Week in Mobile Games E45 - Tripledot's surprise acquisition of AppLovin's games business

[Music] hello 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 with me today is our news editor Aaron assel Aaron how you doing yes doing well thank you um I'm back again any weekly viewers will know I was um absent last week I was watching the attack on Titan finale at the cinema during our kind of usual recording time which was excellent so it was basically it's been a bit weird because the final season started in like 2020 and then it's only really just kind of wrapped up 2020 because I was saying to you like I think I I think it season 4 right and I I watched some of it and then and then they split into three parts I think you said

because yeah it was very good to watch good to see on the big screen quite dramatic Cinema scale like audio and stuff I went quite hard call with it I saw the dub and the sub on the same day just like yeah I was like I had to sort of track over to Oxford to go and see it and it's like while I'm here I might as well see both versions both versions I mean you've got to see the the sub yeah but I'm controversially I'm quite partial to the dub for Attack on Titan no come on man those are the worst with respect to the to the actors but the the voice is usually terrible if you haven't heard the attack on Titan dub though like Armen especially excellent dub Voice better than the sub there I say um anyway so yeah that was good what about yourself well I'm going to get myself a crcy rooll subscription again finally and then wait ages for the film I guess but the main thing this week for me it's not so much interest stuff in my

personal life it's just GDC is absolutely taken over obviously we're doing pocket gaming connect San Francisco as well just all the prep for that and it's going a bit it's just g a bit mental my and all the every single company just sends you news which is amazing please please obviously do keep doing that but uh my inbox is just absolutely flooded now keeping on top is a challenge there's been some talk that not as many people go to San Francisco this year it's always hard to tell when you're there it's easier to tell maybe there's not as much companies doing an expo I find it hard to tell if there's not as many people because I don't I don't think there's a special event this year though but usually like if the state of unreal which is not there which which is ridiculous because I I I literally I just assumed it was there been there every year I think and uh I just saved my Wednesday morning I was like people no I can't do Wednesday morning I'm full for meetings and then I learned like state of a has taking place I think a real first in like June I was like what okay I think we'll we'll jump

straight into the news but obviously the quick shout out so um pocket G conect San Francisco as I said coming up March 17th to 18th to buy game Expo Summit Power by pocket gam conect May 7th to 8th PGC Barcelona June 3 4th PGC summited Shanghai July 30th BGC Helsinki October 7th to 8th and BGC Jordan it's coming later in the year and we'll be I think doing a couple other things as well busy year and yeah hope to see you all at all those obviously I'll be at GGC as well I'll be at games called Lan end of April so if people want to meet me at any of those events just just hit me up so news and the biggest news obviously of the week is a report from Business Insider that triple dot is the mystery buyer for applovin games business at a price of $900 million that's according to four people with knowledge of the lad that's

kind of the main Frost of the news earlier in the week we also reported that some more details from applo's annual report which confirmed it was a it was a private company the deal is supposed to be 500 million in cash 400 million in the buyer Equity the deal could see the acquirer borrow up to $250 million in cash interestingly app could have provide financing through the issuance of of a promissary note if triple Dot can't get all the money and on a personal note I was very uh frustrated insight into journalism where it's you can work on a story for a while and then someone beats you to it and all that works just kind of like okay that was worthless cuz we were we were on to that I've been told uh private London company the day before I'd reached out to Triple dot to ask about it but then and then the next morning I see it all over Business Insider so on a parasol

not note missed that one but kind of get back to the actual importance though triple dot really interesting one I think nobody had guessed that I think when it was kind of more obvious that it was a private company earlier this week I think the list very much narrowed everyone like PL was on some people's minds mini clip potentially although mini clip still down as a private company on company's house despite being own by a public company and yeah some people issued it was it was Savvy games group but no triple dot for those that don't know them yeah London develop the founders are like some of the richest people in now in the UK games industry I think there was a Bloomberg report that reported that sorry that called Akin the president the Kingpin of mobile gaming if you want to get an idea into their credentials and they kind of fly onto the radar no one really there's a lot I'd say there's a lot of people that just don't really know much or anything about triple dot they make casual games like woku they did do an acquisition last year I think of zier mobile their last race in 2022 they may forgot I think it was a series B $16

