The games industry needs Africa’s untold stories now more than ever – but it can’t have them yet
Some frustrating reasons are holding the continent back, and I'll explore them.
Journal
Ex-King and Ex-Apple Team Raise $9 Million Seed Round for Metica to Revolutionize Gaming Growth with AI-Powered Personalization and Monetization
Metica, a cutting-edge technology company building AI-driven customer engagement and personalization solutions for the gaming industry, has announced the successful raise of $9 million seed round. The round was led by top-tier venture capital firms Play Ventures, 13books, and Firstminute Capital, with participation from renowned angel investors including Riccardo Zacconi, founder and ex-CEO of King (makers of Candy Crush), Caro Krenzer, CEO of Trailmix, Klaas Kersting, CEO of Phoenix Games, Michail Katkoff, Founder of Deconstructor of Fun, Roland Rudd, Chairman of FGS Global, Nigel Morris, former CEO of Dentsu, and René Rechtman, founder of Moonbug Entertainment. Metica is on a mission to help games grow faster by uniting user acquisition (UA), in-game monetization, and AI-driven personalization. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Phil Mohr and Puli Liyanagama, Metica marks their third successful venture together. Their previous startups include Comufy, acquired by King, […]
Top 10 Turkish Mobile Game Publishers
🇹🇷 Top 10 Türk mobile game publishers you need to know!What makes a publisher successful in your eyes? We, have been rapidly growing over the years.While getting faster in game production,Adapting to the marketing trends is a MUST.These studios not only mastered the development,They also kept their marketing uplift.Now that’s the challenge.Now that’s success… 🥂 Cheers!Data by AppMagic as always. PS: These publishers/self publisher developers have all different strategies.DM for deeper conversations. Data is worldwide, numbers are approximate estimations, rounded for better display.Not included in game ad revenue, which can significantly change the listing. #gamedevelopment #videogames
SayGames is stepping up its no-ads offer game!
Juice King by SayGames is really stepping up its no-ads offer game! 🍹 This package goes above and beyond, packing over 12 benefits + resources into one irresistible deal. It's clear a lot of thought went into designing this—making it almost impossible to say no!
10 Live Ops traps to avoid
10 Live Ops traps to avoid I teamed up with Sergei to break down the most common mistakes in Live Ops and share tips on improving them:1. Over-focusing on a single metric 📊 Track retention, engagement, and happiness—not just revenue. 2. Event overload 🔄 Too many events burn players out. Space them out. 3. Copy-paste strategies 📋 What worked before might not work now. Adapt and test. 4. Ignoring feedback 🗣️ Complaints = insights. Use them to catch problems early. 5. Over-relying on whales 🐋 Cater to all players, not just big spenders. 6. Content drought 🌵 No new content? Players leave. Keep it fresh. 7. Inconsistent updates ⏰ No schedule = frustrated players. Be reliable. 8. Misusing A/B testing ⚖️ Bad tests, bad data. Test properly to improve. 9. Weak onboarding 🛠️ Confusion = churn. Make onboarding fun and […]
Former Space Ape Exec Simon Hade launches NextBeat
The creators of Space Ape Games’ popular music rhythm game Beatstar have spun the title out into a dedicated music-gaming company called NEXTBEAT. The move follows Supercell‘s full acquisition of Space Ape Games in November 2024 – a deal which is expected to close in the spring. Beatstar was launched globally in 2021 after five years of development within Space Ape Games by a team that included Simon Hade as COO and co-founder of the studio, and Olly Barnes, who led music strategy and rights acquisition. Barnes is the co-founder of Voisey, a music-making app that Snapchat acquired for $70 million in 2020. Snapchat later offloaded Voisey in 2022 as part of Snap Inc.’s wide-scale restructuring. Beatstar is a free-to-play mobile game often compared to Guitar Hero. It features over 850 global music hits secured through music licensing deals with major labels, indie publishers, and dozens of rightsholders. In September 2022, MBW reported that Beatstar shared USD $16 million of its revenue with music labels and […]
The Strategy Behind Aonic’s $70M Acquisition of Mega Fortuna
Turkish Ad Tech startup Mega Fortuna boasts 10 million MAUs for its mobile gaming discovery and loyalty platform. Aonic, a fast-growing video gaming and technology group, has completed a $10M minority investment in Mega Fortuna. The deal includes an option for Aonic to acquire the entire share capital of Mega Fortuna for a valuation of up to $70M. The WHY behind the investment Paul Bowen This acquisition is logical in the highly fragmented Play & Earn (P&E) ecosystem, which is experiencing unprecedented growth. With 27 companies listed in the Incentivized Advertising Database offering gift card reward services, consolidation is inevitable as larger players and their owners absorb smaller companies to expand their P&E portfolios. However, key questions remain, particularly around the total addressable market (TAM) for users interested in earning gift cards by playing games. I anticipate we'll see further consolidation […]
Mobile Ad Monetization #6
After a long hiatus the best Mobile Ad Monetization Newsletter in the world is back... and this time it will keep coming back.. Once a week! Promise. 🥇Block Blast! The Next Largest Mobile Game Publisher?🥇 Block Blast! is on the road to becoming the largest mobile publisher app in the world. On December 20th it looks like Block Blast! for the first time whizzed passed the second-largest mobile game publisher “8 Ball Pool” by Miniclip. Block Blast! is firing on all cylinders and has been downloaded 28.2 Million downloads in the last 30 days and has a DAU of 13 Million users compared to 8 Ball Pool’s 12 Million DAU. I estimate that Block Blast! is earning anywhere between $800k-1.1m a day in ad revenue. 🤯 The largest mobile game publisher remains “Subway Surfers” by Sybo (also owned by Miniclip) […]
Why play Netflix’s Squid Game when Roblox already exists?
