What’s going on at Rovio, Miniclip’s new ad network, Squad Busters’ last rites, RedLynx closes, 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. The big story of the week, for me at least, because it took ages to edit down into a easily digestible article, is this interview I did with Alexandra Pelier Normand, who is the boss of Roio and also now the COO of Sega West Studios. So he's now in charge of Sports Interactive, Creative Assembly, Twooint Studio, and a bit more of Sega West, which is Sega Europe, and maybe a little bit of America 2. And the interview, which took place at Gamescom, was based on the whole idea of Roio having this rebuild. That was the term it used in May when Sega, its parent company, said that the $775 million acquisition of Robio had failed to create economic

value and the studio is rebuilding. So, there's been a couple of rounds of layoffs. There's a little bit of context at the start of this feature cuz actually I didn't know how many people are in each office at Roio. Turns out there's about 290 in Espoo, about 70 in Stockholm. They do Angry Birds, too. Roio, Barcelona, about 35 staff who work across Live Ops and monetization, about 20 staff in Canada, split across Montreal and Toronto. And the message from Alexandre here is that Roio is focusing on Angry Birds and Sonic and the things that it knows it can do. Well, I think what is representative of this is they had this match three game in soft launch for a long time called Bloom City Match. They've actually killed that project and moved that team onto Angry Birds Match, which is

essentially a very similar game, but with the Angry Birds brand attached. That makes sense. If you're going to make a match three and you own the Angry Birds IP, why not make an Angry Birds match three? Another soft launch title, Angry Birds Rush, is in development at French studio OBB, which shows that Roio is not only working on internal new games, but licensing its IP out to other studios to have a go as well. There's a stretch of this feature on how Robio can do more with Sonic in mobile. Although it is tricky to monetize the runner category, which obviously Sonic works well in. They are exploring a few different ways to do Sonic on mobile there it seems. Then we go into Sonic Rumble Party. This is actually a Sega Tokyo game that Roio did help to market when it launched after the acquisition.

But essentially, he says here that this game would be killed if it wasn't a Sonic game. It's not performing, but Sonic has this rabid fan base that does tend to get quite upset if you do cancel a Sonic game. So, that seems to have survived so far based on that. And it's not actually Roio's decision. And it's Sega's decision as it is their game. Roio isn't helping Sega with the live ops or marketing of that game anymore. So, it seems to be on the back burner a little bit. [snorts] And then we end with potentially some Twooint Hospital, Twooint Museum games coming to mobile. Another go at the Total War games coming to mobile. These are on mobile at the moment, but they are pretty much straight premium ports of the big complicated PC games, then maybe they're not the best fit for mobile play. So, both being top- down strategy type

games, you can see those making sense on mobile. He also has a little swipe at Apple and Google for really not offering much in exchange for their 30% cut of inapp purchase fees. I don't think this is a surprise anymore, but still interesting to see one of the original mobile game makers with very strong ties to both those platforms. Even ROIO is speaking out quite publicly about this now, saying they're exploring direct to consumer options because they're getting squeezed by platforms not offering a huge amount and user acquisition costs. So yeah, loads to get your teeth into with this feature. The headline is ROIO's rebuild means refocusing on Angry Birds, Sonic, and picking new projects carefully. This is interesting. Ad Surge is a new ad network which has been built by the

Mini Clip team with help from Tencent and EasyBrain data. This is a new ad network that has been in the works for three years according to Mini Clip. Ad Surge will offer user acquisition and ad monetization services and the $1.2 2 billion acquisition of Easy Brains catalog certainly helped give Mini Clip the scale and range of games needed to launch this new ad network. It also drew on technical insights and AI expertise from its friends at Tencent, which of course owns Mini Clip, but says AdSurg's algorithms have been built from scratch around its own traffic. It is also an independent company from Miniip and Miniip said that partner data is managed in strict isolation. Ad Surge says it was born because publishers are facing squeezed margins from platform fees,

