ] away. I mean, if they don't do 20 to 22, I would be absolutely shocked. Wow. If they can make that many, this is the launch quantities, right? They're going to keep adding more and more to the channel and they'll sell out and add more and add more. And the whole goal is to build up inventory for holiday because launch is different obviously than typical, but like 50% of the sales of hardware for Nintendo is in December, right? For the whole year, right? So, it's a gift giving item. It's something to put under the tree. And so, they're going to try to build up law numbers for that. And then after holiday, they're just going to keep replenishing as much as possible. And so I can't even imagine that they don't get to a 20 million plus type number by the end of the fiscal year in March. So I think the only criticism I have of this launch is the same criticism I've had on Nintendo from the very their inception. I think is they give not one [ __ ] rat's ass

about third party, right? That the fact that there are no third party games or ports for like for every anything, right? like for Madden, for FIFA, for NBA 2K, for whatever is only because they did not allow it. Whether they did not provide the dev kits or they did not provide the support or they wanted to make it a clean launch for Nintendo, they are the worst worst partner out of all the console manufacturers by a long shot because they don't really just don't care. Having said that, I think what's cool is that for Holiday, we should see all these games released. They will have a bigger install base. It'll actually probably be better for third party to release at holiday. And maybe that's part of the calculus to some degree. But anyway, they should have lots more games available at launch for this title besides like Cyber Punk and that's it, right? Enhanced Tears of the Kingdom. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but content's coming on, right? So, Donkey Kong's coming and then they have the

Pokemon game, which my kids are really excited about, and then a bunch of other stuff for holiday. Nonetheless, yeah, this looks like an absolute killer launch. So, yeah. Yeah. Are they making positive unit economics on this? Is there margin on each unit? They historically have always maintain margins on every unit. Yes. So, I don't think this would be any different. And plus, it's like just an update. It feels like it's not like a whole brand new. I mean, they probably still had to change some of the manufacturing, but they probably have some economies of scale, don't they? Yeah. I actually I haven't seen an estimate on the bill of materials on this. I just haven't been looking. I just assume that they're basically break even because that's the way they've always positioned themselves. Break even or better. H I don't understand what this unlocks, Eric. You know, it just seems like, you know, iOS, you know, 3GS or something. I I just it's a hardware update. You know, the the internals get updated a little bit. It can run a

couple more third-party software. The narrative's the same. I mean, listen, I'm not promoting the camera thing, but I have had younger folks say that the camera thing is cool that you can kind of pretend you're an influencer, the picture thing. How many iPhones have you owned over the last like 10 years, Mr. Philip Black? Quite a few. If they gave me more upgrades to the Switch, like on a more continuous basis, I'd easily buy into that. That's what they were supposed to do. That was the actually the whole vision of this thing was that they were going to release it like three years ago. They were going to release some kind of upgrade, right? It just took them forever, you know? So, yeah. I mean, it's just a more capable device. It's creates, again, I've always said like any new hardware purchase just creates a more active install base. So, like people are going to be buying more software when they get new hardware. And frankly, the original Switch was a piece of [ __ ] okay? like it did really well and it was a successful launch, but it was a terrible piece of hardware. It was a joke even then, right? And can you imagine now? And so like people are just dying for an upgrade of something more

capable that has onboard storage, a better Wi-Fi chip, more capable Bluetooth, and not to mention the fact that yeah, the processors like the Xbox Series S. So, I don't know. I think this is a far better strategy than starting over. Like starting up with some other new like crazy scheme like the Wii U, you know, like this is it. This is what works. Not very innovative. I'll tell you that much. And so, you know, but you don't like innovation. Not on No, not on hardware. No, I I think that's not that that this is far better business decision than starting over from scratch with a new install base. Convincing people to buy something new. Well, it's basically a relaunch. It's was it eight years? So, you know, you weren't born yet and now you're an eight-year-old. It's brand new to you. So, you get in a sense like another guaranteed launch success because if you had success with the first one, the next eight-year-old's probably going to be like, "Cool, this is awesome."

