Unity streamlines, PlayStation cuts, The Division, Elder Scrolls Blades, Coffee Stain, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games industry recorded on location this week in glamorous Norfolk. Here we go. Biggest story of the week, certainly by readership since we last spoke, was Unity's decision to sell off its Supersonic label and close ironSource's ad network. So, Unity has been working on this kind of turnaround ever since new boss Matt Bromberg joined the company. It has put a lot of effort into its Unity Vector ad tech and that seems to be paying off. But, like AppLovin before it, it seems that it is done with hyper-casual game publishing or hybrid casual game publishing, depending on how you look at it. Supersonic, the label behind mega hits

like Bridge Race, Going Balls, Build a Queen, and many, many more, is going to be sold off. Unity has appointed a financial advisor to speed up the process and the closure of the ironSource ad network also means that not long after the $4.4 billion merger of Unity and ironSource, practically all of the ironSource bits of the company will not really be public-facing anymore. There may be bits of ironSource in Vector, but the ironSource ads network will be no more. That's closing down effective April 30th. This is all down to Unity making an effort to simplify the business and this news came out as a result of Unity publishing its first quarter 2026 results early. The preliminary results

say that revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2026 actually came in above guidance. The firm expects to report Q1 26 revenue of 505 to 508 million dollars, which is above the expected range of 480 to 490 million. And adjusted EBITDA essentially profits of 130 to 135 million dollars for that same 3-month period, which is notably ahead of previous guidance, which was in the 105 to 110 million dollar range.
[snorts]
The way Unity breaks down by revenue now is it expects grow, which is effectively ads and UA to generate revenue of 352 million this quarter. And the engine business 155 million in revenue. So, the ad tech UA side of Unity

way ahead in terms of earning power, even though I think for a lot of people Unity is the engine company. It is not anymore. It is very much an ad tech company. And within the reporting, I couldn't help but add a little bit of extra context including the departure of practically all of the ironSource executive team in January 2024 and October 2024's report in which sources told me about alleged bullying, mismanagement within Unity's ad tech arm and big culture clashes between the ironSource and Unity folks. Dozens of resignations, unhappiness, toxic atmosphere. You name it. So, I think selling off unwanted parts of the business will help with this Unity turnaround story that CEO Matt Bromberg is keen to

push. The next question is who is buying Supersonic? They have a portfolio of games with hundreds of millions of downloads. Probably tens, maybe hundreds of millions in monthly active users. So, for a company who is keen to carry on in hyper / hybrid casual, this is probably a pretty good portfolio of games to buy.
[snorts]
So, you know, the likes of Voodoo, Say Games, Homa, maybe even the new publisher on the scene, Arcade. They have backing from Dubai. They may well be contacted by Unity's financial advisers in the near future. They may well be talking right now. There's also Tripledot on the scene as well, who swept up some of AppLovin's unwanted games, and maybe they're in the market for more

from Unity. So, yeah, big changes for Unity, and given the depths of despair the company was in a couple years ago, I guess this is good news. On Monday, I sort of got confirmation of layoffs in PlayStation Mobile, but not really. So, let me explain this one. PlayStation's mobile arm hit by layoffs, says the headline. PlayStation has cut around 50 staff from its studio business group, we are told. And that includes staff in its PlayStation Studios mobile division, we are told. The official line from Sony is quite vague. It just said it made several strategic adjustments to support long-term sustainability. There were limited workforce reductions across select teams. I understand that yes, around 50 were let go.

But it is really hard to say whether all of those were in mobile or some of those were in mobile. Sony also would not confirm the details. And I think it is also worth mentioning the LinkedIn post. One person let go suggested that basically all of PlayStation Studios mobile had closed down. Which may still be true. Sony would not confirm that either. But I am told that the Ratchet & Clank game will continue. That is not an internally made game. That is OB B, the French developer. And MLB The Show mobile is made by Sony's San Diego studio, which is also not PlayStation Studios mobile. And also it should be said that the various bosses Olivier Courtemanche and others seem to still have jobs at PlayStation Studios mobile.

