Week in Mobile Games E32 - Google Play's Judgement Day

[Music] hello and welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights I'm Craig Chapel head of content at pocketgamer.biz and on the podcast with me today are our Deputy editor Paige cook and our news editor Aaron assel how you both doing Paige what you been up to nothing too special see it's October so it's an excuse to try and watch some more Horrors there's like a thing on now TVV it's like a cuz I always struggle with picking films because you spend more time choosing than you do actually watching it so they've got this thing where it's like 31 days of Halloween you click it and it just gives you a horror film to watch but it's um it's a bit hit and miss you know there's some okay ones some terrible ones it did have the birds on it which I'll admit I didn't watch the whole thing through I just went through it but if you don't know what it is it's

a movie from the' 60s and you should just everyone should just skim through it just to see how in the 60s this was genuinely something terrifying and you watch it now it should not be in horror it should be in comedy because it's hilarious so yeah that that was fun but I have been getting my horror fix from games I've been playing um the new Silent Hill 2 remake which is very good I uh it's been so long since I played Silent Hill that Playstation One game yes that is a long long time ago do they still hold up does the Remake the remakes the Remake does there was a lot of like when it was in development I think like nobody had faith in it and everybody thought it was going to be terrible but it's actually genuinely really really good it looks great the sound is really really good um so yeah would definitely recommend it's quite nostalgic even though obviously it looks nothing like the original because it's completely up to date I would say just before this about horribly movies I I'm

not that big a fan of horror films but then if I think about it I might be wrong about myself I love the alien franchise I like a good be movie that's kind of horror um what's the film called the velocci Paster if any if anyone ever want wants to watch that it's not really horror s sort of horror sort of ridiculous B Movie film it it's brilliant I've seen it I'm certainly I've seen it twice it's about a pastor that becomes a velociraptor sounds amazing there is one that's called Zombie ver again it's not a horror it's more of a comedy but it's it's what it sounds like it's zombie beavers I've seen zombie beavers it's it's a legit good film it's not even like a to me it's not even just a good be movie it just a good film it's something it's an experience not quite as high a praise I feel like I should be making notes here yeah not seen any of these the Velociraptor one sounds very compelling it's it's the lowest budget

movie you'll ever watch um but it is it's it's good nobody quite I feel like I've learned a lot about you from this yeah yeah there's even uh us there's even really quickly yeah we already get on in the games podcast there's a scene at the beginning of that film where where uh because it's so low budget I it's right at the start I guess I won't give the spoiler but so it happens basically involves a car blowing up but because they don't have a budget the car it just comes up on screen explosion here anyway sorry bit of DET thanks thanks on that page Aaron what have you been up to yeah so um slightly less horror based but um I had a uni friend come and visit last weekend which was very nice um over a year since i' seen him catch up remines on old times yes that was nice and then other than that obviously the big the big news of this week from Nintendo we have you know the

new hardware at long last which is an alarm clock called alarmo um so now you can wake up to Mario collecting some coins and um as you as you roll about in bed wishing the noise would stop they'll he'll collect them that much faster and he won't stop until you emerge from your bed to the victory like level clear music and like what better way start your day the one that the one that made me laugh the most I I honestly thought it was April I checked the date cuz I'm like I'm sure it's like October there's the Splatoon them you can get and I was just like right so you're going to wake up to the sound of gunfire in the morning I mean it's not I might not choose that mode it would wake you up it would get me out of bed that's for sure uh yeah that was a weird it feels like something that I probably need to get me out of bed in the mornings but also think I would

absolutely 100% hate yeah it does actually seem like a novel idea that as it's like watching you which is a bit questionable but um you know it won't stop until you get out of bed whereas obviously like your phone alarm you could run the risk of just like yeah I'mma turn it off and then you know head back down on the pillow and you're away again whereas this you know this won't let you stop you know you can't stop it until you're up and out of bed and you're probably less likely to pull back to sleep anyway so yeah the switch successor hopefully not but it's finally here thanks as myself uh I've basically just been playing Starcraft as always I now up to platinum league on my way to becoming an Esports player uh so from Context Platinum is like I'm pretty sure bronze to gold is like you're just pretty rubbish at this game Platinum is like oh you might be you might be okay and then it goes from there I didn't know what it meant so when you mentioned

it like earlier today I Googled it and I was like what what does it mean and it was like it means that you're a somewhat respectable player is that is it is that the actual definition that's what it said yeah that's how I go through life somewhat respectful that's that's my ambitions all right enough of that let's get into things so uh a few shout outs quickly we obviously just did uh Pocket Gamer connects house siky so thank you everyone that attended for that to all the speakers all sponsors uh we just released the top 50 if you haven't seen that link in the comments and you can check that out on the website who who made it top 50 mobile game makers uh upcoming events we've got Pocket Gamer connects Jordan on November 9th for 10th and we've got Pocket Gamer connects London our biggest show of the year which takes place on January 20th to 21st uh so looking forward to seeing you at those shows there's like an event every week at the moment so I'm sure I'll see someone at one of those so on to the big news of the week

