Mobile publishing is a beast of its own, built on speed, data, and above all, user acquisition. In this episode, host Alexandra Takei, Director at Ruckus Games, sits down with Asi Burak, Chief Business Officer of Tilting Point, to unpack the future of mobile publishing and why UA financing has become one of the most talked-about trends in gaming today.

Tilting Point, a top 50 global mobile publisher, recently launched a $150M UA fund this past March. In the past, TP made its name scaling live titles with marketing muscle and pioneering UA financing before it was industry standard. Today, that model has become mainstream. Asi explains how this structure works (non-dilutive, risk-sharing, and predictable) and why even large developers now see it as a smart capital allocation tool rather than just a lifeline for smaller studios. The conversation also covers ATT’s seismic impact on mobile, Tilting Point’s pivot from third-party publishing to 3rd party UA financing and first-party acquisitions, and how IP-driven strategies amplify UA effectiveness. We discuss what is attractive today in UA financing and how to effectively structure an organization to run two parallel investment pillars. 

We’d also like to thank Heroic Labs for making this episode possible! Thousands of studios have trusted Heroic Labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about gametech or scaling for success. To learn more and reach out, visit https://heroiclabs.com/?utm_source=Naavik&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Podcast

We’d also like to thank Lysto — the AI-native playtesting platform helping game studios capture unbiased player feedback and convert it into structured, actionable insights. Learn more about how you can get bias-free feedback at https://lysto.gg/?utm_source=naavik&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ad

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Alex: Alright, what's up everyone? And welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Alex, and today we're diving into a part of the industry we frankly don't cover that much — mobile publishing. And when most people think about publishing, they think of PC or console juggernauts that help studios get to market. But on mobile, publishing looks completely different. It's about scale, it's about speed, operations and above all, user acquisition and few companies have made a bigger mark here than Tilting Point.

Founded in New York back in 2012, Tilting Point built its name by stepping in to help existing free to play titles grow through marketing, muscle creative optimization, and of course UA financing. Over the years, they've raised multiple funds to back this vision and the most recent being a $150M UA financing fund that they announced earlier this year in March.

Today we're gonna discuss the landscape of mobile publishing, first-party, third-party, and third-party financing, and how Tilting Point is evolving to navigate that market. And my guest today is Asi Burak, the Chief Business Officer of Tilting Point. Asi.

Asi: Hi Alex.

Alex: Hello. Asi is calling in from Sonny Barcelona and he leads BD IP licensing and growth partnerships as well as many other things at Tilting Point.

Asi has been there for over a decade at this point and has helped Tilting Point achieve a 25x increase in annual revenue and secure a spot on Pocket Gamer’s top 50 mobile game mark makers for four years in a row, which is pretty incredible. Something I also admire about your background is that you've previously chaired a nonprofit Games for Change, which is actually right in my backyard in New York City.

For those in our audience that aren't familiar, Games for Change is a nonprofit that helps facilitate games with a social impact, so education, humanitarian causes the environment. All of this is needless to say that we've got a great guest for today's episode and welcome to the show, Asi.

Asi: Thank you so much Alex, and glad to be joining and thanks for hosting me.

Alex: Awesome. So before we dive into the meat of our show, I wanna ask a few questions to set context about you and Tilting Point. So first, of course, about you, and we talked about this a little bit in our kick-off, but you played a 15 year role essentially running a nonprofit, and now you're part of a big business expansion at a mobile publisher. What is your mental model or reconcile, or reconciling is even the right word for you between the mission and monetization at this commercial publisher given your background in nonprofit work?

Asi: Yeah. Look, so, so it's really interesting because most people I know that jump between the two worlds, it's the opposite. You know, they go in, they go on, they make a lot of money, and then they start to do some charity work. In my case I did start in business before I moved to the us, but very early I started to dive into the nonprofit world because I was fascinated by the idea that video games can do more than entertainment.

And I had the, me and this relatively small group of people back then let's say it's 2004. Had this this same vision, the same idea, the same ambition. It was very early. Think about it before mobile games, before Facebook. And the stigma the perception of video games was very negative.

I mean, today you see, you see some leftovers in certain crowds, but back then it was really very narrow and, and that idea kind of drove me to invest in it so much. And then I went to the commercial world, so I did the opposite route. But I think it gave me some perspective in the commercial world that helped me on one hand to work with developers to understand the struggles of an indie developer because I was an indie developer in the Games for Social Impact before I ran games for change. It helped me to understand the impact that we can have on their life basically on their on them and their audiences. And I think it also helped me to do some projects. I wish I could have done more, but over the years we've done probably. Five, six initiatives like this that take Tilting Point into that world as well.

So participation in the Green Game Jam that the United Nations is sponsoring, whether it's integration of nonprofits into our games for a campaign. One case that was very successful is with SpongeBob our cooking game, where we put a nonprofit with a product called Life Pack and Life Pack, two or three of those can sustain a, a hungry child in a certain country for a day. People by playing the game and by donating and by buying packages could make a real difference. We did others with tree planting and other initiatives. So, you know, that gave me satisfaction that I got some of that DNA to, but it's not only me.

