Week in Mobile Games E70 - Squad Busters shuts down and Google Play's transformative changes

[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 and I'm going to be doing this by myself today. Wanted to do a quick roundup of the news for everyone. Hopefully, as I say, provide some insights. As for everyone else, Aaron, who's usually on the podcast with me, is on some welldeserved holiday. So Aaron, if you're listening, enjoy enjoy your break and we'll talk about it when you're back. But yeah, so no fluff this week. And I'll mention it anyway, but know me talking about Starcraft 2. So you can rest easy. Before we get straight into the news, some quick shoutouts. So, coming up soon, we've got PGC Akaba, which is November 8th and 9th. And then the big one, PGC London, January 19th to 20th. I believe the early birds are still going on. So, if you know you're

going to go, you might as well take advantage before the prices go up. And without further ado, we'll crack on with the actual news. So, the big one of the big stories of the week, there's a couple. Supercell will shut down Squadbusters next year. So, they actually launched this in May 2024 and it was their first game for about I think it was five and a half to six years. All Stars came out in December 2018. Obviously with with Squadbusters had a had a massive launch with a celebrity marketing campaign if you remember that. Chris Hemsworth and a bunch of others kind of headlining that. Very expensive launch. Wrapped up a lot of downloads. Made over hund00 million in its lifetime. But as we know with a Supercell game, the goal as we all thought it was at least was kind of a billion dollars or bust, right? So the game has kind of been for Supercell's expectations a failure. They did obviously try to do a reboot of the game. Squadbusters 2.0, they did some

press about it when they did this. So we pocket.biz business and mothers were on that on that call and they admitted that it hadn't reached the levels that they they wanted it to to make. But they did obviously think it was going to be a huge success when they launched. They did it without a proper soft launch, which is very unusual. Supercell has in the past. I think Brawlstar was in I've said this on the podcast before. I think Brawl Stars was in soft launch for about 18 months or so. And actually, it needed that time to eventually actually get the release. There was a lot of speculation, a lot of articles at the time that that might not even launch even through that long process. And so Supercell did something different with that and also did something different with Mo.co. But it hasn't it hasn't worked out. The reboot hasn't worked out. And Squad Busters will now receive its final update in December. Inapp purchases will no longer be available as of October 30th. Players that made a purchase in the game can request a transfer of their value to Clash Royale, Brawl Stars, Clash of Clans, Hay, or Boom Beach. Players can also claim a free bundle for

through the Supercell store saw for most of the company's other games which is quite interesting except for mod.co which is also interesting in and of itself. The closure they said it wouldn't be before mid2026. So it sounds like in the latter of 2026 is when the game will be shut down. And if you're not aware, this will be Supercell's first mobile game that they have closed that has had a global launch. They've never done that before. They are very much known for kill your darlings as it were and they do it all the time with games before a global launch. They'll go into soft launch or even before that they'll cancel them. They think they're not going to hit their kind of high bar. And this is the first time they've actually done it to a live game. Even Boom Beach is is still going which which is probably the one that generates the least revenue. I think it's a really interesting decision for Superstar. that wouldn't have come easy cuz it's being their first time that they've done this and they want to the important thing to remember is their big motto which is they build games like forever. They want you to play them forever and so yeah they could have kept

going or or they cancel and it feels like they've tried the big reboot and they've canceled it. Maybe that's maybe that's the right decision and actually fitting in with kind of their their culture for soft launches and they're just kind of bringing that to the live service table. I I would say that clearly it didn't seem like it was going to happen with this game and the other games I'm about to say are massively successful but they have been able to turn around games before. Brawl Stars the famous example Clash Royale recently they kind of turned it around but those are still coming from a very high level and a very much loved games whereas Squadbusters had quite a big mountain to climb and not even just to bring back users or it doesn't have that much familiarity other than being a Supercell game and having those characters. So yeah can so big decision big news of the week. They said I asked for an interview they're not doing interviews at the moment. We'll see if it appears on another on somewhere else. But they said that they're going to do a Q&A which with questions from players to give more detail about why they made this

