two & a half gamers

Most teams treat influencer marketing as a series of one-off campaigns. The ones who actually scale treat it as a system — one continuous testing framework that runs from your first nano creator all the way to a Mr. Beast integration.

Marion Balinoff returns for episode two of the influencer marketing series, going one level deeper than the foundations. Drawing on 12 years building influencer programs across 15+ studios and eight-figure budgets, this episode lays out the complete testing framework: the three-phase path from knowledge-gathering to scaling, how to read the vertical assessment table, the CPM/conversion/LTV diagnostic for fixing what's broken, the gift-code and giveaway mechanics that move conversion without killing LTV, and the custom in-game integrations that lifted conversion 437% on average. If you watched episode one, this is where the foundations become a machine.

The single most important mindset shift: you're not buying reach, you're buying learnings. Volume isn't the goal - data density is.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Why influencer marketing is a system, not a campaign

01:30 The three-phase framework: gather, optimize, scale

02:40 Influencer size — why 8% of channels drive 63% of views

03:40 The vertical assessment table and the three thresholds

06:00 The CPM / conversion / LTV diagnostic

08:30 Gift codes that doubled ROI (and the starter pack that killed LTV)

13:00 Custom in-game integrations — 437% conversion lift

16:30 The five key takeaways and the 12-month timeline

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Influencer marketing is a system, not a campaign. The full framework runs across a 12-month timeline: Q1 knowledge-gathering with nano and micro creators testing as many verticals as possible, Q2 optimizing with a broader size range plus giveaways and contests, Q3 onward scaling proven verticals while continuously testing new ones.

— Size diversity is mandatory, not optional. 22% of YouTube channels are micro (under 50K views/video) but account for only 37% of views — the remaining 63% comes from just 8% of channels in the mid-to-mega tier. You need all sizes to scale and keep testing.

— Gift codes lift conversion but watch the LTV trap. A real example: adding a character + starter pack pushed conversion above target, but LTV dropped by half because the generous starter pack cannibalized early monetization. Dropping to a character-only gift brought LTV back up and doubled ROI. Always tell creators the gift's value in a currency they understand (USD/EUR).

— Custom in-game integrations are the highest-leverage scaling move. Bringing a creator into the game (a character, skin, reskinned item, or full funnel) lifted conversion rate by 437% and ROI by 279% on average across genres. Start small — reskinning or renaming an existing item is a low-effort entry point that still creates the personal connection.

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Host: Marion Balinoff

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marion-balinoff/

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Voodoo wasn't supposed to be making this kind of money. For years their entire portfolio sat at sub-$100K/day games — Mob Control, Cap Heroes, the usual hyper-casual treadmill. Then something switched in early 2026 and now they're suddenly running at $1M/day in IAP across the portfolio. The flag-bearer for the new era is Marble Sort.

We dig into Marble Sort by Voodoo — a sort-category puzzler that scaled from launch in February to $200K/day in IAP plus $52K/day in ad revenue by March. The conversation covers the sorter-category explosion (Pixel Flow's Scopely acquisition for close to $1B set the precedent), the 800-1,100 creatives running on AppLovin and what they tell us about Voodoo's creative production discipline, the level-design and APS-curve methodology that Tripledot-style studios actually use, why this game could be just a mini-game inside Royal Match (and why that matters), and the bigger story underneath: Voodoo just launched a mid-core PvP studio led by ex-Kameli Games French founders, signaling a serious IPO push in the next 1-2 years.

If you want to understand the Voodoo renaissance — or just figure out why Jakub keeps insisting "the sort category is the new hot shit" — this is the episode.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — Voodoo is suddenly doing $1M/day in IAP

02:24 The sorter category is the new hot shit (and why)

05:36 The Voodoo portfolio renaissance — Castle Clashers + Marble Sort

08:56 Walking the game — sorting mechanics, level curve, no live-ops yet

13:40 The level design metrics — APS curve, booster win ratio

17:38 32% ad revenue + $52K/day = roughly $250K/day total

19:59 800-1,100 creatives in 30 days — AI + gameplay + AppLovin altered videos

28:33 Voodoo's new mid-core PvP studio + the IPO setup

--------------------------------------

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you

+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Podcast:

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

Chapters

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

A top-5 mobile game with 60-70 million daily active users just disappeared from Google Play for 24 hours and came back. Nobody from Hungry Studios is saying anything. That's the headline.

