Week in Mobile Games E68 - The Top 50 Mobile Game Makers, and crisis in the EU's games industry

[Music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we chat about the week's news and hopefully provide some insights. As ever, I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz and with me is our news editor, Aaron Hassel. How you doing, Aaron? What's going on?
Yeah, doing well, thank you. Not as much going on this week. I've been going to catch up on um Westworld. I don't know if you've ever seen that.
I've not watched it. I've seen the film actually. I think I watched like an episode on a plane. I need to watch it because I think I would love it cuz the writer behind it did Person of Interest, I believe, which was excellent. So, yeah, I do need to watch it. How How is it?
Uh I'm quite enjoying it. Um, it's weird cuz I think I'd said on the podcast or maybe maybe not, but recently I caught up on Stranger Things as well and I really liked series 4 after I didn't

really enjoy series 3. And the same's kind of happened with um Westworld, but I series 1 and two were great. Series 3, I just didn't enjoy it at all and wasn't interested in carrying on with the show anymore. But for like 3 years now, people have been telling me like, "No, watch series 4. you know, it gets better again. So, finally, like this week, I thought, you know, well, I'll give it a chance. It's been like however many years since I last watched an episode. I'm a bit, you know,
yeah, a little bit confused, but I'm actually quite enjoying it. I think it is. Yeah, I'm liking it more than I think part of the issue was series 3 cuz it's kind of like dystopian sci-fi stuff. Um, and it kind of came out just around when the lockdowns started, but yeah, no, series 4's quite good so far. Um, so that's kind of the I guess the highlight of my week so far that this old show I liked is good again.
Is this is it still going?
I think there's going to be a series five, I believe. So yeah, trying to get

caught up on a few things before the new seasons come out. I say like Stranger Things, I've only got a few weeks wait for that instead of years.
I need to Yeah, I need to watch that. As for my week, I'm still out in Liverpool. I'm in another Airbnb. More exciting background paintings on the wall. Uh yeah, there's a few things going on up here. So I'm still still around. That's why my beard is getting for for video listeners. That's why my beard is getting a bit out of control. As you speaking of TV, the thing that I watched I haven't had a chance to play any games other than New York Times games. Thank you New York Times for for connections and the media, etc. Spelling be I got addicted to that. Um but recently, a few weeks ago, I actually forgot. I watched uh if anyone's ever seen Alice in Borderlands sci-fi show uh it's on Netflix. Seasons one or two, one and two are both excellent. Season two is up there with like my favorite television ever. It's fant it's kind of like a Squid Game type thing, right? So they they got competing

games survive and it it the games that they play are brilliant to watch. It's not just all action. There's some that it's like real psychological and just really interesting interactions. Uh season 3 doesn't need to exist. And my analogy, my comparison that I give someone is like, you know, like in Jurassic Park where Jurassic Park is a like the original fantastic film and then after that they keep needing reasons to go back. So like you finished the story, but then it's like but we have to go back because of this and that's what the franchise has been ever since. They sort of tried to change it a bit with Jurassic World but there was even a second one of that and it starts with we have to go back.
Yeah.
And then the new Jurassic World is like we have to go there again.
Yeah.
It's they m actually the premise of that they migrated to a new area or something. Anyway, we have to go there. It's just like God and and that's how I

felt with this. It's just like the most unnecessary season of television. Like the games are okay. The final game's pretty good, but it's like they they wrap it up after two seasons and then it just appears again and then it'll probably continue now. So yeah, I I did that. Season 3 isn't very average. But if you're interested in that kind of thing, seasons one and two absolute bangers and it actually has an ending despite there being another season. Right, we'll get into it. So a few shout outs. So thanks everyone that came to Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki. I haven't heard this very good show. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it. I think I said before the third event I've had to cancel in this rather dramatic year. So, I hate hate drama. So, hopefully next year I'll actually go to all the events, but be as may I couldn't attend. Yeah, I heard very good things. And on to the next one. So, up coming up, we have Pocket Gamer Connect Summit Korea on October 31st, PGC Akaba November 8th and 9th, and then the big one, PGC London January 19th to 20th. Uh

