💰🚜 How Playrix turned a 17-Year-Old Tycoon into a $45M/Month UA & Match-3 engine
Township just hit $45M/month - at 17 years old. How?
We sit down with Erno Kiiski (Game Refinery, a Liftoff company) to dissect what is arguably the most underrated transformation in mobile gaming: how Playrix quietly turned an evergreen farming tycoon into a stealth match-3 game with the tycoon repurposed as a UA funnel.
We trace 17 years of Township across five eras — from Facebook Canvas farming sim to hyper-casual mini-game platform to its current form, where match-3 is the main engine and the tycoon is essentially the onboarding. Plus a year-by-year archaeology dig through Township's UA creatives from 2019 to 2026: Pull the Pin, Golden Goblins, Idle Lumber, King Shot iterations,
and AI-generated ads.
If you work in mobile games, product, or UA — this episode will change how you think about evergreen titles, portfolio strategy, and the CPI/LTV equation.
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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 Lancaric
Special Guest: Erno Kiiski
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erno-kiiski/
Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA
Chapters
00:00 - Epic intro
01:23 - Welcome + Game Refinery intro with Erno Kiiski
03:36 — Why Township now ($45M/month)
07:29 — The five eras of Township
20:37 — Pull the Pin and the Playrix portfolio play
23:00 — 2021: when the puzzle became the core
38:24 — Disco Ball and sense-of-urgency design
57:47 — The January 2026 currency inflation play
1:18:21 — Township is a UA funnel, not a tycoon
1:19:32 — The Reverse 4X concept
1:23:08 — UA creatives archaeology: 2019 → 2026
1:47:38 — Is Playrix now bigger than Dream Games?
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Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
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