Top News

#1:  Playtika Closes Seriously’s Main Studio in Helsinki 

According to mobilegamer.biz, Playtika has closed Seriously, the developer behind the popular puzzle RPG Best Fiends. The company has also decided to lay off all its employees, effectively moving the operation of Seriously’s titles to Playtika’s offices in Poland and Israel.

This may sound like shocking news, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Back in June Playtika ceased operations of its offices in London and Montreal, as well as a Seriously office in Los Angeles, leaving 250 staff unemployed. There were already suggestions at the time that closing the studio in Helsinki was being considered.

Mobilegamer.biz reports that the decision to close Seriously’s operations is mostly due to disagreements between the Helsinki-based studio and Playtika’s leadership, with Seriously wanting to focus on the development of new titles while Playtika wanted to push for more aggressive monetization mechanics in Best Fiends. We believe that Playtika’s current financial situation contributed to the decision and that the company is now taking a conservative approach to its previous acquisitions — squeezing as much out of existing games as possible while deprioritizing building new ones.

As reported by Naavik in September, “the company’s growth of annual revenue is clearly slowing down and EBITDA margins continue to drop.” Plus, the company’s roughly $1.3B in net debt is approximately a third of Playtika’s market cap, and the interest expenses regularly take a decent chip out of profits. The company’s Casino portfolio has been declining in revenue, and its growth is now more reliant on its two biggest casual titles: Solitaire Grand Harvest and June’s Journey. There is also a lack of successful new titles being launched by studios acquired by Playtika.

In light of this scenario, it’s understandable why Playtika would feel the urge to prioritize optimizing Best Fiend over investing in new games. After all, Seriously has not managed to prove that it can replicate the success of Best Fiends; all titles released by the studio since 2014 have flopped. Much of the growth from Solitaire Grand Harvest and June’s Journey comes from optimizations based on Playtika’s Casino playbook. Playtika brought features that worked in its biggest Casino app, Slotomania (live-ops, collectibles album, piggy bank, offer, and player segmentation), and adapted them for the two casual games. As Best Fiends’ growth has stagnated, applying its Casino playbook to the game seems like a “quick win” decision.

Even though Playtika’s decision to kill Seriously seems mostly logical, there are still a couple additional factors to keep in mind:

For starters, it is not a given that Playtika’s Casino playbook will work in Best Fiends. Grand Harvest and June’s Journey might be outside of Casino, but they still share demographics with Playtika’s Casino apps. According to data.ai, between 60%-65% of players from June’s Journey, Slotomania, and Solitaire Grand Harvest are older than 45 years, and only between 16%-21% of players belong to the 18-34 demographic. Best Fiends, on the other hand, has a younger playerbase, with only 49% of its players in the 45+ demographic and 31% in the 18-34 one. Older players would not only have a higher purchase power but would possibly respond better to Casino features and mechanics.

There is also a risk that Playtika might be too conservative in the launch of new titles. Most of the company’s revenue comes from a relatively old portfolio, and optimizing current games will take the company only so far. In the long-term, especially if Playtika wishes to be valued as a growth company again in public markets (or perhaps attain a more lucrative buyout), the publisher will need to rely on new non-Casino games to keep growing. While the company has released two new titles this year (Merge Stories and Ghost Detective), it has closed four different offices and laid off more than 300 people. Yes, this leads to a more efficiently run business in the short-run, but it also has both lost expertise from other subgenres and started a precedent that might lead to an accelerated exodus of talent from other studios if not careful.

Game Launch Radar

#1: Soccer Manager 2023

• Publisher: Invincible Studios
• State: Hard-launch
• Territories: Global
• Classification: Sports & Driving – Sports – Realistic Sports

• Quick thoughts:

  • This is the sixth game in the Soccer Manager series, and it went global in mid-September 2022. We’re looking at it right now because the download numbers have reached a significant point since launch (1.32M). You can check out the gameplay video here.
  • Invincible Studios has stayed true to its tendency of releasing a new Soccer Manager title every year since 2018, with every successive launch being bigger and better than the previous one. And lo and behold, Soccer Manager 2023 is its biggest launch yet!
  • This is a pretty standard football manager simulation experience, and it competes with Nordeus’ Top Eleven. While the initial RPD numbers look quite good compared to key competitors, it will be interesting to see how well the studio will live operate the title to bring it in the league of Top Eleven.
  • Our guess is that long-term live operations of a single title isn’t this studio’s key strategy. It has seen a lot of success in growing the franchise’s audience over time via annual version releases, every successive title being a bigger revenue generator than the previous one. And it will likely continue to do so until live-operating a single title makes more long-term economic sense.

