Istanbul Is the University of Puzzles: Dream, Grand, Loom & the Founder Factory

Solo news week, and the action is all on the platform and ad-tech layer. Miniclip launched AdSurge, a new ad network built with Tencent and Easybrain: Miniclip’s casual portfolio and addressable pool, Easybrain’s Sudoku-grade monetization data, Tencent’s scale behind it, landing exactly as AppLovin sits in legal trouble and Unity bets everything on Vector. It won’t dethrone anyone overnight, but a well-funded entrant with real first-party data means more auctions and pricing pressure, and that’s leverage for all of us. Matej is testing it the day he gets access and says you should too. Then the shutdown wave. Supercell is killing Squad Busters: pulled from stores December 1, servers off December 14, barely two years after a global launch Supercell almost never grants and almost never reverses. If the best hit-rate instincts in the industry can push a game to global and lose it this fast, the bar for worldwide launch is very high. Ubisoft is worse: Rainbow Six Mobile shuts in January, Helsinki studio RedLynx is poised to close with 52 jobs at risk, and the number that explains it all is $5.3M lifetime IAP from 13M downloads. Installs are a vanity metric; monetization is the business. Also: we broke it first, Luis de la Camara (ex-Rovio, King, Gameloft) is the new CMO of Smadex, go watch Felix’s episode with him. And the 30% fight boils over: Google defending Play Store commissions in a £1bn UK class action while the CEOs of Rovio and Sega say Apple and Google aren’t earning their cut. No shit.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: the shutdown wave00:25 – AdSurge: Miniclip, Tencent and Easybrain’s new ad network02:05 – Luis de la Camara joins Smadex as CMO02:20 – Supercell kills Squad Busters03:05 – Ubisoft: Rainbow Six Mobile, RedLynx and $5.3M from 13M installs04:00 – Apple and Google’s 30%: UK class action, Rovio and Sega speak up🎙️ HOSTMatej Lancaric – UA & Creatives👉 Got AdSurge access? Tell us in the comments👉 Felix + Jakub back next episode👉 Join the 2.5 Gamers Slack#MobileGaming #AdSurge #Miniclip #Supercell #SquadBusters #Ubisoft #AdTech #UserAcquisition #TwoAndAHalfGamers---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected] you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Luis de la Camara spent 20 years on the client side, six in AAA, then Gameloft, King, Scopely, and five years at Rovio through the Sega exit, and he left a few weeks ago. Felix got him on before the news broke: Luis is the new CMO of Smadex. So this is a conference-bar conversation on tape. The brand question first: even with Angry Birds and Candy Crush, nobody has cracked measuring brand on top of UA; broad awareness campaigns brought the same quality users at a much higher CPI, so the real power of brand is cheaper performance, and incrementality testing is the only way to know whether App Store search is growth or just defending your own IP. Felix’s thesis: the networks know your users better than you ever will, so stop fighting it and segment on their output. His hack: track eCPM decay per user; shallow curve means IAP-optimized traffic, steep drop means ad-ROAS traffic, and you can tell who will ever pay. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: incentives that make rewarded cohorts perform01:17 – Who is Luis: AAA, Gameloft, King, Scopely, Rovio03:36 – Brand vs performance: the battle Rovio never fully won05:25 – “The networks know your users better than you”09:11 – Felix’s eCPM decay hack for spotting payers10:24 – UA Society takeaways: segmentation, rewarded users, Papaya14:29 – Retargeting, CTV and incrementality done simply21:30 – DSPs are winning: Moloco, Liftoff and how to work with them25:47 – The BREAKING news: Luis joins Smadex as CMO🎙️ HOST & GUESTFelix Braberg – Ad MonetizationLuis de la Camara – CMO, Smadex (ex-Rovio, Scopely, King)https://www.linkedin.com/in/luiscamaraking/This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Deepstash is “TikTok for smart people”: key ideas from books in bite-size, level-like chapters, now part of a portfolio (Paladin for history, Imperio for business) that founder Vladimir calls Smartheads. We had him on with Jeff Cohen from PvX to unpack how an education app scales like a game. The numbers: more than 50% of paid subscribers now come through web2app after “a billion iterations” that Vlad himself thought would never work, 3,000 creatives in the last 30 days from a 30-person UA and creative team, niche organic pages that surface what goes viral before it becomes an ad, and contextual cross-promo (read the Iliad in Deepstash, get Achilles in Paladin) converting 10x better than generic ads. Felix’s homework for Vlad: you’re on AdMob only, add two or three networks and watch ad revenue double or triple, then go the Duolingo route and show ads to the users you know won’t subscribe. Jeff explains why web2app fits subscriptions better than games (one purchase decision, then opt-out), why consumer apps are now half of PvX’s ~$40M/month in funded UA, and why he keeps telling Vlad to spend more. Plus GTA, Halloween and Dracula as cultural-moment content, tiered AI models for creative production, and the one gap Matej couldn’t let go: no AppLovin, no playables, yet.