How we think about it in toys, right? Like every eight years, you can relaunch a brand because it's brand new to someone. And if it was successful, just launch it again. And then you have nostalgia because apparently eight years is nostalgia as proven by Fortnite when they I'm fascinated how Nintendo just keeps on getting this audience like always like a new batch. It's so weird and keeping the old batch. It It's fantastic characters and IP nostalgia. As a parent, you're like, "Oh my god, I grew up on Mario. I love it." Even though you try to go back and play Super Mario Brothers and you want to kill yourself. It's so bad. Yeah. Yeah. I because we just played Super Mario I think like yesterday on the old Switch. I put my girls to it and they're like, "It's kind of lame. Let's let's get on Roblox. What are we doing this?" You got to take the new characters and, you know, they are updating play patterns. They are updating graphics to make it, you know, Nintendo for this generation. But yes, it does compete with crappy,

you know, well, I shouldn't say crappy cuz those kids love Roblox games. But but the thing I'm remarked by is they haven't had the impact from Roblox. Like I expected something to show up in their numbers and there hasn't been like any. Roblox is on the other platforms. They're on PlayStation, Xbox. Yep. I can't imagine they'd ever be on Nintendo. It's possible. It's like 80 90% of on mobile. Yeah. But but they're now they're marching towards 100 million MAU. Like I would expect to touch Switch in some way. And it doesn't million in DAU, dude. Yeah. DA, excuse me. the quality of the content is so at a different level. Like it doesn't matter. You're competing for time for a limited group of people. And I'm shocked they've been so resilient to Roblox's Inquisition. It's parent approved. Many I don't know if if you guys have the same thing. Many parents are like sneaking in a little bit of time on the Switch themselves because they have that nostalgia going. All right. So, there's a little bit of rumor, and this is in

flux, of Tencent potentially trying to purchase Nexon. So, the article I saw too was that the Korean gaming industry protested any of this talk and their alleged attempt to buy its way into the Korean gaming market through a $15 billion acquisition of Nexon. Basically, they said, "This isn't cool." Bloomberg started the reporting last week that Tencent was approached the family of the late Nexon founder Kim Jongju to explore a potential deal. It's unclear if this is going to actually happen if the family is going to come through. Tencent already owns 17.5% of Net Marble, 13.6% of Craftton, 20.7% of Webzen. So, I don't know. There's something going on here. So, Craig, I thought I'd phone a friend. I I I had like a visceral reaction to this thing and then I'm like, "Wow, they you know, I can't believe Tencent owns so many of these Korean companies. Like they have like such a share of them." But anyway, I I am clearly not up to date on Korean like acquisition policy or government,

you know, policy, but according to ChachiBT anyway, there is the Korea Fair Trade Commission, which I think and what seems to be will block any type of acquisition of a Korean company versus an investment, which I think is a distinct difference. Um and there's just a variety of concerns similar to all the things that we've talked about in the US despite you know our complete ridiculous position on Tik Tok these days. But you know there's national security there's market competition and generally public opinion of that are the three big criterion as to why this would never work. And again according you know the article that you wrote that gaming is considered a sensitive sector and a strategic sector in Korea. And so I think they're going to protect it at all [ __ ] costs if I were to be clear. And I think the quote that that lady made, I think it's a lady anyway that made it this Korean game society is this is a matter of national security that the government should not just neglect on the pretense of neutrality. She's like,

"This is strategic move to dominate one of the most important industries in Korea." You know, like she's like she's out of her goddamn mind. Like yeah, I think a How about this? This ain't gonna happen, right? The Koreans are not going to sell to the Chinese, one of their big gaming companies. Like, this is not going to happen. Now, I could be wrong. I'm no expert, but that's that's my sense. Why don't American companies get more interested in Korean companies? First of all, Korean companies are not for sale. Japanese companies are not for sale. You can't acquire Korean companies. They don't the regulatory commission. They just Yes. Look for a merger or an acquisition of a Japanese company in the history of man, right? There are none, right? Korean is by the same. Nintendo would have been purchased by somebody ages ago if that was the case. They're protective. That makes sense. But usually [ __ ] on China for requiring all this co-oping in terms of having like a domestic publisher. But it seems like these other eastern countries are just as bad when it comes to allowing Western capital into their countries which I think has been to

their own detriment. I mean the valuations would be higher because they have big bigger exit. Like I think about something like shift up which is really interesting. I mean, you can't imagine like a savvy being interested in something like Shift Up. There's a Middle Eastern version of Nikay, by the way, coming. Did you see that? I [ __ ] you not. Oh, get out. Really? No way. Oh, yes. It's a conservative version. It's a conservative version, right? Is it like a like a Saudi or a Lebanese version? Let me know right now. the screen online talking about I guess that makes sense if they can't be interested but it feels like it's to the detriment of those own countries and they deserve just as much criticism as you've given China too if Japan and Korea aren't allowing foreign capital western capital in dude yes 100% I'm totally critical of that I think it's been actually to their benefit particularly Korea for instance that have maintained their own industries within Korea and they are exporting all their you know cars and electronics and stuff like that but if you go to Korea and you try to buy like a Sony device like good luck. You know, you're not going to find [ __ ] American

