two & a half gamers

In this special episode, we sit down with Tactile Games and Loomit to break down how ad monetization actually works at scale - using Lily’s Garden as a real-world example.

https://loomit.ai/

https://meetings.hubspot.com/iortizf/25gamers?uuid=c4c16368-14b8-4277-9ab2-ab55d5614c2d - to book a meeting

From segmentation and A/B testing to dynamic floors, multiple ad units, and user-level optimization — this episode goes deep into the systems behind modern ad revenue.

We...

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, we break down one of the strangest success stories in mobile gaming right now — Yarn Loop.

Despite having a relatively small player base, the game is already generating millions in revenue, driven by strong Tier 1 users, efficient monetization, and heavy AppLovin scaling strategies.

We explore how this “Pixel Flow-inspired” puzzle game evolved into a top performer, why iteration beats originality in today’s market, and how studios like Spyke are building scalable puzzle machines using templates, AI, and ruthless execution.

Subway Surfers City just hit 10 million downloads in 3 weeks — but is it actually a good business?

We tear apart Sybo's long-awaited follow-up to one of the most downloaded games in history. We break down the gameplay, the surprisingly advanced (and stingy) economy, Felix's obsession with the ad placements, and why the UA setup is basically a ghost town despite having MiniClip's full weight behind it.

After 5+ years of development in Denmark and a soft launch back in July 2024, Subway Surfers City finally went global — but the numbers are already declining. Is this a profitable sequel or a...

I automated my weekly UA reporting using AppsFlyer MCP and it took less than 15 minutes to set up. https://bit.ly/4lMS8jM

Every week, I was doing the same painful thing: opening AppsFlyer for one client, then another, then another. 10 accounts, 10 dashboards, hours gone before the week even starts. Not anymore.

In this episode, I walk you through the exact setup I use - live, on screen - so you can copy it for your own accounts today.

What you'll learn:

→ Wh...

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, we break down the insane launch strategy behind Last Asylum: Plague by 37 Entertainment - a game that mixes onboarding mini-games, massive AI-driven creative production, and aggressive scaling tactics that could define the next phase of the 4X market.

From My Perfect Hotel-style onboarding loops to hundreds of AI-generated creatives flooding ad networks, this launch shows how Chinese publishers are building growth machines that are almost impossible to compete with.

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop

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Mobile Gaming & AI Industry Breaking News. This week’s biggest stories reveal major shifts in platform power, investment flows and UA channel consolidation.

In this Breaking News segment of Two and a Half Gamers, Felix explains:

• How Apple is making nearly $1B from generative AI apps despite lacking a clear AI product strategy

• Why new mobile gaming funding rounds signal renewed investor confidence

• The strategic acquisition of JustPlay by NCsoft for $200M

• Why rewarded UA companies are starting to consolidate globally

• How Nazara’s...

Slay the Spire 2 just proved that game design still wins

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, we break down one of the biggest indie launches in recent years.

Slay the Spire 2 reportedly generated over $100M in revenue within two weeks of early access, driven by massive wishlist numbers, Twitch coverage and an already legendary community built over nearly a decade.

The hosts discuss why the game works despite minimal visual upgrades, how roguelite deck-building loops create extreme engagement, and why premium...

Influencer marketing in mobile gaming is growing fast, but most campaigns still fail. Not because creators are bad or games are weak. The real problem is setup.

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, Marion breaks down the real execution framework behind profitable influencer campaigns. From defining goals and calculating budgets to choosing the right creators and measuring organic uplift, this episode is a practical guide built on real campaign experience.

You will learn why organic traffic matters more than tracked installs, how to calculate the minimum...

How Super Bear Adventure Became a Massive Ad Revenue Machine

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, Matej, Jakub and Felix break down one of the most surprising mobile success stories right now.

Super Bear Adventure looks like a nostalgic low-budget console platformer.

But behind the simple visuals hides a huge scale business driven by ads, social features and organic traffic.

The game reached millions of daily active users, especially in Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets like Indonesia, Brazil and Russia.<...

This week’s biggest industry stories come straight from GDC announcements, platform changes and new market predictions.

Here’s what we cover:

🎮 Google reveals more details about reduced Play Store fees

💸 Fortnite increases V-Bucks pricing ahead of the new season

🤖 Google Genie world models disappoint investors

📉 Gaming stocks react to AI hype cooling down

📊 Newzoo predicts PC will overtake console revenue by 2028

🎰 Loot box regulation tightening in Europe

🎮 Xbox reveals early next-gen console plans

📦 NCsoft expands into casual games wi...

