Trump's $14bn TikTok deal, MrBeast joins The Angry Birds 3 Movie, and Fire Emblem Shadows launches | 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
The political divest-or-ban saga for TikTok - an important user acquisition channel for games publishers - in the US is coming to an end.
A $14 billion deal has been cut, reportedly with a consortium of investors that could include private equity firms Silver Lake and MGX, the Murdoch family, as well as the platform’s US cloud service provider Oracle.
That means no such luck for other potential buyers like ads firm AppLovin, which wanted to acquire all of TikTok’s international operations, not just the US business.
So what does it all mean? Well, for starters enforcement of the law has been pushed back once again to January 20th, 2026. So until it happens, anything could happen.
With Trump so heavily involved in the deal, along with potential involvement of the Murdochs, it will be interesting to see if TikTok runs as normal or if it becomes more politically charged. The potential for China to use TikTok to influence public opinion was a chief concern driving the divest-or-ban bill.
And how, exactly, will Americans’ data be handled and how will this affect the platform's operations? TikTok’s X factor is its algorithm, and the Trump admin has said Oracle will licence a copy of that recommendation algorithm. Any changes to how Tiktok fundamentally operates will surely be noticed by its legions of users.
Content creators will also want to know the app’s future direction in the US - is it just going to have the exact same functionality in future as the international version? Or will it splinter into its own platform?
Should the deal happen, there are still a lot of questions about how exactly TikTok operates under new ownership and whether the saga was worth it.
Paige Cook
MrBeast joins the cast of Angry Birds 3
The Angry Birds 3 Movie is set to release later this year following a long gap since the second movie, released back in 2019. While these types of projects were far from new then, there has been a significant surge in recent years. From games to movies, TV tie-ins, and even beyond with the likes of board games and comics.
So really, it’s an excellent time for the Angry Birds brand to have another big-screen outing.
The latest development includes some casting details, with MrBeast among them. The world’s most subscribed YouTuber has been confirmed to be in the movie, although in what capacity remains unknown.
Perhaps it will be just a small cameo, or maybe something more, but the film will inevitably want to appeal to a family-friendly audience. MrBeast has an enormous following among the younger demographic, so it's an easy potential way to attract some of that following, even if he's hardly present.
The first two Angry Birds movies together pulled in over $500 million at the global box office, so I’m intrigued to see what this third instalment can achieve. After all, we are in a time when A Minecraft Movie is one of the biggest-earning Hollywood films of the year so far.
While I don’t see Angry Birds 3 reaching those heights, its release window on December 23rd means it may be able to pull in some extra interest from a holiday season audience.
We’ll dive deeper into the significant rise of transmedia at our special Transmedia Summit during Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki on October 7th.
Aaron Astle
Nintendo shadow drops Fire Emblem Shadows as its first new mobile game in six years
I wasn’t expecting to be writing about a newly released Nintendo mobile game this week - least of all a Fire Emblem title. But, here we are, and I’m certainly not complaining.
Fire Emblem Shadows is the first new Nintendo game on mobile since 2019’s Mario Kart Tour. It fulfills Nintendo’s recent claim to still be interested in new mobile games, which at the time sounded more like keeping options open than a hint at things to come, especially while the company’s busy with the recently released Switch 2.
As for the game itself, it’s opting for real-time combat over the series’ traditional turn-based gameplay, but has kept its grid system for some semblance of continuity. There are also a few returning characters - namely Lyn and Dimitri - while the main story follows original characters and protagonist Kurt.
And, one gameplay element may also feel familiar to Among Us fans: in each battle, someone among the army is a traitor, and players must identify who to put a stop to them.
So, will this be the next Fire Emblem Heroes? Could this be Nintendo’s second billion-dollar mobile game? Currently, I’m not convinced - there’s no gacha, for starters - but I’m quite willing to be proved wrong on this one.
‘Trust no one’, as the trailer says.
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