stay tuned for that. Right, first thing that I wanted to cover on this show is we just released the top 50 game makers 2025. Uh we we do this every year. We have done it for I actually don't know how I think it was over 15 years. This might have been the 16th edition, I think. I think we celebrated last year. And yeah, it basically looks at it's an editorial decision and we try and consider basically all the factors, right? successful successful new games, successful live games that have been going for years. Maybe they've been notable in their expansion, whether through M&A, uh, investments. Um, and obviously like not just about money though, right? It's like, were the games they released good? And we take various things like that all into account and we try and say who over the past 12 months has been the best developer out there or like the most notable. that sums up where we are in the industry. And so we all we all got

together and discussed uh and I'll let you talk in a sec, but I guess I will run through the top 10 that we chose. So we have at number 10, 10 cents. I mean technically 10 could just win it every year if we did it based on money. They are so far and away ahead of everybody else. But uh 10 cent obviously still like one of still technically still the biggest publisher out there. Timmy very successful. They've had a few successful. Delta Force has done well. Pudgy Mobile still does well. Ora King smashing it. So, you know, no concerns for them, but they're slight I think they're slightly down from last year only because everyone else is so is so freaking good at the moment. Voodoo number nine. bit of a tough choice kind of in a way for the hyper casual lot because Hab is obviously absolutely brilliant. We put Voodoo in there because they have grown their business kind of dramatically over the years and they're doing they're still doing absolutely fantastic. Roblox I mean technically you could say Roblox is a

platform there developers that make it right but we chose it because we've had it in there for for years and it's like it's still like an app you download. It's the UGC creator and then the games that kind of come out of that and Roblox has obviously been I keep wanting to use the word fantastic. I need a thesaurus but uh um one of the games grow a garden steal a brain obviously separate developers. Uh they're kind of this year is almost like a breakout moment for Roblox which is already incredibly popular. Those games are getting tens of millions of concurrent users way above other games out there. probably giving Fortnite a bit of a run for its money at the moment though Fortnite is isn't slack isn't really lacking. Number seven, first fun make last war survival still still doing brilliantly makes billions basically for strategy game with that gate mechanic. Chinese developer lot to look forward to from them. Dream games number six. It's tough

for them to do some of these cuz they could almost be top or higher. So, Dream Games, obviously, Royal Match is now the top match free game in the world. Royal Kingdom had the big um celebrity marketing campaign with like basically all of the celebrities that millennials will know. So, I guess the way I would put it, it was a huge campaign. So, a lot of debate. The industry dreams obviously raised a lot of money as well. So, cur curious to see what the future holds for them. They're going to double down basically on Raw Match and growing Royal Kingdom. Will they release a new game with the 12 months? But yeah, it's been a big previous 12 months for them. Supercell at number five. So, I feel like in a way it's the most controversial one. So, I think initially when we were putting this together, I I was thinking maybe maybe they'd be slightly lower because obviously Squad Busters Mo I I think we could call those failures. So, finally Supercell is releasing games, but they don't seem to

have that higher it would appear. I mean, they might have well thought that these games would absolutely do well, but they didn't really do they did testing for these, but they also kind of just then went out and released and they've said like they wanted to try different types of launches for these rather than the usual really long soft launches that they do and then those games get cancelled. Um, I've heard Philip Black on structure fun was actually talking about whether Super might even regret is it Clash Mini? I think that was actually that would actually probably have done actually pretty well. might not have been a billion, but hundreds of millions maybe. Anyway, yes, so they're still struggling new releases. However, you can't forget that they did kind of change the way they do financials a little bit uh publicly, but 2024 was their best year ever. I think was record-breaking revenue, right? You can't forget that Brawl Stars rise been going for a while now, but that is super super like relevant to this list and it's very

rare. Okay, I'm trying to think of another example off the top of my head. I can't think of one. Technically, you could say coin master, but I I don't think they started scaling it until years actually after it was actually released. No, I think it came out like 2011 and it didn't scale until I don't know 2018 maybe. Can't remember what's
uh
and then obviously um Clash Royale is kind of following suit.
Exactly. Clash Royale has been incredible and they've done it again, right? York said he'd never seen anything like it with Brawl Stars and then they did it again. So really managing their live game. So they split to new games to live games. They've done really well. New games needs to work. Um but I'm excited for what they can do and obviously they're doing all the trans media projects doing a lot of investments. They're experimenting with AI. It's really interesting times. It's just where it all kind of it's whether the whole thing comes together. We we'll see. Uh I'm going to quickly go through the top five. Aaron, I'm sure you got places to say as well. Sorry, the top four. So number four we've got Scopley.