I saw amazing reception of the young generation of employees, you know? So it was a very easy thing to, to get in. I just had the right connections and the right structures for it, you know?

Alex: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think also, like, you know, as you know, you talked about the evolution of gaming, right?

And how it, you know, had a little bit of a negative stereotype around it. And obviously it's evolved to what it has become today, even. I feel like I've witnessed that in my lifetime. There's also a very different level of, I guess, generational, importance and focus on charity and giving, right?

And so, companies for good companies that have kind of a peripheral like, you know, kickback towards some sort of like economic, sorry some sort of ecological or societal benefit. I think it's very important to a lot of generations, you know, gen Z and below. And so, I think it's also about building a good culture of a company because you feel like that, you know, of course we're making a business, but we're also doing good things for the world and where we can.

And so, I guess that also brings us to discussing Tilting Point a little bit. You know, you brought up this example of SpongeBob, but give me the elevator pitch kind of for the audience for what Tilting Boy Tilting Point does and its value. We'll obviously go way deep into this, into, in our episode, but at the high level, who are you guys? And what do you guys do?

Asi: So, so I think that, you know, you started defining it very accurately at the beginning that we are a mobile publisher. And when we started it, it was a unique creature, you know, in mobile, and I think we were one of those that kind of shaped it as an industry helping mobile developers to scale, helping mobile developers to grow and succeed.

Today, I would say because of the size and growth, we are very focused on acquisitions, basically taking studios even to the next level with acquiring them, allowing them to exit, to continue independently and be successful. We're doing a lot of user acquisition financing.

It's the same type of I would say perspective of empowering and growing studios, but lighter touch.

Right. And the third is that we, over the years. By doing publishing, by doing partnerships, by working with Licensers, we established a big portfolio. So we have a very strong portfolio of mobile games, a lot with licensed ap, some of the very known like SpongeBob or Avatar, the Airbender that we launched this year.

So, I would say these are the three legs you know, the portfolio, the UA financing and the m and a that makes us all together. I would like to think one of the top 50 mobile players in the market today.

Alex: Okay, got it. Unlike I said, you know, we don't cover mobile publishing at Naavik that often, and that's not because we don't cover mobile, but it's because mobile publishing within itself is just more rare compared to PC and console.

I mean, it's primarily this way because I think games on the PC side and console side are often divided in creation and development and distribution. And both are so onerous and complicated that you. Kind of needed two distinct entities. No choice. The publisher and the developer to, you know, unite hands and get to market.

But in mobile games launched with a direct to consumer format through app stores. And so, there's a paucity of mobile publishers simply because there's a less of a need when mobile became big in the early 2010s. Effectively it's like kind of easier for everybody just to be first party. Or at least that's my pitch to myself. But I'd like to hear from you, you know, talked about Tilting Point's, legacy as being, you know, one of the top 50 mobile publishers. But why do you think that we need a mobile publisher, given what I just said?

Asi: Look when, when it started kind of mobile publishing and when and this is even before free to play, of course, it continued through free to play Tilting Point, and others played in a game played in a domain or a discipline that is similar.

To PC and console, and that that principle was, I'm going to take a bet, right? I'm going to invest in a developer before they're even out there. I think that for, just like you said for developers, it could go directly to the market. It presented a dilemma because they are basically tying their destiny to a publisher without knowing much about each other, without knowing much about the success of the game.

So the chance for misaligned expectations is much higher. And the, you know, if, for example the publisher put a lot of money and the success is not immediate, they can immediately get disappointed or decide not to invest anymore, and developers could be disappointed of their own expectations and desires.

What we did, and I think that was the point, probably not the only ones, but among the only ones that said, you know what, mobile has something that others don't have. And that is you can access consumers directly and you can show data that is, is a treasure trove of information that can basically make or break a game.

And we said, we're not going to come to you before and take 50% of your revenue. We're actually going to come to you where you're already live. And then you need very specific help. And maybe we take less because we took less risk, but the expectations are much more aligned. Okay? And I can also tell you, you know, right now your game, the size of your game is X.

Reading your data, reviewing the data, assessing what I know. I think I can take you to Y. But I have much more confidence and the knowledge in saying this, right?

So I think that opened a way for developers to be much more flexible, to take their things to the market, to decide then if to work with someone like me, or maybe just go for UA financing or maybe do it all alone if they can, if they can get the resources. But I think that made the industry and publishing make much more sense for people in mobile.

Alex: What to you are, you know, you mentioned one of them, right? This gap maybe between expectations and knowledge. Right. So I feel like I have some sort of asymmetric information about how successful the game is gonna be and therefore writing an upfront investment is challenging.

Whereas for a mobile publisher, they're coming in pre-launch a little bit more like growth equity than venture capital. But what to you are like the top three differences between mobile publishing and PC and console? Beyond just the fact that of when a publisher usually taps a game on the shoulder in terms of timing.

Asi: So look, I think the reliance on data is critical. You know, that I know that it took time for the industry to get used to it, and it's still counterintuitive for creative people. But data is almost more important than anything else. You know, in, in the other industries today, you will go and make a pitch to a publisher, and most of your effort would be that the publisher would believe that, you know, the audience would like the game and that the game is and you will have it in a mobile pitch.

