Mobile tracker claims, the Supercell deal that never happened, Mario Kart Tour's closure and AppLovin vs Unity | Week in Views
The games industry moves quickly and while stories may come and go there are some that we just can't let go of…
So, to give those particularly thorny topics a further going over we've created a weekly digest where the members of the PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week.
Craig Chapple
Questioning that report on mobile games ‘infested’ with trackers and where your data gets sent
A questionable report released today by ProtonVPN carries with it bold claims that some of the biggest mobile games in the world are “infested” with trackers that send your data to China, Russia, Israel and ‘Five Eyes’.
I found the report a strange one, yet it's been reported by a couple media outlets as is so far.
FYI I'm sure you know, but Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing alliance that consists of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.
The report says some of the “trackers” included in games can send “large amounts of highly personal data to countries hostile to privacy, with minimal transparency and no meaningful accountability”.
The report examined the 100 most downloaded mobile games in countries such as the US, UK and Germany. In the US, it found that of the (presumably estimated) downloads, 98% of them send data to ‘Five Eyes entities’(?), 95% to Israel, 81% to China, 71% to Russia and 70% to all of the countries it looked into.
So what does this actually mean in practice, though? The report used open-source platform Exodus Privacy to analyse Android apps and detect ad trackers.
This then details widely-used ad networks on mobile - some of them simply headquartered in the named countries. I looked at one top game to see exactly what kind of trackers the report alludes to.
These include AppLovin, AppsFlyer, Facebook Ads, Google AdMob, IronSource (wasn’t this shut down?), Tapjoy, Unity Ads and others. Hardly insidious.
These companies and networks, of course, are just par for the course on mobile and key networks for running ads and driving user acquisition campaigns.
The insinuation that simply from this, your personal - and identifiable - data is then shared with government agencies or is accessible by criminals for some nefarious purpose that will impact your life seems disingenuous.
Part of the report states how some apps actively collect users’ physical location - but takes no lengths to explain how this information is tracked to individual users by external parties or, importantly, that location sharing permissions are strictly opt-in for Google Play.
It’s worth noting that the report also includes a link trying to sell the company's ad blocker included in paid plans.
I think there are some practices that could shock people (like panel data), but just reeling off ad companies and stoking up political tensions is, as I’ve said, in my opinion disingenuous.
I asked ProtonVPN for comment and they sent the following statement:
“This report is about exposure of data, not about proven misuse. We're not claiming that any specific government has accessed data from these games, but we're showing that the most popular games in the world contain trackers that send data to companies with links to countries such as China and Russia. In China, for instance, National Intelligence Law requires organisations to support state intelligence work. In Russia, surveillance rules give security services broad access to data held by Russian companies.
“Some apps may have a valid reason for collecting location information, but when this is tied to extensive data sharing (e.g. the apps with large numbers of trackers), then there is the question of what else may be done with the data. Most naturally, this would most naturally be used to enhance the performance of ad targeting by sharing it with international ad networks (some of which are in locations that a user may not be comfortable with).
“Some apps are quite meticulous with specifying in their privacy policies which ad networks and external analytics providers that they are sharing data with. Others make broader, non-specific statements. And some have privacy policies that make no reference to the trackers that they have, and seem more like generic website privacy policies taken from a template library to satisfy the requirements of having a policy. Of course, few people take the time to read privacy policies, as well.”
Paige Cook
Mark Pincus reveals Zynga nearly acquired Supercell for $400m in 2012
There’s something interesting about the “what if?” stories that occasionally come out of the games industry. We hear about acquisitions that never happened, or job moves that could have gone a different way. Countless huge deals must have come close to happening, then fell apart, and we’ll probably never know about them.
This is a particularly interesting one, with Zynga’s founder Mark Pincus claiming he had a handshake agreement with Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen to acquire the developer for $400 million in 2012, only for Zynga’s board to reject the deal.
You can understand why. Zynga had already had a rough experience with the acquisition of OMGPOP, which had made a popular title with Draw Something. However, the game’s popularity quickly faded. The board apparently didn’t want Pincus making another acquisition before proving he could manage what he already had.
But the timing makes this one pretty painful in hindsight. Pincus says Zynga was already watching Supercell closely, with Hay Day and Clash of Clans taking off. Supercell would, of course, go on to become one of the biggest success stories in mobile games.
It does make you wonder how many other massive deals have come this close and never happened.
Aaron Astle
Mario Kart Tour shuts down after seven years on mobile
This is a strange one for me. Despite being a big Nintendo fan, I never actually played Mario Kart Tour, so I can’t claim its closure affects me personally. And yet, I have a very clear sense of nostalgia for this mobile racing game.
I had just started university when Mario Kart Tour released, and I vividly remember my first time seeing the game in-person was on a new housemate’s phone as I walked into the kitchen. It sparked a conversation, I watched some gameplay, shared some information from the handful of videos I’d seen from Nintendo YouTubers, and suddenly that new housemate was that little bit easier to talk to.
I saw a few people playing it around that time - not big Nintendo fans, not Switch owners, but young adults who were nostalgic for Mario Kart Wii and gave the game a try. As for how many stuck with it for the duration, who’s to know. But for those who did, it seems a shame there’s no Complete Edition like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp got when that game shut down. It’s a reminder that most live service games will only live for so long.
Mariam Ahmad
AppLovin takes legal action against Unity over Ad Quality DSP
This week, Paige covered the news that AppLovin is taking legal action against Unity over data collected through the latter’s Ad Quality SDK.
If you've been following mobile ad tech, AppLovin and Unity ending up in court probably doesn't come as a huge shock.
According to the lawsuit, AppLovin asked a San Francisco court to stop Unity from collecting data through its Ad Quality tool. AppLovin says the tool picks up information about the ads AppLovin wins and that Unity might be using that data to train models that bid against it. Unity says the data comes from developers who agreed to share it and calls the lawsuit a dominant company trying to handle competition through the courts.
In mobile ads, data is the product, so I can see why AppLovin is worried. But suing a rival as competition heats up isn't a great look either. It's also hard to ignore the history here - not long ago, AppLovin tried to buy Unity outright.
What I keep coming back to when I think about this case is the developers in the middle. It's their games and their players, yet the fight over that data is happening without them.
Nothing's been decided yet, but I'm curious to see where this one lands!
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