so uh there's plenty to get through some some we've left for the week of views towards the end um to start with I thought we'd kick off with Monopoly go maker scop Le is gearing up for a mega deal acquisition next year so I presumably they really mean well I guess backed by Savvy uh games Group which bought scopely for $4.9 billion dollar so uh so according to mobile gam beers the company's Chief Revenue officer Tim O'Brien shared the plans during a subscriber only Q&A at variey entertainment and Technology Summit he said I hope that we announce at least one Mega deal and when I say mega deal I mean a scaled Global franchise doing hopefully at least a billion dollars in Revenue so who could that be okay speculation uh we just did the top 50 so I'm wondering I I'm kind of immediately ruling out Chinese Developers say

because I I guess I don't really know how that would work uh maybe maybe I'm strong it that sounds like it would be a difficult thing to do so I guess who else does play rcks could buy H skates Garden Scapes again that some of these will probably end up being more than scope would cost which should be which should be weird uh but they I guess they'd be a great great company to to get moon active maybe guess because Monopoly goes kind of if I guess if you want to Corner that market with coin Master Plus Moon active is doing really well in other genres like merge now um uh what companies have got magmatic Gaz and Mel soft do really well so actually you would get I guess a diverse portfolio for require Moon active plus your biggest rival for Monopoly go and play Tika I thought maybe these are all probably ridiculous but I like the biggest companies that are making over for one franchise a billion

there's not that many so I guess they look I guess play chica was looking to sell they're looking a bit more attractive with a super play acquisition so maybe but then Super play itself cost $2 billion so the more I think about it the more that's probably ridiculous I don't know P any any spec wild speculation on who who Could That Be I don't know about wild speculation but I think out of the ones you have said if I had to bank on one I'd probably go Moon active like that's the one that would maybe make the most sense yeah I think they're they they're definitely a good one I again I have no idea how much like a moon active would cost I mean coin Master is insane uh and there other their other games doing very very well so but these would definitely be Mega deals almost like a merger rather than just an acquisition yeah because I guess that's the wording of it like there are plenty it could be but Mega deal that kind of

shortens the list I guess uh I actually forgot uh I'm looking at the top 50 now I forgot like a really obvious one dream games that actually probably makes the most sense Royal match massive game they're about to release Royal Kingdom in November I saw so they'll have a they'll have a second game and they were talking about a billion dollar franchise it's overtaking Candy Crush uh that's probably a good shout actually I think actually uh I'm going to go with dream games why not we'll see how wrong I am uh later later next year so that was an interesting one H and and then some other uh I guess kind of quick funding stories open AI gets a $4 billion credit line and that was just days after it secured $6.6 billion doar in a funding round um obviously open AI does chat GPT and they're kind of leading quotequote uh the the Gen the gener AI charge when

I say qu quote because obviously you've got different kind of company but Nvidia leading that charge as well and then uh some other quick stories uh finish developer Future run secured around of investment led by Supercell Rivers has raised 4 million euros to fuess user generated content creations and then some other little stories Konami assigned a FIFA deal for FIFA e World Cups featuring e football which I guess you could kind of knew this kind of thing was going to come that another developer would take the FIFA license for some reason I kind of thought it would be take two because there's rumored to be working on a football game uh I guess technically you still could be them uh I missed the days of pro EVO to be honest it used to be pretty it used to be very good a very good rival to FIFA very much slipped away then it changed to e football and FIFA e it's sounds like uh it's it just

sounds wrong it sounds like some budget game or some blockchain game I was going to say like a cryptocurrency it's a real money game it does sound blockchain yeah it doesn't sound I'm sure there'll be many good uh blockchain games that come out but this just it it just sounds awful call it FIFA e World Cup I don't think anyone like if it was just called FIFA World Cup I think people would buy it or play it if it's going to be free uh FIFA e and then uh lastly list top turkey blocks Discord in latest social platform ban so as reported by Reuters the ban comes from turkey's information Technologies and Communications Authority uh apparently that it was due to suspicion of child sex abuse and vcinity that was according to the Justice minitor Yas T they've also banned previously uh Roblox I think under basically some similar reasons they had other reasons as well

and all this in the context of I think they they also mve to block uh Instagram previously so there's just a big Crackdown I guess on these kind of communication platforms I guess you could speculate as to why whether those reasons are the ones and you know these these platforms do have a responsibility to regulate the content on there and and it maybe it's just not good enough if you let some through right you have to you have to kind of block it all but you know you can speculate if there's other wider maybe political reasons as well so that's it that's it for my uh news round up for anyone that's like watching this and thinking you going to talk about Google and epic that that's coming up later but for now uh Paige what have you got um yeah for me I'm going to start with you were just mentioning Roblox as well um some Roblox news which is actually really big at the moment um so basically there was this hinder research report and they have accused

