Week in Mobile Games E66 - UGC platform revenue share and app store competition

[music] [music] Hello and welcome to the Pocket Gamer atbiz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights. We're back for starters for those for regular listeners. We've had a few weeks off. Anyone new? I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz and with me as always is our news editor Aaron. How you doing Aaron? How's the past few weeks you've been on holiday?
Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's been a while since we've recorded. So um I was away in the Peak District the other week, which was nice to get away. Stayed in a a lodge in the woods somewhere. Um yeah, which was a nice time. Um and Nintendo even treated me with the Nintendo Direct while I was there, which was like over an hour long.
You're out of the wilderness. You don't have access. Yeah, I was I was out when

it happened. Fortunately, the lodge had Wi-Fi, but uh someone messaged me because I was out when it actually happened. I usually try and watch them live, but I was on holiday, you know, had to had to kind of prioritize doing the holiday stuff. But yeah, someone messaged me saying like, well, you know, guess you're going to have to get a Switch 2 now. So then the whole I was like, well, what what have they announced? You know, I don't want to just look it up and spoil it. I got to watch the whole presentation. And then uh yeah, there were some cool games in there, but I was thinking the whole way through it's like none of these are really like the game I've got to get the Switch T4. And then literally like the last thing was the next main series, Fire Emblem, which um think that that franchise will be coming up again later in the podcast. Um just to give a little tease. Yeah. But no, it's been a nice couple of weeks. Feel a bit recharged and getting over a cold at the minute if my voice sounds a bit weird, but Everyone in the UK is currently struck down with some sort of bug. I've noticed

it's typical weather's getting cold. That's why I got my hoodie on. But we're not allowed to turn the heating off until the clock's changed, which is like a month away. But yeah, everyone gets ill around this time of year, so that's fun. As for myself, yeah, sorry. Been uh been a bit busy past few weeks. Haven't been able to put the show on. Um asked me about it over a beer at Helsinki. But in other stuff, I've been uh playing Silk some which is excellent. Very very good game. Like very long time in the in the making that one and worth the wait for sure. It's just really slick gameplay. The world's pretty cool. If there's a story, I have literally no idea what is happening in it. Although I do jokes my friend mostly to annoy him. Hello Alex who writes for Piece of Games Design that the Hollow Night never had a story and I've legit forgotten anything. I I've forgotten most things that happened in that game, which is I have a rubbish memory as I'm sure you know, but like I it's like I've never played the game. I'm just like I don't remember that. There's bosses. I literally don't remember a single thing. Really strange

cuz Hollow Night is very good.
I've actually really never played Hollow Night. So, um I ought to It's It's somewhere on the list. It just doesn't ever quite make it to the top of the list.
It's very good. Silk Song. I guess I guess it's a criticism. It's just very it's extremely difficult, but maybe it's kind of made also for the people that played the first one. So, you don't want people just breezing through it either. But there's some very like the bosses are great and I think first some the best ones are actually the ones that you go in, you die immediately. How am I ever going to do this? And then I guess it's kind of that Dark Souls you think of, oh, okay, you just learn their attack patterns and then by the end of it, it's it's an exceptional boss fight. So, let's do that. And obviously, I've been playing more Starcraft. I think I finally got better again. So after getting rubbish and uh actually an interesting thing to note so for me so in the Starcraft 2 community people a bit confused and excited it's a 15year-old game and to balance it they actually had a balance council which I believe was made up of professional players. I don't think they were really

named but some people kind of hinted that they were in it. And so each year, I don't know, 8 months to 12 months, there'd be like a big patch that would make balance changes to the game because, you know, I guess in in the meta, especially professional players, but even at lower levels, you kind of find certain units and ways of playing became kind of too strong or changes that they previously made in a patch that were barely tested really kind of come in and then actually nothing ruined the game. But there was one thing in particular in the last one for one of the factions that I don't know. I wouldn't call it broken. But anyway, so what's really hap the weird thing that's happened now is they've actually I don't know how long they've been doing that. I believe they got rid of this balance council and someone or a team at Blizzard is actually kind of maybe working on the game again. And so they randomly released this patch, a bunch of changes to test out on a on a server before it gets rolled out, which quite normal, but there's no explanation of what they're going for. It's just these are the changes. So how a unit works, how that particular move works, it's all

