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This is a no BS gaming podcast. We share insights, knowledge and fun gossip relating to the topics of User Acquisition, Game Design and Ad monetisation. You will find here actionable insights in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. A safe space where we mimic the honesty of a 4am conference discussion. Enjoy & let us know your feedback!

  1. The Mistplay Audience Network: Smartest UA Expansion of 2026! 3X reach, same quality

    15 HR AGO

    The Mistplay Audience Network: Smartest UA Expansion of 2026! 3X reach, same quality

    Rewarded UA used to be a test bed. In 2026, it's a third of your UA spend. Mistplay just made it easier to scale. We sit down with the full Mistplay leadership team — Tricia (CEO), Aaron (CCO), and Mark "Bear" Bearman (GM, B2B) — to unpack the launch of the Mistplay Audience Network. The conversation covers the state of rewarded UA in 2026, validating rewarded as a core channel, why the category is consolidating, what the MyAppFree acquisition actually unlocks for advertisers, and how the audience network expands Mistplay reach to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards inventory with a single check-box. If you've been treating rewarded UA as a tactical add-on rather than a core part of your stack, this episode is the wake-up call. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Cold open — what the audience network means for UA 01:33 Welcome + guest intros (Tricia, Aaron, Bear) 02:55 The state of rewarded UA in 2026 06:23 Survey data: rewarded UA at 20-30% of budgets 07:29 The scale-vs-performance tension and the "patient path" 13:17 What the audience network actually is, in plain English 17:51 Brand budgets and the value-exchange opportunity 23:00 The "tick a box" advertiser experience explained 30:31 Where rewarded UA goes next — discovery + retention 📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS — AppsFlyer's 2025 Performance Index validates what UA managers already see in their dashboards: roughly one third of the top UA sources are now rewarded. Three to four years ago, rewarded was 1-3% of spend; today it's 6-10% average and climbing. — Matej's own UA survey: rewarded UA is now 20-30% of budget for most respondents, and 80% are planning to increase it further next year. That makes it core, not tactical. — The Mistplay Audience Network = one campaign, three inventory sources. The same Mistplay buying engine now extends to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards (Mobvista) inventory with a literal check-box. Tricia's framing: "same key, more doors." — Why MyAppFree matters specifically: brand advertisers finally want value-exchange placements (not just gamers), which means a third inventory stream that wasn't monetizable through gaming alone. This is genuinely new. — The performance-quality bar isn't being lowered to add scale. Mark Bearman: a high-quality DAU/MAU ratio and engagement filter still applies; the audience network expands reach without compromising the cohort signal. — Rewarded UA consolidation is real and rapid. Three to five years ago, every studio was launching a rewarded platform; now the market is consolidating around the platforms with sustainable foundations. Tricia's intentional framing: "platforms our partners can count on for trusted ROAS delivery." — Future direction: Mistplay is shifting from a closed loyalty platform to a UA layer that handles discovery, acquisition, AND retention as a continuous loop. The audience network is the first piece of that vision. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ HOSTS Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant 🎤 GUESTS Tricia — CEO, Mistplay https://www.linkedin.com/in/tricia-han-920649/ Aaron — Chief Commercial Officer, Mistplay https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronthandi/ Mark "Bear" Bearman — GM, B2B Solutions, Mistplay https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwbearman13/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #mobilegaming #useracquisition #rewarded #mistplay #liveops #f2p --------------------------------------- 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: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

    36 min
  2. 🧠 MVP UA template AXON: How to set up your Applovin for Success by Matej Lancaric

    1 DAY AGO

    🧠 MVP UA template AXON: How to set up your Applovin for Success by Matej Lancaric

