What’s next for Warner’s mobile games, why award shows ignore mobile, weird TikTok ads and more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games business. Here we go. You may have seen reports on the biggest media merger potentially ever involving Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Brothers. This is very much a developing story, but as it stands, Netflix has proposed a $72 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers, a Warner Brothers Discovery technically, and that bid has been approved. Paramount would like to pay more, over hundred billion, and that bid is backed by Paramount and a bunch of extra American investors. The Paramount bid is unsolicited, but money talks, so Warner's shareholders may well accept. But let's not get bogged down by that. For the mobile game industry audience, the most relevant thing is what happens now to Warner Brothers portfolio of

mobile games and all of the licensed titles it has, which are made by partners like Scopely, Jam City, and most of all, Zingga. Zingga has several pretty big titles using Warner licenses and also fun plus has Dark DC legion. So, I broke all that down on Monday in a piece called the mobile games caught up in that potential Netflix Warner Brothers deal. And obviously, you should read the article, but looking at the last 30 days worth of inapp purchase revenue among Warner Brothers self-published titles, Game of Thrones Conquest is by far the biggest title in that portfolio. $1.5 million earned in the last 30 days according to atmagic estimates. All of these numbers are atmagic. Second, Mortal Kombat 890K in the last 30 days. And then the rest, Heads Up, DC Worlds Collide, Injustice 2, 600K, 600K, and

400K respectively. Not going gang busters those games, but steady earners. Outside of that, you've got some legacy titles that aren't doing particularly well. Game of Thrones Dragon Fire, not a game I'm familiar with, but given the license that doesn't seem to be doing too well. And I conclude after looking at those numbers, that is hard to see a longterm future for those games within Netflix. They don't really fit into the Netflix strategy. And especially those games earning under half a million a month. This stuff is really a rounding error for Netflix and it has said so really. It has come out since that Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters did not even consider the game's arm in the valuation of Warner Brothers when making the bid. So that doesn't bode well either. And then you got the license games. Jam

City's Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery 2.4 million earned in the last 30 days. that you would imagine will stick around. Game of Thrones slots casino from Zinga that's also doing about 2.3 million every month. As I say in the article, you would imagine there are licensing agreements in place for those titles. And if Netflix does succeed in buying Warner, the survival of those titles will depend on how long those contracts last for. And if Netflix wants to maintain that kind of money coming in for relatively little effort, the thing about these giant tech and media companies is that 2.4 million a month may not be enough depending on internal bean counting. So there's also puzzle Harry Potter puzzles and spells from Zinga. It's about 2 million a month for that one. Game of Thrones Legends RPG.

Another Zingga one. About a million a month for that one. Fun Plus only just launched DC Dark Legion. 2.3 million in the last 30 days earned on that one. So all of those games could now be at risk of either closure or just effectively being soft sunseted and slowly fading away as lots of mobile games do. But the big butt is this Netflix deal. This Paramount deal for Warner still has a long way to run even if the Netflix deal goes ahead as planned. It'll take probably a year to 18 months to fully complete and things may change in the meantime. But that is the lay of the land right now. I thought that was worth doing even though there are lots of uncertainties around and I didn't really put it in the article, but it is notable that a company like Warner with IP like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, all of

the various DC licenses, like lots of other big legacy media companies just have not fulfilled their potential in mobiles. These are great IPs that most game makers would bend over backwards to use. The PC or console games which have been getting a lot of the attention online as ever. You know, Rock Steady hasn't got a great record recently after all those Batman games which were very successful. Mortal Kombat ticks along fine. But yes, yet more uncertainty around an acquisition for lots of people working in games and there will be further twists and turns. The topic of game awards, many of my peers are flying out to LA this week going to the game awards. I think there's one mobile game category in the game awards and it doesn't seem to be that

representative of what's actually going on in the mobile game business. There's also the BAFTAs. The BAFTA long list of games for the BAFTA game awards 2026 came out this week. I quickly scan through it and there are three games out of 64 on the long list that are mobile games. And I think maybe it's worth repeating that there are a few people out there on LinkedIn with their hot takes saying mobile gets ignored in these things and questioning why given the importance of the business and the huge downloads and huge revenue that mobile games generate. I would argue that these awards shows are about cultural importance and cultural influence. And it is hard to argue that mobile games have the same level of cultural influence and inspire

fandoms in the same way that a game like Clare Obscure, which seems set to sweep up at the Game Awards. And it's worth facing up to that and questioning why. And I think the reason why is because mobile games take a more scientific view of its players. Really, the order of the day is keeping players retained and monetizing them while of course offering them daily bite-size nuggets of fun. But it's hard to argue that a game like Monopoly Go, wild success, hundreds of millions of downloads, billions in revenue. But has it made any cultural impact at all? I would argue no. There's no characters. There's no story, you know, the Mr. Money Guy, whatever he's called. I guess

he is a character, but I don't even know what he's called. And Monopoly is a worldrenowned brand. So yes, mobile games should be represented at these awards, but it is really down to the judges and these are not business awards. These are player awards and cultural impact awards. And that is why you don't really see mobile games represented in the game awards or at BAFTA. It honestly doesn't matter how much money a game makes if it's making no cultural impact at all. It's not going to get any awards in these types of events. You could say something like the Avatar films are similar in that they are a big media property, incredibly financially successful, but in terms of cultural impact, those films make surprisingly little contribution to cultural life. I once