different. The spell casting, whatever is all different. And then like the most surprising thing was that like 2 days later they changed that again. So it was like rapid fire testing and I believe someone suggested that it was kind of like Warcraft 3 where actually to do balance changes, they just really rapid fire test like maybe like every few days really like okay, see if this works. So you can try like kind of crazy stuff to see if it's fun and if it's fun but too powerful you roll it back a bit and then you can balance you do it quickly testing and then you can put it kind of implement it into the full game. I thought that was really interesting one as a way of the different ways of balance testing in games which this is how I'm making it relevant to mobile. Uh different ways of balance testing and then also the thing I I have a conspiracy theory and so I this is ridiculous. This is no basis probably in truth, but like I'm wondering if there's AI involved in

these updates. So, in the they made in the second update, but in the first one or sorry, in the first one, they made these changes, but they got like the names of some of the like spells and units incorrect. They don't even this not how they're mentioned in the game, which you could say that's nitpicking, but this is on the official Blizzard like news from the team. like they made up these terms at the first place. It's a bit weird. They got them wrong and they don't fix them in the second update either. And then they had a load of which they haven't done for a long time like quality of life changes, bug fixes. They didn't even fix like a well-known bug before the world cut. And I wonder if AI was used to look through forums and maybe what professionals are saying and and then releasing a patch that was like identified those. So then the team works on what they think the community is has been talking about the most. And so I'm wondering if then an AI has then generated the patch notes and that's how

it's kind of hallucinated these incorrect terms. I thought it was it because it because it was just really strange that the team's suddenly back on it after 15 years and there's kind of no reason for them to
if they're not going to do it
for the past five years.
Yeah. Curious. So anyway, Fury, but I thought it was quite interesting. I I'll do the journalist thing and ask them, but uh I don't think I'll get a response. Right. Um so we'll get into the actual news of the week and as always a few shout outs before we do that. Our events coming up. We got Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki very soon. October 7th to 8th. I'll be there unless some catastrophe hits. I hope there's two events this year because of things that I got very ill for London. Uh unfortunately for those for those that have seen him on uh on camera, my little Gizmo was my cat. He did pass away and that was the day I was supposed to be flying to Shanghai. So I cancelled that obviously.
Yeah, sorry again.
Thank you. So there's TMI. So other events that we got coming up, we got Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Korea

October 31st. Got Akabar event coming up November 8th and 9th and then the big one PGC London January 19th to 20th and also we have the top 50 being announced in Helsinki that has gone to press and I was very upset that a company announced a massive game after it went to press but there you go what could you do such is life uh classic that is classic print journalism and um we have some top 30s in the works for top 30 Mina we've pretty much narrowed down that list to top 30 Southeast Asia and they'll be coming up over the next month or so. So, lots lots of stuff going on. Right, on to the important stuff, the news. So, there's a few things I wanted to talk about that been in the news recently. The one thing I wanted to start with is the Fortnite changes recently. So, so in Fortnite, you can now sell in-game items directly from your created files, which is great. There's more ways for creators to make money on the platform. So from de December 2025

through to the end of 2026 developers will earn 100% of the V-Bucks value for sales made which in practical terms equates to around 74% of of it says of retail spending. However from 2027 the rates offered by Epic Games are set to return to 37%. That's that so that's the actual money you make. I think they use something else 50% or something. Interestingly, when they made this announcement, they were like, "That's higher than Roblox is 25%." By the way, so they're making like a big move. They're really again sort of doubling down as they have been for a long time. You see, UFM and UGC is the big kind of buzzword. If you look at Roblox, if you were to judge things by share price, it's gone up and up and up despite, you know, the um what they call the short sellers gunning for it. And it's actually just been banned in Q8. and it's, you know, it's having problems with kind of child safety still, even though they made a lot of attempts to trying to appease regulators and parents more importantly. UC is kind of a big