decision. I think for everyone in the industry it's probably pretty clear to be honest but there I think that was I can't remember the date November 13th mid November that will go live. So, the other big news of the week, and we talked about this last week, so I won't go into too much detail, but the Google Play Store will have to open up to alternative payment methods as part of an injunction from the Epic Games versus Google case that came into force, and this is a US only. So, last week, it was actually supposed to come into force last week, but it was delayed by one week at the request of both Google and Epic. We still don't know why both requested this. In that meantime, Google was petitioning the Supreme Court to grant a stay. There's no word on that. Now, Google has actually now updated Google's now updated its developer page to tell developers about the new rules. As of October 29th, it has basically been forced to allow publishers to use other payment methods outside of Google Play billing. Publishers will also not be required to set a price based on whether Google Play billing is being used. Google will also no longer prohibit the communication of the

pricing of an app outside of the marketplace, nor prohibit use of direct download links. The company did note interestingly that it will share more details on business model changes in the near future to preserve quote preserve user trust and safety in the ecosystem. This injunction against Google will last uh until November 1st, 2027. So it's not permanent. Uh the idea is to give time for competitors such as the Epic Game Store to gain ground on Google. I don't think two years is enough, but it is it is very significant still that Google's have to do all of this and maybe once you let the genie out of the bottle in 2027 just Google just say we'll just go back to what it was 30%. Uh we'll see. I guess I can't really say one way or the other, but when it's kind of alluding to business model changes, I'm curious what that means. I wondered if they would try and

do what Apple does. And then the EU, which was reported that the EU is under the digital market stats, it's a different thing, had accepted Apple's proposed changes, which was these new business terms that are like make no sense at all. Utly ridiculous. They are ultimately lower than the 30%. Like all the documents together are like over 25,000 words or something. It's no longer just pay 30%. Then that's it. So yeah, I wonder if Google would try doing that, but the case, the judge was quite scathing about basically call Google a monopoly. Does Google really want to play with that fire? Would Google potentially announce that it's actually just going to lower maybe quite significantly its revenue share for Google Play? And that might fit in a bit more long-term if you think this injunction is temporary. But there's good news for developers. Obviously in the US is the app store again is that's opened up like fully. there's not really a time limit on it, but then Apple, I believe, is is appealing that decision. So, we'll see. I think earlier this year

at Gamescom and in the podcast, I noted that developers and publishers are very much like, we want to take advantage of this while we can because we don't know what the future holds. So, at the moment, it's all good news. I I'm very interested in seeing what the financials say. We previously reported on on how much money uh developers, publishers are making. it kind of varies 20 30 even 40% uh revenue uh from their own direct to consumer uh platforms now. So big time for the industry and we'll see we'll see where that one goes in future. I guess it does seem like that will stick until 2027. I want to do a quick shout out. So we did an interview with Fingersoft their chief growth officer annual Rantella. So they have soft launch hill climb Racing free. Now, Hill Climb Racing is one of Finland's biggest exports. I think Fingersoft as a company name kind of flies under the radar, but it's a big IP franchise has. So, basically, there's Hill Climb Racing one, two, and Lego Hill Climb Adventures. The Lego Hill Climb Adventures didn't really do do that

well. They they've achieved over $2.5 billion to date. So, this is pretty significant. It's soft launch on Google Play in the UK, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Um, obviously last it's been it's interesting time for Finger Soft. Obviously at the end of last year they made some layoffs. They laid off 14 staff and they blamed kind of ad revenue changes for that. They've also made this year some executive changes. They brought in their former CEO back. Their COO has left. Their longtime CEO left. So it feels like there's a lot riding on this game. I asked them a few question I asked Daniel a few questions about that and and they said that actually it had been a difficult time for them but they made some changes to Hill Clone Racing too and made it a bit more AP driven and they thinks it's now they're now it's now actually making more revenue than ever. So maybe they're not in as bad a position as I personally thought. It was really good interview though. Uh it was quite honest about things. So, if you want to know the kind of AP mix and adm

mix, which I think is interesting since this franchise started in I'm going to guess here 2014. I haven't got it in front of me. And then the Hill Climb Racing 2 was 2016, which wasn't supposed to be a sequel, but the players thought it was so they made it one, which is weird. Uh, but anyway, so the original Hill Climb Racing had 8% of it revenue come from ads, 20% from APS. Hill Climb Racing 2 had now has 65% of revenue from APS and the restroom ads. And he said with Hill Climb Racing 3, which is going to be kind of more PvP focused, a lot more actual like realtime racing, bit more action packed. You'll have gadgets you can fire. It will have a season pass. And he said that APS will be the primary driver of sales. There will still be ads, but said it will be supported by a season pass. I asked why it took so long to release Hill Climb Racing 3 because actually Fingersoft hasn't launched that many games like itself like internally. It did have a

