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Acecraft by Moonton scaled to $300K a day during first week!

Acecraft by MOONTON GAMES scaled to $300K 🤑 a day in revenue during first week and is already their second biggest game. With a unique art style and IP collaboration it is an instant mobile hit, read the latest here 😎: The game takes inspiration from Cuphead, ☕ the 2017 PC indie hit, which also used this unique art style based on 1930's golden age of American animation. The combat, the menus and even basic interaction is all done in this specific style giving the game a giant differentiator advantage. There is nothing like this on mobile yet. On top of this they global launched with Tom & Jerry 😼 🐭 IP collaboration, which fits perfectly. You can get them both from a limited gacha banner together with their weapons, of course they cost literally hundreds of dollars to get […]

Jakub Remiar September 4

Journal

It’s cool to hate on ad-monetized games.

It’s cool to hate on ad-monetized games.𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹, 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗔𝗣 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝘂𝗽. Ad-monetized games aren’t just a business model.𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺.They drive your installs. They create liquidity.They deliver players across genres and LTV bands.𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗜𝗔𝗣-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀, 𝗶𝗻-𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗮𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗱 𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗨𝗔 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱.Not because the ads are great. Because the traffic converts.That frictionless loop?𝗜𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗵.𝗜𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀.Here’s the part most teams forget:IAP-first games don’t just rely on ad networks.They rely on the games inside them.Your best players often come from games you’d never download.Let alone admit you play.AppLovin. Unity. Moloco. Mintegral. They move the traffic.𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝘁.The source? That’s the “trash” you’ve been mocking.This isn’t about monetization ethics.It’s about infrastructure.𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸.𝗜𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆.

Josh Chandley September 4

Journal

Gaming Founders: Really ready for funding?

The 7 questions I ask gaming founders that make 80% realize they're not ready for funding. 1. "What's your monthly burn rate if you don't raise?"Most can't answer. They've already mentally spent the money they don't have. Winners know their survival number down to the dollar.2. "Tell me what you've learned from people playing your games?""We don't have players yet." And you are raising $2M? In the age of AI coding etc., it's ridiculous if you haven't built something. Tested it. Killed it if needed. 3. "What games have you killed?"If the answer is zero, you haven't been building long enough. At Next Games, we killed 14 for every 1 we launched. Killing bad ideas fast is a skill.4. "Who on your team has shipped a game that made money?"The uncomfortable silence tells me everything. "Well, our CTO worked at..." […]

Joakim Achren September 4

Game Radar

Mobile Game Leaders: August 2025

Xin chào, Salut, Shalom & SELAM! Welcome to the August’25 version of Mobile Game Leaders 🦄 Data source: AppMagic Global Leaderboard: Game Publishers The game's getting hotter out there. (: 🇻🇳 Vietnam is the rising star of downloads, with 1SOFT, ABI Games, and Zego Studio all cracking the Top 20 free publishers. The “Made in Vietnam” wave of hypercasual and casual studios keeps proving it can scale globally. Read: From 44 to 72: Vietnam’s Studio Surge Continues 🇨🇳 China is still the mobile gaming powerhouse, Tencent alone is pulling in more than half a billion dollars in monthly revenue, with Century Games and NetEase also dominating the top grossing. On the downloads side, BabyBus keeps it rolling. Turkey, Israel, Cyprus & US are kinda as usual :) Read: Dream Games Paid $100M, Türkiye’s 18th Biggest Taxpayer in 2024 Hypercasual-Only? While Azur keeps the […]

Gamigion September 4

Journal

This is how a WINNER ad looks like!

After my last post about campaign setup, I figured some people might wonder: what does a real WINNING ad actually look like? How can you tell if the ad you’re testing is ready to be moved into the BAU ad group?Well, today I’m bringing you a clear case (with real data, as always 😏) showing how to spot these needles in the haystack!Sometimes I even have to “fight” with clients over creative production budgets because they say: “we don’t see a clear ROI from investing in new creatives.”This is the type of screenshot I usually show them. Investing in creative production gives you the chance of finding a winning asset that reduces your average CAC by +46%. And not just temporarily for a few days—a real winning asset sustains strong performance much longer than the average creative.It doesn’t matter where […]

David Vargas September 4

Highlights

Rewards Empire: AONIC Acquires Prime Insights for $250M+

Exmox first, then Mega Fortuna, now Prime Insights. AONIC is on its way to create an industry-leading rewards platform out here. In a bold move to strengthen its ad‑tech and mobile‑gaming portfolio, Aonic executed 3 pivotal deals, each bringing distinct capabilities and synergistic potential into the fold. Aonic, a global group of multiplatform tech and gaming companies, has completed the acquisition of industry-leading research technology firm Prime Insights for a total transaction value in excess of $250M. Exmox Acquisition – August 18, 2022 Aonic acquired Hamburg-based ad‑tech and marketing platform Exmox for nearly $100 million. Founded in 2015, Exmox brings a robust global ad network, reaching over 250M users per month across 180 countries. This acquisition was designed to turbocharge Aonic’s ad‑tech ambitions. As Aonic co‑founders Paul Schempp & Olliver Heins noted, Exmox's “expert level of knowledge and unique marketing platform” would substantially […]