place and obviously you've got grow a garden that's kind of been an absolute smash hit a positive story for Roblox that's really put it in the spotlight like BBC headlines for that. And now you got Steer Brain rot which is crazy as well and it's like tens of millions of concurrent uses so really propelling that platform very high. I think the other thing Epic said was it was going to have sponsored placements. That's it. Uh sponsored row that allows creators to bid for prominent placements aiming to help creators grow their audiences. Uh I want to just roll back. These changes are good that this is a good thing like a lot of this stuff. But you've got Epic Games that has been on this crusade against Apple and Google about the 7030% split, right? And I think there'll be a wide consensus that that's been good for the industry steadily opening it up and then you've had regulators and legal

those legal battles currently uh really really opening them up reducing the revenue share which is fantastic for developers, right? And you can argue that Apple and Google don't do enough to earn 30%. I'll go into that again later. 74% is 4% higher than than people were getting from mobile, right? The mobile stores. So that's that's loads more, right? And then it's going to reduce to 37% of in-game sales. You will still get a payout from the pool of engagement. Um, so you can still earn money that way, but they're also charging you to promote your game, which is something that the App Store and Google Play do. Uh, which is not something say Steam does for discovery. So the money that you earn potentially goes back in. And I know that the big difference here, right, is that Roblox, which takes 20 25%, they're going to raise it, I was a bit confused, they're going to raise it by 8.5%. I didn't know if that was 8.5%

of the 25% of revenue or an extra 8.5% of the 100. I suspect it's the former. I don't know. Like these revenue shares are rubbish. They are awful for developers. You're making less. You're making way less than half. Well, in one case, you lose 75% of your earnings. [clears throat]
Maybe it will change for Roblox with platform fees, but I'm not sure. I I just think that's kind of wild.
[snorts]
And yeah, I was just saying like Epic's doing this big this big crusade about oh they take too much or charge 11% or nothing if you use your own payment provider on um the Epic Game Store. But in UF it you just earn like kind of a pittance for your work. They obviously provide the engine and a big audience but Apple could say well we provide a big audience which it does. You just can't access it very easily. So, I'm wondering if that would be that I I feel like down the line that is going to be a

big contentious issue, especially when it's with Epic, it's kind of going the other way, right? So, they're enticing you in with a 74% and then reducing it for some reason to 37%. I know these people run a business. I'm not they've got to make money. I'm not saying, "Oh, they shouldn't take anything." But it does feel a bit like if you're going to complain about this, you can't then give developers 37%. seems wild to me. Uh, that's my thoughts on that. Just one to watch. So, Aaron, you got a big story that was just a bit random. And I think we even I I swear we talked about this a couple months ago. The Nintendo in a in a financials was just like, we will never Oh, sorry. We were never. Oh, yeah. We we're looking at this and I was like, nah, no, you're not.
Yeah.
And then what's the news? A big story.
Yeah. So suddenly um Nintendo have shadow dropped their first new mobile game since 2019.
So since Mario Kart.
Yeah. So it's Fire Emblem Shadows which

has been Shadow Drop. Um and yeah, so it's also surprising that like of all franchises like Fire Emblem now has two mobile games. Um I'm a very big Fire Emblem fan, but I never thought we'd get another Fire Emblem mobile game. It seems a bit um bit too niche, but
it it's weird that you would say that and it's like a a billion dollar game.
Yeah, I suppose.
And everyone was just like, well, we're never going to see that again. Yeah, it's very different to Heroes because that uh yeah, like Heroes is a gotcha basically like a scaled down version of the main series with a turnbased combat on a on a grid whereas this is like a real time strategy game where the characters sort of move on the grid automatically to attack things and then um because I've been playing a little bit of it, I got through the kind of tutorial section during lunch uh which was a bit long. Yeah, like the characters move automatically. So, it's still grid based. You can like choose moves to kind of fire at different