engine costs, and rising ad network margins. Have a look at the story on the site for more details. The headline is ad surge is the new ad network built by Mini Clip with help from Tencent and Easy Brain Data. Supercell has confirmed that Squad Busters is indeed closing down permanently on December the 14th. This was obviously confirmed last October when Supercell said the game was not performing up to expectations and it would no longer be supporting it. But now this is the end game for this title. It will be removed from the App Store and Google Play stores on December the 1st. And for those still with it on their phones, it will stop being playable on December the 14th. Appmagic estimates put its lifetime revenue at about 67.9 million from 58.6 million downloads. US accounts for about 30% of that spend. [snorts] So yes, the end of Squadbusters

coming in December. Ubisoft is poised to close Helsinki studio Red Links with 52 jobs at risk. This is a story broken by games industry. Beers. Red Links recently moved to what it called small screen games. Had a match and makeover game called Gwen's Getaway in soft launch at one point. Also helped out on the various mobile games that Ubisoft has Rainbow 6 Division and so on. The report says it was working on two mobile games that it had not yet announced. Those will obviously no longer go ahead. This studio is going to close. And yeah, a sad end for Red Links, which had a huge hit with Trials, but is now reportedly going to close as part of Ubisoft's ongoing restructuring and cost cutting. Exola connects developers with the resources they need to build, fund,

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Couple of bits of notable new release news. No Man's Sky is coming to iPhone and iPad on October the 28th. This was announced on Monday and got quite a bit of interest on the site as we say in the piece. It was supposed to be coming out [snorts] a while back on iPad, but looks like they held off to bring it to both iPhone and iPad this year. It's been in the works for about 3 years. It'll be free to start. So, free download and then a onetime full game unlock price of about

$20. Pre-orders are open now. Another bit of new release news on the site in the last week. Monster Hunter Rise, which is another big console game that appears to be coming to mobile through Netflix. Eurogamer spotted the listings on Google Play. We checked on App Magic as well, and there is there is indeed a listing for this game. So, Netflix is still doing games. the rate of releases has slowed down very significantly in the last six months since this reboot took place where basically they're just doing super mainstream casual stuff, licensed stuff, kids stuff. But the exception here appears to be Monster Hunter Rise, which is coming to mobile via Netflix. Netflix haven't hasn't confirmed this yet, but it looks like there will be an announcement imminently. As this whole Paramount and Warner merger came through last week, I had a

look at the combined portfolio of mobile games that's out there between Paramount and Warner, which is now to be known as Sky Dance after that big $111 billion merger. Couple of little nuggets of recruitment news in here as well. Variety reported that former Epic Games exec Tony Driscoll will be in charge of Sky Dance Games and everyone's old friend, Activision boss Bobby Kotek, has also been appointed to the Sky Dance board. They are in charge of a pretty big portfolio of games based on the various IPs that both entities own. Starting with Warner, they of course own Game of Thrones DC, Mortal Kombat, and so on. Game of Thrones Dragonfire is the top earner here. About 3.3 million earned in September. That's relatively new on the market. Game of Thrones

Conquest has been quietly coining it in since 2017. Earned about 1.2 million in July and August, about a million for September. Mortal Kombat, another long-term decent earner, still earning about 1 million a month that was released in 2015. All these figures are inapp purchase revenue estimates from App Magic. Then there's a load of sort of also Rans Injustice, Injustice 2, Heads Up, DC Worlds Collide, a load of old Lego licensed games. There are some Harry Potter games out there, which is the property that Warner owns. Jam City's Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery is the top earner here. 1.6 to 1.8 million on a typical month inapp purchase earnings. Warner [snorts] will of course collect a little bit of that cash as a license. Harry Potter puzzles and spells from Zinga nets around 1.2 million in a

typical month. Then you got a load of licensed Game of Thrones games as well. Game of Thrones slots casino. That is the top earner here. 1.6 million in a typical month according to App Magic. Another Zingga game, Game of Thrones Legends. About 700K monthly. Then you got couple more that don't amount to too much. And a few other licensed games. DC Dark Legion from Fun Plus does pretty well. About a million a month for that one. A load of Spongebob games which are scattered across Netflix, Apple Arcade, and the App stores. Not huge earners. Star Trek Fleet Command from Scopely. That is easily the top performing Paramount owned property. About 2 million a month for that one. Star Trek Timelines from Tilting Point about 200k per month. Then you got

