Week in Mobile Games E69 - The big AWS crash and Google delays Android regulation

[Music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.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 as always is our news editor Aaron Asel and we're back. Aaron, you've also had some holiday. How you doing? What you been up to?
Yeah. Yeah, not bad, thank you. I've been um enjoying the new Pokemon. Pokemon Legends EA came out towards the end of last week.
I forgot it was out.
Yeah, it's been quite a long wait for it. Um this is sort of the longest wait between kind of big Pokémon titles. Probably for as long as I've been into the series. It was uh three years ago that Scarlet and Violet came out. Whereas for for a while they were doing new releases like every year. I was going to say like I thought they'd actually wrapped it up recent years.
Yeah, they did through like the 2010s

there was basically I think other than 2015 there was a game like every single year. Um but yeah, it's been I think it was like November 2022 Scarlet and Violet came out. So it's been a long wait for this one. Um and it's it's pretty good so far.
Pretty good.
Yeah. So, so the the I guess from what I remember the things that people didn't like were the the graphics maybe wasn't the right development forward for this particular series cuz now you can do like battles. I don't really know much about it. Whereas the previous one, that wasn't the focus, right? You could just catch Pokemon and that was kind of it.
So, what's what's what's changed? What's what's good? What's bad?
Um, yeah. So, I guess earlyish impressions. So, um, yeah, it's much more at all focused, as you say, at least for what. So, we had one Legends game before to kind of base what the Legends Monica means for the series. And that was very catching oriented. And

there were battles as you went through the story, but way fewer than in kind of the main series then. Um, and it really was just about like to complete a Pokédex entry, you'd have to like catch so many of the same species and evolve them and see them use different moves, which I quite liked. It made it feel a bit more thorough to actually, you know, get the Pokédex entry, like you'd have to actually have observed the Pokémon for a while, but then so you're spending a lot of your time doing that rather than battling other trainers. and also because it was set in the past before there are many trainers. Like most people are scared of Pokemon in Legends Archus. Um whereas Legends EA is a a sequel to one of the main series games X and Y. So that's set in kind of modern times where obviously everyone is a Pokémon trainer. And so yeah, it's very battle focused, but they're kind of I guess semi-realtime battles now. Like each of your moves has like a recharge time, but as long as

they have recharged, you can use them. So like you could use four moves in a row if you want, but then you got to wait for all of them to recharge again.
Feels like it has less to do with the legends Monica
in more ways than one. So it's not set in like a legendary time.
No.
And it's closer to a normal Pokémon game.
So now it it kind of feels like legends just means like experimental.
Yes. diversion from the eight gym formula which but yeah obviously everyone kind of assumed legends was going to mean you know they're going to be set in the past. It's definitely it runs a lot better than Scarlet and Violet which was my main priority.
Sounds interesting. Maybe I'll check because I I really I really did not like the first Pokémon Legends but that was because the onboarding like the intro if you like.
Oh yeah. I guess onboarding is very much a mobile term, but it's just so boring. But for like a substantial amount of time,
first 30 minutes at least, they just talk at you. And I was like just I

didn't care what anyone had to say. I was just like pressing A and it still took like 30 minutes. And I was like, do you know what? Life's too short. Screw this. Now, modern Pokemon games have really they've got a bit of a problem with overly long kind of tutorial openings where
yeah,
as you say, like you maybe got like half an hour in, I'd say it probably takes a good like two or three hours to get through to actually have hands off you can go and do what you want. Now, in Legends Artim
similar in Scarlet and Violet, I think I was probably like two and a half hours into Legends EA before I could actually choose what I wanted to do next. like they're they're they're fun once you get through it, but you just know that like the day one actually starting the game is going to be a bit of a slog.
But then that makes me not want to get it cuz it's like I don't want to have to play through this borax. I get all games slay have to whatever, but they can make it fun.
Yeah.
And I think there's definitely a problem that some games have like in mobile.
I was talking about this with Oscar recently, Oscar Clark, and it was like

