two & a half gamers

Dream Games swore they would never add ads to Royal Match

or Royal Kingdom. In February 2026, they quietly did it.

Here's the proof — and what it means for the rest of the

industry.

Felix Braberg flies solo this week to break down the three

biggest stories in mobile gaming: Playtika officially

walking away from social casino to chase Disney Solitaire

(with D2C revenue now at 62% of their IAP), Mistplay's

acquisition of Mychips as the rewarded UA M&A wave begins,

and the most interesting story of the week — Dream Games

caught adding ads to Royal Kingdom via Wayback Machine

forensics, generating an estimated $170-190K/day in

interstitial and rewarded revenue while 6x'ing downloads

in markets like Brazil.

If Dream Games breaks, Playrix is next.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — Royal Kingdom's $190K/day ad revenue

01:25 Playtika exits social casino, casual is now 76% of business

03:10 The D2C dark pool — Playtika now at 62% off-platform

04:45 Mistplay acquires Mychips — the rewarded UA M&A wave

07:00 Royal Kingdom's secret ads — Wayback Machine forensics

08:30 The Brazil test — 25K to 150K downloads/day, IAP also up

09:30 Top charts wrap — Magic Sword, Grand Games, Monopoly Go

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Playtika is officially out of social casino. Casual games

are now 76% of business per CEO Robert Antokol; Slotomania,

Bingo Blitz, and World Series of Poker are in "managed

decline." The legacy social casino CPIs are too high for

the return profile to justify the spend anymore.

— D2C is the real story underneath. Playtika's D2C revenue

is now 62% of IAP, up from 42% the last quarter they

reported. They're one of the few public companies in

mobile that discloses this, and the trend is the litmus

test for how much IAP revenue is now invisible in Sensor

Tower's "official" charts.

— Mistplay just acquired Mychips (a Math subsidiary).

Rewarded UA is consolidating fast — Felix estimates 14-25

players have meaningful revenue right now, and this is

the first of many acquisitions coming. Watch Agio, Mistplay,

and similar platforms make moves.

— Dream Games quietly added ads to Royal Kingdom in February

2026. Detected via Wayback Machine showing their app-ads.txt

file expanded, plus user reviews complaining about

unskippable ads. This contradicts years of public brand

positioning around "premium IAP, no ads."

— The numbers explain why they broke: Royal Kingdom went

from 100-300K daily downloads to 600K. Brazil went from

25K to 150K downloads/day. Brazil IAP also went from

$12K/day to $17K/day — IAP revenue grew alongside ads,

not in spite of them. Estimated incremental ad revenue:

20% lift, or $170-190K/day.

— The mechanism is AppLovin blended ROAS campaigns —

targeting users for both IAP purchases AND ad watches in

a single campaign. This is the new playbook, and it

works because ads done right widen the funnel without

cannibalizing IAP.

— Playrix is next. Dream Games breaking the "no ads"

posture is the canary in the coal mine. The big

IAP-only studios that have publicly resisted ads will

start looking at Dream's numbers and folding.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎙️ HOST

Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

🙏 SPONSOR

This episode is brought to you by FastSpring — the no-drama

D2C partner scaling with mobile publishers for 20+ years.

Visit fastspring.gg to set up your web store today.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💬 Comment below: which "no ads" studio breaks next?

👍 Like the video if you learned something

🔔 Subscribe for the next weekly news drop

#mobilegaming #useracquisition #admonetization #royalmatch

#dreamgames #playtika #mistplay #f2p

Rewarded UA used to be a test bed. In 2026, it's a third of your UA spend. Mistplay just made it easier to scale.

We sit down with the full Mistplay leadership team — Tricia (CEO), Aaron (CCO), and Mark "Bear" Bearman (GM, B2B) — to unpack the launch of the

Mistplay Audience Network. The conversation covers the state of rewarded UA in 2026, validating rewarded as a core channel, why the category is consolidating, what the MyAppFree acquisition actually unlocks for advertisers, and how the audience network expands Mistplay reach to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards inventory with a single check-box.

If you've been treating rewarded UA as a tactical add-on rather than a core part of your stack, this episode is the wake-up call.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — what the audience network means for UA

01:33 Welcome + guest intros (Tricia, Aaron, Bear)

02:55 The state of rewarded UA in 2026

06:23 Survey data: rewarded UA at 20-30% of budgets

07:29 The scale-vs-performance tension and the "patient path"

13:17 What the audience network actually is, in plain English

17:51 Brand budgets and the value-exchange opportunity

23:00 The "tick a box" advertiser experience explained

30:31 Where rewarded UA goes next — discovery + retention

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— AppsFlyer's 2025 Performance Index validates what UA

managers already see in their dashboards: roughly one

third of the top UA sources are now rewarded. Three to

four years ago, rewarded was 1-3% of spend; today it's

6-10% average and climbing.