I mean kind of Scopy kind of needs little introduction and I think it was top of our list last year. Monopoly Go one of the biggest g mobile mobile games of all time. Still is. Uh it had a decline but it's declined to one of the most successful mobile games on the market still. So they're doing well. And then they had the massive acquisition of Niantic, Pokémon Go, Niantics Games team to be specific as they took Pokémon Go, Monster Hunter now and also Pik and Bloom with them and they left the rest to Niantic Spatial. You can talk about this one in a sec, but info we got DNA Pokémon trading card game pocket. One of the biggest launches in recent years flew into this list. I don't even think we put them in last year and totally deserve it. They've now released uh Fire Emblem Shadows, which I was we wrote this before that was announced and I was like miffed because I was like, "Oh, brilliant." Like, this could be a huge game after Fire Heroes, but so far that has worked out. But we got them in third. So, really, really like impressive how they did that and

replicate Pokémon Go. Got take two at number two. So, obviously, Zingga kind of champions that, but they do also have Social Point, Nordless, etc. uh within the company. I think the key thing for that was Rollic did Color Block Jam, one of the hybrid casual hits of recent years, and that's like smashed its way they they I think they said officially to over $100 million. My sister plays it at the moment. She doesn't play that games. Well, actually, she does through Free Cash, but to get to get some money out of it. So, apparently those things do work anecdotally. And what was the other game? I nearly forgot. So, and Mass Factoring has been a huge success, right? So, and I think Tomb Blast had its own spike. So, I at one point I was thinking they'd actually be a good contender for the top of the list. Like, we discussed this with the team. I think I initially did have it at the top because they mastered the live box, but the challenge that Zinga had, especially since the Take Two acquisition and those

mobile studios, was those games are kind of stable or declining, and they hadn't really released a new big hit for years. Now, we've got it. So I think that actually I think they might have this might need a correction later. I think Tu might have even written off some of the Zinga deal as a bit of a a failure moneywise financially but now it's actually it's looking pretty good. I mean we all knew Zingga has the talent there. It's just whether they could do the toughest thing which is release another hit. And they've done that and they've done that a couple times now. So number one people might be thinking who the hell is number one? We give that to Century Games Chinese developer. If you don't know them, they did the 4X strategy game White Out Survival over a billion dollars. Massive smash hit. Frozen the CE I actually think is an excellent game. It's not It's nowhere near as big as White Out Survival, but like in terms of the quality of their games, the fun they've got it. King Shots is their new big one and I think that is excellent. I recorded a video with Oscar Clark. I'll be releasing that. Today is Thursday. I think I'll be

releasing that today at long last. I think we recorded that while. And then they've even got a casual game truck which I think I said was doing like 10 million. Yeah, 10 million a month. Like you probably never even heard of truckar is doing that. And so I think they they sum up everything that's relevant right now in the industry which is the mobile industry is growing again and they've got a live game that's doing fantastically well and is still growing. They've managed to release a new game and we're seeing a few new hits hit the market right and they are one of them and they're innovating. Now, I say innovating, I think what they've managed to do well is just combine a lot of different gameplay elements, kind of like you see in a lot of Forex strategy, and they've excelled at it and released, in my opinion, like probably the higher one of the highest quality new games in that market. And then Frar, which I kind of never heard of even before I was put this together, I was like, what's what is this? This is this is amazing. So, yeah, I think they kind of sum up where we are in the industry at the moment. I'm sure people would disagree with some of these in the top 10.