places at different tiles, but then an enemy might have moved off the tile by the time the move goes off and things. So, it's very different to the main series. And then it's also kind of like riffing on Among Us and it's inspirations like Werewolf. Um cuz like so in each battle someone on your team is basically secretly working against you and secretly dealing damage to your allies cuz it's like an online multiplayer game as well. So then after each battle you have to basically try and figure out who on your team is the bad guy who's helping the the enemies. So far it doesn't seem like there's massive consequences either way. If you guess correctly, you basically get an extra life for the next round. Um, and if you so so you can basically get knocked out twice instead of once if you guess correctly without getting like a game over. So maybe at like highle play as you get further in that will be a a big deal. But currently it's not like

you guess correctly and that other player gets knocked out or anything. And it's [clears throat] also a little bit weird cuz it's Fire Emblem, but everyone has like an animal form, which like there have been a few like fantasy races where you'll get like one character per game that turns into a dragon or like a a giant fox in one that was quite like Japanese inspired. But yeah, like every character in this has like a kind of beast form. So if they get exposed as being like the bad one, yeah, they suddenly transform. And some of the designs are very just like wacky for the Fire Emblem. Not necessarily in a bad way. It's just very strange particularly because there are some like returning characters. And so one of them um who is very popular from the main series called Lynn um like in Fire Emblem Hero, she's very often depicted as a like cavalry unit. So she has a bow and arrow. She rides a horse so she can move a lot. in this game, if if you're kind of playing as her and you're the villain who gets

exposed, her like beast form is that she's a centaur, which kind of makes sense, but it's also like it's just weird seeing this character who's been around for like 20 years with like official artwork where they've turned her into a centaur. And then, so yeah, after kind of realizing that's the kind of gimmick, I suppose, I've noticed that like every character's human form also has little hints of what they're going to like turn into. the main character, his hair, part of his hair looks kind of like dog ears. And so it just the more I've sort of looked at it, the more it just feels like
this isn't a Fire Emblem game. It's just it's I'm going to give it more of a a go cuz I am a big Fire Emblem fan. And it's it does feel it's not quite like they've just made a game and plunk the Fire Emblem IP on it because there is this kind of tilebased element. It does feel like they've adapted. you know, this is kind of what it would be if it wasn't turnbased, if it were a real time series. But yeah, it is it's just kind

of bizarre. I think there's only two characters so far who are kind of legacy characters coming back like the other one. So he's from Fire Emblem 3 Houses and his sigil is like a lion. So obviously he now actually turns into like an anthropomorphic lion.
So we're going to move on to uh some other news recently in the past few weeks. Apple Games uh has now debuted in iOS 26. We talked about this previously. Stated aim is to provide a single destination for all of the players games and offer a specialized discovery space for new games, providing recommendations tailored to specific users. social features include play together, a tab for tracking friends, there's activity, there's challenges, there's a leaderboard, leaderboards, um, and there's a dedicated kind of Apple Arcade app tab. It It's just weird that it take I just It's just odd that they've just never really focused that much on games

and they're like, "Oh, here's here's this now." The timing feels a bit interesting. I'll go to that in a minute. And then at the same time, Google Play is just presumably just like, "Oh, Apple's doing, so we better do this." It's probably not how it works. They probably work on these things for a long time, but curious the timing. So, Google Play has announced some changes and some kind of additions. There's new features like Play Game Sidekick to help uh users curate relevant information and access to Gemini, of course, during sessions. Basically, as we put in the story, Sidekit integrates Gemini Live screen sharing uh to provide real-time in-game guidance with verbal tips and support to give players AI powered coaching without leaving their game. So, I guess Samsung did something like this. It might even be actually powered by Gemini, which is same thing. So, if you need help instead of think instead of having to leave the app, you just get help in the game. I think that's what that is. We're far and