Why play Netflix’s Squid Game when Roblox already exists? 🔺⭐🔴☂️ “NO NETFLIX MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED” — these are the first words in the App Store description of Netflix’s Squid Game: Unleashed.Yes, with caps lock!By making its new multiplayer battle royale game free-to-play, Netflix seems to have learned a thing or two from its three years in the gaming market. 🤓But here’s the twist: players have already been enjoying Squid Game for years —on Roblox! That is why so many people downloaded Roblox when the Season 2 of the TV Show was launched. 📈Squid Game: Unleashed generated 15M downloads in just one month, according to AppMagic. This is an amazing result! But what happens once the hype dies down? Players will likely move on to other games in the App Store. 📱Now, consider what happens when Roblox players get tired of Squid Game. […]
Mobile Gaming 2022 to 2025
Mobile Gaming grew in 2024 by 5.3% YoY (Sensor Tower, worldwide data excluding China) 📲 . But downloads are lagging both on Android and iOS... are we seeing a shift towards smaller number of bigger games? At the same time concentration among top publishers is not necessarily growing🤔 ... Genres that had significant scale and high growth rates were Board, Casual, Strategy, Puzzle - they were growing both in 2024 (2024 vs 2023) and in 2023 (2023 vs 2022). All details how mobile gaming was behaving in 2024 you can find in my report 📕 📕 📕 - almost 60 pages with different data analyses, data points around mobile gaming (from various data sources).#mobilegaming #data #insights #gaming #market #mobilegaming2025
10 Game Genres to Avoid in 2025
10 Game Genres to Avoid in 2025 (backed by data)𝟭. 𝗣𝘂𝘇𝘇𝗹𝗲-𝗥𝗣𝗚 (https://lnkd.in/eXaSg-Fg) • New Games Released in 2024: 39 • Games Reached $1M IAP Revenue: 0 • Games Reached 1M Downloads: 0 • Success Rate (Revenue): 0% • Success Rate (Downloads): 0% • 𝗔𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗜𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗥𝗣𝗚 (https://lnkd.in/eSU2EBSG)𝟮. 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵-𝟯 (https://lnkd.in/eCK7KeAx) • New Games Released in 2024: 284 • Games Reached $1M IAP Revenue: 2 • Games Reached 1M Downloads: 7 • Success Rate (Revenue): 0.7% • Success Rate (Downloads): 2.5% • 𝗔𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵-𝟯 𝗧𝗶𝗹𝗲 (https://lnkd.in/eVdgx3fu)𝟯. 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗦𝗹𝗼𝘁𝘀 (https://lnkd.in/ebZmjNAm) • New Games Released in 2024: 1,143 • Games Reached $1M IAP Revenue: 0 • Games Reached 1M Downloads: 11 • Success Rate (Revenue): 0% • Success Rate (Downloads): 1% • 𝗔𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀 (https://lnkd.in/emagsy63)𝟰. 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 (https://lnkd.in/etqA8wBD) • New Games Released in 2024: 344 • Games Reached $1M IAP Revenue: 11 • […]
My 2025 Product trends for Mobile Games Predictions
Here are my 2025 Product trends for Mobile Games predictions 😎 you can watch/listen to the whole episode on our channel 😁 or read the TLDR bellow 😅 🔷 Adapting proven Steam games into MobileLast year we saw great success of the Supermarket 🛒 simulator games adapted by Game District and many others and this trend will continue. Another example is the adaptation of the Backpack Hero mechanic. 50/50 there is gonna be a mobile version of Helldivers 2. F2P version of Balatro is a done deal for sure (The mobile premium version makes $100K a day 🤑). I guess 5 teams are on this already. Palword-like monster fighting and collection mechanics are already seen in China. It will be probably Q2 when they hit the western mobile market. 🔷 Casual Genres DisruptionBecause the traditional puzzle match 3 🧩 market […]