million valued their Max 1.6 billion so this this would be a very transformative deal for them I think lion Studios kind of kind of Mak sense in terms of the games it already does and then you've got all the other Studios whether they keep them all alive I guess we'll see obviously hopefully those Studios keep running I don't know how much they will fit into triple doll's business to be honest like machine zone for example midcore does that does that work for them but yeah some of the others still casual games but focus on in that purchases so yeah big deal surprise deal big news for the UK games industry I just can't really get over it of of all the companies but yes for those that don't know them they are really well regarded in the UK what do you think I wanted to start by saying yeah you you've held it together very well there I was expecting slightly more explosive wasn't quite my meltdown in the uh in the work work we still use Skype which is sh down in our Skype

window and I was just like what I can't believe it yeah no so I was quite looking forward to the sort of 15 minute p raade in the podcast but um you kept it short and sweet I was super upset just just just so people know I I was just like you know I wanted I wanted to break the story very selfishly I was I wanted to break that story and then uh I was like I kind of did it in the end I I joked to a friend I was like I've Got to Now do the the journalist thing of making sure everybody knows yeah you know I was on it got to make a social media post about it so I put something a little something in the in the story that we did to say pocket G up is also understands it's like a a London based private company which from that I was able to guess effectively just from that I was like who who could it be it's basically mini clip or triple dot so I just assumed some reason the end Min uh sorry triple Dot and and through subes you could you

could find like close ties between a and well either or Ain well yeah did you pick um yeah obviously yeah big big deal um all goes through it it's funny how it works it always seems like these big kind of deals come all suddenly all together because like we just had the like scopely potentially buying Niantic portfolio and then yeah now we've got like the triple dot um app Lin thing um reminds me of bit of like a few years ago when like Take 2 and zingga news was coming out and then all of a sudden it was um the Activision Microsoft thing it feels like whenever it's whenever there's a big kind of industry shakeup thing there's also another one that kind of comes out of nowhere alongside it yeah of 900 million quite a lot of money it's like it's compared to their last valuation it's like more than sorry it's more than half of their last valuation to to your point I was

thinking like before this it feels like there's some like musical chairs going on with games companies at the moment after years of M and then the few years for the market and then kind of companies like pulling out of like for example Aristocrat kind of pulling out of really of games except for Social Casino still front kind of I think struggling a bit who owns oh sorry it was sorry I'm getting confused Aristocrat did own play that so musical chair there um you got embracer kind of Bion so mini clip kind of grabbing it easy break and so yeah it feels like buying off each other Studios that they bought not that long ago ludia there's been a few like buyouts I think by management ludio being one we'll get into that from J City really interesting time for that kind of m&a yeah right so next up Aaron what have you got yeah so um I'm starting off with shift up goddess of Victory Nikki which has surpassed $1 billion in lifetime play spending on mobile so that's according to app magic estimates so yeah it's got a billion dollars was in just under two and a half

years it released on the 4th of November 2022 it made over half a billion in year one so it's had a bit of slowdown since then it's like roughly another 15 months to make the other half a billion um but you know by no means is that slow you know I I would take half a million in 15 months it has slowed down a bit the November release back in 2022 was still its like most successful month yet we're though over 100 million uh whereas like the second anniversary uh in November 2024 was its kind of most recent a big month and that made about 50 million so clearly you know it's still a a popular game making a lot of money and finally got to the big 1 billion Milestone yeah mainly from its Japanese players they've contributed 58% of the lifetime spending again this is all on mobile have made more from PC and stuff as well so

