💰🚜 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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