Oh, maybe agree. But let us know what you think. Check out the rest of the list on the site. There's a lot of other interesting companies in there. But anyway, sorry Aaron, I've been speaking for ages. I did say that you talk about it.
Yeah. No,
any sort of thoughts about the top 50 or our discussions or
Yeah. So, I guess to start with, it's I guess worth highlighting. It's it's always quite an enjoyable interesting debate kind of putting these lists together kind of cuz everyone's got their own opinions on you know where everyone should rank and I guess it it's the balancing act of yeah like you know does someone doing a big new game outweigh someone's old game you know um really taking off and you know so many different factors go into it um it's just yeah it's interesting like cuz there are some I won't name specifics where you we might have really quite disagreed and someone's like, "That's a top 10." Someone else is like, "Yeah, they should, you know, be way lower down the

list." I find them quite enjoyable kind of conversations just kind of getting all those different perspectives. But yes, as you alluded to, I mean, one that I'd um like to highlight is DNA, who obviously well done to them. Third place um Pokémon Pocket. Certainly no bias from me as someone who still plays every day. I think they should have come first, but um you know, top top three is all right. Oh, I fought my hardest.
There were a few contenders, right? Uh a lot of it was between DNA, Centure Games, and Take Two/Sare. And and to be fair, some of these others could have been top as well. Those were some of the main probably the main contenders. But yeah, I mean, so um I think it's a it's a pretty good list this year. It all, you know, there's there aren't um any that are particularly yeah, glaring to me of like, oh, you know, I really disagreed with where they've ended up other than DNA not being number one. But as you said, like things like Roblox

being in there this year has been like really exceptional for them, kind of breaking
records with the concurrent user accounts. And um I think um it was was it quarter two this year that their like daily average users was up like 40% or something. So like totally makes sense them being high up in the list. Um, as you say, like Century Games just have a bunch of big games going on at the moment. I guess that that's another kind of interesting element to the discussions of like kind of how do you rank someone that's got a bunch of pretty big projects versus someone who's got like one really big game kind of going on and
Yeah.
Yeah. It's Yeah. Well done obviously as well I guess we should say to to everyone that made the
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean obviously the companies that aren't on the list like the there's so many amazing games companies in the industry right now that it's not slight to them by any means and

I'm sure people will think why is this company missing as is the nature of these things. I wanted to do a few quick shout outs um some other companies that we put in here that just been really interesting. So Moon Active was a difficult one. I I think that could potentially been top 10. They've made some really like notable acquisitions but they keep quiet about it. And the interest one of the most interesting things about them right now is that well I think they have the I remember now they have like the biggest merch game on the market in Travel Town which I think is a UK studio um Magmatic I want to say I don't I don't have all that in front of I'm just trying to guess but uh if it's not then the other the other notable games uh sorry the other notable company is Microphone which also is I think is now the merge market leader so both of those kind of do ahead of Metacor which I think actually grew last year with merge management but yeah microphone's really interesting they have gossip harbor and seaside escape so they do really well some other really interesting companies I'll be kind of put in the list is

infold which is really international brand for paper names gets really confusing with some of these companies that have multiple names. It's like Mihoyo. So, what do we put that under? I think we put it under Mihoyo this year. Last year, I think we had Hover. So, Hover is the international name. Mihoyo is the developer in China. And then I think that I think it's like a business holding in Singapore. It's called Cognosphere. Very confusing. Well, confusing for me because I can't remember. Yeah.
Yeah. I noticed on um I noticed on App Magic a while ago it said Cognosphere and I suddenly like my heart stopped and it was like have they like sold it someone and then it's like oh no.
We got Hab as I mentioned in the list. Uh Triple Dot that was interesting one. So obviously the I can't I'm so confused by the whole deal but like basically uh break it up. What was it? $400 million acquisition plus 400 million like stake that Apploving has in Triple

Dot which now owns all of Apploven's game studios. So that was super notable. Then Triple Dot has basically gone from a very successful UK developer but very much flew under the radar with an ads business sorry ads powered mobile games business to one of the world's biggest publishers suddenly like I think now this half at least half portfolio is like in our purchase room super interesting target for them we'll see what they do with that if they can handle like the weight of that. Konami I think was new this year that we put in just because of the absolute growth of I was about to call it pro e but e football do doing exceptionally well and I think Yuio Masters jewel pretty well. Bandai Namco was a surprise to me because I always put it in the list and every time I was in there I I always been like I'm always like they're live op specialists. That's like kind of why I know them for. But then I think you were the first to see it. Aaron was the the Gundam game.
Ex has done really well. Um we got Epic at 30. That was a