Jakub Remiar flies solo this week with nine stories from the May 23-29 news cycle. The Block Blast Android outage is the biggest shock — a game that big going dark on a major platform for an entire day with zero public explanation. The Monopoly Go licensing story is the most quietly important: Scopely paid Hasbro $41M last quarter alone, confirming the $168M/year run-rate that puts Monopoly Go in genuinely different stratosphere from everything else in social casino. And Valve raised the Steam Deck OLED 1TB from $649 to $949 — a 40% hike that prompted Tim Sweeney to publicly joke about Gabe Newell's $500M super-yacht.

Plus: Playtika layoffs as social casino keeps declining, Unreal Engine 6 teased via Rocket League, NetEase posts 7% YoY growth, CD Projekt Red announces a new Witcher 3 expansion called Songs of the Past, IO Interactive's James Bond game hits 1.5M copies in 24 hours, Fortnite returns to iOS to a 3.4M download spike, and the GDC 2026 trend report confirms generative AI is the only thing anyone in the industry is talking about.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — the Steam Deck mega-yacht joke00:30 Block Blast vanished from Google Play (and came back)02:00 Playtika layoffs + Monopoly Go's $41M Hasbro license fee03:30 Unreal Engine 6, NetEase Q1, Witcher 3 + James Bond05:24 Sponsor — Potensus06:32 GDC 2026 trend report — generative AI dominates07:30 Fortnite iOS return drives 3.4M downloads in 8 years08:30 Steam Deck +40% price hike + the mega-yacht punchline

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Block Blast (Hungry Studios) vanished from Google Play on Thursday May 28 with zero public explanation, then reappeared Friday. The game does 60-70M daily active users — roughly the fifth-biggest mobile game in the world by DAU. The iOS version stayed up the entire time. No statement from Hungry Studios as of recording.

— Scopely paid Hasbro $41M in Monopoly Go license fees in the last quarter alone, slightly down from $42M but extremely stable. Hasbro previously disclosed full-year 2025 Monopoly Go license revenue at $168M. Scopely's own claim is that Monopoly Go generates roughly $200M/month, and that doesn't include D2C revenue, which is invisible in Sensor Tower.

— Playtika confirmed another round of layoffs after a 7% YoY revenue drop. The original social casino market (Slotomania, Bingo Blitz, World Series of Poker) is being squeezed by coin-pusher / dice-game hybrids like Monopoly Go, Coin Master, and Dice Dreams. Casino is migrating; classic social slots are not benefiting from the migration.

— Epic Games teased Unreal Engine 6 via a Rocket League teaser. No release date, no details, just confirmation that UE6 exists. Same Epic that laid off 1,000 employees two months ago — the Apple/Google legal battles cost them mobile revenue, and Fortnite is the only thing keeping the lights on (engine business doesn't pay the bills).

— NetEase reported 7% YoY games revenue growth to $3.7B in Q1, driven primarily by Fantasy Westward Journey, Where Winds Meet, Identity V, Eggy Party, and Sword of Justice. Growth concentrated in China, Turkey, and Vietnam.

— CD Projekt Red announced "Songs of the Past," a new Witcher 3 expansion co-developed with Fool's Theory Studio, slated for 2027. Witcher 3 has now surpassed 65M lifetime sales since its 2015 release.

— Fortnite returned to iOS and pulled 3.4M downloads — an 8-year high, mostly because Fortnite hasn't been on iOS since 2020 due to the Apple/Epic lawsuit.