But the data would be the real reason that someone will see the potential, because the data shows that you can actually scale it. It shows the retention. It, I mean, it's tough to think about it like this but in mobile, this is the dominant thing. The second one I would say is user aquisition.

It's related to data, but it means that unlike other industries, you have a lot of control and impact on marketing that can show real. Mediate proven results. I, you know, I was thinking about it for many years when we do UA in mobile, so successfully and predictably and profitably, like you don't have it in, in, in many other industries.

You know, you don't have it in film. I don't think you have it in concert and PC games in that level. Like you can really make an investment in marketing a game and know what you will get and when the money is going to go back to get back to you. So I think that's the second, the very important thing.

And I think the third one is probably I think there's more flexibility because of what you described as the fact that sometimes you don't need a huge team, and sometimes the budgets are smaller and you can go directly to consumers. I think there's more flexibility in where you divide between you and the developer.

You know, at the days that we did a lot of third party publishing, which we don't do today you know, we were doing v on the things that we feel the developer needs, or he says that they need, but the thing that they cover and they're good at, why would I interfere with them?

You know, so, so it's a much more of a collaboration than, okay, I have this template of a publisher.

You are going to do your development and leave it, leave marketing alone. No. If there are things in marketing that they can contribute to, of course they should be collaborating with us.

Alex: Yeah. In a way, actually, I think that a lot of PC console today is shifting towards that model. Yeah. As the traditional, like trad publisher model becomes quite out of style, right.

A studio is expected to do their own marketing and build their own social media pipeline similar to maybe more what the mobile studio do. And then the relationship between you and the publisher is more about like, what are your gaps? What do I need you for? How can you help me and have those services be a little bit a car look

Asi: Here, the, here the, it's not secret in, in mobile, at the end of the day, you can do a lot of things, but UA would be 80% of the battle.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah.

Asi: Yeah. So in, in that sense. No, you can do a lot of things that would support, but at the end of day, you'd need the big capital and you'd need the big expertise. And so that's, I think that will still be something that in PC and console unless the system changes is not there yet.

Alex: And actually that's I think where my next question was gonna go is that, you know, one of the things that has become fragmented in PC console was the relationship between marketing dollars and unit sales or downloads or whatever out, right? That is still not true for mobile, right? And so, in a way. the way that, at least I have thought about PC/console is that fracturing has actually leveled the playing field to some extent. Just because you have 50 million in marketing dollars does not mean that you can't beat schedule one, which is made by one guy. Right? But on the mobile side, given that UA is 80% of base of the battle as you said, do you feel that creativity in that kind of environment is stifled to some extent because the UA dollars have such a large impact on outcome, that there's no room for kind of any actual creative campaign grassrootsy kind of activity that's being displayed in PC/console?

Asi: So, so yeah. I let's say fix the impression with the, with balancing the, with balancing back, there's definitely a place for creative it's a bit different on how you think about it. There's definitely a place for creative marketing and there's a place for creativity in the content itself.

The ad, the ads that you in, we call it user acquisition. It's advertising, it's marketing. The more creative ads will have a much, much stronger impact. They can come from the publisher, they can come from the UA expert, they can come from the developer and, you know, they make a huge impact.

But the other thing is in mobile that because it's free to play games as a service in a very meaningful way, it's not dlcss. It's like daily, daily grind. And of creating new content, live ops you know, events. There's a lot of creativity in how the operators, the people that run the game on the developer side or on the publisher side, interact with the marketing campaigns.

So, and the better they go together, many times the bigger the success. You know, it's not like, I'm going to hire this ad agency. They're going to do something and, you know, come back with the results. It's a daily collaboration. So in that sense, there's a lot of creativity in that as well.

By the way, I've seen many cases on how much art style of the game the choice of the look and the characters or the, let's call, let's say famous ip non ips is integrated. How much the creativity of the integration, the match with the fans how much they make a difference also for the user acquisition.

So it that, you know, to conclude with it, it's not like floating in some limbo. It's all connected, right? And the user acquisition will be much more effective if the game itself as the materials and the content to build on.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's been a big topic today of playable ads and the difference between, you know, the, I guess what I would call them the falsely misleading ones, right?

Yeah. Where it's, I'm not exactly sure what the appropriate term is, that it's too cre, too creative. I, yeah. I just call those the lies. But this is not what this game's gonna turn into being, right? But right, I guess like in that vein, right, before we move on to the third party approach and the evolution of Tilting Point’s, you know, strategy and third party I wanna discuss maybe in the past three years specifically, and I don't mean like, I don't mean Tilting Point, but I mean in general, how mobile publishing has changed. And one of them of course is att, right? Yeah, absolutely. But what else has become very different about mobile publishing in the past three to five years? Yeah. And this is going to obviously inform what we talk about for Tilting.

Asi: So, look I'm not going to beautify it, you know, and give you a BS answer. I think that it's tough. It's tough out there to player at any size. By the way, it's also a problem right now that is shared by the market leaders to launch new titles. You know, if you want to think about an equivalent, you can think about the film industry with blockbusters that it's much safer to, unfortunately to create a sequel sometimes than a whole new innovation.