cars, no. Right. They don't allow that [ __ ] in their country. But I think that's been to their benefit to some degree to build up their industries and to build up their companies. We don't need to get into a free trade debate, but I would at least say like a lot of Korean MMOs when they've been localized here. I mean, look at Amazon Game Studios, who I work for, like Lost Arc has had a really good run under their stewardship. And I do wonder if Korea had stronger ties to the outside to the west that they could have capitalized on this much sooner. Like there's no reason I think a lot of these games that are constrained to the Korean market couldn't have done better in the West. That's a long conversation. Yeah, cuz we I was there from the beginning of them trying to import Korean games to the West and gameplay and the and the designs are completely different. It's a total grind. It's not what the customers want here. The monetization thing is is egregious and insane. Lineage 2, like all that [ __ ] Yeah, that's fair. But I would still say Nicke has done very well in the West. And last time we pulled those numbers, I think the US was what, 30%. Don't quote me on that. There'll be a correction next week. [Music]

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Guessing where your users come from? That's so 2010. Absly is like having a cheat code for mobile marketing. Pinpoint attribution, real-time insights, and analytics that actually make sense. Stop flying blind and start flying smart. Appsflyer because your data is your best co-op partner. [Music] So, uh there were there were two announcement for capital raises in gaming. One was Candy Crush veteran secure $4.6 6 million for a studio 55 555s interior design games. Investment will support the company's general purposes and the development of its app, a gamified mobile application for interior design. The release is set for 2026. The company was founded by veterans from King with developers from Paradox Interactive, ROIO, and EA. So, a design home app that you have never seen before is coming into the market. I cannot wait. This is going to be I I do.

This is one of the five ideas. Phil, have have you invested in a company that has this thesis? Tell us more. I have. There needs to be more bets you can place in this genre. Like I want to see a little bit more juice. Mhm. Maybe. Tell me more about your investment. Uh it's it's okay. It's okay. New versions, new KPIs. Hey, you're you're into this, too. Super Bloom. Let's go. Super Bloom. Let's go. I I've been know either dressed has been a not a good situation. Yeah, I was kind of laughing just because there's not a lot of gaming ideas and this is this keeps popping up again like, "Hey, let's make an app where women can interior design rooms and then maybe order furniture to their homes." The e-commerce trap is it's so tempting to fall in. There's so many slides have been dedicated to like, "Oh man, what if we get CTR up for this e-commerce stuff and take a share of the revenue and like now we're buy the sofa." It's like, yeah. Anyway, and then there's another

announcement as cypress-based mobile game developer Nice Plans Studio has raised $3 million in a funding round by Pixlock with a 600K contributed by the studio founders. The funds will support the development of the company's upcoming what we titled Ricochet Squad. The developer of Nice Plan previously worked on Tactical. I play Tactical a lot. It's like a pretty cool game. It was by my games which was developed by Pancer Dog. The game has generated 53 million in app purchase and revenue achieved through 30 million lifetime downloads. So I I picked up these two announcement because they are very interesting. One is sort of a northern European cozy announcement. Hey, we're going to make a game that is an app that is going to be about decorations uh and we raised funding and we're going to come in in the market sometimes in 2026. And the other one is like we put in 600k of our own money into the shooter. We're we're already in the market and probably raising another round. So I'm also am always surprised by the uh the

ecosystems of Istanbul and Cypress especially in how aggressive they are in shipping and and working on games. I know Phil has been recently into Cypress. It's pretty cool. They come up with new ideas and put their money where their mouth is. So I wish the King founders would have done the same. It would have been much more interesting. But maybe they have. Maybe it wasn't part of the announcement, but anyways, Warner Brothers next. All right. Well, another day, another Warner Brothers game restructure. O, what a nightmare this place has been and has become. Just a reminder, they closed like three studios. Monolith Productions, which did Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, which is a very innovative game. Player First Games was a developer of Multiveres, which came and went, came and went. And then WB's Game San Diego got shut down as well. And Wonder Woman was cancelled, this game that they had been working on for a while. So there's some leadership changes. This guy Eve is doing the Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. Sean, this guy is doing Mortal Kombat and DC.