Roblox of in plating their their metrics um particularly how many players there are and their engagement hours they kind of go on to accuse them that this is obviously misleading investors it's misleading their Regulators advertisers um and kind of just lying how many people are using the platform um they have said that they're overestimating the numbers by anything from 25 to 42% so you know pretty significant but a lot of this comes down to the fact that like what they're essentially saying is you know Roblox are measuring people's numbers but that could be you know if that's five accounts really that could just be one person on five different accounts obviously a lot of people have alts and things like that um they they also raised the issue of Bot accounts so apparently there are Bots just sitting in Roblox for 24 hours straight which obviously drives the you know their hours up um again just having

an impact on what engagement data that they've got and then in addition to that which is already pretty terrible the you know the issues of child safety's popped up again which is something we get a lot with Roblox um but they kind of went as far to call it an xrated pedophile hellscape which is you know that's pretty that's pretty extreme obviously roblo they they did come back with a statement um kind of on both parts the the statement that addressed to me which is I mean obviously numbers and figures are pretty important but also like the the you know child safety stuff which is the majority of their platform they were just like yeah you know there's lots of good experiences on Roblox so I I feel like there's got to be a lot more addressed on that but then in terms of the you know the financial side of things and the inflated numbers they they did make a statement and they said that the report was very misleading um

and the authors they're short sellers with their own sort of agenda I was looking around online to see what you know just people's opinions are and it is it's quite split there's a lot of debate some people are kind of being like this report has done this intentionally they're known for doing stuff like this it's a quick way for them to get some cash and they're doing it for their own gain but then there is the argument of well there's no smoke without fire and this could definitely be something that is going on um said it's definitely not the first time that roadblox has popped up with these kind of conversations particularly around you know child safety so yeah very very big claims yeah because I know a few um months ago there was another guess attack you could say on roblo on the kind of child safety points and I know then they similarly said well you know for most people roblo is a great time and um you know it was a very small percentage of people have had problems

but you it's still important to address them particularly on a platform of that scale even if it's a low percentage you know still a lot of yeah they have a responsibility to look after the people that are on that platform which you know I said the majority people on that platform are children so like to me that's the bit that's more outrageous obviously the numbers thing is bad but it is just like you know if there are kids on this platform you do need to keep them safe but I guess it is that awful thing of you know they business is about getting more numbers and more players and the more people you get they're seeing is well we can't protect everyone people behave in a certain way but to me it is their responsibility like they do need to make sure that this platform is safe for children to be on you know like some of the research of them going on there and finding games that are like you know school girl on toilet like why is that on your game like that's not like that's not okay um so yeah you know as for the whole report who knows maybe you know they've done some of this for their own gains I'm sure maybe they have but yeah I just

think their statement they do need to come out with something a little bit more um a bit more tangible pushing on how they're trying to keep people safe and yeah just making sure that the platform doesn't become a place where kids literally unsafe to be to me the mo the of them all that that one of the most fascinating things to me is is is is the nature of of Hindenberg research like I'm kind of surprised it's legal I mean I guess like that if you looked at the consent Parts I guess they I don't know maybe they don't sound illegal obviously as always I'm not a lawyer so you take a short selling position and then like you've been doing all of this research and you just release all of that expecting the the price to to tank so if you look at hindur research they've done this like loads of times and one of the ones that they did was company called forgive me the pronunciation e canons Rises or I can Enterprises and

basically they did their report they took a short position and then they the uh share price tanked by 50% and if I look now it has never recovered wow and then you look at ROBLOX shares and so I'll I'll just make I guess an assumption so if this was this report released on the 8th of October so robox shares closed at on on the seventh cense at the start of the day on October 8th it was $376 a few dollar drop and then it and then it just kind of bounced straight back up Suddenly uh I there's been basically no impacts of this report that Hindenberg would have wanted um it's kind of the kind of gross thing about it from Hindenberg point of view is it's like you know you're doing this research and maybe some of this would actually be really good but they're not doing it out of the

goodness of their hearts they're doing it straight money so like you're exposing these things just to make I I don't know there something sounds wrong about that as well so it's a very strange story yeah it's kind of like their pointing out how someone might potentially be exploiting something and in return they are exploiting the same thing right yeah exactly next up from me I think we we mentioned humble games last week on the podcast but I think it was just to do with their layoffs but now there's some more news coming out of them so humble games has partnered with a startup games publisher good games which basically includes ex humble gam staff so obviously they had layoffs not too long ago um it was kind of a bit of a messy ordeal was the layoffs was it shut down it was all a little bit confusing um but this new partnership means that good games can basically now support humble games um a lot of the is I think came from the fact that when