um can't remember what game they were talking about. I think it was King Shot that's actually really good at the intro. So, like I'm going a bit off going a bit on a tangent there, but like say like a Forex strategy game or like a lot of more complex mobile games, they sort of just play the game for you and then like but they do it so much kind of badly that after it's done all the handholding for ages, I'm like one, I feel like I finished that session and I haven't really done anything. And secondly, as I I this is probably more just a me thing, but I then just sort of forget everything I've just been told because I'm literally just going, "Yes, thank you. Yes." And then when I actually comes to me having to do stuff, I'm like, "What do I do?" They should really get into kind of the meat of it straight away. I think um random one again. I guess there's two random things in things I've heard from, you know, the professionals. I guess the first one, isn't it? Like in Doom, John Romero, he

said like make make the first level last because that's where you kind of teach everyone exactly the things they know. So the things that they need to know and you'll kind of perfected the level design what the game is. You can kind of
I guess do things I guess what he means is to kind of do things in the most interesting way possible. using people into the game and then if anyone's played it's different but if anyone's played Clare obscure there is a lot lot of talking in the intro but it is done so well like it it's like interspersed with but it's just it's just a really good script to be honest whereas Pokemon Legends it just wasn't it was just boring to me that might be sacious to someone out there and then it's really interesting and then you you you play a bit you walk around and it does such a a really good way of introducing the story where it feels like you're living it with them rather than someone's just going, "This is what this is.
This is how you do this. This is why we're here." And it's like when you're kind of just fed all that, it's just

really boring. So, I guess my takeaway is don't just feed everyone stuff. Just make it feel a bit more natural and
get to get to like the meat of it quicker so you people know what the game is. My useless advice having never made a game. There you go. Right. Thanks, Aaron. I guess as for myself, I've I've not really been that much. I'm back. I'm back home now. So hopefully we'll keep these podcasts going. I keep saying that each week, but things settling down now. So it's good to be back on the show and we'll get straight into it. So first, as always, a few shout outs to our events. We just did Pocket Gamer Connect Helsinki. Thanks for everyone that was at the show. I thought it went really well. We'll have the videos up on the site soon. I want to say in the next week or two. We do them reasonably quick these days in a few weeks. We've got the Pocket Gamer Connect Summit Korea coming up on October 1st. Then we've got PGC AKA which is in Jordan on November 8th and 9th. We're talking all about obviously the Middle East, North Africa industry as well as some global trends. Then the big one PGC London January 19th

to 20th that's so grab your tickets there. You know I think it's still early birds now. You know you're going you might as well get a cheap ticket and then we'll have more kind of to announce next year. And don't forget to check out the top 50 that we announced recently just a couple weeks ago now. top 50 mobile game makers and the kind of the who's who right now in mobile. And obviously let us know if you like the list, let us know if you hated it and why. And uh that's all good feedback for us. Helps us with the next one. And in a couple weeks, we'll be announcing the top 13 Mina game makers as well. So be sure to check that out coming soon. Right. So the news, there's a few interesting stories. One of the ones that caught my eye was the US judge has granted a oneweek extension to comply with the Epic Games injunction for Google. So weird. It was that's kind of weird. So on October 22nd was when Google was supposed to basically open up its store. Obviously, Android is

technically an open ecosystem, but for Google Play, it was going to open up and you wouldn't be like just having to side load stores and then Google telling you how awful that is for security privacy for security reasons. The privacy one's all Apple, isn't it? And so, uh, one of those things is like opening up billing. So, that's kind of basically what's happened with the app store in the other Epic case. I think in this case it for Google it was monopolistic behavior that it was actually proven it had done certain things for Apple it was because it just was not adhering to what the judge was saying and eventually the judge is like screw you the whole thing's open the worst possible outcome for Apple for now I think that it could still be appealed so this particular case Google's supposed to open up Google Play to alternative stores and billing systems on the 22nd we were getting emails from some of the DTC companies I think app chart charge kind of announced its Android billing like the day before

