Mobile Gaming Today: 48

Hallo Fam,

Crazy how Hamburg is enjoying amazing weather this week while Istanbul is buried under snow! ☃️

Guess I should study Geography to make sense of it… or maybe it’s just global warming doing its thing, huh?

Game of the Week

🍭 Candy Crush Solitaire by King

Having its global launch on Feb 6th, looking at the numbers the game did just $260K on 3M+ downloads. Doesn’t seem like the result King was looking for. Why? 🤔

Compared to competitors, and there are many, there is one major change in core gameplay, where players can store 1 extra card as another “connecting” card, instead of just linear connecting all the cards on the board. This gives them much more tactical gameplay ⚔️, where they can save this card for later when they run out of their current chain to immediately start the next one. Because of predominantly older female players, this seems like a step too far into the puzzle, strategic depth direction, which makes the game much more niche, as difficulty needs to be balanced around this additional “helping” mechanic.

Looking at the current state of top puzzlers, which are all following the cookie-cutter Royal Match event metagame, CC Solitaire has having much less aggressive approach. By level 50, I encountered around 2-3 events, whereas in the Royal Match 👑 events meta you are constantly bombarded 💣 by repeating a combo of 4 events that once completed reset again based on player progression. This is all done toward driving the player to play the main level saga as much as possible through use of very short timers, real-time competing players, or event objectives that are different than the level objectives.

» More Here in 2.5 Pod

Gaming Investments

» Good Job Games Secures Investment from Menlo Ventures, Valued at $100M+

Good Job Games’ first external investment here since its founding in 2017.

Rumours for +$15M, undisclosed. More from GJG?

🧩 Sold Zen Match to Moon Active for $100M (Dec 2022).

⚡ Offloaded its hyper-casual portfolio to Azur Games (June 2023).

Looks like a pretty solid shot, GG WP & Clear Win-Win 🦄

» Jam City Offloads Ludia in Strategic Sell-Off

The deal comes less than 3.5 years after Jam City acquired Ludia for $165M, backed by a $350M funding round as part of its ambitious—but ultimately scrapped—plan to go public at a $1.2B valuation.

Meeple Secures £500K to Digitize Tabletop Games

» Meeple Secures £500K to Digitize Tabletop Games

Its debut title, Kingdomino Digital, is set to launch later this year.

💰 50 Reasons Why VCs say NO to Startups

More? » InvestGame

Industry Highlights

» The State of Turkish Gaming Ecosystem

Why does CVC play a bigger role than ever?

🔥 Unity’s 5,000 Layoffs for $214M

🚪 Amazon App Store’s Exit from Android

🎣 Big Fish Games Pulls the Plug on New Titles

📈 Nitro Games Hits Record Growth in 2024

💰 Meta Hits Record-Breaking Revenue in 2024!

🗑️ Apple Removed 135,000 Apps across EU App Stores

🎲 Hasbro 2024: MONOPOLY GO! contributed $112M

🚀 My Take on Liftoff 2025 App Marketers Survey

📲 Meta’s $50M for Mobile: Creator Fun for Devs

Mobile Marketing

🕺🏻 Casual Games LiveOps in Q1 2025

❤️ This is why I love working with Meta Ads

🃏 Monopoly GO Top Revenue-Driving Events

📱 Secret to Growing on iOS?

🤯 META: Is this for REAL?

📢 10 Biggest Mobile Ad Networks

💰 The Economics of Match Events

AI World

» Microsoft just dropped “Muse“, a cutting-edge AI model built for gaming.

Trained on a massive 500,000 hours of Bleeding Edge gameplay footage, this open-source AI doesn’t just learn—it creates. With its knowledge, Muse can generate entirely new game worlds and dynamic storylines, pushing the boundaries of AI-driven game development.

Muse is Xbox’s generative AI model for gameplay ideation

» OpenAI’s ChatGPT explodes to 400M weekly users, with GPT-5 on the way

» Breaking down Grok 3: The AI model that could redefine the industry

Game Jobs

⚡️ Jobs of The Week ⚡️

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