User Acquisition reports and market data
Documents
🧠 MVP UA template AXON: How to set up your Applovin for Success by Matej Lancaric
AppLovin’s Axon platform functions as a high-performance, automated user acquisition engine that requires a distinct strategic approach compared to Facebook or Google.
- Creative assets are the primary performance driver on AppLovin, with playables accounting for 80% to 90% of total ad spend.
- Top-performing games maintain high creative velocity by producing and shipping over 60 new playable assets per month.
- Abandon traditional geo-bucket campaign structures in favor of a worldwide approach, using geo-level ROAS targets instead of geo-level budgets to manage traffic.
State of Gaming: China & Strategy Domination
Chinese game publishers are currently achieving significant global dominance in the mobile sector, particularly within the strategy, shooter, and casual game genres.
- Chinese publishers are dominating Western mobile markets by prioritizing proven mechanics and rapid iteration over creative experimentation, as seen in titles like Whiteout Survival, Last War, and Gossip Harbor.
- These studios utilize 'creative factories' and centralized publishing teams to manage live operations across entire portfolios, enabling the immediate transfer of successful engagement strategies between games.
- Chinese firms maintain a competitive advantage over Western developers through superior operational velocity, high-intensity work cultures, and lower development costs optimized by proprietary AI models.
🌺Cozy Florist Deep Dive: 4,000 AI-Generated creatives in 30 Days
Cozy Florist represents a sophisticated Western-market adaptation of the established Chinese title My Garden Tale, blending traditional farming simulation mechanics with merge-based gameplay and gacha-style rarity systems.
- Cozy Florist, a Western-market adaptation of My Garden Tale, produced 4,000 unique AI-generated creatives in 30 days to support its user acquisition strategy.
- Despite high-volume creative output and features like guild systems and gacha mechanics, the title currently generates only $30,000 in daily revenue.
- Chinese development teams maintain a competitive advantage by using automated pipelines and open-source tools to iterate creatives rapidly based on real-time cost-per-install data.
TWIG #382: Merge Mansion Falls, Xbox Fires the Wrong People, and the Math That Killed Gaming VC
The gaming industry is undergoing a fundamental structural transition, moving away from the high-growth, venture-backed models of the past decade toward a landscape defined by operational efficiency, asset-focused management, and lean production cycles.
- The gaming industry is shifting from high-growth, venture-backed models to a focus on operational efficiency, fiscal discipline, and long-term cash flow optimization.
- Venture capital investment in gaming has plummeted due to compressed valuation multiples and a shrinking pool of potential acquirers, signaling the end of the mobile free-to-play era's explosive growth.
- Studios are increasingly adopting a 'band model' that utilizes small core teams supplemented by freelancers, outsourcing, and AI to mitigate the rising costs of traditional development.
The Attention Budget Rule: why tutorials should teach maximum 3 things at a time
The attention budget rule serves as a critical framework for game design, positing that players can effectively process no more than three new mechanics at a time.
- Players can effectively process a maximum of three new mechanics at a time, making this the upper limit for effective tutorial onboarding.
- Chaining passive experiences like loading screens, victory sequences, and dialogue dumps creates a 'boredom trap' that significantly degrades player retention.
- Effective onboarding requires a rhythmic oscillation between high-tension gameplay and brief periods of relaxation to maintain player momentum.
Soft Launch Sonar: 15 New Games, 14 Are Iterations, 1 Is Probably Doomed?!
The mobile gaming industry is currently defined by a pervasive copy-and-iterate strategy, where studios prioritize the refinement of proven mechanics over original innovation.
- The mobile gaming industry is currently dominated by a copy-and-iterate strategy, with 14 out of 15 new games identified as iterations of proven mechanics rather than original innovations.
- Development is heavily concentrated in the Turkish market, where studios such as Rollic, Spike, and Grand Games scale operations by replicating the mechanics of industry leaders.
- Developers are increasingly utilizing niche regional markets, such as Zimbabwe, for soft-launch testing to gather performance data while avoiding market saturation and legal scrutiny from major incumbents.
🎲 Will Coin Master Board Adventure eat Monopoly Go? (Our year-end predictions)
The mobile gaming landscape is currently defined by a high-stakes battle between established titans and aggressive new entrants within the social casino and board game genres.