this this was supposed to happen for example and then weirdly both Google and Epic asked for a delay of a week so an extension of this kind of of this ruling to take effect. So now for now the ruling and it's been signed by the judge is October 29th instead of October 22nd. So I guess we'll see what happens next week. Will it be extended again? There wasn't um there wasn't a reason provided as to why but more strange because Tim himself has said from October 22nd developers will be legally entitled to steer US Google Play users out of app sorry to out of app payments without fees air screens and friction same as the Apple app store for users in the US but yeah there's no no reason provided it's hard to even speculate maybe I don't know maybe it's just a technical thing one thing was that Google I believe is appealing and they have until I don't have a date here. I think it was it's either the 29th or the 27th. I hope I might be making this up. Uh I just don't have it in front of me that

actually Google that Google could appeal to the Supreme Court. So I think that's going to happen and then maybe they'll get a stay from that. So this could kind of rumble on. So you won't actually in the US, this is all US only, be able to do those linkouts to other payments for longer. See, I don't know what Epic's reason would be to support this. It could. I mean, I have literally no idea. I'm just grasping at straws. Um, one ridiculous thing I could say, I guess, is maybe it's like, okay, well, should we just get this appeal out the way and do it properly? That's really, it seems like a really a really weak reason, but uh, like what's the point in having Android linkouts for one week and then it kind of reverts back and everyone's confused with what's happening and everyone could potentially start breaking the rules accidentally. Maybe. I doubt it, but that's one random reason I have. But uh yeah, it's really interesting that again just regulation coming up, the App Store, Google Play opening up once again as always. We'll just see how they progress. This has

been like one of the big themes of 2025 and going into 2026. Regulation, which we've spoken about a bunch of times uh in various forms and the opening up of app stores. I'll have more on that later, but Aaron, what's your next story? Yeah. So, um, next from me is that Hoyo Versus Next Game is soon going to be entering closed beta. So, this is Petite Planet, which on November 7th is going to be made available on iOS and PC. They're calling the test the coziness test because this is supposed to be like a cozy life sim game as opposed to kind of the RPG style titles they've kind of become famous for with like Genchin Impact and Hong Kong Star Rail. So, like more more details have kind of been emerging on this, I guess, over the past like month. Um, cuz we we've kind of known this title's been in the works for a while. It was back in February 2024 that the original like trademark was registered in China. Um,

and then they got a license approval for it um in July 2024. It's kind of been known through a few different names over that time. There's a Chinese name I'm not going to try and pronounce. And then it was like Asterweave Haven. And then last October when the US trademark was filed, it kind of got renamed as Peak Planet, which they seem to have stuck with now. And yeah, so at kind of the end of September, they finally like released a trailer for the game, which I guess was the kind of official unveiling cuz before it was all just um yeah, stuff from like trademarks and license approval things. But it, you know, it's basically, I guess it's kind of Animal Crossing E by the looks of it. You can like go fishing and crafting and mine stuff and plant things and I guess they'll kind of encourage you to play every day to to keep up with your little planet basically. So yeah, I think one of the most interesting things about it to me

is just how different this is genre wise compared to, you know, the big successes that has had and I guess whether it's indicative of the kind of cannib cannibalization situation between titles obviously like Zenderstone Zero still made somewhere around half a billion now. It was over 400 million in its first year, but which obviously that's, you know, a lot of money, but it didn't even do like as a quarter as well as Genchin Impact's first year. So, I guess maybe they decided, you know, Genchin Impact and Hong Kong Star Rail are still huge RPGs. Maybe there's not a lot of point releasing more in the same genre at the minute. So, they're kind of experimenting with other things. So, as you say, it looks really like a cross between kind of an Animal Crossing and just that and then it brings in kind of the anime style. It's really interesting that they're going into cozy games, which the last few years is just I keep I just keep hearing it over and over again. I think it's not always that successful like Infinity Nikki. Well, it