That's where we are. And the reason is a lot of it is, has to do with the, I mean, it has to do with the economy, but I would say that a TT plays a major role. The fact that user acquisition has changed dramatically and you can't be as effective as before. And the mar market is saturated. It's very tough to do UA effectively.

It's still happening. I'm not I mean we are seeing new titles all the time that are launched and can get funding and be scaled, but it's much, much more difficult than the past. The dream of the five guys in a room doing something that explodes was very true to mobile four or five years ago, less so today.

And and to get the visibility and discoverability stuff as such, on one end, publishers might be needed even more. But you could also argue that they will be very risk averse and they'll prefer to invest their money in things that are established. You know, rather than take any risk on something new.

The good news is that there's more financing options and funding options for developers. So there are more alternatives for the traditional publisher, you know, if you want to get yourself to the next stage. There are more options out there, I think and more education out there.

Alex: Yeah. So I mean, but again, you said that most mobile publishers are not onboarding or signing up with a game before. There's already some sort of live data, right? Correct. And so again, wouldn't that always have been true then that everybody, that publishers were always incentivized to just dog pile on the ones that were the most successful, or at least the ones that they thought they could make an impact on?

Asi: Now we're talking about a different level of risk. When I say established, it's like. You know, the game is already showing that it can run budgets of millions of dollars. While in the past they saw da, the publishers saw data, but it was in a smaller scale. I see. Okay. The scale actually, you know, so yes.

So, so it's kind of how much you are willing to kind of take the bet and extend Sure. And, and I think that it's also a question, which is also a question for Tipping Point. Okay. So, if I see something that is coming to us is it worthwhile to do third party publishing versus investing in my own teams for big publishers, right, that will create something on their own? Where I don't I walk in a, in better business structures, right?

Alex: Well, this is a great segue to basically now discussing Tilting Points in the evolution of your guys' 30 party approach, which you kind of started hinting at in terms of, you know, do I invest outside or do I invest inside?

And also I wanna talk a little bit about UA funds just in generally 1-0-1 in terms of structure. And so probably based on what you've just explained, but you've seen in the mobile market over the past five years, Tilting Point has recalibrated its strategy shifting away from third party publishing.

I believe you guys were calling it Progressive Publishing in the past yes. To third party financing. And so why was the continuation of third party publishing not the right steps specifically for Tilting Point?

Asi: Yeah, no it's a super important question because, you know, some people still, and, you know, recognizes with the past with the progressive publishing, which is good because it was a strong approach.

I also want to say, as I told you, Alex, in, in our in our call before the live broadcast that's what made Tilting Point, you know, so I don't want to dismiss the third party publishing. I think that is what took us from, you know, being a company when I joined 30 people to being 400, you know.

So, it was a very important part of our evolution and creating the DNA of Tilting Point. However, with a TT, with the economy, with all the changes, and also with the, I think with the scale that we got to third party publishing started to be harder and harder to maintain as a, as something that really moved the need, moves the needle for three point.

It's much harder to launch games, as I said, you know, to succeed out there. It's much harder to take risks. The margins are smaller because of UA costs, because of the platforms that are still, you know, even though they're I'm going to say so even though I'm a good partner with the platforms, I'm going to say something that everybody knows their value is diminished.

You know, I remember days when we took a whole team to pitch to Apple in California because their featuring would make a huge dent in huge impact on the game. Today that's not the case. So I think that with all of the third party publishing became tighter and harder, and also not big enough for us, and we decide to go much more for first party as in acquisitions.

As in, if we publish, it'll be from our own studios and helping them to scale and grow. I mean, it's still collaboration because they're independent and there's a lot of, a bit of the publisher developer relationship there, but we own the studio. The only exception is what you ask about is UA financing.

That's a bit of a business segment that stayed with us from the third-party publishing. I can explain to you why, but that's kind of still third-party nature, right?

Alex: Yeah. And you raised that $150 million fund to address that. Right. And you know, right now, actually, I think that UI financing is like all the rage.

Yeah. You guys are doing it and. VCs are doing it, even other publishers are doing it. And I kind of wanna spend some time discussing how it works so that our audience has an under a strong, stronger understanding about what you guys are looking for and how the fund works. And so at a high level I'd love you to tell me how the fund works. You know, where do you raise from? What are you looking for in terms of investments? It's non-dilutive, so, you know, share, tell the audience what that means for Tilting Points specifically, like what's a good, what's a target return for you? Yeah. If you have a hurdle rate.

Asi: So look it, it's a lot to cover. I'll try. We break it into parts, but I think the first thing I'll do is differentiate Tilting Point. I owe it to, to our reputation. We really did it before anyone else. I'm proud of that. By the way, it was something that the people in the company before me invented as a, as an engine.

I was kind of the fuel because I was the first one that came and actually introduced it to developers. And back then, it's crazy. You know, today I'm going to developer to talk about UA financing. He already speaks to three other companies. He knows all about it. He's asking me the details of the details.