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, we run Steam Scanner to look at the latest PC games that are quietly exploding in revenue.

Why does this matter for mobile?

Because some of the biggest mobile hits originally came from PC trends first. Studios that watch Steam early often get a 12–24 month head start on mechanics that later dominate mobile charts.

We break down several surprising titles, including Escape From Duckoff, which generated nearly $70M, and discuss why quirky concepts, niche genres, an...

Rewarded user acquisition and offer walls are suddenly becoming a major part of mobile game UA strategy.

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, Matej and Felix talk with Max from MAF about how rewarded UA evolved from a questionable growth hack into a legitimate acquisition channel.

Studios are now allocating 30–40% of their UA budgets to rewarded channels, and some games are scaling them even more aggressively.

The conversation covers ROI timelines, retention dynamics, monetization setups, genre fit, and how rewarded playtime mo...

The Mobile Game That Makes Money… But nobody understands why. Well, we kinda do. In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, we dive into one of the strangest successful mobile games they’ve seen recently: Cell Survivor.

The game looks confusing, the onboarding is painful, and the design feels chaotic. Yet somehow it’s making serious money, especially in Asian markets.

So the team breaks down what’s actually happening under the hood.

They discuss the game’s unusual progression systems, monetization design, As...

Three huge stories this week are reshaping the mobile and tech landscape.

First, Epic and Google finally settled their long legal battle, meaning Fortnite is returning to Google Play. Even more importantly, Google is cutting store fees and allowing developers to use alternative payment providers.

Second, the AI race just took a strange turn. Claude briefly overtook ChatGPT in US App Store downloads after OpenAI announced a deal with the US Department of Defense.

And finally, Netflix walks away from the $82B Warner Bros...

What if you built a puzzle game in the most crowded genre on earth…

…and scaled it to 5M downloads per month?

In this episode, we sit down with Vlad from Malpa Games and Ritzki from PVX Partners to unpack:

Why Malpa focused on production before ideas

90%+ ad revenue strategy

Why is ad tolerance in puzzles insanely high

How Cardscapes grew 200% month over month

Why AppLovin ROAS camp...

D2C Trends 2026: Steering is still allowed in the US. No fees (for now). But that window is closing. In this episode, we sit down with Chip Thurston from FastSpring to break down:

The current state of D2C in the US

Japan’s 15–20% platform fees

Brazil joining the party

Apple’s 7-day attribution window

Google’s 24-hour window

Why this might actually increase D2C adoption

This episode is special. We sit down with Akin Babayigit — early Facebook gaming, Audience Network launch team, King, co-founder of Tripledot, investor at Arcadia — to talk about what actually builds winning game studios.

We go deep into:

Why Pixelflow exploded

Why Match Villains keeps growing

Why China, Turkey & Vietnam are ahead

Why copying doesn’t kill winners

Why are ads misunderstood?

Why execution beats everyt...

Mobile revenue barely grew in 2025. Downloads fell on both app stores. Meanwhile 200,000+ new games launched across iOS and Google Play. The market is saturated and attention is fragmented.

The only category that keeps expanding across downloads, revenue and time spent? Strategy. Especially 4X. Deep systems, high LTV, long retention curves. That’s where scale still exists.

The lesson is simple. You can launch another puzzle game. You can chase trends. Or you can build depth and monetization power. In 2026, monetization design and category selection matter more than ever.

...

In this episode, we break down War Inc: Rise, the new title from the studio behind Art of War: Legions - a game that previously generated over $150M.

The gameplay? Solid.

The systems? Efficient.

The monetization? Confusing.

The UA strategy? Questionable.

We dive into:

Why War Inc feels like Battle Legion + Lucky Defense combined

How Fastone Games recycled their old IP smartly

Why ad monetization is almost nonexistent (and why that’s crazy)

...

I also built a playable during the recording! Playables are no longer optional. If you're running on AppLovin, Unity, ironSource, or any SDK network and you don’t have playables, you’re leaving scale on the table.

https://playablemaker.com/25gamers/ build your playables now!

In this solo episode, I break down:

• Why top games produce 60 playables per month

• The real playable testing structure

• Why “just wrapping your tutorial” doesn’t work

• Template strategy vs gameplay fidelity

• How to iterate instead of building from scratc...

AI game creatives just made another massive leap. In this episode, we break down 127 new creatives across Dark War, Top Heroes, Township and more and the quality jump in just one month is honestly insane.

We’re talking:

• Full anime-quality world model sequences

• AI influencers everywhere (grandmas, gamers, street interviews)

• 50+ completely different “games” promoted under one title

• Movie-level 4X fantasy ads

• Hyper-niche creative strategy instead of broad targeting

This is not an incremental improvement. This is a structural shift in how UA works...