they had this separation a lot of the Indie developers that had been working with them before all of a sudden after the layoffs they were struggling to do like updates to games that had already released so I'm assuming by having good games come on board to support these are people that already have knowledge of these games have already worked with these developers and they are going to be able to help them you know through this kind of process um yeah and that's just where they come in so it's sort of a strange situation where it's like like there's been these layoffs and then people have gone out made their own studio with people in that studio that were previously laid off and now they're kind of teaming up so it's a weird one but I suppose in the grand scheme of things it's a it's a good thing you know if you've gone through a layoff and you go into a new company and then you get to work on something you previously were anyway so yeah kind of it I think it just adds to the whole confusion of the humble games thing um but no good that these developers will actually be able to you know get what they need and hopefully be able to do those uh updates

because yeah kind of weird that since that's happened they've just not been able to do anything with their games that are already released I know that they um well I know that I was just looking it up the uh humble games did previously work or was it would it been humble games uh Humble Bundle I don't know they would they they previously works with uh the Power Group to help some of those uh Studios and games that were kind of I guess left in the Lurch a bit uh from from hble games so I guess I don't know good games works with power group now or good games just takes all that work but yeah like you say it is good news um one final bit from me it's not it's not newsy it's more uh on the features side of things but it is one that I wanted to just uh highlight a little bit so this is from Oxana fomina we've had her on the site quite a few times um at this point she's founder of gradient universe and she usually does a lot of um analysis or deep Dives on like

titles liveops and things like that so this time around she had a like a super plays die streams which is nice and timely obviously all the news we've had about them and the play acquisition and obviously being in our top 50 which is way more important um but yeah it's a really insightful read and she dives into a bunch of different aspects on their liveop strategy she gives kind of um like Five Lessons to take on board from it um obviously I won't go into all five of them in depth here but just um a little bit on those so she kind of highlights that obviously they do lots of different events but they have sort of a focus on short events so between one to maybe three days something like that creates like a sense of urgency boost daily active users um she brought up a good point about like their their events having rewards so rather than it just being a reward that when that event is over it's done with sometimes those Rewards can be used in later events so if you kind of

Stack a load up and then the event ends and then a new one starts and you think oh I've still got stuff left from that reward it's sort of a way to entice people back in so just you know clever little mechanics clever little features that have obviously paid off for them um she goes into there Ina purchases there being lots of variety in the purchases you know there's seasonal passes there's exclusive offers so again it's just sort of about don't just offer players one thing because what might make me spend might not make you spend so yeah she goes into a lot more detail on those things um but yeah just in general I think the dice streams it makes a really interesting case study you know it's been out for quite a few years now and somehow in 2024 a year where a lot of games have actually struggled they're kind of having their best year yet so yeah I think it it's just um it's kind of a perfect game to do a case St study up right now and I've only gone over it very briefly so if that is something you're interested in do go and read the

full thing because it's it's really interesting yeah it's a great article and uh oana's yeah like I said done a few of those did fixed you deep dive into bro star which I guess similar yeah is kind of experience so yeah definitely check those out thanks so much for that page uh Aaron what have you got yeah so first up from me so um Square Enix have announced another new mobile game this one's called Ember Storia currently it's looking like it's only coming out in Japan and yeah it's it's just quite an interesting one CU mobile generally seems to be a market that um square has been having some trouble with in recent years got a lot of closures of um various games particularly last year it seemed like I was covering something every couple of weeks that was closing like from um like Soo Alex and Bravely Default Echoes of Mana loads of different franchises um and then even like Final Fantasy 7

ever crisis given the kind of size and popularity of the IP it hasn't done incredibly well but yeah they've got another new a new mobile game on the way regardless in particular I'm quite excited to see the character designs personally because they've got yusuke oaki um as the main character designer I quite like his style he done quite a lot for Nintendo like um Fire Emblem Awakening and FES Heroes which is on mobile done some zener Blade Chronicles Pokemon designs design toxcity which is quite a popular newer Pokemon but no it's just quite it's interesting that Square's um yeah got another mobile game on on the way and for now it's going to be Jaan only it fits a kind of theme from them but goes a bit against things they've said before I think that's um something I I'll be um going more into in future weeks yeah we we could tease that

a bit we uh we looked at this and then Aaron made a good point that it's like well square reix has this strategy that is all about kind of going global and then on mobile they've shut down a bunch of games and then now they they announc a game that is think only launching currently uh in in in Japan yeah square rix's revenu is going down Japanese Market is is actually uh declined quite a lot so I mean I mean I guess it only takes one hit to for them to go well you know it was a good game so we released it and it did really well so you can you can talk about all these Trends and maybe it w m if they were just released a good game but things haven't gone that way for quite a lot of time so yeah Aaron's Aaron is is is looking into that so looking forward to seeing the data what you find from that yeah so be sure to tune in again next week everyone so then yeah from me um so epic games is