In 2017 when I spoke to developers, they had zero clue what it's, and it was totally new to the market as a model. And the idea was that I'm coming to them and I'm saying, look, I'm not loaning you money. As a bank, because when a bank gives you money, you need to return that money. No matter what your house can burn, your game can be off the store.

The game can fail. It doesn't matter. You got that money. You need to return it when you promise to return it. I also told them it's not equity. You know, you're not diluting yourself as a founder. By the way. Some I was a founder myself. On some companies, sometimes you only realize very late how much equity is precious.

When you start to get more and more people in you, you get how much you maybe gave it too easily. And I always tell them, don't give it on UA funding, don't get it on user acquisition. Let me fund it. Or someone else for that matter. So then. The question would be wait.

So you're not taking equity, you're not taking it's not a loan. So what is it? It's it's really my, and it shows you how user requisition is predictable and crazy in that sense. I take it's almost like I buy your future cohorts. I fund them, I pay for them. I'm taking my capped fee at the end when the money comes back and that's it.

All the upside is yours. So not only that you didn't fund it I'm also capped, you know, I'm not sharing revenue with you in that sense. So it's a very smart mechanism to say, yes, it's more expensive money than if it was my money. But on the other end, no strings attached. I didn't give my equity. I don't need to pay it if the game doesn't return it.

This is the most amazing idea here that. I need to wait for my money to come from the game, not from your pocket in that sense. Right? And if it doesn't come from the game, I take a risk. So that was the revolution of this. And now you are right. It became insane that everybody's talking about, it took so many years to be so popular.

And the most interesting thing I see is that even bigger d publishers and developers consider it.

Which never happened before. People associated with it, with I don't need UA funding, I have the money. But now they think about it more as a resource allocation. Like, how do I think about it more as a tool?

It doesn't mean that I'm poor, it just means that I'm, you know, using different methods of fundraising for different goals.

Alex: Okay, so let's just kind of walk through an example here. I'm a mobile gaming studio. I've decided based on my e and DPIs that, you know, I need about $20 million in UA financing, right?

I come to you and I say, Hey, can I have that $20 million? Yeah. And you say what?

Asi: Okay, so, so I tend to speak with developers about it not at the beginning, but after a while, as a visit to the doctor. You know, I see ourselves as very good doctors in the sense that we have this expertise to assess your game and not only of what it can do now, but also see the potential.

I get to a resolution with our analysts that, and it'll take very quickly, you will share data with me. You know, the more transparent you are, the better, obviously, because I can also give you feedback as a doctor. And then I will tell you, you know what? I think that on your game, maybe 20 million is even modest.

You know, I think that we could put $2 million a month and still return it, and I also know when it'll return. So I will tell you, we can put 2 million, it'll turn in, it'll return in 10 months. So every core that I will put 2 million. So then you can ask me, so why don't you put 2.5 and I will tell you on your specific game with its specific genre specific curve in KPIs, I will lose money if I put $1 more than 2 million, or maybe I'm not losing it, but then it'll extend to 14 months, which is too long maybe in this case.

So, so I get to a level of prediction that is like how much I can put. When it'll return. And then you can kind of think about the annual budget out of that. And then I will also tell you just like in, in a doctor visit, go see other doctors if you want. But I'm pretty sure that you know, with all our knowledge, with all the games we run in our portfolio, with all the games we've seen over the years, across genres, we have a very pretty, you know, pretty good way to, to assess your game and give you a very honest feedback.

Now the other answer could be, you're not a $20 million now, you know, but I can maybe put 1 million a month and we'll grow together. You know, maybe we'll get there.

Right. And maybe KPIs improve and maybe, you know, over time we see that we can do more, but so maybe I'll start slower.

Alex: Right. And per user, you've decided that you're getting paid some sort of capped.

Asi: Per cohort. So, which means that if I invest 1 million in January, I will wait to get the 1 million. As long as it takes.

Alex: It'll take, yeah. For the payback period.

Asi: Take months, obviously. Yep. Even more than a year. Sometimes on top of it I will take my fee. So let's just for the sake of obviously different, it's different from deal to deal, game to game.

Let's say it's 5%, so I will take on top of the $1 million, the 5%.

Alex: Right?

Asi: The f the 50 K and that's it for that cohort. Everything else is yours, right? Next cohort February, same thing now. Got it. The interesting thing is that chorts behave differently. It could be the season, it could be a lot of things.

Sure they can. Sure. But you know, the differences are not crazy. So maybe they pay less for a cohort that returned faster. Maybe the percentage is 4%.

Alex: Sure makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So, there's some sort of target payback period you guys have, you're scaling that payback period to, to come with that capped royalty rate.

Yeah. And okay, so there's probably a bunch of other details in there. I have of course, a thousand more questions.

Asi: But I think the thing that is important is that both sides, but especially us, we're doing everything in our power. This is almost the opposite from the old publishing world. Not only to align expectations to put even in the contract, when are we going to check certain things, checkpoints mechanisms for going up and down.

And if, you know, sometimes the developer said, I want to fund too, so how do we co-fund, you know, some, I'm putting in, some he's putting in. How do we make sure that it's all calculated? So I'm just saying there's almost like transparency and full detail of how it works.

Alex: Got it. Yeah. So what is working right now with this strategy?