    The AppLovin setup playbook. No micromanaging, no manual optimization, no bullshit. UA template for you! Applovin UA explained! Solo for episode three of the MVP UA Template series (after Facebook and Google), this time breaking down AppLovin / Axon end-to-end. Tracking setup, campaign structure, bidding, ROAS targets, the new CPM-vs-CPI billing change, creative strategy, the real Axon dashboard with real numbers from his own game, and the patience required to actually scale. The headline lesson: AppLovin is a beast, but it really matters what you feed it. Garbage MMP signals = garbage results. Playables aren't optional. And the geo-bucket strategy that works on Facebook and Google does NOT work here — worldwide campaign with geo targets is the only sensible setup. If you've been avoiding AppLovin because it feels like a black box, this is the episode that demystifies it. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Axon dashboard preview 02:20 Why AppLovin and what this episode covers 04:14 Budget, MMP signals, and the "garbage in, garbage out" rule 07:42 Worldwide campaign + geo targets (NOT geo buckets) 10:58 D7 vs D28 ROAS — which attribution window to pick 12:57 CPM vs CPI billing — the new setting most teams miss 14:40 Creative strategy: 80% playables, 60 new per month 17:59 Push budgets hard when something works (30-50%) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS — AppLovin is not Facebook and not Google. The geo-bucket structure (US / Tier-1 / RoW) that works on those channels does NOT work here. Run ONE worldwide campaign, split by attribution window and platform only, and use geo-level ROAS targets to steer traffic — never geo-level budgets (they don't work the way you think). — Garbage MMP signals = garbage results. AppLovin doesn't know if you're sending the right event. If you're sending free trial signals labeled as subscriptions, AppLovin will optimize for free trials and your ROAS will look great in Singular while your real revenue dies. — Skip the CPI / D7 warm-up phase. AppLovin no longer requires it. Go straight to D7 or D28 ROAS, ideally D28 for higher quality and longer-cohort optimization. Pick D7 only if your payback period is short and cash flow matters more than cohort quality. — New CPM vs CPI billing setting: start with CPM (spends evenly across the day), then switch to CPI only after you have winning creatives identified and want to scale aggressively. CPM billing eliminates the old "budget capped in 2 hours" problem. — Playables are non-negotiable. 80-90% of spend should go to playables. Top-grossing games ship 60+ new playables per month — that's the bar. Video length: 30-60 seconds, best results in the 45-59 second window. No hook needed on AppLovin (user must watch 30+ seconds anyway). This episode is brought to you by Potensus — the premium ad network with direct deals to Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Vodafone (no programmatic middlemen), partnered with PlayableMaker for native gaming creative formats. Head to potensus.com to get started. 📌 MVP UA TEMPLATE SERIES 1. Facebook setup 2. Google setup 3. AppLovin setup - you are here Full AppLovin setup guide linked in show notes. #mobilegaming #useracquisition #applovin #axon #mvpua #liveops #f2p Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA Matej Lancaric User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant ⁠https://lancaric.me --------------------------------------- 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 - matej@lancaric.me

    26 min
  3. 🌺​Cozy Florist Deep Dive: 4,000 AI-Generated creatives in 30 Days

    4 DAYS AGO

    🌺​Cozy Florist Deep Dive: 4,000 AI-Generated creatives in 30 Days

    A Chinese-developed Farmville replacement just shipped 4,000 AI-generated creatives in 30 days. And it's only making $30K/day. What's actually going on? We dig into Cozy Florist by Rift Sky Games — the Western counterpart to "My Garden Tale," which is already doing $10M/month in China. The game is a remarkably polished Farmville without the annoying resource puzzle, with stacked cores including flower-merging mechanics, Solitaire-association customer orders, gacha-style flower rarities, social raids, and TikTok Live integration baked into the metagame. But the puzzle is the creative volume. 4,000 ads in 30 days is Forex-scale UA output. The game is testing primarily in Philippines despite being released globally in December. And the revenue isn't moving in proportion. The hosts spend half the episode trying to figure out what's happening — and the conclusion they land on is uncomfortable for Western UA: this is what "second generation" Chinese UA looks like, and the West isn't ready. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 What's going on 02:55 Cozy Florist walkthrough — Chinese fonts, sad-story onboarding 05:21 Stacked cores — flower merging, Solitaire customers, gacha 13:00 TikTok Live integration baked into the metagame 16:44 Revenue reality — 90% China, 2% US, $30K/day 21:31 4,000 AI creatives in 30 days — Forex-scale output 25:21 Why this game isn't soft-launching like a Western game 27:55 The "second generation UA" gap Chinese studios are opening Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop -------------------------------------- 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 years They power top mobile publishers around the world Launch 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 Lancaric⁠ Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA --------------------------------------- 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 --------------------------------------- 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 - matej@lancaric.me --------------------------------------- If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