doesn't seem like Infinity Nikki's been that successful, but it did have a big presence at Gamescom if that's anything to go by. And I mean, it makes some money and I presume on other platforms it makes it as well. So maybe it's just humming along fine. I'm probably reading too much into this, but you're right. I think it it is different to what they've done before and I think maybe that is a bit of a recognition of they can't just they can't just repeat the same formula. However, what I I find fascinating is kind of like with Genchin Impact, it felt like they built upon what they've done before, right? So mentioned before with like Hong Kong Impact third big RPG and then they just went to the next level, invested a crapload into that. Whereas this, if you think about some of the the mega updates that have gone into Genjin Impact, for example, I'm pretty sure you could do things like fishing and maybe some of these other things are kind of in there. I wonder if they've just got they're just building on what they've already got and just kind of repackaging it and putting it into this new. So, it's not like I wouldn't say it was like completely different to what

they've done before, but they're just repackaging the stuff that they found works presumably and they thought, well, we'll try it in this kind of way. I think when Mihoyo, Hoyo verse, Cognosphere, etc., when they release a game, it's it it's one of those few companies that you you take notice the release because in theory, you'd expect it to be making hundreds of millions of dollars at least based on their history like you were saying. So,
definitely a big one to watch. I'd love to I'd love to find out one day how much they actually invested in this game. If you remember Genj Impact 200 $100 million to make it $200 million a year to run it. So I'm curious have they gone to that same massive investment in this or they scaled that down a bit in a different market. Cool. Right. Moving on to the next one. So back to regulation I remember. So I'll read the story. So the UK's competition and markets authority the CMA has confirmed that Apple and Google meet the criteria for strategic

market status on their well strategic market stat. So this is kind of reserved for big technology companies is basically the same as in some regards the idea is the same to the digital markets act in the EU but because of Brexit reasons we have to then do our own thing and be much slower apparently cuz I remember talking about this earlier this year where it was like we're thinking about giving them strategic market stats and I was just thinking really this is like real slow walking into it and when that was coming announced Epic came out as well and said this is ridiculous like you're taking far too long. You're basically delaying it really to the advantages of Apple and Google. So the consequence of this is it kind of potentially affects like their operating systems app distribution browsers etc. So the concerns outlined earlier in the year from the CMA for its investigations were an inconsistent uh inconsistent and unpredictable app review processes apps or search rankings

that may favor apps over app and Google the 30% share and anti- steering measures for restrictions on feature access functionality and choice architecture default settings pre-installation prominence prompts and friction that may favor their own services which limit competition and genuine choice for users and all this regulations basically been pushed to 26 the consequences seem pretty clear it'll probably be very simple things that he's doing but in this new world which is since Trump anything could happen really what what if for example Trump comes out and says if you do this we'll slap 50 20% 50% tariffs on you like will the UK go through with it I'm curious if that kind of thing would happen America in general it's not just a Trump thing America in general really doesn't like it when other countries pick on as they would see it, pick on their big tech companies even if it is like even if there is monopolistic behavior etc. They just think oh you're just picking on them you just want to get money out of these companies because Apple Google

then go kind of crying to the government as well. So, another one yet again. Wait and see. This was the year of kind of regulation. 2026 be very much the same. Maybe a bit more consequential. 2026. Well, random. Aside from all this, I'm still waiting on the uh we're still waiting on the EU's ruling as what it's going to do with Apple. They haven't said it. If you remember like a while back, it was like, well, we we'd hear exactly what the latest whether they're going to accept Apple's new business terms, their latest ones or not. It was there was reported that even though even though the app stores business terms were insane sorry are insane that because they're so convoluted I think I did a I might have done a story instead of before it was like pay us 30% effectively and then there were some things like eventually it was like 50% after this as the regulations start coming in then you got reading apps gets all more confusing when they released their alternate business terms the latest ones for EU it's like over 25,000 words or something across multiple