What products, genres are you parking most of your funds in? Given that you've kind of shifted from the old third party publishing model to third party UA financing tell me about those investments in gaming and also in non-gaming. What's attractive?

Asi: So look we still see a lot of the traditional titles, right?

The match three, the merge the strategy games. I mean, a lot of that social casino, a lot of things like that are coming. There is one thing that I'm seeing this year that I didn't see as much in the past, which is real money gaming. I'm not talking about betting, I'm not talking about gambling, I'm talking about skill-based.

I'm talking about, let's say an app that rewards you with cash or other real world prizes. I'm talking about maybe a rewarded platform. Like, you know, there are those that real cash.com and others that, you know, if you play a game, you can get a certain level, you can get a prize or cash. So, you know, sometimes it's almost feel and by the way, those have a very fast payback.

They can deploy a lot of money and they get, they, they also suffer from sometimes not long enough retention, but they return money very fast. So, it's almost like you see the shift of the industry in that sense for those apps and games to a place where it's no longer enough for players that we move to free to play now.

They want to actually make money. So it's like earn-to-play in the real sense. It's not earn-to-play web3 that was a bit speculative and narrow. It's like much more mainstream earn-to-play. And I see it more and more. It is very interesting to see you know, we are trading li lightly in the sense of to know exactly where to ethically and legally where we can participate, where we can't just as a, to color this.

A few weeks ago, India decided overnight to ban all the real money gaming in India. It was I think something like a $4 billion industry overnight. Basically, you cannot do real money gaming with Indian customers. And a lot of Indian companies are really struggling now to, to find where to go.

So there is, it's still an emerging place where things are being tested and regulations formed. So, you know, but it's interesting, I think it's interesting to see that new crop of things that is coming in and I don't remember before, you know?.

Alex: Okay, interesting. So gaming, but also this new RMG category for you guys. And apps. And apps. And apps. Okay. Awesome.

Asi: Because apps you would argue compared to four or five years ago, are much more gamified with things that became household names like Duolingo. It's much easier to do things like this in the market. So I think that's another area where the boundaries between what is an app, what is a game.

It's kind of, especially with blur certain audiences.

Alex: Yeah. Okay. I wanna shift gears a little bit to your first party strategy. And the thing that I wanna call out is that you obviously have the publishing DNA, but you're not a developer and Tilting Point never really has been a developer, right?

So you have and have been basically buying up studios, correct? And so, I'd like to discuss sort of what are you looking for now that first party is becoming a priority for you guys? Your two main things are third party UA financing and now first party publishing. What are you looking for when it comes to a studio that you wanna bring in-house?

Asi: So, I would say without revealing too much the things that kind of our strategy to competitors or whatever I think that the interesting things about the way we look at m and a. Is what most people would want is the find the hidden value.

Now the hidden value can come in different flavors. It can be something that others are not seeing. I think that was a bit the case of Budge. Budge that we bought from Montreal is a company that in the last three years tripled its profit with us. And it's a leader actually in games for kids in not in the free to play domain.

We saw a business that is very solid, that is not dependent on user acquisition at all. It's very organic. It has this cross-promotion, it has a subscription model that is a very lucrative model and a very good management, very on, on one end, conservative, but growing all the time. And a lot of other companies passed on them.

And we saw a great business and it was, smart acquisition also in a time where a TP came and didn't actually hurt them because they were not dependent on UA. So, I think that was kind of hidden slash public view that others missed. And and it was a great acquisition. In other cases, it could be a hidden value that you can unlock.

And that's more the case of you know, I'll give you an example. A studio that we acquired in Korea, a games a n like the letters a n games they launched a Avatar, the Airbender, in their case, we saw a studio that is proficient in one genre. That's what they do all the time, game after game.

Every game is bigger than the last. And the category is 4X, you know, strategy, games, and what we thought that, one, we can augment them with our Western expertise, like east to west because you need different expertise to address the western market with also with user acquisition and other marketing tech and publishing.

And the other thing that we thought is IP, like to bring them something like Avatar, the Airbender that they might not be able to get the loan. By the way, to your question about mobile publishers, I think that's another area that we didn't mention before. The IP, you know?

Alex: Yeah, definitely.

Asi: Yeah. It's tough for small developers, especially the, unfortunately, but outside of America to go to Paramount or to go to MGM and say, Hey, I want to use your license.

Alex: Yeah.

Asi: You need sometimes someone that does, did it before and.

Alex: Yeah. You jumped actually forward to one of my questions. I was gonna ask about, you know, how important layering IP onto your first party studios is.

And I could see that as probably one of the edges that you can provide. Yes. Which is just access to ip. And it's something, I think on the mobile publishing side, many studios are interested in basically layering or lacing a IP on top of the fundamentals of their game. Whereas in PC console. You aren't always, you are actually less commonly approaching the product that way? Not always, but on the margin.

Asi: Yeah. In mobile, I think the, also the perception is much more positive. Even though, look, there were IP successes in console as well, obviously, but I think that a lot of the leading games in the market might be license ga license IP, you know, and, and approach to it is much more positive.