difficult one, but they did um well, other than everything that they've done for the industry, Fortnite is back. It's hard to see how it's doing cuz people may still have had it installed. You don't count repeat downloads of your account. The monies may not be going through the app store. It's hard to see how well it's doing on mobile. Blitz Royale had a few hundred,000 concurrent users, so I think the mobile stuff's doing pretty well, but it's hard to get insights. GDev, this is more like a conglomerate of of studios. The Heroes War, Hero Wars Alliance, Zombie Miner, Pixel Gun, uh, Us Two, Money Valley 3, of course, Hungry Studio, Block Blast, of course, Select Button. That was a difficult one. Pokemon Sleep, it's like it's more like the gamification style stuff, but I believe the actual development has actually been transferred to the Pokemon company itself. Apparently, they're a team within that. The SL may only be a few people, but they did make the games we put uh, and loads of others in there. So, please check it out. I'll put a link

in the comments. Right, we're going to move on from the top 50. As I say, check out the link to read the full list and you can see previous years as well. We'll do it again next year. So, the big thing in the in the news this week, Supercell CEO Il Capano has been sounding the alarm for the European games industry that new proposed regulations could kill it. He's referring to the digital fairness act for which the European Commission launched a public consultation in July which ends. So, this was released this week. The date now is October 9th. The consult uh the consultation was also in July and it ends on October 24th. Um there has been sort of murmurings about it for quite a long time. So uh you point out Aaron in January at pocket game connects London Isabelle Davis from Wigan was talking was kind of warning about this is coming needs to sort of prepare and there has been earlier this year I want to say Star Stable online kind of fell foul of some EU rules so

there's a bit of like kind to do with child protection and purchases how you how you advertise those promote deals and stuff. So the EU has been watching it. The basic issue at hand is how inapp purchases could be regulated. There's a few things going on. Uh I'll put some links description. So it's kind of like with real currency pricing inapp items recognized as a as a full purchase, right? The problem with that is is that as they stand in game economies freeto play, they can be very much linked with the actual game design and they're quite heavily meshed together. So you might you can pay for hard currency, but you may also get something in the game which gives you kind of that hard currency and then how do you put the price on that? And people are worried that player that anytime you get any version of this currency you have to tell players come out of a screen going do you agree with this etc this value which you'd have to then I guess make it all gets very

confusing. I'll go into some opinions on the word in a minute. Yeah, very much cellular alarm it basically bring fundamental changes and people saying it could be similar to AT and IDFA also seems so Mishka Katakov mentioned IDFA mate laz al mentioned the same thing but at although mate was interesting so we asked mobile mavens and he he contributed to that he's also done a video with two and a half gamers check that out he I think he said like it might be like at we'll seek very concerned about it wrote a big letter and said it kind of basically would kind of particular ly Europe's games industry big companies like Supercell of course I guess a few opinions on this I think some calls of the industry would never accept freeto play and I think there are it's difficult one right but there's there's people out there that will just for example engage like I think some sites mobile game is very derided but I guess this explained to me is I guess

one of the reasons potentially for that is because a lot of those sites basically write for PC console audiences that don't really like very cool audiences that don't really want to play some of these mobile games. So that they have the license to be a bit like this is back. Oh, it's a mobile game which I think is wrong but I I I you kind of get it. I think one of the Sorry. So I think one of the the factors that regulators and critics I think don't understand fully about freeto play is that consumer I I'd say there are caveats to this. Consumers have overwhelmingly voted for these experiences through their actions. So they like them, right? I think they they love freetoplay games because they're played by hundreds of millions of people around the world. If I just forget them any like sometimes the loot box experience can just be fun. I think the problem obviously becomes when publishers take this too far. Um obviously Star Wars Battlefront 2 is big kind of controversial one and I think that can and does happen.