officially financially sound recording to CEO Tim Sweeney um so he was talking at unreal Fest in Seattle which started on a much brighter note than last year because it was a year ago when epic just had there it was about 800 layoff and at the time they kind of acknowledged that yeah they were having to cut back to to kind of keep float really and so that'd be a like degradation in quality and not a great um great way to do your unreal facts but but necessary last year yeah this year they've stood there so they're now financially sound and fortnite and the epic game store have both hit new records since the last unreal fair so yeah a much more positive year for them fortnite hit 110 million

monthly active users apparently last holiday season which was an alltime Peak and then the epic games store reached its new record uh just last month in September apparently they had 70 million monthly active users um which obviously take into account mobile now as well so whe whether those numbers will stay and a stably higher than the used to be I guess we we'll see but yeah all arounder it seems kind of better news for them recently sorry I was just uh I I I just suddenly I I don't know why I didn't say it before so like they said there was a a press briefing uh from tib Sweeney about their uh about their lawsuit with Samsung out of that came that the epic game store had I think 10 million downloads on mobile in the EU today if

that's September so 70 million I wonder if they just counted like around about 10 million of of mobile that just sort of installed it they are they know technically they're a monthly user even if they use it again yeah that's interesting yeah interesting point I'll be curious to see what those numbers are consistently in a couple years I don't know anyway yeah I just suddenly thought like oh yeah 70 million but if 10 millions of that mobile and I wonder how many of those are actually active on a monthly basis rather than just the one yeah no that yeah interesting point I guess um yeah maybe it won't be so many at the minute um because I guess if you've if you've been on there to like download fortnite or something I guess there's not all that much on there right now so but as they add more things because they've got like an arc game coming later this year and then last week we were talking about the new kind of initiatives kicking off in January to try and get more games on there maybe

then it yeah you might be right for now there the monthly total might might just be that initial like download spike I mentioned to you guys it just makes me laugh this only very closely related just because we're talking about fortnite like when you do journalist stuff it's always super interesting what random things end up in your inbox and I had something that was like from Domino's Pizza and I was just like why is Domino's like in my emails and it's because they're doing doing a partnership with fortnite we didn't cover this story but it's huge news guys Domino's and fortnite I think it's something like an emergency pizza so yeah as much as you know they're financially sound now but they've also got a partnership with Domino's does that mean Domino's is going to be in fortnite so um I think I think there was like a picture of like a Domino's store but within fortnite they're just have like the battle bus as a Domino's delivery truck delivery that's such a good idea they should do uh I take I hope you can

um order a Domino's in fortnite now and then it will be delivered to your house in real life if not then they're missing a trip there anyway last one from me is um black salt games horror fishing RPG R is coming to iOS and map on December 18th this year and hopefully on the Google Play Store as well on the same day um there's no pre-order listing on play store yet though because according to dredge developer Joel Mason um Google doesn't believe that they own the rights to the game so they're not letting them list it but they do intend to release it on the Play Store so on Android as well provided that gets sorted out um which you'd like to think it would wouldn't take too long for that to um to get resolved the game came out last year on PC and consoles and has been quite

popular it's it kind of Blends together like fishing but also kind of eldrich cosmic horror which is quite um a combination and um yeah they're going to release a a demo on Apple devices as well which they haven't said they have planning to do a demo for the play store but um again they do plan on releasing it fully on there provided Google accepts that they own the game basically yeah it a weird one yeah they they showed the uh the picture of sea of Conquest like Google thinks this is like theirs strange one I I presume it can only presume that this will be sorted out well before launch um but yeah it'sit it's very unfortunate isn't it and um the interesting fig is we were discussing in the call earlier is that this this going to be premium game well I think as it free trial and then premium yeah like there's a demo free

demo which like years ago you'd say don't do not do this U but actually we we're seeing potentially like there's actually a few games premium games now coming out on mobile again and we'll talk about the stly parable earlier there were loads of other examples and I can't remember them now elro Resident Evil 2 there you go so it's actually quite interesting that that developers are trying this again and it's not just to do with like when you say resent evil that there was that debate about you know these big AAA games like that can they can they succeed on mobile but does anyone really want those on mobile but I'm curious to see the business model making a comeback maybe whether that does anything for for these developers whether it's worth it especially with subscription like you know for many years it was like oh premium's dead and probably a settled case and then subscription kind of comes along with apple arcade and others and I like well it's definitely kind of dead now but

revived in a different way maybe and yeah now it's now it's feel like we're g full circle generally seems to be more like the Indie scene at least from what I've observed that's going for the premium model I guess kind of sticking to the old fashioned you could say um like selling a finished game rather than so I guess you kind of know with games like up purchases and frequent updates like the game never really ends which in some ways is great but I guess there is a market that just wants a game that you know I have this game I will finish this game eventually and then start a new game I guess think like personally for mobile I think it just depends on the type of game so like dredge for example I brought dredge and I haven't played it but I brought it and I got it for like I got it on Steam but I specifically got it to play on my steam deck because I was I don't really want to play it on my console kind of want it to be like a kind of portable game CU it just feels like something