documents. It's ridiculous. People got to keep up with this. Yeah, we still haven't heard the latest on that. And I can only think that's a political thing. I can't think of any is it really that slow to come up with like Well, they're breaking the rules or they're not. And you've had I feel like it's just way past the deadlines, any deadlines that were set. Um, but worth keeping an eye on that what happens there because say the UK does try and do some similar things to the DMA, Apple might just use those same terms and then you would presume it would probably be okay in the UK. Otherwise, UK's position regulator it position might be unreasonable, right? If the EU's gone, that's fine. Why would the UK be different? Yeah,
you sort of saw a bit of that with the um
the Activision Blizzard acquisition about cloud gaming
which is ridiculous as well. Remember Ubisoft's basically operating like the cloud games of like something you never hear about these things anymore. Ubisoft's got other things going on. We weren't going to cover it today but there are a lot of layoffs going on at

Ubisoft. So they've got other things to be thinking about. I guess Ubisoft Red Links has just had a bunch of layoffs and I saw today Massive Entertainment. So there's just basically companywide layoffs despite 10 cents investment setting up a new subsidiary. Yeah. Anyway, there's so much there's so much going on there. Aaron, something we got from another tent. What else have we got? The big story of the week probably.
Yeah. So, as most listeners are probably aware, um, but Amazon Web Services had an outage earlier this week, which impacted like loads of services and games like Pokémon Go, Fortnite, Roblox, Clash Royale. Um, and I was surprised really kind of realizing, I guess, just how many like games and services more broadly like rely on this. And I guess, you know, you occasionally get these little reminders of like how basically everything relies on kind of these tech infrastructures working and like so many businesses just, you know, you just have

to hope they're going to work for your whole business to operate, which I don't mean that as a criticism in any way. It's just, you know, it's it's weird when something does go wrong and then it's like basically, you know, potentially like thousands of companies can't do their work basically cuz someone else has had an issue. It's just like it's back now. We just hope it doesn't happen again. But um yeah, I was quite surprised how many like games like big games as well were just bound because of an Amazon issue.
So So the impact is so as soon as you log on as soon as we log on for work that day like everything's kind of falling apart, right? And uh I think I can't remember if our CMS was slow that day and somehow we sort of weren't that affected but uh yeah but like anyway the the games that were impacted were like or games and platforms that are impacted were Clash Royale, Roblox, Pokémon Go, Fortnite and then you had other platforms Dolingo, WhatsApp, Steam, PlayStation Network, Xbox, Apex Legends, Rocket League, Desperate Daylight, Reddit, Zoom, Slack, I think the Epic Games Store and then a few of these are

releasing statements throughout the day. I think Durolingo maybe released a statement like the next day of AWS going down but yeah so big widespread outage I think they pinned it down to somewhere somewhere in the US something had gone wrong the interesting context around it so apparently Amazon had actually been replacing well this headline is Amazon allegedly replaced 40% of its AWS DevOps DevOps workers with AI days before the crash I've heard that elsewhere in terms of they were kind of moving things to AI and then uh yeah I heard there's been a bit of maybe a bit of brain drain from there and this was perhaps some you see some places like the inevitable consequence of this happening hopefully it doesn't happen again. are curious if Amazon has to pay kind of fines compensation to clients because if you if it's a day down for like Clash Royale that's like a lot of money and then any if it was a day down for Steam blocking

all these payments it's a lot of money for all these companies to to lose. I wonder if it means that they'll just use another provider, but there's not that many big providers like this, right? You got AWS, Azure, and then for games, there's like a few game centric ones. So, yeah, it was definitely that situation like you said where it was you just have this realization that, you know, but when something bad happens, it's like, oh yeah, all of this stuff is just run by like a couple of companies. M
and then you get the memes where it's like um someone's like what it is like someone put like down like dominoes but like so it starts with the small one and ends with and then they gradually get bigger. The first one they put down or like the first brick they put down is uh we should sell books online and then the final one is like society collapses or like internet infrastructure collapses. So yeah, it was uh that was a really big the biggest

