Unity 2024 Report: Mobile Growth and Monetization
Unity's 2024 Mobile Growth and Mon. Report: interesting and actionable data for Growth folks. 📈
#GamingBusiness
AI In Gaming Has Flopped
Two troubling signs for Gaming. First, Danielle Tran from Konvoy reports that AI accounts for only 10% of gaming investments, compared with 71% across all venture activity. Do VCs believe AI will transform every industry except gaming? AI is a growth mechanic, and the idea that gaming won’t benefit as much is a tough pill to swallow. But it’s not necessarily wrong, as our relationship to entertainment rather than tech may limit AI’s relative effectiveness in optimizing the supply chain. Second, the game from famed AI match‑3 studio Cosmic Lounge is in soft launch, getting another update this week, after its late December launch and first appearance. Pets & Puzzles looks like a standard match‑3, albeit with a super‑cute Nintendogs‑style meta. This is the first public AI gaming bet stepping up to the plate, and it looks like they’ll have […]
Jason Citron’s Discord Exit
𝗝𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻'𝘀 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗠𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀 Discord represented gaming's best chance to be recognized among tech's elite. A recognition that increasingly means political influence rather than only the validation the games industry always seeks. Jason Citron, founder and longtime Discord CEO, is stepping down at a pivotal moment, as the company gears up for an IPO. It's a significant blow to what ought to be gaming's broader ambition: claiming a seat at tech's most influential table, dominated by founder-CEO figures like Zuckerberg (Meta), Chesky (Airbnb), the Collisons (Stripe), and Ek (Spotify). Founder CEOs craft mystical founding narratives, something gaming needs but rarely cultivates. Tech founders have dramatizations like The Social Network, The Playlist (Spotify), or Super Pumped (Uber). Gaming had a chance to elevate its mythos with the unironically named 'Mythic Quest', our version of 'Silicon Valley', […]
Gaming’s counter-cycle
Interactive entertainment thrives despite economy, defying expectations. BIG READ: Gaming’s counter-cycle TL;DR: Nintendo’s Switch 2 pre-order frenzy is further evidence that in times of economic strain, video games continue to defy gravity, revealing a powerful counter-cyclical pattern that reshapes how we understand consumer priorities. This week, 2.2 million Japanese consumers registered for Nintendo’s Switch 2 lottery. It is a figure that’s less about an impressive pre-order statistic and more about the broader economics of console gaming. The concentrated demand surge for a premium-priced console costing $449.99 during a period of heightened tariff pressures and economic uncertainty showcases counter-cyclical market dynamics that challenge conventional assumptions about discretionary spending behavior. The business of video games has a distinctive economic resilience with significant implications for investors, strategists, and policymakers alike. History backs this up. During the 2007-2009 financial recession, the gaming market remained largely stable, with global […]
Blocking App Store Competition: EU Hits Apple With $570M Fine
Apple’s $570M Reality Check Here Apple just got a €500 million wake-up call from the EU for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA). At the heart of it? Anti-steering practices. The tech titan blocked developers from guiding users to better deals outside the App Store, breaking the DMA’s rulebook on fair play and consumer choice. Despite attempts to dodge the rules with workaround terms, Apple still took a cut, even when developers linked to external stores. Now, the EU demands a full stop: remove all restrictions and don’t even think about repeating the stunt. Apple has 60 days to clean up or face rolling penalties. Epic Weighs In Epic Games cheered the ruling, urging other global regulators—from the UK to Brazil—to follow suit. They say it’s time to break Apple’s grip on digital markets and restore real choice and innovation. […]
Top VC Deals for Game Content in Q1 2025
Top VC Deals for Game Content in Q1 2025 • Just 2 of 10 were in North America 😬• Top 3 deals were mobile-focused. 𝟮 𝗼𝗳 𝟯 𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘆 🇹🇷• Grand Games (Magic Sort) 🇹🇷• Good Job Games (Match Villains) 🇹🇷• Pixion (Fableborne, action-rpg / base builder) 🇬🇧From Konvoy Q1 Report
The Reality of Video Game Investments
