How Stumble Guys Could Be Set Back to Growth?

This article focuses on analyzing Stumble Guys’ current state and suggests couple theoretical ideas for how it could be set back to growth.

Note: This article is constructive, giving a straight-forward analysis on a game’s current state — with also suggestions and ideas for future improvement. The sole intention is to provide here an insightful article and as a goodwill give open ideas and principles for improvement. This article has data from AppMagic.

Stumble Guys Faces Downhill Slide in Engagement

According to AppMagic, Stumble Guys, a hit from Scopely (originally developed and released by Kitka Games who sold Stumble Guys for Scopely), is seeing decline in downloads and engagement.

Stumble Guys, Revenue 

Stumble Guys, Downloads

This trend, while common in games after top peaks, highlights a critical point:

• Without re-freshening of gameplay and strategic updates, it’s challenging to maintain DAU and MAU once the spikes are gone.

Squeezed up monetization and economy can bring up cash on the table while engagement is going down, but that squeeze, without doing anything else, can end up churning users more.

How Scopely Has Tackled This?

Scopely has taken steps to address the downhill slide by launching the game on multiple platforms.

While this approach helped bring new players, insights from SteamDB reveal a similar downhill trend post-launch, signaling that while multi-platform reach is valuable, it alone can’t sustain engagement long-term.

Stumble Guys’ activity on Steam (Source: SteamDB).

I find this approach useful in general for generating extra engagement and revenue, as well as building the longevity for the IP — but, it’s not the “ultimate” solution for the challenge they’re (as well as many other successful games over time) facing.

On top of this, they have tried addressing things on the D2C front as well — which make sense.

Stumble Guys’ D2C Webshop (Source: Stumble Guys website).

Additionally, as part of game’s live ops approach, lots of IP collaborationa were executed for building game’s longevity.

What’s the challenge in practice they’re facing? I think it one or another way builds over these factors:

• Large volume of users have seen and played the game, and eventually churned.
  • Not enough engaging changes offering new for churned players, even re-targeting could have been potentially applied.
  • Players have found the next phenomena and/or form of entertainment they’re spending their time in.
• Monetization and economy squeeze for business case.
• Purposeful decisions from strategic point of view.
• Raising CPIs overall.
• And so on…

Where to Go Next?

To breathe fresh life into Stumble Guys and boost engagement, Scopely could consider doubling down on social mechanics that foster both cooperative and competitive play — on top of which they could experiment with emergent gameplay mechanics.

Specifically:

Social Co-Op and PvP Features

Building out mechanics that ever-deepen social connections — such as team-based obstacles, co-op challenges, or PvP tied to teamwork — could create new and lasting engagement loops.

This approach resonates strongly with Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, who increasingly seek social, collaborative experiences in games.

It would be like investment into the future that directly targets audiences with whom the game can catch more growth.

Emergent Gameplay for Shareable, Streamable Moments

Introducing emergent and systemic mechanics that spark spontaneous, funny moments gives players reasons to share their experiences.

These types of features, like wild physics-based stunts or chaotic challenges, can drive organic growth as players stream, brag, and share across social media, turning Stumble Guys into a lasting platform for viral gameplay.

Game has lots of elements there already, so investing into something like this could be considerable.

D2C Advancements

Stumble Guys could benefit of some of ideas I’ve written about D2C / Webshops and where they could go next (https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/4-d2c-webshops-in-mobile-games-the):

Onboarding and UA Tie-ins

Following industry-trends, Stumble Guys could try to leverage mini-game UA and FTUE tie-ins — on top of which Emergent gameplay (covered more above and below) could be giving already attractive content for Ads / Creatives.

Why Emergent Would be a Good Direction?

Overall I think emergent and systemic gameplay mechanics have lots of blue ocean opportunities — on top of which, when done right, they “UGC” a game’s content production directly / indirectly for the players, who would play with the elements and components offered by game developers and publishers for them to experiment on.

The audiences Stumble Guys would attract playing, and who most likely have enjoyed playing it already, have grown to these elements already by consuming games like Minecraft, which have emergent and systemic mechanics in them. They have preferences for this and are looking games like this — which comes from Minecraft days and also correlates with Among Us, Fall Guys, etc., whilst one could say they have a taste even for hardcore games like that. Even Fortnite has some elements of these.

Emergent would also be something players would love to stream. On top of this audiences would most definitely try to mimic and recreate what they’ve seen others doing in the game or in streams or videos.

Final Thoughts

Scopely definitely needs to approach these things in good consideration, as they paid out quite a lump sum of cash (~$100-110M USD, give or take) for acquiring the rights for the Stumble Guys IP.

Kitka Games’ profit for the financial year 2022 was approx. $110M USD, which I’m assuming coming directly from the sale of the IP (Source: Finder).

With a renewed focus on social features and gameplay depth, Scopely has an opportunity to reinvigorate Stumble Guys — creating a strategy that aligns with the future needs of younger audiences and extends the longevity of the IP and revenues.

How much Stumble Guys is still in the focus? At least according to LinkedIn job boards, they were recruiting still people into the game team — so seems it’s in focus. They have still good amount of users to engage and monetize. Stumble Guys has also contributed well to Scopely’s overall success and post-acquisition success as well (where Monopoly Go! definitely has outperformed all other titles).

Let’s see where future takes the game! I hope you enjoy reading this article in terms of giving fresh ideas on what one can do to build longevity for a successful game — and why it’s important to keep things fresh.