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: web2app01:17 – Meet Vlad (Deepstash) and Jeff (PvX)05:05 – The product: ideas as levels, Paladin, Imperio12:34 – Cross-promo that works: context = 10x15:15 – Felix: one network is “ripping your eyes out”18:58 – Web2app: 50%+ of subscribers, why games struggle30:00 – Seasonality, Q5 and where PvX came in41:35 – 3,000 creatives, 30 people, organic pages, AI tiers51:00 – No AppLovin, no playables. Yet.🎙️ HOSTS & GUESTSMatej Lancaric – UA & CreativesFelix Braberg – Ad MonetizationJakub Remiar – Game DesignVladimir Oane – Founder, Deepstash / SmartheadsJeff Cohen – Origination Lead, PvX Partners#Deepstash #Web2App #UserAcquisition #PvX #SubscriptionApps #MobileMarketing #TwoAndAHalfGamers--------------------------------------Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Rotate Rings is two weeks old, already at 1M DAU and 500–600K downloads a day. The twist: the core mechanic was a UA creative first. Century Games ran rotating-ring fake gameplay for a year, Tasty Travels used it as a minigame, and now Nebula (Felix's "good authority" says Hungry Studio, the Block Blast team) turned the ad into the game. No timer, no fail state, "another Arrows," and still only $45–50K/day in ads because interstitials are delayed Block Blast-style: Jakub hit level 34 without one. 3,000 creatives in three weeks, AI IQ-test guys, Einstein, sunglasses to hide the AI eyes. UA is 70% of the success, and the clones are coming.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Why the traffic isn't pristine01:37 – A UA creative became a game03:08 – Gameplay: rotate, disconnect, shatter08:20 – 1M DAU in two weeks11:04 – Hungry Studio's delayed-interstitial playbook14:32 – Creatives: AI hooks, 3,000 ads, 90 playables23:12 – $50K/day verdict and clone predictionThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected] you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

https://www.segmenta-ai.com/ - Link for signup if you want bid floor helpFelix, solo from Istanbul, with the advanced ad monetization episode nobody makes: what to do once your game is earning $1,000 a day in ads. The core idea is that ad revenue stacks on top of itself, so tactics that were a waste of time at $100 a day are suddenly worth real money, and the networks know it better than you do. First, network coverage: at $1,000 a day you should be live on at least six or seven of the ten big networks (AppLovin, Meta, Google, Unity, Mintegral, InMobi, Digital Turbine, Pangle, Moloco, Liftoff, BidMachine on iOS), and at $3,000 a day on all of them, because each good network adds roughly 5–10% to revenue. And finally, bid floors: since the industry went bidding-only two years ago, every network runs a bandit model that keeps testing lower bids until one converts, dragging your average down, turning you from price setter to price taker. Bid floors, set at the right levels and updated at the right cadence, claw back 5–20%, and Felix's new SDK-less bid-floor service plugging into MAX showed one client earning nearly 30% more during the test window. Eleven games live, looking for the twelfth. Next milestone to plan for: $25–30K a day, where everything changes again.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: when spacing ads out is actually worth it02:32 – Why ad monetization stacks: what changes at $1,000/day03:30 – Which networks to run: 7 of 10 at $1K/day, all of them at $3K/day05:00 – app-ads.txt and reseller demand: why it's not a beer tap07:00 – The recency model: impressions lose 39–52% of value by the 12th09:30 – Policing ad length: timestamp every impression and confront the network11:30 – The pro move: load an interstitial in the rewarded slot13:00 – Bid floors vs the bandit model: from price taker back to price setter---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected] you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Aniimo is the prettiest game we've reviewed this year and Jakub spent a week waiting for it to catch him. It didn't, and the reason is the biggest