🎙️ HOST

Jakub Remiar — Game Design consultant

🙏 SPONSOR

This episode is brought to you by Potensus — the premium ad network with direct deals to Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Vodafone (no programmatic middlemen), partnered with Playable Maker for native gaming creative formats. Head to potensus.com to get started.

One guy. Five helpers. $30 million a year in revenue. 97% profit margin. Zero UA. 700 million lifetime downloads. The most successful solo developer in mobile gaming history is Swedish and you've probably never heard of him.

Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg return with another One Man Wonder episode — this time on Robert Topala (RobTop Games) and Geometry Dash. The game launched in 2013 as a premium $1.99 title, spawned a free-to-play Lite version, and has been compounding ever since. Active users just hit an all-time high of 10 million DAU — double where they were in October last year. Daily revenue is $75K, with 2025 trending toward $27M after a record $33M in 2024.

The most uncomfortable part isn't the revenue. It's that Topala has literally one UA creative running, his entire growth engine is organic, and his profit margin has stayed between 93% and 97% every single year since 2015. He's still in Sweden paying full Swedish tax because he can't be bothered to relocate. The lesson for everyone else? Either build something so good that creators on TikTok and YouTube market it for free for a decade — or accept that you'll never operate at this margin profile.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — $27.4M revenue, one employee

02:32 One Man Wonder #N — meet Robert Topala from Sweden

05:18 All-time-high 10M DAU and the growth curve doubling

14:32 Ad revenue breakdown: $75K/day total revenue

16:35 The Swedish financial filings — 93-97% profit margin since 2015

20:12 How AppLovin mediation 3x'd revenue from 2022 to 2024

22:41 Third biggest platformer by downloads — just one person

26:34 TikTok and YouTube as the real UA engine

--------------------------------------

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you

+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

#mobilegaming #useracquisition #gamedesign #geometrydash #robtop #onemanwonder #f2p #geometrydashshowcase

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

MAU Vegas 2026 is over, the biggest booths in mobile gaming, and a single conversation dominating every panel and corridor: AI. Specifically, what happens when AI creatives cut your CPI in half.

Matej Lančarič and Jakub Remiar catch Felix Braberg up on what he missed while taking care of his baby. The 2.5 Gamers Gaming Summit kicked off Tuesday with ~100 attendees (roughly 10x the next-biggest competing summit), Christina Larionova from the Last War / Whiteout Survival team shared CPI and ROAS data showing AI creatives are literally half the cost of human-made ones, AppLovin had the biggest booth and announced Pixel Portal, UA financing went fully mainstream (per Jeff at PVX Partners), CTV is exploding, and retention is now openly being talked about as "the new UA" — partly thanks to Mistplay's Mychips acquisition.

If you couldn't make it to Vegas, this is the catch-up. And if you weren't already planning Bellagio 2027 (May 4-6), make yourself available.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — Bellagio 2027, why you have to be there

02:32 Felix missed MAU + the 2.5 Gamers Summit's 10x outperformance

04:31 "MAU is the new GDC" — Jeff from PVX nailed the framing

06:23 The standout talks: Nebo, Christina, Marion, Katja

08:55 AI is everywhere — 70% of creatives are now AI-generated

13:24 AppLovin's biggest booth + Pixel Portal announcement

15:38 CTV explosion: TV Scientific, Vibe, Roku, Pinterest

20:01 Bellagio 2027 + closing thoughts on what's coming

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📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— MAU has become the new GDC for mobile gaming. The vibe is right, the people are right, the venue is walking-distance, and unlike San Francisco there's no feces on the street. Pocket Gamer Connects and other industry events still matter, but MAU is now the must-attend.

— The 2.5 Gamers Gaming Summit on Tuesday's kickoff day pulled roughly 100 attendees — about 10x what competing summits brought in. The format (multiple practitioner-led sessions in a focused half-day) is now a proven model.

— UA financing went fully mainstream. Jeff from PVX Partners had to explain what UA financing even was 12 months ago; this year he was being approached by founders saying "I saw your post, we need this." The conversation has moved from "what is it" to "how do we deploy it."