This week’s episode centers around two major AI developments in gaming. Unity claims its upcoming AI beta will allow developers to prompt full casual games into existence. At the same time, Meta has begun embedding Manus AI into Ads Manager, signaling deeper automation inside UA workflows. The industry is clearly shifting — but whether this is real product evolution or investor-driven positioning remains the big question.

🧠 CORE INSIGHTS

1️⃣ Unity Is Selling the “No Code” Dream

Prompt-based game creation sounds revolutionary. But fully AI-generated casual games are not realistically r...

In this episode, we break down what’s really happening in mobile game creatives right now. Creative trends for January 2026 are here..

From Kingshot clones everywhere to Pixel Flow conveyor belts invading other genres… from 2022 impulse puzzles coming back to life… to the brutal truth about creative fatigue lasting DAYS instead of weeks.

We look at Golden Goblins, Royal Kingdom, Match Factory, Tasty Travels, Tile Survive and more, and what their ads tell us about 2026.

If you work in UA, creative production, or game market...

If you think eCPM is the most important metric in ad monetization, this episode is for you.

Felix breaks down:

• eCPM vs Fill Rate

• Why Ad ARPDAU is king

• Recency model & impression decay

• Why more ads can hurt revenue

• SDK crash risks & ANR thresholds

• Aggressive end cards & churn

• How mediation doubles revenue

• Networks vs exchanges explained

This is a practical introduction to how mobile ads actually work once the SDK is live.

<...

We sat down with Stan (CEO of Oh BiBi, creator of Asphalt) and Luis (VP Global Marketing at Rovio) to break down Angry Birds Rush. We discuss how the game was born, why they built 6 prototypes, how they benchmarked against slot machines, how they secretly tested fans on Discord, and why they’re aiming for a billion-dollar game. A bold attempt to merge:

• Luck Battle meta (Monopoly Go / Coin Master)

• Runner-style core gameplay

• Slingshot physics nostalgia

• The biggest family IP in mobile

And what you’r...

Supercell’s annual letter was supposed to be routine. Instead, it triggered backlash around Clash Royale’s “resurgence” narrative. Influencers were credited for growth, including major names amplifying the story, which upset parts of the community. The reaction escalated to organized boycotts, forcing Ilkka Paananen to issue an apology and update the letter publicly. Meanwhile, revenue tells a simpler story: Clash Royale spiked aggressively, then dropped aggressively, returning close to its previous baseline.

Layoffs continue across the industry. Riot cut around 80 people from its 2XKO fighting game. Ubisoft faces union-led strikes following structural division moves th...

Dragon Traveler is not subtle. It’s a waifu-driven idle RPG, built for scale, speed, and monetization efficiency, and it’s working. Especially in the US.

Despite being a fresh launch (mid-January), the game is already doing $300k–500k per day, with a heavy US + Asian revenue split, thousands of creatives in rotation, and extremely aggressive UA. This isn’t a passion project. It’s a manufactured hit designed to win distribution, not awards.

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop

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PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game devel...

Arknights: Endfield is not a normal anime gacha.

Yes, it looks like Genshin.

Yes, it uses Honkai-style progression and banners.

But the real core is something much riskier: factory automation inspired by Factorio and Satisfactory, deeply embedded into progression, crafting, power, and economy.

This is a high-budget, niche bet. And it’s already showing both explosive upside and structural risk.

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop

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PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to...

This is not a meditation app. This is one of the smartest subscription businesses on mobile.

In this episode, we break down Finch, a self-care app with ~10M DAU, extreme retention, and a web-first monetization system that turns subscriptions into a social, altruistic act.

We cover product design, streak mechanics, collectibles, subscription psychology, web revenue via Stripe, community monetization, and why Finch doesn’t even need ads to print money.

What we cover

• Gamified self-care loops

• Subscription psychology done right

•...

The sell-off was triggered by fear, not facts. Google’s Project Genie demo sparked a narrative that “AI games are here,” even though the tech currently produces short, silent video scenes with no logic, no scoring, no input handling, and no gameplay systems. Investors reacted as if game development had been solved overnight. The result was a disproportionate crash: Unity down nearly 40%, AppLovin down ~33%, Roblox down ~19%, and Take-Two also hit hard, while the NASDAQ itself fell only ~4.5%. That gap tells the real story.

Meanwhile, Meta delivered numbers that completely contradict the panic. Meta apps now re...