Like for example, I think odds should be very much labeled for these things up front so you know exactly what you're paying for. I think it would be it is good when they show you what you could get. And I think some games like with Gro loot boxes, they don't show the odds very obviously like you have to go to some external website which literally no one will ever do. So I think there are some problematic uh issues. But I think simply dismissing the business model is really unreasonable. And I think there's concern, but there's only consultation at the moment and I think it's still a few years away for any of these regulations in the EU to be implemented. But there's concern that yeah, it'll really upend everything that's happened and I think in the wrong way. But I uh the other side I wanted to say is I think there's the rub here that if an industry fails to give regulators respect which I don't think the games industry ever does. I think the games industry just speaks sorry it's kind of as a as a as like one blob there isn't it? But like I think publishers top

publishers just think we'll do whatever we want and you like we'll do whatever we want. What are you going to do about it? I think and I think they'll take it as far as they can. Now obviously it's difficult because if someone's doing it then you don't know that that will get banned that business practice you just behind if you don't do it which maybe some publishers think it's kind of bit insidious way of talking about it I I can say it's difficult but ultimately I think trade bodies and organizations in countries and regions like in in Europe European game develop federation game developers federation separately in the UK like UK I think they just need I think there needs to be greater pressure sorry there's two things they need to do we I don't see a lot of this publicly. I I've heard from a couple of people that the EGDF is IL% himself and Mavens has said it that the EGDF is lobbying on the industry's behalf for months about this and trying to get make sure there's like expertise coming in. So it's not just which is still very relevant. It's not just consumer input and feedback on these potential new rules. It's

industry-ledd feedback that sorry, it's industry feedback that also says like the realities, the mechanics, why things happen, could actually potentially provide actual data on player happiness or unhappiness. Obviously, then you have to take their word for it. But I I feel like games never lobbies like tech does. Uh I know they're quite closely intertwined, but I can't remember what company it was. Is it Apple or Meta or or Amazon or something? I'm sure I heard a long time ago that like for every seller they have like two lobbyists. they hire these people full-time to just lobby because it's important to get their opinion across. Now, I can say that I'm not that big a fan of lobbying in some cases, but like you've got the option. The games industry needs to take it a little more seriously. I think it's a bit wild that to be honest, this like this has been going on for a while and it is now October, a couple weeks out from the end of this consultation period and it's taken a letter from ilkarn to get everyone talking about it. purely I think this is a bit of a failure on on

um on trade bodies to not be bringing this out in public and getting those publishers to talk about it loudly. I think that's insane. Again, I'm sure there's conversations happening privately that are very significant. But the fact we're only talking about it now, I I think the industry is letting itself down. It's also incumbent on those bodies and trade bodies not to just champion the industry, which is what they do. I think they need to they need to be telling publishers that you need to get your house involved. I think they should be more direct and I think the ESA in the US has this this problem in the past where you need to really be telling publishers like this is what is acceptable and this is what is not acceptable. This is how we self-regulate. Like in journalism you have that I'm really going back to my uni days and I can't remember what is cool. So that's that's good, isn't it? How we self-regulate. But there is like uh there are like basically rules that we operate by and if you don't do those then actually call it can be brought up like those rules. I really hate myself for not being able to but you you you do have like that's an industry you can

argue one way or the other people don't like journalists anymore but ultimately there is some form of regulation there and when journalists don't based on their own rules they get caught out by that. I think the games industry just the games industry just waits. They just wait for regulators to step in and regulators are always going to step in with a hammer because they don't understand it. And so I think a lot of this is actually a failure the industry's part and there's a lot of I'll stop in a minute. There's a lot of uh tech regulation going on in the world right now because it's way overdue. And so yeah, it's kind of unfair that governments and regulators have been so slow regulating these things. And so you got these billion dollar businesses that have been formed, million dollar business, whatever, and now the rules might change. You kind of sweep the rug under from their feet. I I I just think it's a bit more incumbent on the industry to do something. I'm I'm hopeful that the industry will be able to engage at this point and maybe there's I think there are some concessions that will have to be made. I think the main I think what

this all is really about and you'll go into this in a story in a minute, a lot of this tech regulation is is about protecting children. It's not about gambling. necessarily etc. It's mostly about protecting children and I think if the games industry can show that it will do that and then hopefully the regulators will listen in the EU and we won't have this kind of catastrophic sort of debate that we're having at the moment. Vic mate was trying to be reasonable in his comments it's not as catastrophic as you think potentially but we'll see how it all rolls out. We won't this is going to rub along for a few years. Cool. That's what I wanted to say. that I've done one of my long rants again which is kind of meing 84.
Yeah. So I guess as you say it's interesting it's kind of taken this long for the conversation to really pick up because um obviously it came up in one of our meetings earlier in the week and then yeah I was thinking like I'm sure like I heard something about this at like game of connects and so I looked