— CTV is the fastest-growing channel almost nobody is talking about correctly.

— Retention is now openly being framed as "the new UA." Mistplay's Mychips acquisition reframed the rewarded ad category, and the broader argument is that retention engineering produces more LTV per dollar than UA acquisition once your funnel is saturated.

— MAU 2027 moves from MGM Grand to the Bellagio, May 4-6. Write it down.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Podcast:

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

AppQuantum's Golden Goblins is five years old and still dropping new creatives nobody else is matching. Magic Sword is running 5,000+ new playables per month. Match Villains just flipped the "save the king" formula and is converting harder than ever. And AI creatives are now indistinguishable from human ones in roughly half of the libraries we looked at.

Matej Lančarič is joined by Felix Braberg and John Wright (Playable Maker, sitting in for Jakub) to walk through Sensor Tower's April creative trends and figure out what's actually winning right now. The conversation covers the Golden Goblins production machine and why they're still using gates (yes, gates), Match Villains flipping the king-rescue formula into peasant-rescue, the AI invasion of creative libraries, why near-death experience hooks are showing up everywhere, the $40 vs $10 CPI gap between 4X and idle arcade creatives, the brutal volume race (Magic Sword 5K, Royal Match only 300), and the 80/20 iteration rule that separates winners from everyone else.

If you ship creatives every week and want to know what's actually working in April 2026, this is the episode.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — "what signals do you look for anymore?"

02:14 Golden Goblins is still dropping new stuff (and using gates)

09:13 The 5,000 creatives per month volume race

13:55 The 80/20 rule — iteration beats new concepts

21:00 "Save the Peasants" — Match Villains flips the king formula

30:40 The Royal Match Apple billion-dollar problem

35:30 AI creatives are now 50% of some libraries

39:13 The $40 vs $10 CPI gap and the Tasty Travels playbook

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop

--------------------------------------

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you

+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Special guest: John Wright

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

---------------------------------------

If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Has AppLovin been fingerprinting iOS users all along? A white-hat hacker says yes — and they cracked the mediation cipher to prove it.

Felix Braberg breaks down the three biggest mobile gaming stories from the week ending May 22, 2026. Sensor Tower acquired App Magic to build out their SMB offering and consolidate market intelligence even further. A white-hat hacker published a detailed breakdown of AppLovin's mediation cipher, claiming 50+ device parameters get extracted per ad call across 12+ downstream networks — effectively recreating deterministic IDFA-level tracking even when users deny ATT. And Embracer wrote down their mobile business by $192M after divesting Easybrain to MiniClip for $1.2B last year, with the market now pricing in another major acquisition.

The cipher story is the spicy one. If confirmed, it explains why iOS performance has been so strong post-ATT — and it sets up a potential antitrust collision course because Apple's own ad business would be exempt from any policing they did against everyone else.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — the cipher and what gets extracted

00:30 Sensor Tower acquires App Magic for SMB market

03:00 White hat hacker cracks AppLovin's mediation cipher

05:30 What 50 device parameters means for ATT

07:00 The Apple antitrust collision course

08:00 Embracer writes down mobile arm by $192M

09:30 Why the market expects another Embracer acquisition

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📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Sensor Tower acquired App Magic, positioning it as their SMB market-intelligence offering. The play is funnel-building — Sensor Tower is expensive at the top end, so App Magic becomes the entry point that captures small studios and indie developers before they grow into enterprise customers.

— The 50 parameters include OS version, screen size, language, font, volume, mute switch, IDFV, and dozens more — together creating a fingerprint that's effectively as good as an IDFA for tracking purposes.

— The Apple problem: if Apple polices fingerprinting, it would have to act against every major ad network simultaneously. And Apple Search Ads would be in the crosshairs of any antitrust response, since Apple's own ad business benefits from the same tracking infrastructure. Felix's read: Apple won't act because they'd lose downloads and IAP revenue.