Gamigion September 3

Journal

Royal Match: How New Event Design Increased Revenue by 14.6%

𝐑𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐚 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐛𝐲 14.6% In May 2025, Dream Games launched a new weekend tournament in RoyalMatch, Propeller Rush. The player competes in 30-minute rounds against four opponents, aiming to create the most Propeller bonuses. The event has three stages with increasing rewards, but losing at any stage immediately ends the tournament. To advance, the player must take first place every time. This weekend's tournament runs from Friday to Sunday. 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 The “sudden death” rule — the event ends after the first loss, creating a unique sense of risk and intensity compared to traditional tournaments. “Sudden death” elimination rule after any loss is a new feature for popular Match-3 games.This mechanic immediately proved effective: during the first 3 days, revenue increased by 14.6% compared to the previous weekend. The tension of […]

Oxana Fomina September 3

Journal

Spotted a fun event in Minion Rumble!

🎮 Spotted a fun event in Minion Rumble! They built it around the viral fruit merge mechanic (drop → merge → level up) that exploded with Suika Game and similar titles.I really like how they turned a trending standalone genre into a limited-time event inside their game.✅ Fresh gameplay without leaving the ecosystem✅ FOMO + novelty factor to boost engagement✅ Smart way to ride the wave of a viral mechanicGreat example of how live-ops can take inspiration from popular genres and adapt them into events.👉 Curious — do you think we’ll see more games embedding these “mini viral genres” into events?

Michael Kopelovich September 3

Journal

Epic Plane Evolution by Voodoo scaled past $170K a day!

Epic Plane Evolution by Voodoo scaled past $170K 🤑 a day in both IAP & Ad revenue per day still doing 100K downloads a day. Is this the Hyper-casual comeback 😲 ? The game started scaling last October doing around 100K dowloads a day and even though it declined 📈 during start of the year it still got back up again to the original 100K a day baseline, which is amazing considering its very shallow feature set. It is already past 25 Mil. downloads. In the past Hyper-casual games would fly up into the charts and then slowly die off, but here it seems the downloads pattern is different. The gameplay is very simple, where you slowly build up a plane (you literally start with just the middle part with out wings 😅) and then launch it with a slingshot. […]

Jakub Remiar September 2

Journal

Paid ads are exactly like renting an apartment.

I spoke with one founder over the weekend and he brought me a brilliant comparison. Paid ads are exactly like renting an apartment. You pay your landlord (Meta, Google) every month to rent your audience. You can optimize your space, make it cozy, get great results - but at the end of the day, you own nothing. Stop paying? You're out on the street.The landlord always wins. They set the prices, change the rules, and your "home" disappears the moment your budget runs dry.Organic growth is like getting a mortgage instead.Yeah, it's expensive upfront. Takes forever to build. Some months you wonder if you made the right choice watching others live in fancy rented penthouses while you're fixing your own roof.But here's the thing - every piece of content you create, every follower you earn, every relationship you build actually […]

Nikita Zatsepin September 2

Journal

Woodoku was the hit. Block Blast was the system.

Woodoku was the hit.Block Blast was the system.𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘀. Most puzzle games hand you thousands of premade levels.I used to think that was table stakes. Handcraft then tune with constant AB tests.Block Blast broke that rule.It handed you one level: 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀.Every session adapts in realtime using algorithms, not level designers.Hard enough to tempt a revive. Soft enough to keep you around.But gameplay wasn’t the only thing evolving.In the last 90 days:– Block Blast tested 3,839 creatives.– Woodoku and Woodoku Blast combined? 144.𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿. You can’t outsmart a system learning 30x faster.Block Blast automated the bottlenecks:– Personalized gameplay.– Mass creative testing.These concepts are redefining every corner of gaming. The teams that win are the ones that build systems to adapt, test, and optimize faster than humans ever could.That’s why Block Blast […]

Josh Chandley September 2

Journal

Top 10 Hybridcasual Games in Q2 2025

Top 10 Hybridcasual Games in Q2 2025 Here are a few key insights you wouldn’t want to miss: 1️⃣ iAP revenue of the Top 10 Hybridcasual titles doubled year-over-year (YoY), compared to +67% YoY in Q1 2025.2️⃣ Puzzle leads the way, accounting for 50% of Hybridcasual revenue with +137% YoY growth. Arcade follows with a 35% share and +67% YoY growth.3️⃣ Half of the top are newcomers — including Screw Sort Puzzle™-Cube Jam 3D, which grew +258% QoQ.

Andrei Zubov September 2

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