And also everybody understands that if user acquisition is a big part of what you're doing when you have a known IP it, it does attract audiences. Sure. I will say that a word of caution here, that it's not just slapping an IP, obviously, and the match between the genre. The mobile genre and the IP need to be super, super tight and, and smart.

And if the IP audiences will come and find something, just like the ads that you mentioned before, you know.

Alex: Yeah. But will be the, but well, if well done. Right. Organic to paid ratios. Increase. And so therefore you have a better chance at basically spending less per user which I think is kind of like the general TLDR, so you can provide that to a studio internally and then kind of lever up their UA strategy when they go to market.

Absolutely. So you kind of explained why budge and games or on games was attractive to you guys, right? And we talked a little bit about IP, so that's kind of in the direction that we're heading. But you know, why as a studio leader or a founder of those mobile studios, would I wanna be bought by Tilting Point?

Why am I better off with you guys? Maybe beyond just the capital? What other resources are you providing to these studios?

Asi: Yeah, so, so, M&A in many ways, it's like marriage. It's even a, you know, a bigger marriage or if publishing is engagement, this is full, you know, full on. You need to feel not only good with the people that acquire, but it's like you're becoming part of a family.

And I think that for us coming from publishing from that DNA, it's probably making it a bit easier for studios to walk with us because we speak the same language versus buyers that come from, you know, they are financial roll-ups, that they're not necessarily, you know, coming from gaming per se. So I think that gives us an advantage.

You know, when you come as a developer, you say, Hey, why would I join the family? I would say, look the family is a family that cares for products. It cares for ips, both original and licensed cares for studios, cares for the culture has offices all over the world. A lot of the work is done remote because this is what we do.

You know, we travel all over the world to meet our developers. So I think. We want to prove and when we acquire, but when we convince someone to be acquired, that it's not only the money they will get, it's also about joining a family that they will enjoy continuing to work with and hopefully we can retain them.

You know, that that's another big challenge of acquisitions like that you want the people not to run away after one or two years. That I'm talking about the big talent the founders and the, that's also something we're really thinking about, like how to create an environment that they actually would want to stay.

Alex: Got it. And I guess going towards that organizational question and we'll loop back to one acquisition question before we close out, but, there are from news articles in the past, you know, Tilting Point downscaled, its operations to about 50 people today. And now you're saying that you're also supporting a bunch of first party studios.

Sort of help me understand how you guys divide the team. You know, how many product people are there, how many investors are there, how many operators are there, right? And what's kind of like the apex of first party studios that you would bring on, you know, an operational internal headcount to studio count that's ideal for you guys?

Asi: So, so, first of all, let's focus on the 50. This is typical core what we call Tilting Point core. That means that's the meta team, right? And all the rest of the people that make up the, I don't know what the exact number is, let's say 33, 5400 are the sub companies that we own right Together.

Whether it's a end gains It's Budget, it's other studios that we own, and the meta team as the BD function, right? The M&A function. So that, that's on the business side. It has a marketing team, it has IP it has the PR it also has product people in some cases to support the studios.

But it's when it's needed, again, going to that principle that we're not dictating or overtaken. And, and those 50 people are basically kind of the headquarters. We make it very. To, to your question about the size, I mean, we can buy studios that are very large, that's not the issue.

It's more about what they need. In the case of batch for example, they needed very little because they came with a very strong ability to get IPs. That was their business. Just like we have IPs in free to play, they have IPs and kids from Barbie to Paw Patrol to Bluey. That's their thing, you know, so business development IPs and in many ways they know more than us about how to work with the parents and kids, right?

So there were things we did for them and with them, but it was always on demand, like things that they really needed on the case of A and Gains or others, we might do much more, but again, it'll be because we need to, because it'll really make an impact. Right. It wouldn't be forced. It wouldn't be also also from, you know, operation and cost.

We don't want to duplicate. Right? So I think that change of Downscaling being a much linear center with a lot of independence to the studios, a lot of power to the studios is serving us. You know, we're much more focused. We try to do probably too many things in the past and very heavy ended, you know?

Alex: And so in that relationship, right, you said it's less about how big the studio is and more about what they need, right. I'm curious whether or not you guys have ever done an acquisition that maybe didn't go well so far, maybe where you got a little bit over your skis and what you guys learned from that in term and how that's informing your approach today with M&A.

Asi: I think that if we made I'm not going to name obviously the companies. I think that if we made mistakes, it was a couple of cases that are in the very small range that, you know, we thought we can help them grow or we thought that we can make a big difference and it didn't. And that's fine. And I think that with the market and everything that we talked about, risk management, where it took us is to a place where we would prefer to do larger plays, even if they take a longer time, even if they cannot succeed at the end because not succeed in the sense of executing the deal.

Right. But they are more, much more established and are much more mature for our stage. Then doing a lot of smaller bets, you know, or smaller acquisitions, smaller partnerships. I think it took us to this place that we will do a very thorough due diligence, but it's also that there's a lot of information about the, that company, a lot of history, you know, a lot of products that are maybe 10 years out there, you know?