    32 min
  4. The Attention Budget Rule: why tutorials should teach maximum 3 things at a time

    7 MAY

    The Attention Budget Rule: why tutorials should teach maximum 3 things at a time

    We sit down with Katie Madding (CEO, emhanceAI, ex-Adjust CPO) and John Hobson (founded user research at Bungie and Blizzard, 20+ years on Halo, Destiny, WoW). The conversation walks through two real case studies — a Skullgirls Mobile playtest and a creative comparison — using emhance AI's facial-emotion analysis (0.89 ROC AUC, basically "lie detector" precision). The findings are uncomfortable. Skullgirls' tutorial pauses combat to teach mechanics players don't need yet. Every level ends with 5 passive screens stacked back-to-back. And the creatives with "near-death experience" hooks within the first 4 seconds genuinely outperform — not because Chinese UA teams said so, but because the emotion data shows it. If you build games or ads for mobile, this is required viewing. The link to the report is here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0v1sLM0 Peaksel case study: https://www.emhance.ai/success-stories/peaksel-emhance-case-study ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Cold open — designing the engagement curve 01:30 Welcome + Katie and John intros 03:48 How AI facial-emotion playtesting actually works 07:57 Skullgirls case study: the first 15 minutes broken 11:25 The attention budget — what it is, why it caps at 3 17:14 High vs low engagement moments in Skullgirls 24:13 Creative case study: Cat Match Two vs Sheep Swipe One 29:52 Why "near-death experience" creatives win — confirmed ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS — emhance AI uses facial-emotion analysis (0.89 ROC AUC, "lie detector" precision) to identify exact moments of high and low engagement during playtest sessions. Engagement = emotion + attention combined. — Skullgirls Mobile tutorial findings: pausing combat to teach optional mechanics players don't need creates frustration. Players come away thinking the game is shallow because the tutorial fights are too easy and the text walls killed momentum. — John's "attention budget" rule: teach maximum 3 things at a time, then give players space to digest. From his Halo days: pop up a tooltip → if used, snooze 5 minutes → if not, repeat. Snooze 15 minutes after second use. — The "5-stack of boring screens" problem is universal. Win → victory animation → reward screen → loading screen → cut scene → talking head → finally back to gameplay. Nobody designed this stack on purpose. Real playtesting reveals it. — Why 6 out of 7 AI ads still suck: the concept is right ("save the character") but the small execution details matter enormously. Emotion data lets you identify which 4 of 15 things in a creative actually worked rather than throwing out the whole concept. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ HOSTS Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant Jakub Remiar — Game Design consultant Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant 🎤 GUESTS Katie Madding — CEO, emhance AI (ex-CPO, Adjust) John Hobson — Game user researcher, ex-Bungie/Blizzard, 20+ years on Halo, Destiny, WoW 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 Lancaric⁠ Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA --------------------------------------- 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

    37 min
  5. Soft Launch Sonar: 15 New Games, 14 Are Iterations, 1 Is Probably Doomed?!

    6 MAY

    Soft Launch Sonar: 15 New Games, 14 Are Iterations, 1 Is Probably Doomed?!