This Softlaunch Sonar episode is a reality check.

Studios are shipping faster than ever, cloning proven mechanics within weeks, and still failing to create real differentiation. PixelFlow, Arrow Flow, Sand Loop and their endless variations show how quickly the market reacts, and how rarely it innovates.

The discussion cuts through cozy games, monster IP arms races, match-3 fatigue, and why “being early” now matters more than production quality. Softlaunch isn’t about polish anymore. It’s about speed, angle, and knowing when the train has already left the station.

Before you soft launch, check this. Or your data will lie. In this episode, Matej walks through a complete soft launch checklist covering tracking, attribution, monetization hygiene, pricing, live ops readiness, UA setup, and creatives.

This is not a full guide. The full guide is here: https://payhip.com/b/fJi9E

It’s everything that must work before you judge CPI, retention, or ROAS.

What Matej covers

• MMP & Firebase setup

• iOS ATT and conversion schemas

• Crash & ANR thresholds

• Revenue de...

Meta is not back on iOS. We just got fooled. In this emergency episode, we break down what actually happened during the two-day Meta revenue spike that made everyone think Facebook had solved iOS tracking.

Spoiler: they didn’t.

We explain ATT, IDFA, why Meta collapsed in 2021, how AppLovin took over iOS, and how aggressive end cards temporarily boosted Meta revenue before retention crashed and performance returned to baseline.

What we cover

• ATT and Meta’s iOS collapse

• Why Meta revenue...

Mobile gaming revenue stagnates on paper, Monopoly GO becomes the fastest game ever to hit $6B, and Liftoff officially files for a US IPO.

This episode breaks down what the data says, what it misses, and why web stores, hybrid casual, and AdTech exits define the next phase of mobile gaming.

What we cover

• Mobile revenue vs reality

• Hybrid casual growth

• Monopoly GO’s $6B milestone

• Web stores and platform leakage

• Liftoff IPO & AdTech exits

Get our ME...

Hunting Sniper should not be winning. But it is. The game looks like it was built in 2016–2018, runs a Golf Clash–style betting economy, and has almost zero innovation in core mechanics. And yet, it’s doing ~$200k per day, outperforming genre veterans like Hunting Clash by nearly 10×.

This episode matters because it exposes an uncomfortable truth:

You don’t need a great game. You need relentless UA, extreme creative volume, and zero shame about fake gameplay.

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop

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PVX...

This episode is a crash course in launching ads the right way.

Not theory. Not “best practices”. But what actually matters when you go from zero ads to meaningful ad LTV.

Felix walks through:

How to think about ads during soft launch

Which metrics actually matter early

When Unity-only is good enough (and when it’s not)

How to choose mediation without overthinking it

Which...

Creative trends are getting darker, faster, and more automated.

In this Creative Trends episode, we break down how AI creatives now dominate volume, why Golden Goblins mechanics are everywhere, how celebrities are quietly replacing UGC, and why IP infringement is no longer being enforced.

We analyze Dark War’s AI-first strategy, Supercent’s creative flood, merge drama escalation, and the uncomfortable reality of what actually scales in 2026.

What we cover

• AI-generated creatives at scale

• Golden Goblins copy machine

• Celebrity...

This week confirms a shift that’s been building quietly:

Volume is down. Monetization is up. And everyone is restructuring around reality.

Across the news:

Big publishers are cutting, consolidating, and centralizing power

IAP revenue keeps growing even as downloads slow

Turkey remains a capital magnet for mobile

Legacy IPs prove longevity beats novelty

AI rules are being normalized, not hyped

In this episode, we break down Sandloop by Voodoo and explain how a lightweight, physics-driven sorting game can already generate ~$100k+ per day with a heavily ad-driven model.

We cover gameplay design, monetization, difficulty tuning, creative strategy, and where Sandloop realistically sits compared to Pixel Flow and other sorting hits.

What we cover

• Sandloop core mechanics

• Physics-based puzzle design

• Ad-first monetization strategy

• Early revenue and spend estimates

• Sorting category trends

• Voodoo’s portfolio strategy

Get our M...

In this solo episode, Jakub breaks down how Heartopia scaled to hundreds of thousands of daily downloads and over $200k per day using slow-life gameplay, cosmetic-only gacha, and zero fake ads.

We look at the cozy / avatar-life genre, monetization mechanics, gacha cycles, UA creatives, and why this game works despite having almost no traditional gameplay pressure.

What we cover

• Heartopia launch performance

• Cozy and avatar-life genre explained

• Cosmetic-only gacha monetization

• Why collections work without stats

• UA strategy and creative volume