Steven Flinery is doing Central Tech and and publishing and other [ __ ] Well, so anyway, they're basically restructuring to focus on the three big things that they do. and we'll see what happens. Ultimately, Warner Brothers doesn't give a [ __ ] about games. Discovery doesn't give a [ __ ] about games. There's all kinds of stuff going on right now. So, it's like, who knows what'll end up happening. The one thing that's pretty clear to me here, and even though my friends in mobile will not be happy with this assessment, is that mobile was not even mentioned as far as I could see. So, it's like I think they probably will consolidate on, you know, the AAA stuff and then they'll get out what they have and see what happens. So, on even worse news. So, this rumor has been around for a while since GDC. So, I've been holding on to it, but it's been confirmed by multiple sources at this stage. Is that the company The Believer, a Los Angeles-based company, and if you could remember this, it was founded by former Riot Games execs Michael Chow and Steven

Snow. And it was a Andrezen/ Lightspeed joint. What possibly could go wrong? 55 million dollar of serious a funding like in March of 2023 again led by Bllight Speed Venture Partners our friend Moritz Andre Bitcraft Riot OneUp Cleveland and Michael Eisner's Turnante company where the [ __ ] that is all right so they have been confirmed believer has shut down last Friday is [ __ ] crazy is this the last AAA domino to fall what's left probably monsters no this is This is the revenge of the fact. We're just getting started, dude. We're just getting started. 2021 was disastrous investments in all kinds of companies that made no sense, and it's going to be $55 million. Wow. So, basically, my understanding, and people are going to be mad, I know, but they had $55 million in funding, blew that in

two years, right? In less than two years. And generally speaking, it seemed like they had absolutely no oversight in terms of spend from their venture investors at all. And at the end of the day, when they came out to GDC, they had nothing to show for it, right? I don't even think they even had a vertical slice. I think they had more concept type stuff. So, they went to back for more funding at GDC and they couldn't get it right. So, I I wish the best for the 80 souls out there that 80 plus souls that are part of this company. 80, something like that. They bring They were giving like I whatever I I heard all kinds of stuff. I I nothing is confirmed, but I Anyway, we can use all this great talent in the big publishers. So, let's hopefully they come back and do their thing somewhere else. There we go. That's So, we're going to talk about this in VCs and PES talk today because like the oversight is part of the things that private equity would do and definitely not something that that venture capital seems to do. But Chris,

what do you think is the next one? Is Gardens the next one? I I really don't want Gardens. I really like those guys. I'm not saying like that's a bad team or anything. They're great and absolutely but like giving this trail is like but yeah, they had a lot more to show and they were further along and I think they were far more prudent with their investments and their salaries. They're actually acting like a startup company versus my understanding with what happened with Believer. So, and TheoryCraft is another one, right? Theory craft is the gold belly belly up or well I mean this next story is the same story really right rocket boy. Oh so talk to me about rocket boy. Bill the rocket boy. All right. So, Build a Rocket Boy was founded by XGTA Leslie Benzes, right? And they are building a game called Minds Eyee, which is a huge GTA style game and a more futuristic like more techy type thing, right? Cyber Punk. So, anyway, they he had some issues with Rockstar and he left and it is unclear

exactly how much money, but the one round that they did confirm was $110 million series D. series D, mind you. So, there's still A, B, and C. And so, it could be I would imagine it's somewhere in the 300 million range in my 300 at least. Maybe this is seven years in the running. Seven years. Yeah. Yeah. But they were acquired like an Aquire, I think, by Play Fusion to further invest in this game, right? And so, I don't know, man. They pushed this thing out, right? It clearly wasn't ready. And it's been an absolute train wreck like this Mind's Eye game. And the reason I found out about it, which is even more crazy, I am still in touch with what's going on, but I still didn't know about this game coming out. But my son was watching this YouTube guy who's really funny by the way, and he went on for an hour and showcasing all the bugs and all like the crazy [ __ ] that happens in this game that it's completely not ready for prime time. So I think their ambition got a little bit ahead of their capability to

some degree but they had 300 people evidently in Edinburgh, Budapest and Mia. So this game has been labeled the worst rated game in 2205. It has a Metacritic score of 37 out of 100. A user score of 2.5 out of 10. Oh, very solid. Yeah. Oh boy. So technical issues, outdated gameplay described as dystopian future that plays like it's from 2012. disjointed narrative. Nothing was really good about this game at all. It was an absolute disaster. I mean, it was absolutely massive, too. And so, like, it must have cost a fortune to build and they did a Beyonce drop on it, right? Isn't this the one where I don't know if someone's going to talk about this where the two people left? Yeah. So, like cuz Chris went through the timelines and your timeline and in December 2024, but the real timeline actually continued to June 2025. The game released in June 2025, but also there was a couple of other releases. And those releases were