that would feel good to play in that way I still haven't got around to playing it and maybe I should have just waited because it actually is something I would play on mobile whereas like Resident Evil I would just play that on my console to be honest I wouldn't play Resident Evil 2 on my phone but I would play dredge on my phone so maybe it just depends on the type of game as well and the type of player yeah we're not talking about like with Indie you know these games don't have to make you know millions of dollars for us to say oh so success so if it makes first if it makes his money back and then more on top of that then then that's kind of fantastic but yeah it just the kind of old thinking is that it doesn't work it's not worth it you you'll you'll spend loads of money doing it and you won't really get much return for that you're curious to see how all these games are going to do so read pocketgamer.biz and we'll let you know so we're going to move on now to the uh weekend view section so the one of the big stories recently is is kind of the Epic V Google case and the judge frauded

favor of Epic and said you know Google has Monopoly and now the judge has ruled that a few things that Google has to do but Google is appealing so we I think these are supposed to go through by November but Google has eight months to to actually Implement these changes that I say a set plus the appeal so who knows when any of this is actually going to happen or even if But but so basically Google now has to this is in the US only basically Google now has to open up to a third party Source within Google play so you don't even just have to Sid load it needs to share all apps uh in its catalog with other stores and I think developers opt in or or opt out of that rather if they don't want that um developers can also set their own prices regardless of Google Play Store Bly uh and Google can no longer enforce its

payment system on the Play Store Google can't incentivize developers with money or perks to launch exclusively or even first on the Play store and the ruling will also factor in new devices so stopping Google from paying device manufacturers and carriers from pre-installing the Play Store and not third party uh but not third party stores uh all of these will be in forc for uh for three years which is half of epic's request the judge said this should provide sufficient time for Rivals to uh to grow and quote level the playing field yeah so breaking this down a bit on payment options and fees I wonder if Google just does an Apple creates like a runtime fee or quote core technology fee uh and just starts charging maybe for installs or just starts charging a platform fee that basically makes Google whole for their 30 % fee or maybe even gets them more

money uh I I doubt very much doubt even if they have to implement these that Google will willingly try and just say yeah that's all fine and not do anything about it like I think as we've seen from Apple I think actually as we've seen from Google elsewhere in the world you know they'll just say okay well uh you can you can have your alternate payment but we'll charge I think what was it they charge before like we'll charge 27% and and then you can have your your third party billing so that makes the whole third party billing doesn't work in that sense uh so I wonder if that's what happens at the incentives bit and I think this was actually kind of the Crux of the case if I remember right uh there's been so many legal cases apologies I get them mixed up I think it part of it was that when they said that a monopoly because Google was doing these kind of deals with with companies to to to basically secure its you know quote

unquote Monopoly and that's why this case kind of made it differently from the from the Apple case um So Google I think Google has even said like you know well apple apple doesn't have to deal with this it's the same thing why why is it just us but I think you know they that is why um I'm curious couple things what uh no incentives means for play pass uh can that still exist as its own separate thing within Google Play So can they pay developers to be on that Subscription Service I don't know people probably think it was play pass I forgot all about it but yeah I believe it still does exist uh and then um Aaron you mentioned in the article that epic itself's planning special perks for users so for the epic game store so they could do it Google card which I guess makes sense right actually to be fair uh it' just be interesting to

see if epic Xbox and other stores that popped up can create a space of themselves so overall I guess like the impact of it I think it's not nothing uh this is great news again for companies like epic again we don't know how Google's going to implement the changes uh and like I said Google's going to appeal and I think I did see an article on games industry where uh and they're not wrong but like people kind of questioning you know where it's Google Play most of the money is spent on the app Source I looked at the data and I think we shouldn't Play Down actually how significant Google Play revenue is for games in the US so according to at Magic first nine months of this year Google Play Still accounts for 40% of mobile games Revenue in the US which is a substantial amount of money that is billions of dollars uh I haven't got it written down here as a as as to guess I think it was 5.3 billion uh for the

first nine months of the year from games it's incredible amount of money so that and then Google takes like it big kind of 30% cut that yeah like if developers can get away from the 30% fee uh they can go to another store and just like that is a lot of money that they they can get back sure they might have most of their money coming from the App Store but a not insignificant amount comes elsewhere but I said before ultimately I think it this is kind of say all this goes through it is good news but it's incredibly difficult to shift player habits away from Google Play we'll see if like you know epic and Xbox What epic sounds like they obviously are going to stick around after all of this and how much they can invest in it and and just kind of calve out some kind of share but I'd be interesting also to see what happens after three years if if Google can just return everything to the way it was and and just make it incredibly difficult again um I guess we'll we'll

see how that all pans out that was big story of the week and then also IDE nearly forgot to say as part of it part of its anti trust case the US is mulling to break it just to break up Google into different constituent parts U so that that would be something uh I think that was more to do with a search Monopoly but I think it was also to do with Android as well so Google's fighting lot of fires at the moment in the US and as we know kind of around the world I I this stuff's got Rubble on for years but clearly there are cracks there are many cracks appearing in these mobile app store ecosystems and uh yeah hope well we'll see we'll see what kind of Revenue share developers get when eventually decades to come the dust sales it's the three-year bit that gets me so it's are they essentially saying that oh you know let's just see what can happen for 3 years this is enough time for all of you other guys to cat up with Google and then after you're all on a Level Playing