compared mobile games to Mrs. Brown's Boys, which is TV show constantly slammed by critics. and yet one of the most popular one of the most popular shows the BBC has ever created. So there is always a disconnect between what critics like and what players like and what is successful in terms of business. And that's okay. We don't need to force commercial success into culturally driven awards like this. The two things can be separate and that's okay. You are halfway through the podcast. Here is a commercial break. I'll be back after this.
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number one web shop solution, Exola provides the tools for developers to focus on what's most important. Creating great games. Visit exola.com to learn more. That's xsol.com. Also, this week, I have noticed a big increase in the number of mobile game ads I'm getting served on Tik Tok every day. So, I wrote an article about it. This is a quick look at the interesting, weird, cynical, sometimes funny ways mobile game companies try and hook you in. And the ones I am getting served the most are Kingshot, Palmon Survival, Xclash, Allin Hole, Dark War Survival, and Tiles Survive. I don't know what that says about me and my algorithm, but I I guess you could say all of those games, apart from maybe Allen and Hole and Tile Survive are kind of dad games, strategy games. I've noticed a big

increase in the number I'm getting served on TikTok lately, which is probably the number one platform in terms of media consumption in the world right now. I would have to check that, but I would imagine it's up there with YouTube and perhaps doesn't get the press it deserves. I certainly watch more Tik Tok than I do any other media platform. And I think the way mobile game companies try and get you into these games is interesting. Starting with Kingshot, they've taken this organic trend of people doing impossible things, throwing balls into small containers. There's an acrobat guy called Jacob who keeps coming up in my algorithm who does impossible thing or unlikely things and one of the creatives for Kingshot does that. It's a guy sitting on his stairs throwing balls into a little container which segus into the more traditional Kingshot gameplay footage where the the king on horseback is going around

shooting guys. There's also Palmon Survival, which I've covered before as having some pretty outlandish ways to get your attention. With this one, it's soaring off uh a Palmon's tail, stabbing a guy in the eye, and then switching to some gameplay, which is not particularly representative of the actual game. All pretty standard stuff if you are particularly a Chinese-made mobile game. All in hole goes down the innuendo route and milks the putting large things in your hole kind of theme. Not going to lie, it's quite funny. And X Clash, one of the weirder games out there. As before, starts off as draw lines around the thing to save it from the bees. Previously, it was a Doge character. Now it's a little cartoon guy. I don't know if he's from some meme, but these ads are now soundtracked

by a sort of odd Chinese version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and then there's Zombie Waves, which is relatively old-fashioned. It's got a guy running through Blue Gates, but then he leaps up and with what looks like Thor's hammer smashes down into a crowd of zombies led by a zombie bride. There's more relaxing creatives out there as well. I'm also getting to serve Dark War survival ads, which are kind of post-apocalyptic diaramas, but also Studio Gibli. So, I assume there's some sort of AI element there because it leans on those Studio Giblly AI images that were doing the rounds among AI people a few months back. And there's also tiles survive which slightly more peaceful as well. Pixel art diaramas, gentle plinky plunky music. So I think the latter two prove

that you don't have to do shop tactics when you are doing Tik Tok ad creatives. There are other ways to get attention. And actually with 95% of the feed based on one or two second long hooks, having a gentle plinky plunky piano music ad creative is actually quite striking. So, this category of article, I don't do them very often and actually they don't get that many readers, but I think it's interesting and important given how much marketing drives the mobile business. I might turn this into a series. I might not. We shall see. But let me know if you find these interesting, if I'm getting the wrong end of the stick. Either way, I think they're fun. In this week's data digest,

there's an exclusive in there. I haven't seen anyone else cover it just yet. Anyway, Jam City got fined $1.6 million by a court in California for violating privacy laws. It failed to offer optout outs for selling player information. So, they've been dinged. 1.6 million. Sensor Towers charts for November. Last War top of the revenue charts. Block Blast top of the download charts. Global consumer spending on mobile games across the App Store and Google Play reached 6.68 billion in November. According to Sensor Tower, that's 2.8% down month. On downloads, 3.62 62 billion in November, down 4.1% month- on month. Little Farm Story Idol Tycoon, a hybrid casual game from SE games, is actually

generating decent amount of inapp purchase revenue, 1.2 million in October on top of its ads. And there's a little breakdown from App Magic on the top 10 first purchases in that game, which is interesting. Not a thing I've seen broken down before. Bud Studios, the kids game specialist. Two billion downloads over its lifetime. It has been going for 15 years now. Founded in Montreal, Canada. Rush Royale also celebrating a birthday. 5 years of that game. $470 million earned. Huge games. 35% of its revenues coming through direct and consumer channels. Brain Test. I included this Unico figure because there are loads of companies like this who often you've never heard of, but they've got 1.6 billion downloads. It's a company called Unico. It makes those brain test games, lifetime downloads for its portfolio, 1.6 billion

downloads, more than triple the 500 million it reported back in April 2022. The brain test games alone have topped 750 million downloads which is a lot and there's more numbers from Niko partners on the Asia and Mena market 89 billion expect that market is expected to generate 89 billion this year that's up a little bit from the 87.9 billion it previously forecasted and it expects the market to grow even further to 29.6 billion in 2029. Now, we're coming towards the end of the year. There's going to be some wrap-up type stuff happening on the site over the next few weeks and then we're into January and we do predictions. So, look forward to that. If you want to

contribute, drop me a line on neilmobiler.biz. Things really are slowing down now. Uh, and I quite like it actually. I don't really like being at the mercy of the news cycle. So, I hope you're winding down ahead of Christmas, too. Thanks very much. I'll be back next week. Goodbye.