far away. If anyone ever remembers about 30 years ago, if you ever got stuck on a game, you couldn't just go on the internet and look for it. So, there would be a number in the manual, I think, you'd have to call it up. And I presume it was like a developer that you'd get through to and they would probably look through this book or just know like how to get past this certain part of the game and you just have this chat of a person. We come a long way. Anyway, all important parts got uh play games leagues uh so you can compete for play points against the community and bragging rights. First league will run from October 10th to 23rd in Subway Surfers. They made improvements to the game detail pages show events, updates, offers, and player progress. Also adding Q&A feature next month for select markets. The UTAB. UAB is also a new personalized hub for rewards, subscriptions, recommendations, and updates with dedicated gamer profiles, and tailored content across apps that will roll out globally from October 1st, 2025. Google Play Games on PC is also

moving out of beta to full release. Says, "Our catalog of over 200,000 titles available across mobile and PC." Sorry, our catalog includes over 200,000 titles available across mobile and PC. No matter how you play, there's a game for everyone, etc., etc. Yeah, curious that they all come at the same time. Feel like these changes have come about for two potential reasons. One, I wasn't going to say, maybe they just decide, both decided to just improve the experiences of games on their platform cuz it was overdue. So, that that's plenty possible. My other theories are that obviously and and Apple kind of alludes to this right in recent proposed changes in the EU where they split testing my memory now is it service tiers I can't remember there's two tiers for revenue share and they basically like piled say Apple games was one of the things that they piled into their services that they were charged an extra fee for. Um this is more precient for

Apple games really his point but uh is is it so eventually they can be like well your the revenue share that they would they take it used to be just for payments and now it's like whatever they decide and one of those is Apple games and they've always treated games differently to other apps which were allowed to skirt the rules for a while and then there was reading apps got the whole history of weirdness. Uh so I just wonder if this is a way eventually they can say to in court or to regulators go well look you know we actually provide all the of these services maybe they have realized that developers are quite upset and they do need to win people back a bit so helping discovery which has long been a problem and they'll never fix it because I think it's just quite is a very challenging thing to do but they should at least try and this could be an attempt to do that. Uh, and then the other thing I it got me thinking, but I don't think this is true either, is that maybe it's like now that there's actual competition

potentially in the market. So in Europe and in the US, you can allow so they have to allow um for alternative marketplaces. And so now they're actually competing with other stores to like make a good experience for finding apps, playing games. So maybe that was a bit of a a motivation for Apple and Google to be like we need to sort our out otherwise I'm just going to either go to direct consumer or they never or they just they're going to eventually go to other stores which I find very unlikely. I think the challenge of uh another store being a success in the west is is a is a significant one. Uh at least in terms of if you're talking about being on on some sort of par with Apple and Google like Samsung, Huawei, Amazon, none of them could do it. And then the last thing I'll say, we did an interview with the Sketch CEO. So, this is one of the alternative marketplaces trying to edge in and find their niche

and kind of appease games publishers to use their store and say and then they're trying to add new things. Skits is kind of cool in that the discovery system is kind of like Tinder. You can swipe to find your app. That was kind of the main gimmick of the app. And then now there's like the full sketch store. There were some interesting things in the interview. If I remember, I'll put a link, but if not, uh, please check it out on the site. ask it interview the PR obviously marketing statement was I I asked a question about discovery because I previously looked at uh how Steam, Google Play and the App Store do discovery and the mobile stores very much lean to paid stuff. Um obviously Apple does the editorial things as well. So sometimes even the app you're searching for is well sometimes always the app you're searching for if it's a good one will have probably have another app in the sponsored section unless the developer has paid for its own name and in some cases it was like multiple apps before you even get to your whereas