back at my coverage and it's like yeah like um it was um there was a talk on it from Isabelle Davies back in January like it's not like this has suddenly come out of nowhere this week. It's just people haven't really paid attention. I guess she talked about it um kind of warning developers and publishers I guess to to yeah prepare for this conversation um that was kind of inevitably coming. She said about there was a digital fairness fitness check which was published in October last year as kind of a review of EU consumer law. off the back of that, she um kind of said that um there'll be quite a big impact that um she thinks will kind of shift the um conversation for the next like 5 years for like free-to-play games. Um and um basically said that like the report suggested um there's an

issue with like addictive game design which they
um sort of described as being like daily login bonuses um or particularly like punishing a lack of play like kind of I guess missing out on things if you aren't playing regularly or in games where like if your base gets raided while you're away from the game that was kind of spun as being like you're being punished for not playing. So, you're kind of trapped into playing the game, which I think it, you know, it's a bit more nuanced than that really. But mainly what sort of struck me this week is, yeah, just suddenly it's come up again after, you know, it it was a a kind of known thing that was going to be coming up. Yeah, it's taken until like Ilk has made a
a statement about it for anyone to take notice, it seems.
I think uh so I've been reading through the call it a report the paper that they release and and the cool feedback

constation I think if I remember right it mentions like dark patterns which is what you're saying it mentions like quite a few things actually about games um which is interesting again I guess like you know if we're real about it like I think the best games the best games on the market are just they try and focus on the fun but there are sides to the mobile games freeto-play business which is and tech Because the ultimate thing about this rate, I'm going to get my points confused now, but the ultimate thing about this is it's about tech regulation and then games is part of this. So the hammer's going down on big tech and games gets caught up in it a little bit, but games is targeted a little bit. It's kind of part of this larger thing. Game design on mobile is kind of designed to create hooks. And whether you believe that you can be addicted to games or not, like they are designed to in such a way to make you spend and to make you and then they use emotional levers sometimes that make you want to do things, compel you to do. So there's

there's a lot of things to look at. I think the games industry does have to kind of I think publishers have to look at themselves a little bit and they can't just have their they can't just have everything they've ever had and and have the cake and eat it. They're going to have to they're going to have to be some concessions and I think there's going to have to be some sort of wider I know you can't do this on a global level but regionally and by country there's going to have to be some sort of what would you call it a chart a rule book that companies are advised to abide by again that is incumbent on EGF and individual trade bodies within the EU and uh and outside of UK um the last thing I want to say is I've been blaming about everyone else I would actually say that it's a bit embarrassing for media and like me for example, right? It's like we haven't been talking about it either. I think we've reported on something that happened in the year, but like but we've not been like reporting like on this earlier. The media needs to be keeping a closer eye on on this kind of regulation stuff. Obviously, we do with some things, but I think this one was kind of been bubbling under and not put to the surface by anybody. Right. So, that's that that's that story. Uh Aaron, what

else should we do?
Yeah. So, kind of on a similar vein to do with regulatory stuff, Texas has announced that there's going to be a new law requiring app stores and developers to implement age verification measures. So, this is going to take effect on January 1st next year. And basically, it means like Apple account users in Texas specifically are going to need to confirm that they're like 18 or older. Um, and anyone under 18 will have to join a family sharing group uh to get like parental approvement um or approval to um be able to uh kind of do stuff on the app store, which I guess includes like downloading apps and stuff. And apparently developers will need to update um their apps to kind of comply with this. And um there are similar laws going to take effect like Utah and Louisiana next year.