Avatar, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem, which is closed, and then Tom and Jerry Chase, a China only game. So, a very, very mixed bag of titles here. [snorts] So, yes, we shall see what happens to these games. I would imagine if you're looking at a spreadsheet with these games in that purchase revenue, the new management may well come in and clear the decks of those catalog ones and the ones that aren't earning their keep anymore. And we may well see a flurry of closures on some of those lower performing ones. But we shall see as Tony Driscoll and maybe even Bobby Kotic wrap their arms around what will be Sky Darts games. Lots more detail in the article which is headlined as Paramount and Warner become Sky Dance. Here's what its mobile catalog looks like. Google is adding a load of new features to its Play Store. All designed to aid

discovery, help players with curation, add some community stuff, and of course a little bit of AI as well. This game finder tool recommends titles based on what Google calls gamer DNA, which is basically player preferences and behavior. Community reviews are also taken into account with this as well. The personalized UTAB has over 250 million monthly active users, says Google. And its unified gaming platform connects over 700 million gamer profiles. Game playlists are being added so players can curate collections of games and share those playlists, have a nose at their friends playlists, etc. Sidekick, the AI assistant, I don't know why it's not called Gemini, but here we are. Sidekick can now record 30 second clips of gameplay and share them with friends without leaving the game.

Quests, community posts, PC games such as Dave the Diver, Warhammer, 40k, Bolt Gun, things like that are also coming to mobile and playable across mobile and PC with Cloud Save. game trials. Google Play points is getting a little PlayFest, which is a week-long event with Playpoint giveaways and incentives and so on. So, yeah, absolutely loads of new things coming to the Play Store. You should have a look at the story itself on the site for a lot more detail. The headline is Google Play is adding a raft of new discovery, curation, and AI features. Couple of game closures in the last week. Ubisoft is closing Rainbow 6 mobile after just seven months on the market. The game according to App Magic earned about 5.3 million in inapp purchase revenue in that time from about 13.1 million downloads. This game sort

of infamously has been in development for over six years. And Ubisoft told us a few years back that 11 of its studios have worked on the game over that time, including mobile shooter specialist Tencent. But yeah, the game did not take off and it is being closed in January. There's also Fingersoft that is closing Lego Hill Climb Adventures, but not laying off any staff. The game just didn't get enough traction according to a LinkedIn post, but the Apple Arcade version of that game will continue to be run by Fingersoft. So, yes, two notable game closures in the last week. Fingersoft closing Lego Hill Climb Adventures. and Ubisoft closing Rainbow 6 mobile.

Second bit of Google news this week. Google defends Play Store commissions in1 billion pound UK class action. This is another bit of courtroom action for Google which has been accused of abusing its position in the market with its 30% commission. And the person accusing Google of this says developers pass those costs on to consumers. Google is of course contesting the claim, saying that Google charges some of the lowest fees in the market. Its lawyers also insist that the case is unfounded and the Play Store faces strong competition from Apple's App Store and other platforms. The trial began on October 6 at London's Competition Appeal Tribunal and the people bringing this case are representing 20 million consumers who spent money on apps, inapp purchases or subscriptions on the Play Store between 2015 and July of this year. This comes

amid various other legal and regulatory pressures on Google right now. So, we'll see what happens with this one. In data digest this month, loads of investment actually. Smashfest developer flow games has landed $46 million mostly from Tencent. That is a story published by pocket gamer.bbeers. Spill games raised $10.5 million. This is an Indian AI native puzzle studio. Mobile game spending fell 7% in Q3 according to ARim and Sensor Tower's latest report. Scopli Explore, formerly Niantic, led the US publisher growth chart in Q3. There's some more growth stats from Sensor Tower. Further into this article, Roblox Dohan Battle and Zeus, a new Korean title from com to us, leading the growth charts in September there. Gardens Interactive 35 million

plus for that studio which was founded by some of the people who made Journey and Sky Children of the Light. Another nugget from that ARM and Sensor Tower report suggests only three of the top 20 grossing mobile games are under two years old. 52% of top US app store games run inapp events. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a little bit of research from Admiral Media in there. For all the usual stats and facts and figures and graphs, have a look at Data Digest every Wednesday. And that's it for this week. You join me in glamorous Middlesbrough. I am up north for a event called New Horizons. Should be a good laugh and we'll report back next week. But until then, thanks for listening.