the chief legal officer and chief financial officer left the company. And here's this, the CFO changed the name and URL of his LinkedIn account. Like I have no info about this, but this of course doesn't indicate anything very good. And with so much money raised and such a powerful set of investors that they have, they have like Redbird and like these billiondoll New York funds that have put in money into them, this can turn really ugly really quick as they start looking for who is to be at fault. And now you don't have your second and first line defense, which is your chief legal officer and your chief financial officer. So hope it's just a bad game. Let's let's just leave it at that. All right. So, we're covering a lot here. I wonder if someone is keeping track of all of these, you know, bigname founders who get a [ __ ] ton of startup money. Is there a scorecard? Because

what feels like is going on is that your chance of being Crest's kid getting into the NBA is higher than your chance of being an ex bigname company winning at a startup. Is that the new bet? Yeah, that's a little unfair, but yes. No, in a good way. Like I actually think you can make it. I'm just joking. I'm just teasing. Um, can you give me a little bit more color, Eric, on like how would you do venture capital in AAA if at all? See, here's the thing, though. When I look at this on paper, though, it's a large amount of fixed capital for a series of revenue to be delivered later on. Like, that feels like a VC style problem is to take on those losses for year after year after year. feels like akin to the VC model. No, that's actually the opposite of the VC model. The VC model is you invest and you build it over time and you continue to invest as you scale over time. Yeah, that's the problem with AAA. That's why it works for mobile to some degree because you you revenue coming out of the game. You

build revenue, you spend money on UA, you raise more money and then you and you scale and then you sell or go IPO, right? But with AAA, it's like you just build for five, six, seven years like a money pit. it releases, you get revenue for a few months and then you're done. You know, that's fair. They can't show any traction. Like at least when you're taking on losses with Uber, you can show, you know, increase in riders or drivers, but they have nothing to show. They have no real validation of demand, right? And once the game is out, you have to start that all over again. It's like five or six years. It's just not a VC model, right? And so, so we're starting to see these new publishing things start to come up like Kepler is coming. whatever this thing joint is with Owen Mahoney and Bing and stuff like that like another there like you know I've been consulting for foris which is like a similar idea it's like these are the ones that should be placing multiple bets across different types of products and different types of teams in order to build another publishing organization right to compete to some degree right with some of the bigger publishers and see some of these double A single AA and then potentially

AAA games come to market that's the appropriate model for gaming AAA gaming in general model, right? Not the VC model, but but the publishing model is still the same though, right? Like you're putting aside capital with no return in the short run over and over again every single month. Except with the publisher model, you have milestones. So there are deliverables to measure traction, but it's still not validating demand, right? But a publisher model are people that are actually publishers like that know games. Like the venture capitalists don't know games, right? these people that are investing in games know [ __ ] all about games, you know, like I want to double click on what Crest said because that's the point like with these big funding rounds. A lot of these investors are generalist investors and they are the ones who are pouring these tens of millions because they're are gigantic funds and that's what we're seeing also as a problem. There are funds that are run by people who actually are in gaming but they are not billion dollar funds. I mean some of them are kind of right now but they are the problem. baby and throw it like $110

million round D on a company that hasn't shipped a game in 70 years. You have to not know anything about gaming to do that. It's ridiculous for me to like second guess what was happening in 2021 when money was so cheap and there was just so much of it and people were trying to just get into the gaming space because it was hot hot hot. But at the end of the day, the right longer term model, I think, is more of a publishing model for gaming where you can make multiple bets and have like a pipeline of products and people that are managing the [ __ ] process, which I think is the problem that happened with Believer is that they had no oversight, right? They were hiring engineers for like a million, $2 million salary, something ridiculous like I was hearing. It's like that's not the way you build a startup, right? That's not a startup. What about something else that doesn't seem to be tracking? Well, yeah. So yeah, Bungie basically announced an indefinite delay for Marathon. So it was supposedly coming out September 23rd, but as you recall, the feedback from the alpha test was very, very negative. So they are