- MoonActive’s Coin Master Board Adventure is directly challenging Monopoly Go, currently recording 2.2 million monthly downloads compared to Monopoly Go’s 1.8 million.
- The mobile gaming sector is shifting toward hybrid experiences that integrate merge and idle systems with traditional social casino mechanics to drive engagement.
- Monopoly Go faces significant market pressure due to rising user acquisition costs and diminishing returns, despite maintaining a massive creative library of over 15,000 assets.
🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Record Revenue, Record Layoffs, Why Only 2 Genres Are Actually Winning in 2026
The global gaming industry reached a record $195.6 billion in revenue in 2025, yet this financial milestone coincides with a severe labor crisis, characterized by over 44,000 developer layoffs since 2022 and an additional 2,000 to 3,000 job losses in early 2026.
- The gaming industry reached a record $195.6 billion in revenue in 2025, yet this growth is highly concentrated, with Roblox alone accounting for 67% of net market growth.
- Mass layoffs continue to plague the sector, with over 44,000 developer jobs lost since 2022 and an additional 2,000 to 3,000 cuts in early 2026, leaving nearly half of terminated U.S. developers unemployed.
- 4X strategy games, led by titles like 'Last War' and 'Whiteout Survival,' are the only genre currently experiencing simultaneous growth in revenue, downloads, and user engagement.
💀 Review Radar #11: 80% of the games we covered are already dead!
The mobile gaming landscape is currently defined by extreme volatility, with approximately 80% of new titles failing to maintain long-term momentum following their initial release.
- Approximately 80% of new mobile game titles fail to maintain long-term momentum, experiencing sharp declines in downloads and revenue shortly after their initial release.
- The industry is shifting away from brute-force user acquisition strategies, which often mask poor design stability and fail to sustain a consistent player base.
- Niche-focused titles with innovative mechanics, such as Sunday City, are demonstrating superior resilience, with the game currently generating $100,000 in daily revenue.
Puzzle Monthly #2: Match-3 Is Broken, Pixel Flow Clones, and Royal Kingdom’s Rise
The mobile puzzle market is currently defined by a stagnation of core mechanical innovation, as developers increasingly prioritize polished execution of proven hybrid-casual models over risky gameplay experiments.
- Royal Kingdom has reached a top-four global position with over $300 million in annual revenue, driven by a high-profile, celebrity-led relaunch.
- The mobile puzzle market is characterized by a lack of mechanical innovation, as high user acquisition costs and incumbent dominance force developers to prioritize refining existing models over risky gameplay experiments.
- Royal Kingdom faces significant long-term viability concerns due to its heavy reliance on paid user acquisition, which contrasts with the organic traffic advantage held by established leaders like Candy Crush.
💰🚜 How Playrix turned a 17-Year-Old Tycoon into a $45M/Month UA & Match-3 engine
The longevity and financial success of the mobile title Township demonstrate the effectiveness of evolving legacy tycoon games into sophisticated, multi-core revenue engines.
- Playrix generates $45 million in monthly revenue from Township by evolving the 17-year-old title from a traditional farming simulator into a complex, match-three-driven monetization engine.
- The studio successfully repurposed legacy gameplay loops as onboarding funnels for high-LTV (lifetime value) monetization models, prioritizing energy-driven exploration and merge mechanics over lower-monetizing mini-games.
- To maintain long-term profitability, the studio overhauled the game's economy to tighten currency inflation, ensuring player progression remains strictly tied to the match-three core.
Tim Cook's Apple legacy | Week in Mobile Games podcast
Tim Cook’s impending transition from Apple’s chief executive to executive chairman marks a pivotal shift for the technology giant after fifteen years of unprecedented financial expansion.
- John Ternus is set to replace Tim Cook as Apple CEO in 2026, marking a transition point for a company currently navigating intense regulatory scrutiny and the long-term impact of App Tracking Transparency on mobile user acquisition.
- The mobile gaming industry is facing a sustainability crisis driven by rising development costs and stagnant private investment, making government incentives a critical requirement for studio survival.
- Xbox is restructuring its Game Pass model by introducing tiered pricing and moving away from day-one releases for major titles like Call of Duty to prioritize the protection of premium sales.