Premium-feel Mobile Games: No Ads

“High-quality, premium-feel, free-to-play mobile games have no business adding ads to monetize their players. Ads make the game look cheap, low-quality and will inevitably result in player frustration, causing damage to retention and in-app purchase revenue. Ads are for hyper-casual games.” 💎 💰 🔇

“All free-to-play mobile games are suitable for ads. However, to avoid problems and maximize gains, various aspects should be taken into account including game genre. Both hyper-casual and core games (and all the ones in between) can use ads, but their implementation should, of course, be very different.” 📺 📢

Up until recently, high profile companies such as Supercell, Peak, Dream Games (and some others) have behaved in line with the first statement and they were not using ads to monetize their games. 🛑 ☠

Two out of three mentioned have apparently changed their minds recently. 💣 🤯

Case #1 Peak Games integrated last year rewarded video ads in their games Toy Blast and Toon Blast. We managed to find one, out-of-moves placement in their game Toy Blast, which gives users extra moves to complete the puzzle. 💥

Case #2 Supercell added ads (to at least some players) to Brawlstars. According to their patch notes, “they will offer players a way to obtain additional perks such as an additional Daily Quest, more daily Battle XP, or an additional daily freebie in the Shop in some regions of the world.” 🧐

It’s no secret that Supercell was already using rewarded video ads in their legacy games Hay Day and Boom Beach but to see ads in their highest grossing game, to some, this was an impossible scenario. According to AppMagic, just in August 2024, Brawlstars generated 43 million USD in IAP revenue, almost the same amount as all other games combined. 🏆

Check out the reddit thread if you’re curious to see what their players think about ads in Brawlstars. 😅 🤬

Here: Patch Notes and Reddit