basically kind of reassessing the strategy and changing parts of the game. I think this is like kind of bad news, good news. Like it's really bad news that the game is delayed indefinitely clearly, right? But the good news is that Sony's not getting rid of it, right? They're not canceling it or shutting down Bungie, which is was another option for Sony in theory. So, they're going to give it some time to like make it better and see if they can pull it off. I think it's actually kind of good. Yeah. Netn net, you know, to me. Yeah. It's a marathon, not a sprint. [ __ ] joke. Oh my god. He was waiting for it. God damn it. I want to talk about Remedy. So, they launched today. Hey, I think today or yesterday they launched their version of Hell Divers, which is FBC Fire Break. It's not really looking as a fire break. It has like 60% positive. So, looking, you know, all righty. This game particularly, I'm not sure how long has been in development. I listened to the podcast with the CEO. I know that they have been developing this sort of a multiplayer shooter. It was first to be freetoplay and then it

changed to probably what this is for at least seven years. It was called the Project Vanguard. At one point it was being developed out of Finland, then it got developed out of Sweden. I don't know where this game comes from, but it seems like a pivoted to this. In the podcast, the CEO said they spend about $30 million on development costs plus marketing of this game. This is the first self-published game from Remedy, which is interesting. He said that they need to sell, was it 10 million to break even? I think he said they need to sell 2 million to break even or something like that. So, it's not that crazy. The game costs between $30 to $40 if I'm correct. It has two different SKs. It was released though at the same time on Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, which kind of indicates that they knew that the potential for this game is quite limited. So, Remedy is the last public gaming company on Finnish stock exchanged. It was interesting. And I listened to the podcast with the CEO and interestingly enough because the reporter seemed to have read the hard

truths about the Finnish game industry, my DOF blog post that got that got very viral here in Finland and me deported. And so the question that she was asking was pretty much from what I wrote, which was very interesting. And to summarize it, the remedy CEO kind of to be honest blamed the competition for limited the success they've had, saying that well the competition and he always talked about the west coast that the salaries on the west coast are so high and the budgets are so big and that's the competition and just the the uh the situation in the market. But the reality is looking at Remedy, it is a fantastic studio. I think it's they've been live for 25 years. games like Max Pain, Alan Wake, Control really, really good at at making these double A games. When they IPOed, it seems like they raised capital to the owners because they didn't build out their publishing function. And I think that is kind of influencing them still. You know, their product strategy is very

focused on very much a niche singleplayer horror games like apart from Resident Evil, what's what's in this category? And they they kind of left out some of the games that they were doing before. Like I remember when I was a kid, I played Death Rally, which was one of their game, Max Pain. They sold that to Rockstars, all the IP rights. I think they are making a game now with Rockstar on that one. And their budgets, even though they're quite small, like when we're talking about $30 million a game, they're still too big to cover their returns because after the release of the last one, which was Alan Wake 2, it got insane Metacritics. They had to, I think, take a loan to kind of stay afloat. And when you look at their financial returns, they made $51 million million euros last year in revenue and the EBIT was minus4 million. Didn't Epic publish that? Yeah. And so, so because they didn't build out their own publishing function, their games are published by all kinds of different companies and they kind of don't own their fate. Even though last year lost like 4 million or so, that revenue was

up actually 50%. So, that was a good year. And even on a good year, it wasn't actually that strong. So, Remedy is kind of perfect example of what's going on in the Finnish game industry. The market has changed considerably. Nevertheless, the game studios kind of retracted and are doubling down on what worked before. So, just focus on the game, focus on the gameplay, focus on on the experience, just craft a good product. And when you put in all your focus on the product and kind of leave everything else to others like publishing, like marketing, you end up building these really really goodlooking games, but your faith is in the hands of somebody else. It's in the hands of the publisher, right? It feels like they've they've made products that that either misses the market or is just not competitive in the market. and and now they are as the CEO said going more towards what works in the market by building a multiplayer game in the setting that they have developed but at the same time this game doesn't have live ops and you know the the first kind

of reviews coming in are not exactly hell divers so I don't know it's going to be interesting to follow but it's kind of sad that they didn't build this is a disaster I was looking at this I'm trying to be nice this is an utter disaster like when you look at the steam numbers which you shared and we have on the screen. Right now, there is only about 2,000 peak CCU on Steam. And you're telling me this was released for free on PlayStation Plus and Game Pass, which sometimes I'm a fan of. You want to get initial distribution, especially in a live service game. But if you're telling me you're getting what, maybe 30 million from PlayStation Plus, that's just a random guess. And like let's say 15 million downloads off of Game Pass, I know that's extremely generous as well. You're telling me like they're getting no uplift in PC from that massive console distribution? This is over. Like this is self-published. It's Dunzos. It updates your priors I think on the Game Pass and PS+ distribution too. Be the game of the year for Finnish Game Awards in 2020. [Music]