hole we've ever found in a Chinese launch: there is no gacha. None. Everything you'd expect from a top-tier open-world RPG except the engine that pays for it. You catch your Aniimo in the world, grind the rare ones through long quest chains, and that's it. Jakub's verdict: "you build a beautiful car and you forgot to put in the engine." Mobile revenue is around $200K a day, the cross-platform in-game spend chart suggests maybe $600K combined, and the audience is exactly who you'd want: Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand with the US at just 16%. The people who, in Jakub's words, live and die by the gacha, handed a game with none. Kudos to FunPlus for diversifying away from 4X. Now add the gacha.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: Honkai did $12M a day at launch, Aniimo doesn't have the engine for it02:32 – Who made it: Paw Print Studio, FunPlus and why the 4X OGs need a way out06:00 – The game: Genshin world, Pokémon catching, twining into your Aniimo, boss fights and rarities15:00 – Energy, live ops and cosmetics: the only monetization that exists18:24 – The elephant in the room: there is no gacha23:30 – The numbers: 40M pre-regs, ~1M DAU, $200K/day mobile, Japan and Korea leading34:11 – UA and creatives: 1,300 in-game cinematics, no AI, no playables, Kakao and Path of Exile YouTubers43:23 – Category check: Genshin $30M, WuWa $10M, NTE $5M a month and the predictionThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX CardFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Draft Showdown is a Voodoo-published auto-battler that is, by the admission of the two people on this podcast who actually worked on it, Battle Legion with the friction removed, and that's why it's doing what Battle Legion never could: roughly $120K a day, 45–50% of it from ads, 400K DAU, a $70K IAP spike on the new Draft Pass season, and 1,200 new creatives in the last three days. Felix estimates $38–43K a day in ads alone, and he's already messaged Voodoo begging to know how they did it. On the UA side Matej is surprised to see Facebook still the biggest channel over AppLovin, Unity and Mintegral, then explains why: the creatives are fake-as-hell mass battles, 4X hooks, Mob Control tubes, Plants vs Zombies clones, Hero Wars, Rush Royale, a dinosaur you never get to pick, all 59 seconds, no AI, "as soon as you see these type of ads, you know it's expensive." Plus Teut Weidemann's new book "I Told You So: Why Fairness Wins in Free-to-Play"⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: $38–43K a day in ads01:20 – Battle Legion trauma: Matej did the UA, Jakub did the design, Voodoo did the iteration05:54 – The core loop: roguelite draft, live counters, four-card deck and no placement11:35 – Legendaries behind the Draft Pass, shard gacha and the two-plus-one ad shop19:26 – Felix's admon breakdown: seven rewarded placements and the double-interstitial trick23:44 – Numbers: $120K/day, 400K DAU, $70K season spike, Voodoo portfolio and the $200–300K prediction30:25 – UA and creatives: Facebook still number one, 1,200 creatives in 3 days, all fake, no AI40:06 – Rigged matchmaking: why 70% win rate feels fair and games push it to 95%This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Mystery Dumpling Unbox ASMR launched in mid-August, spiked to a million downloads a day, is still pulling 300K downloads a day and 1.1M DAU, shows $2 of IAP revenue in the last 30 days.Every one of those 12 million monthly downloads comes from a viral toy trend: RMS "Real Magical Stuff" mystery dumplings, unboxing videos on TikTok and YouTube doing 47M, 70M and 82M views each, and a developer that named the app so precisely ("mystery dumpling" + "unbox") that it sits as the first Google result when a kid searches for the toy. The monetization is textbook ultra-casual pumping: interstitials triggered by action count starting at 15 and dropping to two or three, a permanent MREC on a 10-second refresh sitting on top of the "claim free legendary pack"Felix runs the math: mostly Indonesia and Tier 2/3 traffic, only 33K DAU in the US, so somewhere between $18K and $29K a day in ad revenue, call it $1M a month and roughly $900K banked since launch.