Japan's contributed about 600 million almost out of the billion whereas the the US is the second biggest Market at 175 million which is about 17% uh South Korea has sort of been gaining a bit of ground on the us whether it'll end up overtaking so it's it's now at 17.8 million so like three and a bit million behind the US which is quite impressive but it's not a game I've personally played but certainly written about it a few times it's always nice to see a game hit a big milestone I played it a bit and uh it's actually quite a good game I don't like the uh the the obviously there's a big audience for this the the art style I find just a bit bit cringy like because the camera is obviously based behind them as as you shoot stuff for obvious reasons yeah is actually quite it's actually quite fun to play I was just looking looking at their last financials on they said that

uh it got us got us a victory made up approximately 70% of their revenue in 20 24 and then Stella blade I think made up uh just just under 30% so I say 30 70% forgot ni and 30% for blade so yeah still doing very well Revenue fell a bit but you I guess you could expect that and it's but it's still a very high level I mean I'm sure they'd rather it was going up they're keeping it kind of running so they're doing a good job so anime is uh still big yeah around the world right next up we have I alluded to it a few minutes ago we ran the headline for this story ludia plots m&a and hiring spree after Jam City exit so I guess as we've been reporting quite a lot and I think we talked about on podcast a couple weeks ago uh ludia has been acquired by a Consortium of Canadian investors and also the company's management for an UND undisclosed fee so again like a buy out

basically interestingly the the Studio's GM Jimmy Gendron has been named CEO and Company founder of former CEO Alexandra Tabet is rejoining as a shareholder and chairman of the board as I said the fee wasn't disclosed but in one of the comments by one of the investors this there's quite a big group of them one of them is investment Quebec and they said they had put $18 million into the studio the studios behind tittles such as Jurassic World the game Jurassic world alive it was acquired 3 and a half years ago by Jam City for 165 million do convinced this acquisition is not that close to that the deal had initially been attempted to help Jam City achieve it leld ambition to go public kind of we talked about this before but that didn't come to through issue but it went ahead with the purchase anyway it raised a bunch of money and and did that at the time so I was looking back at the old uh kind of announcement and then I compared

it to kind of the announcements we're getting now and it at the time ludia employed 400 star we've reported on some layoffs over over the kind of intervening years from the acquisition to now Lugia broke away from Jam City with pretty much all its staff no there were no layoffs apparently because I've asked and they said no they took 130 employees with them and a few were left uh to to work on like jam SE games because they already on JC games so they taking 130 they used to have three times more people there so that's a lot of stuff that they've lost over the years um but apparently their portfolio still reaches three and a half million players his month obviously they don't talk well they don't talk about the revenue that they're currently making so we interviewed Jimmy and uh there's a few things that amazed me so Jimmy don't see you firstly what amazed me was that the studio apparently wasn't for sale which kind of knew but he he just started speaking to some investors and then brought the potential deal

forward to jab City and then they opened kind of discussions with the investors it just seems crazy to me that perhaps like lud's as a total guess perhaps lud's future wasn't that secure but I can't imagine one of the staff was it's the GM but I can't imagine the GM at a company that you own is talking to investors to buy the the studio that they own so that was interesting um but the other interest thing is you know as I said they' kind of they've downsized quite considerably since the acquisition but they want to get back to growth and actually they plan to hire 50 more staff over the next year I think a lot of that Jimmy said was to kind of so as part of being Jam City I think they had a lot of those publishing operations in place sort of the business side of stuff which I think they're trying to hire quite a lot of that so they can kind of I guess push on when when they release new games and look after their live games also plans to some m&a activity to acquire mobile

Studios they didn't say how much they've got for that but he but he did say that the investors kind of you know basically worth billions of dollars they have billions of dollars I don't think they'll be spending billions but but it's yeah it's interesting that they they're going to do that after splitting off and after being downsized all these years it's and it's fascinating that I know these investors want to make returns and I did ask is there pressure there and he said well it's not a 2-year thing and then you know we sell up or whatever apparently it's for the long term I guess you would say that but apparently it's all for the long term and so good luck to them just uple little things like I think they're still planning on potentially using IP and and creating original Ip as well yeah another big m&a story this week yeah I think we touched on it a couple of weeks ago didn't we when when it originally was coming about yeah it's it's nice to see Ludy is still going to be doing stuff hopefully I think I said I used to