— Embracer wrote down their mobile business by $192M in their Q1 full-year results, following last year's $1.2B Easybrain sale to MiniClip. Top mobile earners (Crazy Labs, Thinking Ape, Deca, Subway Surfers, Glow, Lamar, Flophouse, Party in My Dorm) generated $72-73M in net sales — down 28% YoY due to the Easybrain divestiture.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

--------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

A 5-year-old location-based game just 5x'd its downloads. There were no new creatives. No new geos. No marketing push. Just one regional event that changed how the game actually works in Taiwan.

We break down Pikmin Bloom by Niantic — the quiet survivor of the post-Pokemon-Go location-based wave that everyone forgot about, but which has been quietly making $30-50M/month for years and just spiked dramatically in early 2026. The conversation covers the Pikmin IP history, the game's walking-based resource-conversion mechanics, why 58% of revenue comes from Japan, the brutal scale comparison to Pokemon Go ($85M in 5 years vs $75M in 30 days), and the most interesting product story of the episode: Niantic's regional experiment in Taiwan where they moved mushroom locations weekly from November to February, driving a 5x download spike that's still scaling.

The takeaway isn't about Pikmin specifically. It's about what product-driven UA looks like when creative-led UA stops moving the needle.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — Pikmin Bloom is scaling, why?

03:16 Pikmin history lesson — Nintendo IP, RTS origins

06:16 The actual game: walking, flowers, Pikmin work for you

13:01 The 5x download spike and Taiwan's surprise dominance

14:53 The brutal comparison — Pikmin Bloom vs Pokemon Go

17:01 The Japan IP rule: everything Nintendo touches is sacred

24:12 The Niantic Taiwan experiment that changed everything

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📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Pikmin Bloom is doing $30-50M/month consistently across five years, with 58% of revenue coming from Japan. The game just 5x'd downloads and crossed into Taiwan as its second-biggest revenue country — and almost none of it is driven by UA.

— Niantic ran a quiet regional product experiment in Taiwan from November 12 to February 15: mushroom locations changed weekly (normally fixed), which created persistent engagement and surprise discovery. Result: 5x downloads and revenue acceleration that's still running.

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you

+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Podcast:

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Long-form playables aren't just back — they're crushing it. The top playable in April hit 75% impression share. Whiteout Survival is doing it with 3 new playables a month. And the format that's winning everywhere is the one your mum would recognize.

Matej Lančarič is joined by Ondrej Monsberger and John Wright for another Playable Trends deep-dive. The crew goes through Sensor Tower's top playable creatives for April, focusing exclusively on long-form playables and what's actually driving impression share right now. The conversation covers the production trick of building one playable script and shipping 20 variations, why the "mum test" puzzle format is dominating, the BitLife "find the shoes" frustration mechanic, Royal Match's redirect-then-return experiment, and the awkward truth that Whiteout Survival made only three new playables in April but still has 99% impression share on puzzle creatives.

If you make playables — or you're trying to understand why CPI keeps climbing despite shipping more creatives — this is the episode to bookmark.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 the "mum test" and recognizable formats

02:24 Welcome — the never-ending playables debate revisited

06:15 Sensor Tower setup and April's top long-form playables

09:27 One script, 20 variations — the production playbook

13:50 The completion-rate vs engagement-clicks tradeoff

21:00 The 75% impression share playable of April

25:48 Royal Match's redirect-then-return experiment

30:05 Whiteout Survival: 99% impression share, 3 new playables

38:24 Predictions for next month — and the arrows trend

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— One playable script can become 20+ variations without rebuilding anything: vary the length, vary the CTA timing, vary the color scheme, vary the redirect point. Stop asking "can I make a new playable" — ask "have I drained the variations from the playable I have."

— Long-form is not a problem if players are engaged. John spent 9 minutes finishing a Cell Survivor playable. Ondrej spent 5 minutes on Magic Sword. Both downloaded. The frustration isn't the length — it's getting cut off before finishing.

— Royal Match is experimenting with letting users redirect to the store and then return to finish the playable.