Field like realistically I don't really see that happening like 3 years maybe sounds a while but like I said people are set in certain ways and do things in certain ways so I don't know if three years is really enough to be able to you know catch up to that kind of level where they're now not a monopoly um so yeah I think that's the thing after three years what then do you do they extend this or is it like oh well there you go you can go out to doing what you want now the three years have passed so yeah that's the bit that just catches me so I think some some parts of it feel really quite thorough to keep Google from kind of finding loopholes in the system for these three years know when I was reading through it all it's like yeah the fact that it's like well okay so we want to want to stop Google having this Monopoly we need to make it so other people can have their app stores on there and it's like okay so that means we need to kind to ban Google from paying people off to not ship things

with other platforms and we also need to ban them from paying to definitely stick with the place store in some ways it's really quite well thought out I think but then yeah as you say like the um the three years it's like well if even if someone whether it's epic or someone else does start to kind of encroach on the the market there if Google can then just go back to being like well we're not going to distribute your app stores anymore through Google Play then no one new can kind of get in on the other app stores after three years and if they're also then allowed to kind of pay um manufacturers not to put other app stores on there you know when it comes time for people to upgrade their phones even if they were using like the Epic gam store if their new phone comes and it's just the play store again and then you can't

download epic games on there anymore like it would kind of just go back to how it was yeah I I think there there would be certain things that Google still wouldn't be able to do because obviously they got a lot of trouble for these kind of deals that they made right so if they did them in a similar way again uh they they would just get into the same problem and probably you would assume the consequ quences would be far worse um and and I guess at some point you know Google does have to be put back on a quotequote Level Playing Field like they can't in perpetuity not be able to offer of special deals while whilst their Rivals can but yeah three years is not that's not long that's that is a sizable investment that Rivals have to make in a short amount of time to carve out some sort of space uh for a future that I guess would still look a bit UT interesting uh so that's uh so that's uh that's the Google the big Google news of

the week paig you've got another company that's been in the news quite a lot this in recent months yeah I was going to say like every podcast we mention Ubisoft and we're here again um obviously you know I think I say this every week about Ubisoft once top of their game and you know lately recent years just haven't been as you know great for Ubisoft by their own admission you know some of their games have fallen lower than expected with Star Wars Outlaws they've obviously pushed back Assassin's Creed Shadows which basically that happened and then instantly shares plummeted they went really low and then at the end of last week all of a sudden there was this report that tenson and Ubisoft founding family I think I'm going to pronounce this wrong but it's French so is it is it gimo is that is that how it's pronounced G yeah so those guys um so they're they're considering a potential buyout um um bear in mind this is just speculation at the moment um

nothing concrete but just from the report itself the shares they spiked again um I think they went up the biggest single day jump on record which you know is great and it sounds impressive but at the same time things haven't been good for years so just reading that sure it sounds great but there's still you know quite a long way to go um Ubisoft responded to all of these claims but it's very classic PR manner of yeah you know we're aware that people are talking about this and you know we'll keep everyone informed if something does happen so you know I don't think we were expecting Ubisoft to come out and say anything um sort of stronger than that that was to be expected um but yeah I suppose the real question is is how much of this is just talk and speculation and it's an idea of something that could happen and how much of it is actually no like this is seriously something that is heavily cons and may happen and if it does happen like what does that mean you know it

gives Ubisoft you know if it does happen maybe it gives them some shortterm relief from the recent years stress and you know things not going out how they want them to go out but at the end of the day I kind of see it as if they're private if they're public you know it kind of doesn't really matter if how they approach their games just still seems completely out of tune with their players I think it was only recently the um the CEO said something along the lines of like you know in today's market it it's difficult because Gamers essentially want too much like that's kind of a terrible statement to give so you've made games that haven't hit the mark and it's the player's fault because we all want too much um so yeah for me like I don't I think if it did happen it it could be a good thing but I still just have those worries of what ultimately you know if it's Ubisoft private if it's Ubisoft public there still needs to be

