Mobile Gaming Today: June 17
🦄 Content of the Week
⚡️ Game Economy That Drives Retention & Revenue
Even the best games thrive on trial and error.
When we talk about Game Economy, we often focus on numbers:
- How much do things cost?
- How do players earn?
To drive Retention & Revenue, we need deeper questions:
» But to build THAT kind of Economy, you need to:
- Master more than Math
- Work with these 6 elements
🤟🏻 Industry Highlights
⭐️ HTML5 Gaming Gold Rush: Discord, Telegram, X & More
The huge potential for games on every platform with a browser!
🇮🇳 Indian Gaming Industry Surge
- You missed China. You slept on Brazil.
Don’t miss India. This isn’t “emerging.” It’s exploding.
🇪🇺 Supercell’s Ilkka Paananen on Gaming, AI & Europe’s Edge
$13.5 billion in revenue across 2.5 billion downloads. Crazy?
Supercell experienced explosive growth in 2024 across revenue and player base. While Ilkka notes this level won’t be the annual norm, he confirms strong momentum across live titles and excitement for new games in development.
👉🏻 AppLovin just launched their new “self-serve” ads manager dashboard.
HUGE upgrade over the last one, but still not perfect.
Here are my notes on each section of the new UI.
😶🌫️ Unity’s Data Dilemma: Why Gaming’s Underdog Needs to Stop Playing It Safe
The $81 Billion Question.
Can Unity Break AppLovin’s Stranglehold on Mobile Gaming?
🦄 Netflix meets Zynga, but make it AI
Former Netflix Games VP Mike Verdu and Zynga legend Mark Pincus just launched a new startup: Playful.AI, and they’re not thinking small.
The Mission? Reinvent GameDev & Player Experiences using Gen AI.
🫡 Evolution of the Gaming Product Manager in 2025 + AI
GameDev is shifting rapidly, reshaping what it means to be a product manager. Key macro forces, from the attention economy to global competition, are creating new challenges and demands.
🤖 Real-Life Comeback: AI Boom to Reboot Human Events
“Within the next 3 years, there will be so much AI, in particular AI video, people won’t know if what they see or hear is real.”
💵 Game Investments
🔫 Ricochet Squad Aims to Redefine Mobile Shooters
Backed by $3 million and a bold vision, Nice Plans Studio is taking its shot at redefining mobile shooters, again.
A $90 million mobile shooter with 30M installs is back with a new mission: to scale Ricochet Squad, a physics-driven 3v3 shooter built for mobile-first play and long-term engagement.
🇹🇷🇬🇧 Turkish Game Startups Join UK Accelerator
3 Turkish game startups, PaxAnimi Games, Game Actor & Yamy Studio, have been selected to participate in the London Market Expansion programme, an initiative designed to support international studios entering the UK market.
🇮🇳 ChimeraVC Unveils $10M Gaming Fund to Fuel India’s Mobile Gaming Rise
India-based VC firm ChimeraVC has launched a new $10 million early-stage fund focused on gaming across India and Asia, with a spotlight on mobile.
The fund is already in action, having led a $1M pre-seed round for Bengaluru’s hybridcasual studio Qila Games.
💵 Game-Like Home Design App: Candy Crush Creators Raise $4.6M
Former King veterans are back—this time blending casual gameplay with creativity. Studio555, a mobile startup led by ex-Candy Crush developers, has raised €4M to develop a game-inspired interior design app launching next year.
💰 Transforming Ad Measurement: Paapi Secures £420K Pre-Seed
Paapi raised £420,000 in an oversubscribed pre-seed round led by SFC Capital, the UK’s leading early-stage investor.
More » InvestGame
⭐️ Mobile Game Marketing
🧩 Block Blast: D60 retention of 19% in Q2
In Q2, Block Blast had more downloads than the 4 four puzzle games combined.
💰 Clash Royale Hits Highest Monthly Revenue in 3 Years
In May, Clash Royale spiked to $27.7M in monthly revenue, its highest in three years and a 46% year-over-year increase. What’s behind the surge?
👾 TikTok Ads: CPPs report MUCH less than they should!
I recently started a couple of campaigns on TikTok Ads for iOS, and as usual, I used CPPs as an attribution layer on top of SKAN, MMP & Blended numbers.
🦄 2025 Hybridcasual Market Overview with Real Data
The hybrid–casual market is accelerating, with global net revenue reaching a new high of $174.8M in March 2025 across the App Store alone for iPhone and iPad.
That’s a significant step up from ~$100M in early 2024.
The U.S. remains the top driver with over $68M in revenue, followed by China at $42.8M, and Japan at $ 11.9 M.
💵 How do we get spend depth above $100k for a hybrid-casual game?
Wittle Defender (Habby) is the latest, and arguably most casually-packaged example of the AFK Arena-inspired ‘Idle RPG’ economy.
For anyone who hasn’t worked on ‘Idle RPGs’, the most defining features of the genre, from the economy perspective, are…
👉🏻 The BitLife Blueprint: 7 Years Old and Still Crushing it
BitLife, the text-based sim that’s been quietly printing money for over seven years. Think you need amazing graphics or next-level meta to scale?
🇹🇷Rollic & Gybe Games chat over Color Block Jam
Color Block Jam: Crafting a Minimalist Masterpiece in the Puzzle Genre.
What looks like just another match-and-clear title at first glance turns out to be a tightly designed logic puzzle experience, built with intention, precision, and a clear sense of design philosophy.
💰 Zenless Zone Zero Celebrates Its 1st Anniversary with a Major Revenue Spike
On June 6, Zenless Zone Zero saw a major jump, reaching $5.95M in daily revenue, 5% higher than its launch peak and almost as large as the ATH spike.
📲 These 4 Games Make More from Ads on iOS Than You Think
Ad monetization professionals shun iOS, as Android is way more profitable.
However, these titles might not top the charts, but they’re generating serious ad revenue from their iOS versions.
👾 Brawl Stars released a new MOBA!
On June 5, Brawl Stars introduced a new MOBA-style event called Brawl Arena, with gameplay similar to what we see in Dota 2 or LoL.
🧩 Puzzle: Bite Size Insights 19
Bitesize series continues with 6 new puzzle games.
🌿 Game JOBS: June 17
Jobs of the Week & Hope for the industry.
Just Love & Support out here. Cuz we’re MOBILE GAMING 🤟🏻
Thanks for reading!
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Cya next week!
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