There's um not a vast amount more I think that we know about it at the moment. But I think it's interesting like worth noting and we were kind of touched on it um before the podcast earlier today but like quite how it's going to work like just in Texas or whether you know how you specify the part of the United States someone's in or whether it will end up kind of becoming a bigger thing in the country. I I think just kind of going back to the EU stuff tech regulation is is coming particularly targeting child safety and this is just a greater global movement
towards that
it's not going to slow down the implementations end up being because again it's governments regulators how do you do it also the companies are very just how do I describe this without swearing it is again like we're going to do what we want what are you going to do about it and we'll do bare minimum if we h if you think we have to do anything or

we'll just make people go and then suddenly someone goes you've got to do this and everyone's like whoa whoa whoa how could you can't possibly do that that's impossible laws to follow like now we have to do facial recognition or whatever I don't know do identification for children it's just like dude like you do have you do actually have to engage with regulators you can't just ignore it and act aloof like I think that it's an insane attitude so uh another story that I did want to quickly touch upon uh is so Atloven this week their shares fell as much as 19%. So every now and again you get one of the short seller reports but this one was actually pretty serious following those shortseller reports I think they were earlier this year a lot has happened this year uh and they were kind of looking at the practices that out loving uses uh for it has business which has been very very successful it's grown outgrown it competitors massively there's also I think I think part of the key issue of so there's invest did I say

this there's investigation into and it's data collection practices and I think the key part of might have been that is because one of the allegations was about the data of children being used and I think once the allegation is made then the SEC has no choice but to investigate that surely it could just be sort of kind of the nice way to put this could be that it is actually just sort of run-of-the-mill they they have to do this now right fast growing company allegations been made specifically about children whatever you think of the evidence that was provided in those shortseller reports and also the motiv motivations for those short seller reports It has to be investigated, I would say. According to Bloomberg, the SC investigation claims that Atloven allegedly breached platform partner agreements to deliver more targeted D. I hope I'm not misquing him. I think Eric Sufa, obviously, UA expert over at Mobile Tip Memo. Um, if not, check that out. Definitely check that out. And he sure he said a while back like, well, the allegation might not be true because surely like Apple, sorry, is it Apple?

Surely like Facebook or Apple they'd all know about it and they've not done anything about it and then separately like so there was another ads company famously I don't want to say who is because I get wrong think is that famously was kind of like bad right but and and you know could this happen again applovin said we regularly engage with regulators and if we get inquiries we address them in the in the ordinary course material developments if any will be disclosed through the appropriate public channels one of the most interesting thing about this was The SEC's probe follows a whistleblower complaint and then recent shorts a report. So there is an insider potentially at the company that is is making some claims that they've decided they have to investigate. So I'd say it's actually pretty serious. Whether anything comes of it, don't know. My thinking is wider context to this just to think about is that if you if we go back to Appani in the market intelligence space before they were called data AI, this is why they rebranded to data AI. they uh they got in trouble with the SEC and I think I

think if I remember right investigation took years um because what you're not allowed to do in market intelligence is show public company data accurate information in the platform. So if you got data directly from a public company, you're only allowed to put that into like the algorithm to create estimates. You're not allowed to basically front that on the platform and the allegation was that app penny did do that. They got fined $10 million in a in the scheme of being a slap on the wrist, but I think that was that was kind of bit fatal for that company and then later obviously since term uh but as a result of that other market intelligence firms then also were investigated by the SEC. So, what I'm trying to say is I think what might happen now is that actually other ads companies will be getting the call if they probably already had it as if I was to guess from the SEC to say we want to investigate your ads practices as part of a wider look at this industry which a lot of

people out there are saying oh companies do this etc etc etc. at least got shady things. And so if any of that's true, there could be a bit of a reckoning. I don't know. I'm probably being a bit dramatic. Maybe nothing will happen, right? Everyone's what they do is ultimately fine. But I'd say at the moment I I think this would probably be bigger than that, right? But uh it's been great. Thank you everyone for tuning in and listening, especially to my ramblings today. There's quite a few. Hopefully hopefully some of it was interesting, accurate. Um, thank you obviously as always, Aaron, for being on the show and for writing your response.
Yeah, thanks. It's good to talk top 50 and regulation
and regulation. Sorry, I was a really old one today. And then uh yeah, everyone have a good weekend and sorry I didn't see you in Helsinki if you were there. Hopefully in the next for the next one definitely London. Great. Have a good one. We'll see you later. Bye. Hi.