So it is still an entity within PlayStation. But yeah, this this came about as a result of a Blue Sky post from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who is always on the money. I followed up to get some confirmation based on the extra material that I had. I thought this is worth reporting on especially given the extensive coverage I gave to PlayStation mobile as it hired a lot of people in 2022, acquired Savage Game Studios in 2022. And but then it seems to have all kind of fallen apart. Savage got renamed Neon Koi, the leadership left, then got closed. But, PlayStation does have a permanent head of mobile, Olivier Court Malsh, and there are other projects in flight. So, you got that Ratchet & Clank game, you got MLB, and you got Horizon Steel Frontiers, as well as Destiny

Rising, which is a co-production with NetEase. So, PlayStation mobile still alive, but possibly not making games itself, maybe more of a kind of licensing division these days. Xsolla connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally. With Xsolla [music] Web Shop, sell virtual items, in-game currency, subscriptions, and custom offers directly [music] to players, while driving up to five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number one web shop solution, Xsolla provides the tools for developers [music] to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit xsolla.com [music] to learn more. That's xsolla.com. Ubisoft has had another go at carving out a niche in the highly competitive mobile shooter market. It released The Division

Resurgence this week. It's a game that has been in soft launch for a couple of years at least. And uh freelancer Alex handled this one as he did with the Rainbow Six Mobile article that we ran. And that came out about a month, six weeks ago. So, two big-name shooters from Ubisoft in as many months arriving on mobile. Some fun nuggets in this one. The game's producer, Pierre-Hugues Pechlong, I'm going to say Pechlong.
[snorts]
Sorry if I've mangled that, was asked, you know, which studios worked on this? Which studios took the lead on the project?" And as Alex notes in the piece, these big Ubisoft games are usually the work of six, seven, eight, nine, 10 studios with one lead studio, usually Montreal. But with The Division Resurgence, that does not appear to be the case. So, development duties were split between Vietnam, Singapore, Newcastle, Bordeaux,

and Chengdu studios at Ubisoft. And Petche Long, when pushed on which studio took the lead on the project, he answered, "The lead team is a group of people throughout Ubisoft mobile games." So, a group effort by the sounds of it. You may detect from my tone that I'm not sure that's a great idea. But, they shipped a game, which is more than I've ever done. So, good luck to them. The Division actually has a pretty solid following and has been pretty successful. The unique selling point for this one is that it's an open world RPG-type shooter. So, you can roam around. You can play the game for free. There are no monetization barriers or anything hidden behind monetization, which I think I don't know, it's a it's a good message to put out there to consumers.

But, to industry watchers, knowing how tough the industry is right now, there may be a few eyebrows raised at that one. He also wouldn't talk about how the game's monetization changed throughout that soft launch, which you would assume is one of the things that changes the most as players play and you react to what they like and what they would like to pay for. But, yeah, I mean, Ubisoft has some great brands in its arsenal. The Division is one of them. And I hope like Rainbow Six Mobile that this finds its niche. But it is up against some pretty fierce competition. Call of Duty Mobile is an absolute monster. You've got your PUBG Mobiles of this world and things like Delta Force. Destiny Rising is out there now.

So there is no shortage in this category. Petter Lund does acknowledge that it's going to be tough. But there is a lot to do. He adds at the end, "It's going to be very fun, very intense." So yeah, good luck to Ubisoft with The Division Resurgence. Let's run through a couple of other quick ones from this week. Bethesda quietly killed off The Elder Scrolls: Blades. This was a game I flagged in the Microsoft's mobile gaming empire analysis that I did about a month ago when all those Microsoft gaming / Xbox management changes were made. This was one of the games that was clearly struggling to justify its existence. And actually Bethesda just quietly pulled the game from the app stores, put a little pop-up in the game saying the servers are closing on June the 30th.