Oh god, they should kick you out. In fact, we'll find out soon if they did. Yeah, but but they do build they build amazing games and amazing single player games and and kind of bums me out that that they are in this horror genre. So I feel like if they would control their own publishing, they would be bigger. I don't know where where that IPO money went. I I don't know what they did with it because they've let others publish their game for eight years after the IPO. Okay, it's time finally to talk about King Shot. I don't think there's any particular reason that we're talking about it other than it's a game that's been scaling for a while. From what I understand, it was under a different publisher name when it was being soft launched. So, the data we have on Censor Tower just suggests that it started scaling really at the beginning of the year. What it's done is it's almost taken over the Century Games portfolio. And if you remember Centry Games, they're of course the makers of White Out Survival, which you guys did a fantastic and used to be a fun plus studio, right? This used to be the fun plus studio. Frozen City has done very

well as we've kind of talked about as well, but White Out Survival has just grown revenue almost linearly, but Kingshot has done a number in terms of increasing its revenue share for their portfolio. And if you remember, their portfolio is not just 4X games. They also have Roblox games which they've worked on. They have a game that's going after Chrome Valley Customs called Truckstar. like they are everywhere trying to make revenue. If they if they see a genre or even a platform they want to go after, as Eric would say, these guys are absolute [ __ ] gangsters. And Kingshot has been like I would argue probably their next big attempt at doing this. It's pretty interesting in that it's primarily US-based product right now. About 20% of the revenue is coming from the United States. And it follows what we've seen from their I don't want to say fake ads playbook. The ads that they have right now are focused a lot on kind of the traditional things that we're seeing in mobile creative. Overwhelming armies of, you know, enemies swarming you, but the early gameplay is a lot of action RPG. It's

you and your king riding around on a horse defending against hordes of people attacking your town. The sim elements that you saw in Frozen City, villagers being happy or not are also available. That second kind of squad RPG core that we sometimes see in a lot of these Forex games is here. And there was two things that I wanted to draw attention to on the economy side which I thought were fantastic monetization. The first was a deal system they have called Arcane Trove which is you making a series of purchases on consecutive days and after you completing those consecutive purchases you get some sort of ultimate reward or you get a higher reward. You get a grand prize. It is compa in some sense. It is complete gotcha just collection systems. Machine zone used to run these stepup offers and every forex game has run them which is okay. I'll start with a $5 pack. When you purchase that, I'll get a $10 pack. I'll get a $20 pack. I've been skeptical about whether or not this actually increases average revenue per paying user rather than just immediately going to the $100 skew. But I think this is a very interesting way to layer on offers as a

collection mechanic. And the second thing which I thought was really really impressive and this is something that I've wanted from a long time to get people to understand from web 3 is that they have these mechanics called staking which is you putting tokens into a particular project and then you essentially getting yield and what they've done is they've implemented this for hard currency in Kingshot. So there's a bank mechanic and it's under tight control right now but you can put in a certain amount of hard currency and after a maturation period you will get that amount of capital back plus a interest rate. So you can you can basically buy all this hard currency and have it kind of just floating. Now don't get me wrong, there's a lot of controls here because you don't want compounding growth to destroy your economy, but I still think there's something to having players purchase a set of capital, set it aside, and kind of keep it swishing in the system. And I think web 3 has actually been really good at using this mechanic. And I've been waiting for it to come over to mobile, and we'll see whether or not the bank mechanic spreads. But this was another thing that I thought was really interesting. But besides that, it seems like the success of this game is honestly just playing

the Frozen City playbook. And then the art is really, really captivating. Like the IP building here, I thought, is a step up from where they were in Frozen City. Yeah, for sure. I think I've seen this bank feature. Was it in Legends of Mushrooms? I don't I feel like it was in one of those idol games where I saw it as well and I was like, "Wait, is this like like I'm depositing like earning interest in a game?" So, it might be other places. I've been playing this game like a [ __ ] crack addict for like months now. So, I I am kneede in this thing. And I will say it is a complete bait and switch, right? The tower defense gameplay mechanics they have on the ads, you don't even do that. You can't even do that. There's like one small little like quick thing you have to do like that's like that but none of it is crazy the bait and switch. It is a 4X game. Yeah, definitely. Right. And they but they do have like a collection mechanic like an RPG collection character mechanic upgrade evo type [ __ ] But at the end of the day there's just a ton of things to spend money on.