The Reality of Video Game Investments Even now, pre-seed and seed rounds are competitive for investors: everyone wants to be the one who discovered the talent and had the highest ROI. Fund investors expect VCs to do exactly that. This leads to situations where most VCs want to participate in the first round but are reluctant to join following rounds if they weren't in early. After all, what’s the point for LPs to back them otherwise? This is especially true for gaming VCs, where LPs expect not just financial returns from their VCs but also co-investment opportunities and market insights, so the funds with the best access to original deal flow win. This creates a vacuum at the Series A and later stages, which can be a brutal wake-up call for founders who previously enjoyed FOMO-driven fundraising because of their […]
Top 10 Hybridcasual Games in Q1 2025: The Great Puzzle Takeover
The Great Genre Shift: from Hyper to Hybrid Last year was all about embracing Hybridcasual and adding depth to Hypercasual. Both large publishers and small studios took the simple, catchy cores of Hypercasual games and layered them with Casual features, adding boosters, meta systems, and more refined monetization. We covered this shift in detail in our Casual Games Report 2024! This wave of change also led us to adjust our own approach. As developers enhanced their UA with LiveOps and monetization upgrades, we realized it was time to level up our reporting, too, which is why our quarterly Hypercasual Games reports are going Hybridcasual! IAP growth of the Hypercasual market If you’re familiar with our navigation system (and if not, just have a quick look here), you might be wondering how we analyzed the Hybridcasual segment if there’s no dedicated tag for […]
Midcore Made You Click (And Lied About It)
Let’s be honest: Midcore games didn’t just define the genre. They defined the art of misleading ads. Remember this? A hero climbing a deadly tower… (not in the game) Epic boss fights with 5-button combos… (not in the game) A full-on dungeon crawler? Nope. Just a turn-based RPG under the hood. And the wild part? It worked. For years. Because showing the actual game was either: 1. Too complex 2. Too boring 3. Or just too mid So they did what marketers do best: They sold the fantasy. Not the product. --- 🧠 The “Promise” Era The golden era of fake ads wasn’t about fraud. It was about emotion-first targeting. UA teams optimized for: curiosity frustration problem-solving instinct Not clarity. It was smart — until it broke. Now, everyone’s seen the traps. Everyone’s watched tower puzzles turn into turn-based […]
Top 10 Hybridcasual Games in Q1 2025
Top 10 Hybridcasual Games in Q1 2025: The Great Puzzle Takeover 🧩 With the trend of Hypercasual games enhancing their UA and monetization, we knew it was time—our quarterly reports had to go Hybridcasual too! 🏁So, here we go!In this article, we’ll cover:📈 The dynamics of the Hybridcasual games market: +67% YoY in net IAP revenue 🔎 Key Hybridcasual market trends: meta and boosters from Match-3 and Social Casino 👑 Leading titles and how they innovate: analysing the success of Сolor Block Jam, All in Hole, Mob Control, and Screwdom The full report here.Let us know in the comments what you think about this format 💛
For those looking to understand the mobile market.
For those looking to understand the mobile market, A treasure trove of data in Udonis' 2025 blog post...Some highlights:• There are over 700,000 mobile games on iOS/GP• Users spend 3.5 hr/d on mobile devices, 11% on games• Roblox was most downloaded mobile game in 2024.• Azur Games was the most downloaded publisher, by a long shot (1.4B DL)• Monopoly GO was the highest-earning game • Tencent was the top-earning Publisher• US aOS Banner Ad eCPM are 2x iOS' ($0.60 vs. $0.27)
Mobile Gaming Today: April’22 Week
Ciao Fam, Heading to HGC Berlin soon. Hit me up if around 🕺🏻 👌🏻 Top Gaming Content » Royal Kingdom’s Hollywood Power Play: Last Hurrah or Royal Rebirth? Launching a new Match-3 game in today’s mobile market is like trying to sell umbrellas in the Sahara. Saturation, soaring CPIs, and razor-thin differentiation margins make even the most technically sound games struggle to scale. When Dream Games soft-launched Royal Kingdom two years ago, they entered this same storm, which quickly showed itself. After years of pivots and a rocky soft launch, Royal Kingdom is back. This time with what may be mobile gaming’s priciest celebrity campaign, starring LeBron James, Jimmy Fallon & Shakira. Dream Games’ high-stakes play has reignited speculation: is this a desperate revival, or the launchpad for a broader Royal IP? Now, nearly a clone of Royal Match, Dream’s […]