play that Jurassic part game uh for probably a good like four years or so back back in my early secondary school days that was I'd finished school straight on Jurassic Park for however long homework could wait till I'd you know sorted out all my you know collected all my money from all the different little theme attractions and stuff what have you got next yeah so we're a little bit late to this one now but I'd be remiss not to mention Pokémon day which was at the end of February again as I wasn't here last week otherwise I would have been um yeah excitedly talking about it yeah I so they they covered like quite a few games there's their mobile analog and a new game the Highlight for me personally was the legend Za which is coming to switch and maybe switch to but they haven't actually said that the other big thing to come out with Pokémon day was there's a new cross platform game coming out which is Pokémon champions that's going to be on switch and mobile yes it's

being developed by the Pokemon Works in collaboration with game fre it's supposed to be really a battle oriented game that um sort of yeah it's going to aim to make the Core Series battles more accessible to people and I guess give them the freedom to do more variety in the new games cuz again like Legend Za has kind of got a different battle system to the main Series so I guess if if Pokémon Champions ends up becoming like the place for competitive play as opposed to whatever the newest game is so like at the minute it's the battles for competitions are based in scarlet and violet I guess if they have a dedicated platform for that classic battle format that kind of makes sense and gives them a bit more freedom to change things and players will also be able to transfer the Pokemon from Main Series games into Champions so ultimately to battle with them as they would in main series anyway but yeah in this kind of dedicated battl in game which it's sort of surprising they've

not done it earlier it's it's been something people have wanted for quite a long time but yeah I'm kind of surprised they finally they're finally doing it that's really interesting for I don't really think about it like that in terms of like competitive side of it because I think that's probably the main purpose of it obviously being on mobile will also has the benefit of reaching a bigger audience actually makes a lot of sense now the way the way you've put it because because now I can see like it does the things that for fans like Pokémon go obviously you can do battles but it's just tapping really so it does the things that that that game doesn't do brings the other element to mobile basically and uh I guess it reminds me now of Pokemon Stadium if you ever played that I never played it I'm aware of it yeah but yeah they showed stadium in the trailer like the revealed trailer at first I think some people thought there was going to be a new stadium but it it kind of is in a yeah

okay yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense Adam anecdote that's um I don't if I mention this podcast before no I don't remember back way back in the day when we had Pokemon Red and Blue you could get a me but you had to go somewhere to um you literally had to go to a physical location to download the me to to to get 1501 Pokemon and uh went there of a friend and my dad took us and then we obviously had that and you know we we played Pokemon so much we had like loads of level 100 100 Pokémon you know with battle Etc and then Pokemon Stadium kind of comes out and so you could I can't remember how it works you could basically link it up in some way to the N64 uh your game so we did that and I think that's how I accidentally deleted my my friend's save file oh so he's not only lost all of his like well all of his progress obviously all of his level 100 Pokemon can't get the Mew again and the Mew was like a limited time thing to

go to these EV yeah I was going to say wasn't really furious with me not not externally I'm sure inside yeah no that's that's yeah I didn't know you had like you had an original legitimate Mew in red and blue I did I mean I might even still have it that that cartridge might be worth something these days actually I fear I don't still have it because um this this is uh this really boring stuff but back again back back then you could um you could save multiple files of Pokémon but the only way you could do that is to have like a separate save cartridge or accessory I can't remember what it was so I had this thing where I could save different files of Pokemon because you could only have I think one yeah the actual game so I probably lost if it's on that I've lost that I'll be checking later going I've got I've got my my level 100 Venusaur my first Pokemon um God I Tri out M later so yeah any other big news from the day yeah

from Pokemon day yeah so the other so they yeah they covered stuff from each game like um go got an update Pokemon Masters has its five and a half year anniversary at the moment um which I still play Pokemon Masters I quite enjoy it the trading card game as well pocket so the the mobile Trading Card Game got another booster pack they have kept up with this kind of once a month thing so far which seems to be serving the well we've talked um quite on quite a few podcasts about how much money pocket's been making it doesn't work yeah um but yeah that's quite I'm quite enjoy I'm starting to feel close-ish to what Pokemon go did of actually when I go out and seeing people playing pocket and me inadvertently making people download it like because I saw my cousin recently and I my phone notified me I had a pack to open so I opened my pack and he saw it and he was