publishing division. Didn't really go into that. For those that remember it had like round zero publishing which they I don't think they really do that so much anymore. But he so he gave a quite an interesting response and he said to quote we were focusing heavily on the live ops and operating the live games. We also decided in 2019 or 2020 to take the route of putting a lot of ammo into one or two big games and then having constant prototyping. I would even go as far to say that for a while there we kind of forgot that we're a game developer and we went more into a game maintenance mode where we trusted on these big bets and eventually we weren't really able to push out any proper prototypes. He said while some ideas emerged through this like through demo days or game camps, they would often go down the same path where they didn't have enough resource to actually focus on these games because they were focused on what they already had. He said, "So that's changed now. We finally we finally have a really talented prototyping team and actually we're looking to at testing three new prototypes by the end of the year and some of those might be hill climb racing related and some might not. So read

definitely read the interview. It's quite interesting like on the one hand kind of they're having a bit of change in strategy and they've had to learn a lot cuz the original game was made by the founder in his bedroom for like 5 months. It feels like the classic game developer success story. And what was interesting is kind of their journey over the years. And actually after the second game, after the second Hill Racing game, they spent a while just building out like Hunt Ages Ludency there, but building out the live the live teams. And it's actually just an interesting sort of insight into what it takes to grow a successful game franchise and build out a studio. And it takes time. Some do it fast, some do it slow. It's It's always different. This is just quite an insightful look at that growth, things that went right, things that went wrong, things that they're doing differently now to try and kind of change things and I guess release potentially more new games. This week also was Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket first anniversary and according

to App Magic estimates has made, this is gross revenue from player spending on the apps on Google Play, $1.3 billion. So, it's done all right. And according to their estimates, that is actually far that is actually more money in its first year than Pokémon Go made from inapp purchases. Pokémon Go did have uh well, I guess firstly, how accurate are the assessments? Maybe maybe it's more more equal. We don't I guess we don't really know. But what I would point out is actually that Pokémon Go still actually made revenue from sponsorship deals as well. you know, they had like McDonald's sponsorships, I think, in the US and other other sponsored locations around the world, and it does real world events. So, there's lots of different kind of avenues that Niantic made money. Yeah, hugely successful game. Like, these games don't come around that often, and it's one of the biggest launches of recent years up there with kind of Monopoly Go, right? So, kudos to DNA working on the game and the Pokémon Company. And that is so in our top 50

mobile game makers list. Shout out to that. But we ranked DNA third because this game has just been such an enormous success over the past year. So, I'm looking forward to to see what else they do with that and and if they can keep that going. Another story here. So, it was reported earlier this week that Amazon was set to lay off 30,000 staff. Amazon officially then came out and it's going to be cutting around 14,000 corporate jobs across the company, including in its games division. The company's senior VP of people experience and technology Beth Galleti confirmed the last message to staff saying the move is part of an effort to streamline operations and function more like the world's largest startup. Bloomberg reported that there would be that the games division would be affected by the layoffs and that significant cuts would impact its Irvine and San Diego offices as well as its central publishing division. I think it's also closing down New Worlds. I think that was announced kind of as an aside from this. That was probably that was one of their most successful games. It did well at the

start, but obviously it's not doing well enough now that they've decided to close it. And apparently Amazon players apparently Amazon plans to scale back its focus on large scale projects, especially big budget uh and budget games and MMOs. Uh just some thoughts on the history of Amazon's kind of looking Oh, sorry. Uh before I go to that, one one thing is point out. So there was a former executive at the games division on LinkedIn as an aside almost. So they've just relaunched at the same time their cloud gaming platform Luna and the executive was saying that it was once designed to compete with Steam. I feel like anyone outside of that team did not know that that was the case. It felt so lowkey the whole time like I would just forget about it straight up until there'd be another announcement. it just didn't it didn't even feel as serious as a Google Stadia which obviously failed and and in that message they also spoke about like they about not being able to break user habits and that was kind of a