And this was noticed by players on Reddit. There didn't seem to be any sort of official confirmation. I obviously asked one of the PRs as well. They've not responded either. And while I was Googling around this one, I noted that Bethesda has just removed all of the individual web pages related to The Elder Scrolls: Blades on the Bethesda website and The Elder Scrolls website, which I think is a bit much. Obviously, this game maybe didn't turn out the way they wanted. If you look at the App Magic estimates, it got about 11.9 million installs, made about 13.5 million dollars, which is probably not enough to even cover development, you would think. But, still, I'm sure picked up a decent following. So, for Bethesda to delete this game from existence seems a little bit rough

on the developers who I'm sure worked really hard to make this game work. Yeah, a strange end for Elder Scrolls: Blades. Another quick one that came out unfortunately on April Fools' Day, and it is from a studio that is well-known for being quirky and probably did do some sort of April Fools' stuff. But, here's Coffee Stain. They're closing their mobile studio, which is based in Malmö, about 17 staff at that studio, according to its website. This was announced on LinkedIn by mobile VP Daniel Persson. It's home to mobile development and publishing operations. That was the team that brought Goat Simulator to mobile in 2023. They also ran the game Song of Conquest and the makers of smash hit Mediocre, a great indie studio. They also joined Coffee Stain Malmö, which I was not aware of until this story came about.

But, yeah, Daniel Persson, mobile VP at Coffee Stain, thanked all of the staff for their efforts and said, "There's some great talent here if you want to snap it up." Coffee Stain Malmö closing, more people out there looking for a job. Let's rattle through the regulars. Data digest, a good stat from my friend Chris Dring on the games business. He interviewed Javier, co-CEO of Scopely, at GDC. And there was an interesting stat in that interview saying that just 20% of its revenue comes from newer players. Or to flip it the other way, the quote is 80% of our revenue comes from people that have been playing our games for more than a year. So, Scopely really got its hooks in a lot of Monopoly Go players and other games, of course. Pokémon Go also in their armory

these days. There is also a summary of Tencent's latest financials. This is based on Niko Partners translations and estimates. But, Tencent's total gaming revenue reached 40 billion last year. The revenue highlights, Honor of Kings, of course, but also Peacekeeper Elite, Valorant, PC and mobile, and higher revenues from Supercell's games, PUBG Mobile, as well as incremental revenue contribution from Wuthering Waves. Huge revenue, down 6%. Profitability up 10% 2025. Subway Surfers City, 15 million installs, 1 million revenue in its first month, according to AppMagic. Amanotes, the maker of those Magic Tiles music games, 4 billion downloads for their games since the company was formed. AppCharge claims it now processes $1 billion in annual direct-to-consumer

transactions. And Everplay, owner of Astrogon, StoryToys, and Team17, profitability up 11.5% in 2025 to 56 million. A Newzoo study finds that over 60% of gamers play on mobile. And February's top performers, according to Sensor Tower, are, of course, Last War: Survival by revenue and Block Blast by downloads. The whole top 10 in the article. That data also from the GamesIndustry.biz. Have a look at the article for more fine detail on all of that. Let's also run through new games and soft launches as well. Headlining the new games update last week, Cookie Run: Oven Smash. That is out now. Field Day from Bitog, which is a group of Clash of Clans and Clash Royale developers, ex-Supercell guys.

Their new game, which looks a bit like Extraction MOBA, Brawl Stars. That soft launched. There's also Seven Deadly Sins: Origin, another game from that franchise. Pixel Worlds has relaunched after some time away.
[snorts]
Farming Simulator 26 is coming to Netflix. And there's a load more games in there.
[snorts]
In the soft launch update, not a huge amount of movement, but you've got your you've got your regular Hill Climb 3, Overwatch Rush, Garena Free City, Habbys Dice Hero, Petty Planet, Minecraft Blast from King, many, many, many, many more. All good stuff. The full list is on the website. Have a look. That's it for this week. Hope you enjoyed the sound of gravel underfoot and birds tweeting this time from Norfolk and not from

Hertfordshire. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.