like oh you know you he because he's about my age so he remembered collecting the cards as well so then um like the next time I saw him he showed me he downloaded it and was showing me his collection and so he's been been playing it every day and then he texted me over the weekend to say he' been playing it when he was out with his friends and then so now they've downloaded it spreading like a virus yeah so yeah it's quite cool to sort of see it um in the real world a little bit more because like Pokemon Masters I don't know if I've met anyone else in real life who's played that game but you know it's fascinating to me that all these announcements like how Central mobile is yeah or at least was to this one but how you just you realize like oh yeah there's actually loads of Pokemon stuff already on M Bar you know well technically two there are other games that no one plays um CU they used to yeah these Pokemon day

presentations they used to spend way more time on the mobile games and I think people got a bit tired of it because they'd kind of give each one the same amount of time so you'd end up with like a 40 minute presentation and like 35 minutes of it would be the mobile stuff and then you'd get the trailer for the new Switch game uh which you know as good as some of the mobile stuff is you know that's a little bit imbalanced because it's kind of all driven by the main series if you're going to announce the switch game that's that's what people are there for yeah the Big Range so yeah they they seem to have kind of struck a good balance now of showing everything they need to show from the that's good like six or seven mobile games without it taking like an hour and I like they're not afraid of it either because this is completely different but like in the past you have like big Publishers with them they're treasured IPS to be fair in some ways um they it's almost like they're afraid to announce the mobile version of it sometimes because the mobile version is rubbish but other times it's just there's just no confidence there like you've got a

good if you've made a good game you should be happy to to reveal it to that audience if you feel like it's not going to be appealing to that audience you should probably ask yourself why are we doing this in the first place other than to make loads of money I guess all right was that all the news from from Pokemon there yes yeah pretty much there's quite there's quite a lot there so we'll try and go through the last ones fairly quick so uh a big story this week for the UK games industry jagex CEO Phil Manel stepped down so he he's been with the company for 14 years and I think he was CEO for eight years he's been there a while he's kind of jagex rcap kind of through and through for his career so seems like he's done a he's done a good job of kind of keeping that game going it's now broken uh $2 billion lifetime Revenue run escapes which includes obviously oldcape old school RuneScape and RuneScape 3 because they split it off a few years ago he's been replaced in the top job by

John Bellamy I forgot on his role I don't have it in front of me I think he was Chief commercial officer I want to say at huge games a few years ago and he's also worked at jagex before in m&a and strategy at a time where I'm pretty sure they didn't do much of it I think they were building up that publishing stuff their jagex Partners which also felt like it never really went anywhere he's a charge he's also an adviser for CBC so if anyone remembers jagex I think it was last year or the year before I think it was last year was bought once again keeps changing hands like a couple of years it feels like they were acquired by CVC which again J is advisor for and I think Havi I'm not sure how much for actually um I think they've been bought in the past like a billion dollars so possibly around that figure but yeah the change at the top is interesting because it feels like it just feels like that John at least from the outside I have no idea of him personally right but it feels like a

very different appointment and I think when you first look at it I think people's thoughts will be very cynical okay the the the guy that apparently he's played R gate for 20 years I don't I don't know if I believe that it might be true is in the FR or they talked about it on the video C but like I think when it's the a guy that's from the Investment Group that acquired jaged when they're put in charge it feels like oh we're putting him in charge and that they want serious business changes at the company and so it makes me think that I don't know they're going to push through some stuff like or or like layoffs incoming this is all absolute speculation it could be that jagex just goes down another attempt at a path of growth so for years you know they've tried to break out a RuneScape unsuccessfully and sometimes very publically so like in the past I can't

remember the name of this really old game it's going to drive me mad but one of them was Transformers that was obviously a big kind of failure for them really and they tried to turn it into a different kind of game that didn't work then they did jagex Partners I think they published a couple things but it doesn't feel like the big operation that it that they were trying to get to and so they been you know stuck on this very successful IP we'll see what kind of changes if any that they make to that I think they do I know that they're very close to the community and and the community votes on on a lot of things I think particularly for old school RuneScape so any big changes that they're going to make they get the community to vote and and then I think it's very challenging for any kind of business style decisions to get through that because if the players are going to vote they're probably going to vote for the things that they're used to and that they like and not I don't know like can we make this more expensive can we change a monetization or whatever it could be those things are going to be very hard to push like major changes are