— Matej's own UA survey: rewarded UA is now 20-30% of

budget for most respondents, and 80% are planning to

increase it further next year. That makes it core, not

tactical.

— The Mistplay Audience Network = one campaign, three

inventory sources. The same Mistplay buying engine now

extends to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards (Mobvista)

inventory with a literal check-box. Tricia's framing:

"same key, more doors."

— Why MyAppFree matters specifically: brand advertisers

finally want value-exchange placements (not just gamers),

which means a third inventory stream that wasn't

monetizable through gaming alone. This is genuinely new.

— The performance-quality bar isn't being lowered to add

scale. Mark Bearman: a high-quality DAU/MAU ratio and

engagement filter still applies; the audience network

expands reach without compromising the cohort signal.

— Rewarded UA consolidation is real and rapid. Three to

five years ago, every studio was launching a rewarded

platform; now the market is consolidating around the

platforms with sustainable foundations. Tricia's

intentional framing: "platforms our partners can count

on for trusted ROAS delivery."

— Future direction: Mistplay is shifting from a closed

loyalty platform to a UA layer that handles discovery,

acquisition, AND retention as a continuous loop. The

audience network is the first piece of that vision.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎙️ HOSTS

Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant

Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

🎤 GUESTS

Tricia — CEO, Mistplay

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tricia-han-920649/

Aaron — Chief Commercial Officer, Mistplay

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

Mark "Bear" Bearman — GM, B2B Solutions, Mistplay

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwbearman13/

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

#mobilegaming #useracquisition #rewarded #mistplay

#liveops #f2p

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

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

The AppLovin setup playbook. No micromanaging, no manual optimization, no bullshit. UA template for you! Applovin UA explained!

Solo for episode three of the MVP UA Template series (after Facebook and Google), this time breaking down AppLovin / Axon end-to-end. Tracking setup, campaign structure, bidding, ROAS targets, the new CPM-vs-CPI billing change, creative strategy, the real Axon dashboard with real numbers from his own game, and the patience required to actually scale.

The headline lesson: AppLovin is a beast, but it really matters what you feed it. Garbage MMP signals = garbage results. Playables aren't optional. And the geo-bucket strategy that works on Facebook and Google does NOT work here — worldwide campaign with geo targets is the only sensible setup.

If you've been avoiding AppLovin because it feels like a black box, this is the episode that demystifies it.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Axon dashboard preview

02:20 Why AppLovin and what this episode covers

04:14 Budget, MMP signals, and the "garbage in, garbage out" rule

07:42 Worldwide campaign + geo targets (NOT geo buckets)

10:58 D7 vs D28 ROAS — which attribution window to pick

12:57 CPM vs CPI billing — the new setting most teams miss

14:40 Creative strategy: 80% playables, 60 new per month

17:59 Push budgets hard when something works (30-50%)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— AppLovin is not Facebook and not Google. The geo-bucket

structure (US / Tier-1 / RoW) that works on those

channels does NOT work here. Run ONE worldwide campaign,

split by attribution window and platform only, and use

geo-level ROAS targets to steer traffic — never geo-level

budgets (they don't work the way you think).

— Garbage MMP signals = garbage results. AppLovin doesn't

know if you're sending the right event. If you're sending

free trial signals labeled as subscriptions, AppLovin will

optimize for free trials and your ROAS will look great in

Singular while your real revenue dies.

— Skip the CPI / D7 warm-up phase. AppLovin no longer

requires it. Go straight to D7 or D28 ROAS, ideally D28

for higher quality and longer-cohort optimization. Pick

D7 only if your payback period is short and cash flow

matters more than cohort quality.

— New CPM vs CPI billing setting: start with CPM (spends

evenly across the day), then switch to CPI only after

you have winning creatives identified and want to scale

aggressively. CPM billing eliminates the old "budget

capped in 2 hours" problem.

— Playables are non-negotiable. 80-90% of spend should go

to playables. Top-grossing games ship 60+ new playables

per month — that's the bar. Video length: 30-60 seconds,

best results in the 45-59 second window. No hook needed

on AppLovin (user must watch 30+ seconds anyway).

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

PlayableMaker for native gaming creative formats.

Head to potensus.com to get started.

