Gamigion

Griffin Gaming Partners has purchased the mobile publishing arm of Playdigious from Sweden’s Fragbite Group for €10.5 million ($12.2 million) in cash. Playdigious is known for bringing acclaimed PC and console titles like Dead Cells, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, Loop Hero, and Streets of Rage 4 to mobile. The acquisition gives Griffin full ownership of Playdigious’ mobile publishing business, while Fragbite will retain 90% of revenue from Playdigious’ PC-focused label, Playdigious Originals, covering games such as Fretless, Crown Gambit, Linkito, and The Almost Gone. Fragbite acquired Playdigious in 2021 for €5 million and described the sale as a “successful investment,” with the studio now valued more than double its acquisition price. The deal strengthens Fragbite’s capital position, supporting its new ventures in Bitcoin treasury operations, esports, and work-for-hire services. Playdigious accounted for roughly 77% of Fragbite’s 2024 revenue, with a book […]

According to Bloomberg, AppLovin’s stock plunged after reports surfaced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing its data-collection practices tied to targeted ads. This move appears to have erased approximately $8.65 billion in value held by the company’s top executives and early backers. Key Developments The SEC is investigating whether AppLovin circumvented its partners’ data-sharing rules by using unauthorized tracking methods to deliver hyper-targeted ads. Following the news, AppLovin’s stock dropped about 14%, triggering massive paper losses among insiders and early investors. CEO Adam Foroughi’s net worth reportedly fell by ~$3.4B. Cofounders Andrew Karam and John Krystynak lost ~$460M and ~$540M respectively. Early investors—such as Ling Tang, Hao Tang, and Eduardo Vivas—also saw losses in the hundreds of millions to over a billion. Background & Context The probe follows allegations from a whistleblower and multiple short-seller reports accusing […]

Big win for Istanbul’s Cypher Games. The studio just closed a $30 million Series A led by Play Ventures and The Raine Group, with participation from MIT, E2VC, Huuuge founder Anton Gauffin’s Big Bets, and repeat support from heavyweights like Discord’s Humam Sakhnini, King founder Riccardo Zacconi, and Tripledot’s Akin Babayigit. This comes less than a year after Cypher’s $10M seed round in September 2024, which fueled the expansion of its team and the development of its debut title, Match Squad. Match Squad? A fresh twist on casual puzzle gaming. Match Squad blends classic match-3 loops with dice mechanics, bringing both luck and skill into play. Cypher is also building city-building metagames and social layers around it — aiming to create the “true social core” of luck-battle gaming within the casual category. “We don’t aim to differentiate just for the […]

The SSP playbook is breaking. Verve, the Swedish ad tech player with a $740 million market cap, has just cut parts of its PubNative & Smaato teams. The signal to the market is clear: SSPs are feeling the squeeze. Why SSPs Are Struggling The supply path is being compressed from both ends. Buyers shift away from open exchange. According to ANA benchmarking, PMPs now account for ~88% of nonsocial programmatic, up from ~65% just a year ago. That’s a massive tilt toward curated pipes. DSPs are cutting out middlemen. The Trade Desk’s Kokai openly labels SSP routes as “resellers,” steering spend into OpenPath and other direct connections. Margins are collapsing. Magnite’s DV+ cost per ad request dropped 26% last year, and a brutal 45% in CTV, just to stay in play. For SSPs, that means higher costs to win lower-margin […]

AI-powered CTV ad platform emerges as a performance marketing powerhouse. CTV is shaping up to be the next big battlefield for UA spend. With players like Vibe.co raising big and scaling fast, expect to see more mobile studios testing TV as a core channel, not just an experiment. Vibe.co, CTV ad platform built for performance marketers, just closed a $50M Series B led by Hedosophia (early backer of Spotify, Uber, Airbnb). The round brings Vibe’s valuation to $410M, with participation from Elaia, Singular, Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky’s QuantumLight, Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, and Carolyn Everson (Disney, Coca-Cola board). Nextdoor’s CEO Nirav Tolia, also joins Vibe’s board. Why it matters CTV is no longer a branding channel. Vibe.co is turning TV into a performance engine, with hyper-targeting, AI-driven campaign optimization, and incrementality measurement. The company has hit a $100M revenue run […]