Start your week right, with our quick take on the stories that are impacting the mobile industry right now.
To help get you primed and ready for another week in mobile gaming, we’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days.
1) Five trillion levels later… Celebrating 20 years of King and 10 years of Candy Crush
This year King turns 20 and to celebrate its success, we visited the London HQ to get the latest from the president, Tjodolf Sommestad. With more than 200 million active players, five billion installs and $20 billion in revenue, the impact of Candy Crush Saga is undeniable.
At HQ, we got the chance to play level 15,000.
2) Epic and Sega announce 900 more games industry lay-offs
Epic Games announced more than 800 lay-offs last week, representing approximately 16% of its workforce in a move that appears to have been a financial necessity in tough market conditions. CEO Tim Sweeney put it bluntly: "We’ve been spending way more money than we earn."
At the same time, Sega announced the shuttering of several of its projects.
3) Meta owns all four of the top ad networks for mobile games in Q2 2023
MobileAction released its Mobile Ad Trends report for the second quarter of 2023 and identified Facebook Native as the most popular ad network on the App Store, with a total of 163,000 different creatives. Instagram, Facebook and Facebook Messenger followed, meaning all four of the most successful ad networks are owned by one parent company, Meta.
4) Omada raises $7.5M for a sports game with a twist: tackling gambling addiction
France-based developer Omada raised $7.5 million in a Seed Round after its creation of a social casino app with a twist: no real betting. Felix Capital led the $7.5 million investment with other participants including 20VC, F4, Motier Ventures and Play Ventures.
The new funds are expected to boost an expansion of the game into the US.
5) Amir Rahimi: “Our goal is to have a game on Netflix for every one of our members.”
Netflix has bolstered its gaming library with the release of Netflix Stories: Love is Blind while sharing that the company is still in its "early days of making games". Games represent an added value to a Netflix subscription, especially coming at no extra cost and with no microtransactions.
"This is a natural expansion of our business," Netflix VP of game studios Amir Rahimi summarised.