some fundamental changes in their mentality towards how they're making games you know they're kind of saying like oh you know we we released these quality games and they're not hitting the Mark I don't know I think that's kind of debatable with a lot of their games in recent years I wouldn't say the quality is always there maybe it is after it's released and it's been out for a year but you know um but yeah big news and then I think um it was only today that we were talking about Ubisoft are also being sued so like it's just kind of never ending for them really yeah that was the uh class action lawsuit over allegedly sharing data with meta I think yeah that was it so they just yeah they can't get a break at the moment but yeah I don't know do you guys think is is this going to happen are they going to be bought out or is it more talk than it is actually action what gets me is that the Gil are so again it's their company but they're

so want to keep it as as there or he wants to keep it is he wants to be in charge all the time that the decisions that are being made appear but like if I was to look at it well from the outside it's like well okay so when 10 cent first came in you did that to Stave off an acquisition because you wanted to keep control the the rumor about uh 10 cent and get considering to take it private and then they they release statement of like you said just a small statement about it is that just to keep control again like none of this is actually to it doesn't appear like any of this is to improve the company it just it's just like to solidify their position within it and there's obviously things that are going wrong I mean I guess private or public yeah like it doesn't matter that's kind of what I was thinking about I was think like this is

like it's really big news if it happens if it doesn't happen it's big news but does anything actually really change you either way I'm not really sure because there's still something just at the core kind of wrong I guess because we're we're just talking about the developers I guess if you're an investor if someone buys it you'll make money and leave but you probably lose a lot when you said like yeah share shares Rose like their that their sharpest ever 36% I took a look it's still it's still at a 10 year low that's how far I I mean you know come come when's uh I've forgotten the release date of Shadows now is it January I think so I think it's first quarter next year I can't remember January defin yeah it's definitely early because it was supposed to be the end of this year so it'll only be a couple of months if that if that does really well we might all start saying oh ubisoft's on a turnar around but is is one game enough for publish big publisher like Ubisoft and it will need another big hit I think for people it's it's doing really well again um my take it seems

more like a fight for control than a than a fight for let's get things in order thanks that paig uh so Aaron what have you got yeah so my my last one today is about weaing waves which has um coasted to 150 million r Mobile Revenue by out magic estimates so this is curo games open world RPG and yes it's made it to 150 million in just over 4 months since it came out which is an impressive Milestone to get in that time um by comparison OB we talking about ho verse earlier I think it was only last week I was that was endless own zero hit 150 million in three months so um for C games new RPG to hit that Milestone only take a couple more weeks to get get there you know I think that's quite a an impressive accomplishment the

game was quite big of um earlier in the summer its Revenue has been declining quite considerably um month on month since so it peaked in June and it's um that was around 60 million in June on noile but then that hared to about 30 million in July and then again to like 16 million in August um so it's definitely um quite a start decline over the past few months but nevertheless with kind of the momentum it had at launch and quickly get to 100 million uh yeah it's now hit 150 and yeah you imagine Cura games must have something in the works to kind of turn it back around um because of how kind of steep the declines are they did have a pretty

reasonable with the um version 1.3 update in late September which introduced like a new Limited Time character to the Guta so players only have like a limited time to get them and the base pull rate is less than 1% I think so I guess you need to spend quite a lot of resources to to get the character um and yeah so the the game's Revenue spot by 22% on the launch day of the of the version update which yeah is quite you know quite a considerable spite yeah it does seem like they they need to do something to bring its Revenue back on force and kind of break this monthly decline that's going on yeah whether you know whether there's more to come in this version update that will will do that or whether they need to do something a bit more drama I guess you could say yeah I think the fact that they after their beta they

kind of reworked the game quite a lot and overhaul a lot of elements and rewrote the narrative which obviously paid off because again you know has made a lot of money in a short amount of time but that kind of suggests maybe they can do that again and move it in another positive direction now in whatever way that needs to be I I I think weing waves in general has been a huge a huge success for CER games especially like in the light of the changes that you mentioned that they made as well play dayss really is it really is a good game like the combat I really really enjoyed that so I think they made I let you just had in front of me but 7even eight million net revenue according to at Magic 7.5 million net revenue in September just from the App Store and Google play so not not including other platforms and presumably third party Android stores in China so

they're still making a lot of money I think it's important for us to say that it is in it is in quite a steep decline at least on app store Google Play which would be I guess of course of concern but we're definitely saying it's still very successful game I this is good news overall the yeah good news that they've lost yeah it's a good news that they made 150 mil in Gross the the The Surge that you you said that is still kind of going and actually so October you're at 4.8 million net revenue and September it was 7.5 so you're looking you know we're less than a third way for the up so they're looking pretty good for October to go back to kind of growth again um yeah so it looks well assuming like you say that that I guess the changes that they made kind of sustain from that point of view um yeah I I I really like w and waves and uh see good lot of them so that brings

us to the end of the week in mobile games thank you for everyone for tuning in h thank you very much to Paige for for taking part yeah thank you for everyone for listening and catch you in the next one thanks Aaron yeah thanks yeah good to be here and yeah thanks again for everyone I hope you have a great weekend we'll catch you on next week's show have a good one goodbye