— Prediction for next month: long-form continues, puzzle format keeps dominating, arrows-themed mini-levels start appearing inside casual game playables (already showing up in Royal Kingdom), and AI playables become indistinguishable from human-made for the simpler concepts.

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🎙️ HOSTS

Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant

Ondrej Mosbergert — Game Design + UA consultant

John Wright — Playable Maker

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This episode is brought to you by Potensus — the premium ad network with direct deals to Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Vodafone (no programmatic middlemen), partnered with Playable Maker for native gaming creative formats. Head to potensus.com to get started.

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#mobilegaming #useracquisition #playables #creativestrategy #liveops #f2p

--------------------------------------

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you

+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

The first AI-native programmatic stack for mobile publishers is real, and the early numbers are absurd. 10-20% revenue lifts across every publisher they've launched.

Felix Braberg sits down with Dan Sack — Co-founder of CloudX, formerly MoPub, Twitter, Max, and AppLovin — for round two of their conversation, three months after CloudX went GA in February. The company now works with dozens of publishers, has five bidders fully live, a dozen more integrating, and a 35-person team. The pitch is "monetization as code" — a publisher platform where every setup lives in code and can be operated by humans OR AI agents.

What's actually working today is the infrastructure

layer: transparent fees, no competing ad network,

verified auctions, and integration options that include

first look, parallel, and standalone. The agentic

capabilities are coming in Q3 — and that's the part

that could reshape how publishers operate.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — dating app publisher up 14% revenue

01:19 Round two intros + Dan's torn ACL update

03:30 What CloudX has shipped since February GA

04:39 Monetization as code: human + AI agent operated

07:28 Felix's example: "kill DT for IAP whale cohorts"

08:43 First look vs parallel vs standalone explained

14:27 The real reason CloudX delivers 10-20% lifts

24:14 Felix's pickle: 3 weeks of manual tuning, no AI yet

32:19 The Q3 automation + intelligence layer roadmap

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📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— CloudX is delivering consistent 10-20% revenue lifts

across every publisher launched, regardless of

integration type (parallel, first look, banners, full

screen). Dan admits even he didn't expect lifts of

this magnitude this quickly.

— "Monetization as code" means your entire setup lives

in code and can be operated by humans OR AI agents.

Think Claude Code or Cowork but for ad operations —

agents that monitor, recommend, and execute on your

behalf.

— Three integration types: first look (CloudX gets the

call first with a floor, clears or passes), parallel

(both platforms auction simultaneously in silos,

winners compared), and standalone (CloudX called only

for specific apps/inventory). Standalone is launching

in the next few weeks.

— Banners are NOT dead. CloudX is seeing real lifts

there too — partly via dynamic price flooring (which

many SDK networks underprioritize) and partly by

bringing massive web/CTV banner demand into in-app

through partnerships with buyers who historically

ignored the channel.

— Demand stack today: Meta, Liftoff fully live. Next

wave (weeks away): Moloco, Pangle, Digital Turbine,

MobileFuse, Verve. Big omni-channel buyers set for

Q3. Twenty-plus bidders integrating.

— Multi-round auctioning is the killer feature. Bidding

+ dynamic flooring + waterfall optimization in a

single auction system, no hacks needed. Sophisticated

publishers have been hacking this for years; CloudX

productized it.

— The AI agentic vision: dashboard becomes a Claude-Code-style

conversation — "what's happening, what should I know,

what's the recommendation, do it." Automation in Q3,

intelligence layer following. The platform you log

into shouldn't be a dashboard you operate, it should

be an agent you direct.

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🎙️ HOST

Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

🎤 GUEST

Dan Sack — Co-founder, CloudX (formerly MoPub, Twitter, Max,

AppLovin)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dansack/

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💬 Reach out to Dan: [email protected]

💬 Comment below: would you try a programmatic stack that runs on AI agents?

👍 Like the video if you learned something

🔔 Subscribe for more deep-dive analysis

#mobilegaming #admonetization #cloudx #mediation

#programmaticads #aiads #f2p