lesson from this of how hard it is to break into that but now they've relaunched Luna anyway and then obviously the rest of Amazon's over time I've been reporting on it I think since they started doing this obviously they bought Twitch they they've hired experienced developers and then that for whatever reason that's just never really worked out. They acquired the rights to fork the Cry Engine to create Lumberyard, which didn't work out. I was told years ago by a developer that they hated it. Basically, they hated using Lumberyard. And I couldn't actually get this confirmed, but they said that they moved from Lumbiard to I think Unreal Engine or a different engine for one of their projects because they they couldn't they didn't want to use Lumbard um their own teams and so you never really hear about Libyard anymore. I don't actually know if it's closed. Yeah. So, I feel like their generally their game strategy is kind of massively failed. Overall, I I doubt that they've clawed back the investment that they've put into it, right? It seems like it needs a different approach, which is I guess what they're going for now. It's a

shame that then because of all of that, lots of people lose their jobs. We'll see where they go from here. And then a couple other stories to wrap up. I I'll go quickly on these, but as I always as ever when I say that, I always say forever. One of the interesting ones is PUBG Maker Crafton is plotting a major shift. wants to become an AI first company and is investing 100 million uh 100 billion Korean Juan which is around 69 $70 million to make that happen. Wants to invest around $20 million annually to support it staff with the move that the firm says is more than 10 times the scale of existing AI service support. So I guess in practical terms what does that mean? Because sometimes these things are really just they're half half intentional. sort of do a bit of it. A lot of it is probably to raise share price. Press alluded to changing its management structure and then as well as kind of the same promises you kind of hear from companies of automating tasks and allowing employees to focus on being more creative. Uh but actually I wrote an

article and I said like the cynic in me yeah feels sick. They're just trying to excite investors with the magic of AI and everything it can do. But Craftton has actually long been serious about this for a long time and has been very open about its aims even controversially so and I'm actually surprised that we haven't heard more about it while other publishers kind of shy away a little bit from talking about it too much publicly exactly what they were working on like last year their CFO said the tech could be used for level design writing and voice acting and there a suggestion basically that it could replace voice actors which if you recall there was I think it was an 11th month 11 month strike in the US about this very issue. So, I'm very shocked that it didn't really make more headlines. We wrote about it, but I'm surprised it wasn't such a big controversy. Um, we'll see how that one goes as well. And then some very quick stories. Scopely has released the Monopoly Go chat app, which I thought was fascinating. The new messaging app is designed for players to stay connected with friends, family, and teammates. Users can talk and text,

create or join groups, compete in community challenges, and get notifications when teammates need help. It appears to just operate like a like a regular chat platform. Like looking at the images, it just looks like WhatsApp basically. It feels it's quite it feels like it's quite unusual for apps to do that, you know, rather than say pushing everyone to a a discord or, you know, operating guilds chats and sort of chat functions in game. But yeah, I mean the game's huge, right? One of the biggest launches ever on mobile. It's already generating more than $5 billion. So really, really interesting there from Scoply. This the last last very quick story. Roio Soft launch Angry Birds Match World. They already had a match free game, but they're doing it again. I guess the title was only available in Finland's on the app store. That was last time I I looked, which was the end of last week. The game sees players follow Red and his friends around the world to retrieve eggs from King Pig and his minions. Previously, Angry Birds Match, according to App Magic, it generated about $85 million in player spending. It picked up an estimated

$190,000 in September. So, so I guess that's worthy of updating. I guess the backdrop to this is that Roio has been performing under expectations according to Sega's uh recent finan uh last financials. So maybe there's a bit of pressure there to to kind of get some more games out of Sonic Rumble's coming November 5th, but that is to my surprise that is actually I believe Sega developed title and looks like ROI is kind of handling through Beacon like the publishing and the operations of that. Um, and it also has another uh game in soft launch, Angry Birds Rush, which blends the franchise this kind of classic slingshot mechanics, but merges it with like runnerlike gameplay and you bounce through the levels. It's quite interesting. We'll see if any of these kind of make it big. I think Roio is is looking really now for its next big hit. We'll see if it can make it. So, that brings us to the end of the week in mobile games. Just me this week. I hope you still enjoyed it. Thank you everyone very much for tuning in. We'll be back. Have a great week. We'll see you soon.

Goodbye.