Scopely triumphs as Best Publisher at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2025

• The Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2025 took place at Gamescom in Germany.
• Scopely won Best Publisher, ahead of honourable mentions Homa, Miniclip and Zynga.

Scopely winning Best Publisher at this year’s Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards should come as little surprise, being the company behind genre-topping hits like Monopoly Go and the new owner of AR pioneer Pokémon Go.

Celebrating mobile game makers everywhere, PocketGamer.biz awarded the standout stars of the industry with fresh accolades at Gamescom last night. Tailor-made to reward all the creators, makers, movers and shakers that make mobile games happen, we spent the night cheering on finalists and unveiling winners across 24 categories.

After reminiscing on a stellar year for Best Developer winner Supercell, here we’re focusing on Best Publisher Scopely.

The "megadeal" realised

Scopely has frequented the mobile news cycle for years, and that’s only ramped up since chief revenue officer Tim O’Brien teased plans for a "megadeal" in late 2024.

"When I say megadeal, I mean a scaled global franchise doing hopefully at least a billion dollars in revenue," he said at the time.

Fast-forward to 2025, and reports emerged that this deal could be for Niantic’s Pokémon Go, the geolocation giant going on $9 billion in player spending by AppMagic estimates. And, those reports proved true, as the deal was confirmed this March and completed on May 29th.

The $3 billion acquisition brought Niantic’s licenced games under Scopely’s ownership, namely Pokémon Go, Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom. Niantic’s Campfire and Wayfarer also came under Scopely’s control, and game teams moved with the games themselves.

The seismic acquisition makes Scopely the new publisher of one of the world’s biggest mobile games, but that’s not the only reason for victory in this year’s Mobile Games Awards. After all, Scopely won Best Publisher last year too.

Pass go, collect $5 billion

Monopoly Go is a Scopely juggernaut in its own right, officially reaching $5 billion in revenue just two years after launch. This makes the blockbuster among the fastest games to ever hit the milestone - achieved with more than six billion boards completed and 80 million in-game landmarks destroyed.

The game has partnered with Six Nations Rugby, assembled the Avengers and most recently collaborated with The Fantastic Four. It's also recruited star power like Jason Momoa and Chris Pratt to advertise the game to even more players.

And, having made 55% of all casual casino revenue between the Play Store and App Store last year, discussing the genre as a whole automatically means talking Monopoly Go.

With win after win, it’s little surprise Scopely’s been equipped to open a new studio in Saudi Arabia and a tech hub in Barcelona.

Honourable mentions

Of course, there are so many mobile developers deserving of their own spotlight from this past year, so we’ve also compiled a list of finalists worth celebrating.

Honourable mentions go to Homa, Miniclip and Zynga. Other finalists include:

• Com2uS
• Crunchyroll
• FunPlus
• Habby
• Jam City
• Nazara
• NetEase Games
• Playstack
• Tamatem Games
• Tilting Point
• Voodoo