Hot Five: Zenless Zone Zero's $442m year one, King reportedly loses 10% of staff, and Toca Boca hit by layoffs
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.
HoYoverse’s Zenless Zone Zero celebrated its first anniversary on July 4th with $442.1 million in mobile player spending over its first 12 months.
This was far behind predecessors Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, which each earned over $1 billion in their first years respectively. Though, AppMagic data suggests Zenless Zone Zero had its biggest spending spike yet on June 6th with version 2.0.
2) Report: King loses 10% of staff as Microsoft makes games division cuts
Microsoft’s major layoffs have impacted multiple games divisions, including Candy Crush developer King.
The layoffs have reportedly impacted around 200 jobs at King, or 10% of its total staff, as Microsoft hopes to focus on strategic growth and "position gaming for enduring success".
3) Swedish dev Toca Boca hit by layoffs
Swedish mobile games developer Toca Boca has been hit by layoffs, according to affected staff posting on social media.
As per those posts, roles impacted included QA, art, design, development and more. One employee stated the move came due to project changes and cost-saving.
4) Game of Thrones: Kingsroad surpasses $1m on mobile after 36 days
Game of Thrones: Kingsroad generated its first $1m on mobile in just over one month.
After launching globally on May 21st, 2025, Netmarble's GoT adaptation took 36 days to reach the milestone, AppMagic data suggests. This followed three consecutive weeks of falling player spending.
5) Game engine Godot rolls out asset store in early beta
Open-source engine Godot has launched its assets store in beta, with more than 50 free assets currently available.
Paid assets are also planned for future updates, as are features like drag-and-drop asset installation and sales analytics, but for now the creators are focused on migrating content from the existing Godot Asset Library.
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