Andrei Zubov

Supercell Takes Full Ownership of Space Ape: Why Now and What's Next? 🎯 Space Ape Games' recent hits, Beatstar and Chrome Valley Customs, have influenced developers around the world and put the studio at the top of my favorite companies out there. 🌟According to AppMagic, Space Ape Games has generated over $280M in IAP revenue alone! 🚀But why is acquiring the remaining 25% shares now? After all, Space Ape has been Supercell's subsidiary since 2017. 🤔Several factors could explain this move:1) Straight from the press release: fully acquiring Space Ape is the best way for Supercell to expand its presence into London. 🇬🇧2) If long-term incentives were in place, Space Ape’s founders, with their strong track record, may have hit their KPIs and been ready for an exit. 💼3) With Squad Busters being Supercell’s first global launch since 2018 but […]

Is it true that former Activision Blizzard employees raise VC money more effectively? 🤔 Short answer: Yes, they do.Long answer: can be found in the new research by InvestGame, published on Deconstructor of Fun.For this, we analyzed all the startups founded by Activision Blizzard alumni who publicly secured funding over 2020-2024. Here are the key takeaways:— Average deal size: Higher.— Follow-up rounds: More frequent.— Products in the release: Marvel Snap and... Concord… — Exits: Already happening!For all the details and numbers, check out the new InvestGame x GDEV Inc. ($GDEV) feature via the link here! 👇P.S. Yes, it’s just like we did with ex-Rioters!

Plants vs. Zombies 3 is shutting down (for now), while PvZ 1 gets +80% downloads! 🌻🧟 In January 2024, Electronic Arts soft-launched the latest Plants vs. Zombies 3 in regions like the Philippines, Indonesia, and the UK. This was the second soft launch, with the first attempt back in 2020. 🗓️Both times, the game didn’t reach a global launch, as PopCap Games took it offline to adjust based on player feedback and key metrics. And guess what’s happening while PvZ 3 is being reworked? The original Plants vs. Zombies is thriving—we haven’t seen similar weekly downloads in years. 🚀In the last few weeks, the franchise attracted a wave of new players, with average weekly downloads jumping from ~1.1M in September to ~1.9M by the end of October, according to AppMagic.I think this is partly driven by the excitement around PvZ […]

How Last War and WhiteOut Survival Expand Their Player Base 📈Take a look at the Top 10 4X strategy games in the image below. Notice how far ahead the Top 2 games are from their competitors. And the year-on-year growth? Absolutely insane! 🚀What’s driving this success?— Popular, engaging settings 🌍— More of the casual mechanics 🎯— Fresh visuals and more dynamic gameplay 🎨— Stronger appeal to female players 👩‍💻Want to know more? Read the new article on AppMagic, written in collaboration with Olga Sobolevskaya, Game Market Analyst at MY.GAMES, whose insights lay the foundation for this research into evolving trends in 4X games. The link is here.

Fortnite collaborates with so many IPs that it’s easy to forget the game itself is a powerful IP 🧱the LEGO Group just launched a new line of physical playsets based on Fortnite, and I absolutely love this move!While exploring UEFN and getting blown away by the LEGO Fortnite regime, I overlooked the potential of Fortnite becoming a part of the LEGO universe—not just the other way around. 🏰Back in April 2022, KIRKBI (owners of LEGO) invested $2B in Epic Games. With that level of investment, it was only a matter of time before we saw deeper integration between the two brands. And LEGO isn’t the only major partner. Earlier this year, Disney invested $1.5B in Epic Games. 💰Given the epic (🙃) results we’ve already seen from the LEGO collab, I’m excited to see where Epic could go with Disney—especially considering […]

Can Tencent Actually Acquire Ubisoft? 🤔There've been talks about it lately, but Guillemot Brothers took some strategic steps to protect their company from acquisition back in September 2022. 📅 At that time, Tencent increased its stake in Ubisoft from 4.5% to 9.99%, but the deal came with an important condition:❗ Tencent wouldn’t be able to increase its stake in the company for the following 8 years.So far, only two years have passed, and six more are still to go. This condition was specifically structured to safeguard the Guillemot family’s control and prevent any aggressive acquisition attempts from Tencent. 🚫So if both companies were to pursue a deal, they’d have to navigate this restriction—meaning a lot of paperwork and negotiations. If you want to learn more about it, I left the link for the Sep’22 deal analysis we made for InvestGame in […]

Startups are already raising money for Telegram-based games 🤔 Last week, I wrote about the phenomenal success of Hamster Kombat, which hit 110 million MAU and made Telegram one of the biggest platforms for play-to-earn games. Today, while looking through the deals for an upcoming InvestGame report we are preparing, I came across several investments targeting Telegram-based games — something I hadn’t noticed until recently! While some startups like PlaysOut and Animoca’s Gamee raised funds to publish multi-genre games for their Telegram mini-apps, others clearly took more inspiration from the recent success of Notcoin and Hamster Kombat.  🐹For example, Anomaly raised $1.45M in May’24 for ‘play-to-airdrop’ games, while Akedo secured funding for its ‘tap-to-earn’ game Akedog — both heavily influenced by Notcoin and Hamster Kombat.Some of the investors in these rounds are Yuga Labs, Kenetic Capital, 4399 Games, Mozaik Capital, […]

Hamster Kombat is bigger than Monopoly GO, Royal Match, and many of my favorite games. 😳 But how? We all know the story: a mix of greed, virality, and referral marketing. It’s easy to get caught up in those talks about the second wave of play-to-earn hype and the future of gaming and Web3…But let us focus on what’s happening right now—the impact of this viral clicker on Telegram. 🐹Today, with 110M MAU, Hamster Kombat now makes up 15% of all Telegram users, according to AppMagic.So what did these insane numbers do for the messenger? — Helped the platform reach 700M MAU and brought in millions of new users 🆕— Popularized the Telegram App Center and flooded it with tap-to-earn projects 📈— Drove millions to download Tonkeeper wallet, greatly expanding the TON ecosystem 🔗Find out more in our latest article!