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: 70 million views on a dumpling unboxing video01:32 – What Mystery Dumpling Unbox ASMR is and why $2 of IAP is the wrong way to look at it02:29 – Gameplay walkthrough: interstitials on action count, a permanent MREC, Google billboards and four ads per screen11:07 – The toy behind it: RMS mystery dumplings, Amazon, €50 diamond editions and a safety recall12:50 – The numbers: 1M downloads/day spike, 300K/day now, 1.1M DAU, 12M downloads a month, all Tier 2/315:23 – Felix's Panini FIFA theory and the $18–29K/day ad revenue estimate20:32 – Zero paid UA: TikTok, YouTube, Google search #1 and how ASO did all the work29:07 – Fake 4.7-star reviews, the ultra-casual category and the Miniclip cloneThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Mobidictum Conference in Istanbul, October 7–8: fifth year, 80% of the top Turkish studios in the room, 20 Vietnamese and 30 Chinese companies, 60% international attendance for the first time, and all three of us on stage. Batuhan has free tickets for the 2.5 Gamers audience, so reach out.Turkey went from zero gaming news for five years to producing the most consistent hit-making machine in mobile, and in this episode we sit down with Batuhan Avucan, founder of Mobidictum, to find out how that actually happened and what's coming next. The short version: investors gave Turkish founders one mandate, puzzle, and Turkish founders executed. The Sort category alone went from basically nothing in 2023 to roughly $80M a month in IAP, and once you add ad revenue on top it's easily $120M a month, spearheaded by Pixel Flow, Magic Sort, Hexa Sort and friends. Block is dominated by Color Block Jam and Block Out from Grand Games, Match Blast and Match Factory are Peak's home turf, and match-3 is still a heavyweight fight between Dream and Playrix. But the interesting part is the machine underneath it: studios that grew up working with publishers like Rollic and Lion, learned the craft, then went solo and shipped Loom and RotateLab-sized results. Batuhan puts it better than we can: "We don't train talent anymore, we train founders." 🙏 THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY POTENSUSPotensus is a premium ad network built by people who've been on both sides of the industry. Direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola and Vodafone, no programmatic, no middleman tags, premium CPMs landing in your game. Plus, with PlayableMaker they turn brand videos and statics into playable ads and rewarded video. Head to potensus.com and check their creative portfolio in the show notes.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: "We make unicorns"02:26 – Who is Batuhan Avucan and what is Mobidictum03:45 – Turkey's investment story: from Peak's exit to Series A rounds going underground08:31 – Jakub's data: Sort at $120M/month, Block, Match-3, Blast and the physics puzzle tip for 202712:30 – "We don't train talent, we train founders": the publisher-to-founder pipeline and the puzzle dependency18:10 – Subsidies, investor mandates and why nobody funds a Turkish RPG20:27 – China ate every genre except puzzle, so the real threat is Vietnam24:15 – Mobidictum Conference, Oct 7–8 Istanbul: who's coming and free tickets for our audience---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej Lancaric⁠Guest: Batuhan AvucanJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Suck It Up is Tactile Games' new eat-and-grow hole game, and three months after soft launch it's doing ~$30K a day in IAP — about to overtake Lily's Garden as the Danish studio's biggest title (and Lily's Garden made well over half a billion). Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg walk the game: a Hole 'Em All-style timed core with the smart differentiators (live animals that jump and hide in levels, a level-based "album" of collectible objectives, and an untimed Zen Garden mode that conveniently makes the "no timer, no stress" creatives true), then the category detective work — the whole thing traces back to Donut County's 2017 Steam trailer, which Voodoo copied into Hole.io (still 300K downloads a day today after a revival), and now Hole 'Em All, Moon Active's Hole Stars, ironSource's Holey 3D, Grand Games' Jelly Hole, and a spiky Hong Kong "Hole Busters" are all fighting for it. Felix's ad-mon read: interstitials only from level 35, rewarded from level 50, eight placements, ad revenue likely under 15% — a deliberate IAP-first, retention-first setup (D1 probably north of 50%, 36 minutes a day). ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Suck It Up — Tactile's new hole game02:40 The core — timed levels, live animals, and the Zen Garden "no stress" mode06:40 Album, no-ads pack & the slim feature set09:20 The numbers — $30K/day, about to pass Lily's Garden11:00 The category — from Donut County's trailer to Hole.io's 300K/day14:50 Who's in the hole race — Hole 'Em All, Moon Active, ironSource, Hole Busters19:40 Ad-mon — interstitials at 35, rewarded at 50, retention play24:30 The UA — 60 playables, Unity works, and Facebook is goneThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]