📌 MVP UA TEMPLATE SERIES

1. Facebook setup

2. Google setup

3. AppLovin setup - you are here

Full AppLovin setup guide linked in show notes.

#mobilegaming #useracquisition #applovin #axon #mvpua

#liveops #f2p

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

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

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 Chinese-developed Farmville replacement just shipped 4,000 AI-generated creatives in 30 days. And it's only making $30K/day. What's actually going on?

We dig into Cozy Florist by Rift Sky Games — the Western counterpart to

"My Garden Tale," which is already doing $10M/month in China. The game is a remarkably polished Farmville without the annoying resource puzzle, with stacked cores including flower-merging mechanics, Solitaire-association customer orders, gacha-style flower rarities, social raids, and

TikTok Live integration baked into the metagame.

But the puzzle is the creative volume. 4,000 ads in 30 days

is Forex-scale UA output. The game is testing primarily in

Philippines despite being released globally in December.

And the revenue isn't moving in proportion. The hosts spend

half the episode trying to figure out what's happening —

and the conclusion they land on is uncomfortable for Western

UA: this is what "second generation" Chinese UA looks like,

and the West isn't ready.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 What's going on

02:55 Cozy Florist walkthrough — Chinese fonts, sad-story onboarding

05:21 Stacked cores — flower merging, Solitaire customers, gacha

13:00 TikTok Live integration baked into the metagame

16:44 Revenue reality — 90% China, 2% US, $30K/day

21:31 4,000 AI creatives in 30 days — Forex-scale output

25:21 Why this game isn't soft-launching like a Western game

27:55 The "second generation UA" gap Chinese studios are opening

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: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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]

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

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

We sit down with Katie Madding (CEO, emhanceAI, ex-Adjust CPO) and John

Hobson (founded user research at Bungie and Blizzard, 20+

years on Halo, Destiny, WoW). The conversation walks through

two real case studies — a Skullgirls Mobile playtest and a

creative comparison — using emhance AI's facial-emotion

analysis (0.89 ROC AUC, basically "lie detector" precision).

The findings are uncomfortable. Skullgirls' tutorial pauses

combat to teach mechanics players don't need yet. Every

level ends with 5 passive screens stacked back-to-back. And

the creatives with "near-death experience" hooks within the

first 4 seconds genuinely outperform — not because Chinese

UA teams said so, but because the emotion data shows it.

If you build games or ads for mobile, this is required

viewing.

The link to the report is here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0v1sLM0

Peaksel case study: https://www.emhance.ai/success-stories/peaksel-emhance-case-study

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — designing the engagement curve

01:30 Welcome + Katie and John intros

03:48 How AI facial-emotion playtesting actually works

07:57 Skullgirls case study: the first 15 minutes broken

11:25 The attention budget — what it is, why it caps at 3

17:14 High vs low engagement moments in Skullgirls

24:13 Creative case study: Cat Match Two vs Sheep Swipe One

29:52 Why "near-death experience" creatives win — confirmed

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— emhance AI uses facial-emotion analysis (0.89 ROC AUC, "lie

detector" precision) to identify exact moments of high

and low engagement during playtest sessions. Engagement

= emotion + attention combined.

— Skullgirls Mobile tutorial findings: pausing combat to

teach optional mechanics players don't need creates

frustration. Players come away thinking the game is

shallow because the tutorial fights are too easy and the

text walls killed momentum.

— John's "attention budget" rule: teach maximum 3 things

at a time, then give players space to digest. From his

Halo days: pop up a tooltip → if used, snooze 5 minutes

→ if not, repeat. Snooze 15 minutes after second use.

— The "5-stack of boring screens" problem is universal.

Win → victory animation → reward screen → loading

screen → cut scene → talking head → finally back to

gameplay. Nobody designed this stack on purpose. Real

playtesting reveals it.

— Why 6 out of 7 AI ads still suck: the concept is right

("save the character") but the small execution details

matter enormously. Emotion data lets you identify which

4 of 15 things in a creative actually worked rather than

throwing out the whole concept.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎙️ HOSTS

Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant

Jakub Remiar — Game Design consultant

Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

🎤 GUESTS

Katie Madding — CEO, emhance AI (ex-CPO, Adjust)

John Hobson — Game user researcher, ex-Bungie/Blizzard,

20+ years on Halo, Destiny, WoW

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

Every new mobile game is now a copy of a copy. And that's

not a complaint — it's the strategy.