Alex: Yeah. And anything that makes sense with a small team. Right. I think that there's a ratio, a healthy ratio of kind of external groups that you can support and really be paying attention to that you have mindshare for with a team of 50 people. Yes, exactly. I think that there's, you know, an over portfolio allocation will just mean that you have your hands in too many pots.

Right. And you won't even have the internal team to staff and support them.

Asi: And also you, when you buy larger and you buy more independent and more established and more. I would say strong. Well, like stronger, then they need less of the scaffolding and support, you know? So, so that's part of it.

Alex: Makes sense. Alright, well we're rolling up into almost at time, and I wanna ask you kind of two concluding questions before we sign off today. So far, you know, we've talked a lot about mobile publishing, your third-party strategy, your third-party financing for UA and also first party.

But, you know, one of the things I just generally wanna talk about, there's been a big theme throughout this podcast about, you know, the Apple and Google and a lot of the a TP changes, having fundamentally, like an irrevocably changed the space that actually kind of is what led you guys to shift some of your strategy as well.

Right? Right. So you're sitting here like five years later and I kind of wanna get your perspective, like, what is your total holistic reaction to a TT? Was it earth shattering in the way that you expected or is it earth shattering in a way that, you know, as you've unpack, as the industry has unpacked it for the past five years, is different than maybe the initial reaction to what was going to occur?

Asi: I think it was very traumatic. You know, as in 20 to 30% impact really. I mean, it was huge. I think it, it stall a lot the growth of the industry, but over the years. People learned how to live without debt resolution, at least on Apple. I think that people learned how to make predictions even without certainty that they had before.

I think people learned to use alternative methods, alternative platforms, alternative edge channels. So I think it the good thing is that it demanded more sophistication. I think it was a bit too easy demand more sophistication from publishers, UA experts and developers to, to get there.

And I think that what we see now is also, maybe it's something we'll talk about later, but, we see if five years ago it was all Apple and Google, you know, 50% of your revenue was at Apple, 50% was at Google. In Apple, you add less players, but more quality as in they pay more in terms of revenue.

But in Google you add many more users, but you know, they, they pay less. But it was equal in terms of impact on your company. Today we start seeing other platforms. We start seeing web shops. I have a lot of games as Tilting Point. We have a lot of gains on PC, Steam, and Windows, and even web. We have games that we started to put on console.

So I think the prison has been and a result of it was also a TT and the confines, you know, so people start to look at, so, and sometimes you get to a place where you have a game where. 20, 25% of the revenue is made on the web, on a web shop, you know, outside the store, outside Apple.

And you have direct to consumers relationship. So I think that it forced us to come with those solutions, you know? In that sense. I see. Okay. And get out of the dependency.

Alex: Right. Which in a way could have been a good thing for the industry. Exactly. Just it was, you know, sometimes look,

Asi: The big question is, the big question is it enough?

I mean, I think that there are some people that would still sit here and say it's not enough. I mean, something needs to come beyond free to play. It's no longer the place that allows for innovation and growth as it was before. Where's the new model? What is the new model? What is the new innovation? So I think that you could argue that.

You know, we're still maneuvering, we're still kind of, the ice is melting a bit, but it's still icy.

Alex: Got it. All right. Well, again, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention and so yeah, there's possibly a way out of this yeah. When the business is disrupted. So last question I have for you to close us out today is, you know, right now you are a mobile publisher.

But as the landscape of publishing and cross-platform is changing would you guys ever consider taking PC and console titles or at least cross-platform mobile titles? How are you guys thinking about maybe the next journey in Tilting Point strategy? In first party?

Asi: So look we definitely do that.

We definitely take a lot of our titles that make sense, right, for the audiences to pc. We took a few to console as well recently to see how it differs for us. I think that, that will definitely continue. You know, we do more on switch, we do more on PS and Xbox, we do more on pc. So that definitely will continue to be the case.

However, I think it'll be still mobile first in the sense that they will be designed for mobile and extended then to other platforms. I think that through our requisitions we'll probably also gain some expertise in other platforms because we might buy someone who has also a very strong PC title and they're very good at so maybe the whole family could enjoy more from the benefit, more from their very unique expertise.

So I, I definitely see the cross platform. I see the web shops evolve and the regulations are changing every, you know. Few months. It's like, you need to learn the whole thing again. You know what the court in the us told the, that P Google now needs to do and how to set yourself. Oh, it's only in the US so in Europe it's going to behave differently.

Alex: Or it's the—

Asi: Opposite. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you need to really do very frequent mapping and kind of run between the bullets. So I think to get expertise which we're already having, but to sharpen that. And I think that you know, be better at the synergies, what we call synergies, which is how do we become even more efficient in adding value to the studios.

Alex: Cool. All right. Well thank you so much Asi, for coming on. It was such a pleasure. There's a lot of opportunity obviously in the third-party UA space, and I think the role that you guys are playing is pretty critical, especially for mobile publishers that are trying, I mean, sorry, mobile studios that are trying to, you know, lever up and take their games to the next level. So thank you so much for coming on. It was an awesome episode.

Asi: Thank you so much, Alex.

Alex: All right, and as always, friends if you've got feedback or ideas, please hit me up at [email protected]. I'm always open. And with that's our episode. See you, guys next time.

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