#2: Unhappy Raccoon

• Publisher: XD Games
• State: Hard-launch
• Territories: Global
• Classification: Mid-core – RPG – Action RPG

• Quick thoughts:

  • XD Games and Big-Cat Studio announced that their highly anticipated action sci-fi roguelike Unhappy Raccoon launched on October 8th. This game has been in the sights of many roguelike fans for quite some time, and players are excited for the unique spin on the genre it introduces. You can check out the gameplay video here.
  • While its core gameplay and progression systems are similar to those of Archero, Unhappy Racoon introduces one unique twist — characters and their abilities are affected by in-game story choices the player makes. While this definitely improves player immersion through a tight connection to the story, it is yet to be seen whether the feature will be able to differentiate the game enough to compete with the likes of Archero or Mr. Autofire.

#3: Civilization: Reign of Power

• Publisher: Nexon
• State: Preregistration
• Territories: South East Asia
• Classification: Mid-core – Strategy – MMO

• Quick thoughts:

  • Very recently, Nexon opened preregistration for its new MMOSLG, Civilization: Reign of Power, based on Sid Meier’s Civilization 5. This preregistration was opened up for Japan first, then the rest of South East Asia, but it still remains unclear whether there will be a globally available version. You can check out the launch trailer here.
  • While little is known currently in terms of gameplay, it seems like a lot of the roots of Sid Meier’s Civilization will be kept intact. Players will be able to recruit leaders from 14 different civilizations, grow their civilizations, wage war, form alliances, and eventually conquer territory.
  • Civilization is one of the defining gaming franchises of our times, but it does not have a mobile-first audience. Therefore, its core players have very high expectations for this release. What will be more interesting to see, though, is how the mobile version caters to and monetizes a mobile-first audience and brings new fans to the overarching Civilization franchise.

Other Game Announcements

• Supercell is ending development on Everdale, which will shut down at the end of the month. Link
• X-Hero, which rapidly gained 15M downloads and $12.9M in spending based on sketchy UA tactics, is now banned from app stores. Link
• Netmarble’s Seven Deadly Sins mobile game marks 50M downloads. Link
• Iran blocks Clash of Clans amid ongoing protests. Link
• EA announces its upcoming plans and updates for FIFA Mobile. Link
• Giant Monster War, X-LEGENDS’ debut strategy title, is now available globally. Link
• Airship Knights, Super Planet’s idle voyage PDG, opens pre-registrations on iOS and Android. Link

Company Announcements

• Playrix is going to close offices in Russia and Belarus and relocate staff. Link
• Tencent is reportedly going to get more aggressive with its overseas M&A strategy. Link
• PlayStation is looking for ways to expand better into mobile and PC. Link
• Ubisoft unveils ‘Global Creative Office’ in significant restructure. Link
• Amber Studios, the development services company, raises $20M to further expand globally. Link
• Bidstack, an in-game advertising platform, secures $11M in funding round. Link
• FunPlus opens a new Barcelona studio, hires Jacob Krüger as the new Director of User Acquisition, and promotes Felipe Mata to VP of Product. Link
• Roblox removes games depicting war in Ukraine. Link
• Zynga pushes forward with season passes for its catalog. Link

Ecosystem Announcements

• Harry Potter mobile games have amassed over $1B in player spending. Link
• The cloud gaming market is on pace to generate $2.4B in 2022. Link
• Epic and Match Group are expanding their lawsuit against Google. Link
• Intrinsic in-game ads earn twice as much view time as other digital channels. Link

Content Worth Consuming

• Practical Advice for Growing Games in Diverse Markets (DoF): “As games progress through their lifecycle, it becomes difficult to maintain the same level of acquisition costs they experienced post-launch. In addition, if the game is not evolving or developing quickly enough for players, live operations to keep up with content demands could require further investments. Ultimately, many games experience increased costs and stalls in growth over time, and a good way to unlock growth is to find new pockets of players outside of English-centric countries. But what’s the optimal way to find these markets? How do you decide whether to make that investment decision? How much should you localize versus culturalize? What is the potential of these emerging markets?” Link
• Don’t do that: What to avoid when soft-launching a game (GameIndustry.biz): “If you’re reading this article, it’s highly likely you know what a soft launch is and why we need it. So instead of focusing on things you might already know, we’ll concentrate on mistakes developers and publishers commonly make when they launch their mobile games.” Link
• Making Games with Impact at Ustwo Games (Rise & Play): “Among the notable successes of Ustwo Games are Monument Valley and Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. In this episode, we are discussing what it takes to build a purpose-driven company culture and create games with meaning.” Link
• Is Unity still focused on making games? (GamesIndustry.biz): “With an IronSource deal pending, CEO John Riccitiello talks about the future of Unity, its history of losses, and buying back stock in the wake of layoffs.” Link
• How to get into the top 3 among simulators with a haircut project unlike others (Azur Games): “There are quite a lot of haircut games on the market. But almost all of them have cartoon art and are more focused on the female audience. We went in such a different direction that at launch 75% of the players were male. Then the audience was expanded, but the main difference from other projects was left — the realistic visuals. As a result, a simulator about the barbershop’s everyday life surpassed the mark of 10 million downloads in just a month. How did it succeed? Let’s talk about it.” Link