thing probably in the news this week. It seems to have all recovered now. We'll see if it happens again.
Yeah. So I think a lot of it had kind of recovered by the afternoon cuz Yeah. So cuz I um was off work that day. I had a bit of holiday time. So I had a nice lie in that day. So I woke up saw the saw the news that everything had gone down and it's like oh but it's back now. So I just slept through all the chaos. So, another quick story I've got and my last one is Unity gets into direct consumer with a crossplatform unified digital stores. So, I've got the the press release, I guess, in front of me. So, and I love reading these because they're always full of nonsense. And this one, it doesn't I'd argue it doesn't really ultimately you could say it's payment. It doesn't really make clear completely what they're doing. uh but today announced an enhancement of the Unity engine that will enable that will enable game developers to manage their global commerce and catalog from a single dashboard within Unity itself. So today selling across platforms means juggling multiple SDKs rules and payout systems.

With this enhancement, developers will be able to combine different payment providers, optimize for different markets, and manage pricing, promotions, and live operations across mobile app stores, web, and PC from any platform, etc., etc. So, basically, they've partnered with Stripe, and they're going to power like we're talking about the opening of app stores. You can now do alternative billing. They're going to power that and you can do it through Unity, right? So I I'll be honest, I'm not completely clear they actually mean that you can build web shops through Unity. I guess it looks like you can, but I I don't know cuz that's the basically the essential offering of an Exola or an app charge or a stash coming that have kind of emerged. Well, it's not been around. The other one's kind of emerged over the last few years, which is yeah, you can do the payments, but also we have like you could build your web shops through us basically or other sort of direct consumer practices. It's potentially a big move for Unity. It

make it does make sense. I'm curious also how it's going to work with if at all it works with Vector. So my only thinking is is there any they're basically one of the things that they're trying to promote with vector is potentially they could access engine data and so if they create a payment service is there any interesting data that they can use from that. So you have player potentially kind of probably don't know what I'm talking about but potentially to compete with app then unity will have access to what players are doing in a game and then if they got the payment side of it they have access maybe or more access to exactly what how much users spending which users are spending and maybe you can target those particular users better um and when when and what they're spending on and maybe that will help with their ads business. I thought that might be part of where

this is going because seems like a good thing to do for uni anyways. You've not and but they probably be thinking of a broader strategy. Maybe there's something within that. Maybe not. This is the way I described it, but there's something there. But yeah, everyone direct consumer kind of like I say regulations big 2025 once again. I think it was kind of last year as well, but direct to consumer really really big this year and and going into next year. They're both kind of hand in hand. So if regulation ultimately fails, so will DT in a way all direct consumer even though the genius already out the bottle. found it interesting you saying about looking at the press release there that like they don't actually say direct to consumer anywhere but like that is what it kind of sounds like is like the unified digital stores and kind of you know says about giving developers you know more control over you know optimizing different markets like it all screams BTC then but they don't actually directly say that anywhere
I didn't even think of that they don't

mention like the basically the key term like they left out. I wonder if that's deliberate or just a mistake. I feel like that's a mistake. I mean any it's not it's not for consumers, right? But any consumer in that wouldn't care. But yeah, like as a small marketing thing, yeah, you should say direct consumer practices cuz they even mentioned like they mentioned like 120 billion u inapp purchases a year like the opening up basically. Well, they at least allude to kind of the opening up of the the app stores I think. So it's curious that they're actually saying right. So that brings us neatly to the end of the week mobile games. Thanks Aaron as always for being on the show.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, good to be back.
Thank you everyone for listening. We should be back as usual next week. Thanks. Thanks as always for tuning in. Have a great weekend and we'll see you soon. Goodbye.