Steam doesn't do promoted spots. It bases it all on recommendations based and I guess an algorithm that's based on your tastes and also trending games regionally locally to you which really interesting. Skitch's PR line then after I asked this question. So they were prepared somehow. It was uh with we want to be the Steam for mobile gaming basically and or I said I guess it could be considered the Steam for mobile gaming something like that. But the point of that was uh it's just a different way of doing discovery. They they say they're not going to do like those promoted spots. So that was very curious. They're just going to do different ways of of discovery. And uh let's take a 15% revenue share. I believe it. The point of all this is just that yeah, there's a lot of competition going on and I I wonder if that plays a bit of a part in in Apple and Google paying a bit more attention and then that's kind of the benefit of actual competition in a market versus monopolies that don't actually have to do anything. Those are my thoughts on

that.
Uh Aaron, you've got a really really great interview on a very serious topic. So yeah, I recently spoke with um Oxy Wild, which is a Ukrainian mobile game studio, and so I spoke with its founder, he burner, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. And so yeah, we basically talked about um what it's like developing and maintaining mobile games during a time of crisis, obviously with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And yes, so it was a really insightful interview. Quite inspiring really that they've carried on through you know getting you know bombed with like air raids team members going off to join the army. I'll preface by saying like definitely check the the full interview out on the website but yeah it was um I think it's quite a moving interview to be be honest. Um, so sir, he had said like

nearly every night Ukrainian cities are attacked by dozens or even hundreds of drones and then during the day you're expected to be productive. And so he talked about kind of his role as a a leader when you know team members their family members might lose lives or um, you know, or the team members might be having blackouts and unable to get online. And then just basically talking about the development process around that, like people trying to get things in before deadlines because they're expected to lose power by the deadline or working from um like a garage garage I think he said or garage um because like it's safer during a raid um and then they've also moved like fully remote because where Oxywhile was based is like very frequently bombed.
I think it's a desk, was it?
Yeah. Yeah. As you say, it's a very kind of serious um interview, but I definitely

think it's worth reading. I think it puts a lot in perspective maybe both professionally and personally just particularly see if you're um in the west you know further west like not not to speak for everyone but you know maybe your stresses at work aren't quite as as bad as they could be compared to you know people going through this kind of thing and yeah the kinds of games that they make are kind of strategy games kind of set in the real world so you take control of kind of a country and lead its operations essent essentially. And so like sir he talked about initially he made a game called Ukraine Simulator and then Ukraine Simulator 2 which was something of kind of an act of patriotism quite a few years ago after the annexation of Crimea. And he said that he wanted to make a game where players could kind of push back at least in a virtual world. And then yeah, over

time they've kind of made bigger games where you can kind of control, you know, you choose a country to to lead basically. And yeah, they're continuing to make new games. Modern Age 2 is of being adapted for PC now as well, so they're kind of even expanding platforms even with all of this going on. And yeah, I'd say it's just quite a humbling interview really.
Yeah, it's uh thank you very much for for doing the interview with us. And it's very hard to imagine what they're going through. Obviously, we see it all the time uh in the news, just constant attacks as they mentioned there's quotes like nearly every night Ukrainian cities are attacked by dozens or even hundreds of drones and then during the day as you said Aaron and then during the day you're expected to be productive and I think the the quote we had in the headline was it's hard to focus on creative tasks when your city is under attack and yet you know these people with the risk of kind of with the possibility of being mobilized into the army as well whether whether that's yourself, your friends, your family, your colleagues, just just I can't

imagine those conditions. And then you just but you turn out every day and make games to kind of make people around the world also happy, right? Imagine it's just like those conditions and the stark contrast of like the lives that they're being forced to lead and then what they what they're doing with their time is is really inspirational. It was really really fascinating interview and exactly what they do to kind of make it work and their games. Sounds like they're doing pretty well. 40 million downloads. So, good luck to that studio and yeah, appreciate them taking the time to speak with us and and shine a bit of a light on on what's going on.
Right. So, that brings us to the end of the Pocket Gamer Biz podcast week in mobile games. Thanks very much, Aaron, for being on the show.
Yeah, thank you. It's good to be back.
It was very good to be back. Hopefully we'll be back next week. I don't I don't want to make a promise now. We we we'll attempt to get this back to regular. Uh and anyone going to pocket Gamer Connect Helsinki, give me a shout. I will be

there. That is on the 7th to 8th of October. So, not long at all. About a week or so, a week, week and a half when you listen to this podcast. Right. Have a good weekend and we'll see you all very soon. Goodbye.