going to be very hard to push through so I'm intrigued to see if one of the roads they go down is to try and grow runescape's Revenue further how that how they deal with that with players and then how the players react to any changes again this is all speculation I don't know what they're going to do it could be business as usual but it it's just the style of the change makes me does make me wonder we'll try and grab uh them for an interview and uh so they can go on the record exact what their plans are any experience with jagex or or RuneScape no I had a few friends that played it when we were at primary school but um yeah yeah I was more of a a Club Penguin man and a few of my friends were on RuneScape very different games very different games yeah the school was a bit divided you you had to be in one camp or the other I'm pretty sure everyone has played RuneScape at least once I don't think I have to be honest maybe I'll um have to change that well have to do a special podcast like a live

stream and my first time playing like a few minutes I think I remember just logging in I was like I think I was on a school computer as well so obviously it wouldn't run very well but I obviously blamed the game because I was a kid I was like well this is this is rubish I'm never going to play this but yeah very still still very popular to this day right uh Aaron you've got the last story big one yeah so thought yeah one um one of quick one on the kind of jobs newy front is that um supercell has appointed lass seanan as general manager of its New London office so of course supercell officially closed its 100% acquisition of space eight recently so that's sort of forming the backbone of supercell London in a statement to pocket gamer. beers the supercell said that sanan will Define the overall vision for the studio and work closely with the London based teams to bring it to life so he's been with supercell since 2019 and has worked as games lead for

everdale Heyday and Boom Beach more recently he was the head of game Production Services and also carried on working on Boom beat and yeah now he's going to be general manager of the London office they've also been doing a lot of work to kind of build up the the London Studio I think there were some layoffs in the kind of the transition and but the points of senior people I think they're still recruiting new jobs um they've been working on Heyday they're working on Squad Busters they've got a new games team Lassie obviously a lot of experience at supercell he previously founded a company called play Raven that made some strategy games they were required by roio previously worked at remedy a digital Cho cler I feel like he's been around the the finest games industry very experienced in the sector but the you know the weird thing that surprised me it's cuz I I guess in my head I still don't see supercell as like a normal games comp maybe not even stupid but I just imagine

like when they said like sorry when I saw that they were hiring the GM and it was lastly I think would be the great edit I was like oh yeah I just I just kind of assumed the studio would run itself like like obviously there's you got the game Le Etc right but I I didn't think there'd be an official GM that sets the vision for London itself I thought it was basically an extension of maybe is still but basically an extension of the fin Finland HQ and it just happens to be based in London where they can get other talent and then the games teams run themselves right and then obviously you have some other functions that are necessary like HR and other operations but a GM that sets out the vision I I'm curious what that will be yeah hopefully we can speak to them soon about that but it just sounded like a very normal company hire or higher appointment cuz he already been there um

of just like yeah he's the GM and literally every Studio has this but we super like that's very normal that's a surprise um probably speaks a lot of the changes that they've made over the past few years which seemed like they're seem like they're kind of working in some ways obviously again kind of go back to bra stars and and how recently the G the game lead on that Frank said that bigger team was part of the reason that were able to really put the game into overdrive I guess and test experiment a lot and then ultimately they kind of you could like some of it luck but obviously a lot of it hard work and the changes they've made I guess and the talent obviously to to suddenly make that game like more successful than it's ever been so yeah a lot of a lot of structural changes they're adding like the management layers this feels like just another management layer basically it's my point I spent five minutes get to the it's another management L point but uh yeah super interesting you s really good news for London that they're building up

the studio but it's a real shame it's just a real shame to see the space eight name c of go we'll see what the future lies in store for super London and what new games they might make and if those ultimately get released right that brings us to the end of our week mobile games podcast I nearly forgot the name again thanks very much Aaron for being on the show this week yeah good to be back yeah thanks for thanks for having me thanks for talking about some Pokemon feeling filling Chris's shoes big shoes to Phil this week he had even bigger shoes to fill last week so but yeah thanks very much we hope you all enjoyed this episode please do send us feedback and we'll see you on the next show preg GDC have a good weekend we'll see you soon goodbye