We dig through the soft launch charts to surface 15+ new games released in the last three months. Voodoo's Block Pals (which is literally just Block Jam 3D again). Moon Active's two new merge games are chasing Gossip Harbor. Spike's Hexa Out, Quick Send, and Solitaire Sort. Grand Games hiding its new Aerogem on the Zimbabwe App Store to dodge takedowns. SuperSend's template-driven creative-first approach with FROZIA and

Daily Farm Harvest Empire. Plus the bigger structural question: is Overwatch Rush actually going to make it?

The pattern is clear - 80% works, 20% iteration. Every serious studio is following the same playbook. The question is who executes it best.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — merge is the new match-3

04:04 Field Day by Bitod — ex-Supercell startup goes GTA

06:15 Overwatch Rush — Blizzard's mobile play (high CPI face)

09:53 Moon Active's merge wave — Reality Bay + Family Bay

12:43 Voodoo's Block Pals + Century's DakiMage Color Puzzle

15:35 Turkish section — Rolik, Spike, Grand Games dominance

25:16 Aerogem hidden on the Zimbabwe App Store

27:00 Arrows hits 6.5M DAU — the new template everyone copies

28:38 SuperSend's creative-first templates: FROZIA, Daily Farm

— "80% works, 20% iteration" is now the default soft launch

strategy. Every game in this episode is an iteration on a

proven winner — Block Jam, Gossip Harbor, Pixel Flow,

Lesmore's Arrows, Township, Last War Creative.

— Merge is officially being treated as the new match-3. Moon

Active alone has two new merge games in soft launch.

Caveat: merge is much harder to balance and live-ops than

match-3, so most of these will fail.

— Grand Games is hiding its new game Aerogem on the Zimbabwe

App Store specifically because legal teams from incumbents

(likely MiniClip / Lesmore) don't operate there. This is

apparently a real soft launch tactic now.

— Spike has abandoned its main App Store account and is

publishing everything from a new "testing" account,

releasing Hexa Out, Quick Send, and Solitaire Sort in

rapid succession with the same template strategy.

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

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

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]

MoonActive just launched the obvious counter-punch to Monopoly Go — and it's already pulling 2.2M monthly downloads against Monopoly Go's 1.8M, with 10x fewer creatives.

We break down Coin Master Board Adventure end-to-end: the stacked core

loops (board + merge + Klondike + bombs + idle tree pets), the static-vs-seasonal album split, the 5-pop-up energy trap, the UA creative library, the launch trajectory, and why social casino monetization is still a money printer that the rest of the industry can't crack.

Plus the question that opens the episode and pretty much defines the genre: what is the D365 retention of users spending $5,000+ a month? (Spoiler: basically 100%.)

If you work on UA, live-ops, or social casino product, this one's required viewing.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — D365 retention of $5K/month whales

02:55 The setup: MoonActive's counter-launch to Monopoly Go

04:13 Coin Master is a $70M/month plow horse — for years

08:50 Walking the actual game: pop-ups, energy, board core

13:12 Five stacked cores: merge, Klondike, bombs, idle tree

20:00 Launch trajectory — $300K/day, 80K downloads/day

21:27 UA creatives: 1.5K running, why CPIs stay at $90+

31:21 Year-end predictions and the Las Vegas granny

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

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]

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

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

The mobile gaming industry just posted record revenue

($195.6B) while simultaneously firing 44,000 developers.

Here's what's actually going on.

Matej Lančarič flies solo this week to break down the five

stories that matter most: NTE's massive global launch,

IronSource's official shutdown after one of the worst

acquisitions in mobile gaming history, the State of Mobile

Gaming 2026 report and what its genre data really tells us,

Adam Foroughi's spicy 20VC interview, and Google's ad tech

antitrust ruling that's about to reshape programmatic

advertising.

Five stories, one signal: the market growth is real but

extremely concentrated. If you're not in the right two

genres or one of the live-service giants, you're competing

for table scraps.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Record revenue, record layoffs paradox

00:50 NTE / Neverness to Everness global launch

02:30 IronSource is officially dead — RIP $4.4B acquisition

03:45 $195.6B revenue + 44K layoffs — the concentration story

05:15 Adam Foroughi on 20VC — $83M payday, AI, layoffs

05:45 Google ad tech antitrust ruling — what comes next

06:30 Closing — the week ahead

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Global gaming hit $195.6B in revenue in 2025, the highest

annual total on record. Meanwhile 44,000+ dev jobs have

been cut since 2022, with another 2-3K already gone in

2026. One in three US developers laid off, 48% still

jobless.