But it is like that 4X mechanics a lot of PvE type mechanics but then also PvP. So anyway, it is an amazing game, which I think is kind of what's happening is from a role playinging, you know, collection game to a 4X game. But I started getting my ass handed to me by some guy who's coming after me constantly. Just destroying my base and I'm that's when I my PDE Care Bear person just like bows out and says, "F this." But yeah. No, I'm the same way. Whenever I That's what happened to me in White Out Survival. I was like, "Oh, this is fun. This is fun." And then your shield goes down and you get your ass kicked. You're like, "This isn't fun anymore." Do Do you remember Top War was the game that started this trend? Top Yeah. I played that. You mean that? You mean the action RPG elements into? No, the bait and switch 4X. It looked like Boom Beach like just like this Kingshot looks a little bit like a like Supercell game. So it looked like Boom Beach and then you merged together different units and they created a different one. So it was

like a merge two with battling and that was in 2020 and it started scaling really heavily. It was just after the rise of kingdoms came top war and then after that it has been taken over by century games and other ones. Top war was a Chinese developer. I forgot what the developer name is correct. First fun something. Yeah it sounds the most Chinese name you can come up with for a studio. Uh but and especially with the chart that Crest us a lot of his talks with the IDFA deprecation and like what genres have been successful and what genres have been less successful. Like you can see RPG on the other side and surprisingly strategy games are doing really well and they're doing really well because of this. Yeah. And like mobile right now is is 4x and it's cash. So what RPG games should do? They should do this bait and switch RPG. Like how can you bait and switch to I feel like they've already absorbed RPGs. You know, this is something we try to do on Breaking Bad was add a lot of gotcha to these experiences. Chinese developers

have been Yep. Chinese developers have been doing this for a while. Search fleet command does this. This game does it. Like one of the screenshots that we're looking at right here is you basically going through a squad RPG flow, right? It's you and your legion of troops in auto battle with with abilities triggering. So like they've already absorbed it and it's just a question of like what other game plays can 4X absorb because at the end of the day the reason everyone's doing 4X is because it's the most it's the most unbelievable monetization system we've ever created. Like it one of the podcasts I had on Game Economist cast a long time ago was like what is the greatest game economy of all time and I said match because match is a sustainable game economy that doesn't result in a lot of long run inflation. We understand the levers that make it going. I mean Candy Crush has been going for 10 years and is hitting all-time highs in terms of revenue. we haven't checked it back in a long ter time. That game is still absolutely slaying and 4x seems to be the other one that stood the test of time is that it's an incredible monetization engine and instead of you know having steady sync it's about getting average revenue per paying user as high as possible. It's about an auction for power. It's a completely

different paradigm and everything has basically been absorbed into those two paradigms. You're either match or you're 4x and mobile right now. Don't forget social casino dude. That's the most ingenious model ever, dude. Cuz just you're [ __ ] people are paying for currency that has no value. And then they continue to buy it over and over and over again. Yeah, that that's one I will just truly never understand is all you're doing is playing a slot machine and in the real world people are like, "Oh, how much?" And it's like, you think match is that much different? You think match is much different than a social casino? I I really disagree with that. Uh I think there's a lot at least in match you're achieving something, correct? Right. I mean, how many boards do you have? I got a ton of boards. I love traveling to new areas. Like, if you play a lot of social casino games, they're about meta collection. They have all these album mechanics. Like, it's not just you pulling a lever. There's a bunch of stuff that goes into Social Casino these days, too. Yeah. No, I I I see that that there's a little bit more. I I kind of meant like the shitty slot games or the bingo games that aren't Yeah. I was I

always talk about the traditional slot. I just don't think that Monopoly Go is really a casino game because there is a more meta progression going on than a casino game. It's a hybrid. I think it needs its own because the Coin Master, the Monopoly Goat, like those are in a sense it feels hybrid like. Yeah. A little bit of each. Anyway. All right. So, we need to wrap up. PEVC next time. Next time. Okay. All right, everyone. We will see you next week. Bye. 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. Those stars and likes while small action on your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show. More importantly, are you a member of the Deconstructor of Fun Slack group? If you have 5 years or more of games industry experience, go to deconstructorofund.com/slack and apply to join. Join the games

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