— IronSource is dead. The $4.4B Unity acquisition is one

of the most controversial deals in mobile gaming history

— Supersonic is being sold off, and three and a half

years later there's almost nothing left of IronSource

inside Unity. Unity Vector grew 48% YoY though, so the

ad business itself isn't dying.

— NTE (Neverness to Everness) launched globally April 29

on PC, Android, iOS, PS5, and Mac with cross-platform

progression. Same team behind Tower of Fantasy. Massive

IP, production values, and gacha — benchmark is Genshin

and Zenless Zone Zero.

— Adam Foroughi's 20VC interview is required listening.

$83M CEO payday after a 92% stock drop, AI vs layoffs,

AppLovin's run as one of the best-performing tech

businesses right now.

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

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]

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

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

Welcome to Review Radar #11 — the "broken dreams and hopes" edition. We revisit every game they reviewed between September and December last year to see which ones survived, which ones got killed, and which ones genuinely broke through.

The verdict is brutal. AceCraft dropped from 800K downloads a day to 4K. Galaxy Defense never scaled. The Squad Busters of the world joined Supercell's graveyard. But there were real winners: The Tower, Level Devil, Sunday City (the "Casino GTA"), and Heads Down all proved that smart design beats hype every time.

If you want to understand what actually predicts mobile game survival, this is the episode.

#mobilegaming #gamedesign #useracquisition #liveops #f2p

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: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — "broken dreams" radar incoming

01:51 AceCraft, Galaxy Defense and the September graveyard

07:54 The Tower — one of the best games we've reviewed

12:01 Sudoku Master and the puzzle category check-in

20:11 The Supercell post-2018 graveyard + MoCo's slow death

28:38 Sunday City — the "Casino GTA" winning at $100K/day

34:00 Final verdict — who survived and who didn't

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

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

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

How do you pick the right core for your next puzzle hit?

Jakub Remiar breaks down the methodology behind some of

the most successful puzzle launches of the last two years

— Domino Dreams, Magic Sword, Block Out, Hexa Out, Arrow

Gem — and explains the pattern that connects all of them.

The short version: stop trying to invent new cores. Find a

puzzle sub-genre that already has massive download volume

but is monetized almost entirely through ads. Take that

core, wrap it in level-based design, blockers, and live-ops

polish, and convert the ad-revenue audience into IAP

players. Domino Dreams did it with Domino. Magic Sword did

it with Water Sort. Block Out did it with Color Block Jam.

Same playbook every time.

This is the video to send to anyone who asks "what genre

should I build in next."

Potensus is a premium ad network built by people who've actually been on both sides of this industry - game publishers, agencies, and successful exits. They get it.

Here's the thing - Potensus has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone. Not programmatic. Direct. Those budgets land in your game at premium CPMs, no middleman tax.

And they handle everything with their in-house team. PLUS they're partnered with PlayableMaker WINK WINK - so they'll take a brand's YouTube video or a static banner and actually turn it into a playable ad or rewarded video. Proper interactive format, built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming-native creative, publishers getting higher CPMs. Everyone wins.

Head to potensus.com to get started or check their creative portfolio here

https://vimeo.com/showcase/12093300?fl=so&fe=fs

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro — how to pick a core for a new puzzle game

02:21 Domino Dreams: capturing the Domino category

05:20 Magic Sword: turning Water Sort into IAP gold

07:50 Spyke Games / Combo Games portfolio strategy

10:50 Hexa Out — when iteration becomes innovation

13:00 Grand Games portfolio: the templatization machine

15:55 Arrow Gem: the obvious next move after Lesmore's Arrows

17:30 Why this is a lottery — and consistency wins it

18:30 Closing methodology: pick your strengths, know your shot

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— The opportunity isn't in inventing new puzzle cores.

It's in finding ad-driven puzzle categories with high

download volume and converting them to IAP via level

design, blockers, and live-ops.

— Domino Dreams isn't a Domino game. Magic Sword isn't

a Water Sort game. They're level-based puzzlers with

a familiar core wrapped around them — that's the trick.

— Category ceiling matters: Domino Dreams will likely

cap around $7–8M/month because the niche is finite.

That's still a profitable, sustainable hit.

— Studios like Grand Games and Spyke have built a

consistent template: 80% finished metagame engine +

swap in the new trending core + 20% iteration.

— Lesmore's Arrows is the current source code —

everyone is iterating on it (Hexa Out, Arrow Gem,

countless clones).

#mobilegaming #gamedesign #puzzlegames #liveops #f2p

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

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

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]