    Every new mobile game is now a copy of a copy. And that's not a complaint — it's the strategy. We dig through the soft launch charts to surface 15+ new games released in the last three months. Voodoo's Block Pals (which is literally just Block Jam 3D again). Moon Active's two new merge games are chasing Gossip Harbor. Spike's Hexa Out, Quick Send, and Solitaire Sort. Grand Games hiding its new Aerogem on the Zimbabwe App Store to dodge takedowns. SuperSend's template-driven creative-first approach with FROZIA and Daily Farm Harvest Empire. Plus the bigger structural question: is Overwatch Rush actually going to make it? The pattern is clear - 80% works, 20% iteration. Every serious studio is following the same playbook. The question is who executes it best. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Cold open — merge is the new match-3 04:04 Field Day by Bitod — ex-Supercell startup goes GTA 06:15 Overwatch Rush — Blizzard's mobile play (high CPI face) 09:53 Moon Active's merge wave — Reality Bay + Family Bay 12:43 Voodoo's Block Pals + Century's DakiMage Color Puzzle 15:35 Turkish section — Rolik, Spike, Grand Games dominance 25:16 Aerogem hidden on the Zimbabwe App Store 27:00 Arrows hits 6.5M DAU — the new template everyone copies 28:38 SuperSend's creative-first templates: FROZIA, Daily Farm — "80% works, 20% iteration" is now the default soft launch strategy. Every game in this episode is an iteration on a proven winner — Block Jam, Gossip Harbor, Pixel Flow, Lesmore's Arrows, Township, Last War Creative. — Merge is officially being treated as the new match-3. Moon Active alone has two new merge games in soft launch. Caveat: merge is much harder to balance and live-ops than match-3, so most of these will fail. — Grand Games is hiding its new game Aerogem on the Zimbabwe App Store specifically because legal teams from incumbents (likely MiniClip / Lesmore) don't operate there. This is apparently a real soft launch tactic now. — Spike has abandoned its main App Store account and is publishing everything from a new "testing" account, releasing Hexa Out, Quick Send, and Solitaire Sort in rapid succession with the same template strategy. -------------------------------------- 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 years They power top mobile publishers around the world Launch 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 Lancaric⁠ 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 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 - matej@lancaric.me

    34 min
  6. 🎲​ Will Coin Master Board Adventure eat Monopoly Go? (Our year-end predictions)

    4 MAY

    🎲​ Will Coin Master Board Adventure eat Monopoly Go? (Our year-end predictions)

    MoonActive just launched the obvious counter-punch to Monopoly Go — and it's already pulling 2.2M monthly downloads against Monopoly Go's 1.8M, with 10x fewer creatives. We break down Coin Master Board Adventure end-to-end: the stacked core loops (board + merge + Klondike + bombs + idle tree pets), the static-vs-seasonal album split, the 5-pop-up energy trap, the UA creative library, the launch trajectory, and why social casino monetization is still a money printer that the rest of the industry can't crack. Plus the question that opens the episode and pretty much defines the genre: what is the D365 retention of users spending $5,000+ a month? (Spoiler: basically 100%.) If you work on UA, live-ops, or social casino product, this one's required viewing. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Cold open — D365 retention of $5K/month whales 02:55 The setup: MoonActive's counter-launch to Monopoly Go 04:13 Coin Master is a $70M/month plow horse — for years 08:50 Walking the actual game: pop-ups, energy, board core 13:12 Five stacked cores: merge, Klondike, bombs, idle tree 20:00 Launch trajectory — $300K/day, 80K downloads/day 21:27 UA creatives: 1.5K running, why CPIs stay at $90+ 31:21 Year-end predictions and the Las Vegas granny -------------------------------------- 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 years They power top mobile publishers around the world Launch 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 Lancaric⁠ Podcast: Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA --------------------------------------- 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 --------------------------------------- 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 - matej@lancaric.me --------------------------------------- If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

    33 min
  7. 🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Record Revenue, Record Layoffs, Why Only 2 Genres Are Actually Winning in 2026

    2 MAY

    🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Record Revenue, Record Layoffs, Why Only 2 Genres Are Actually Winning in 2026

    The mobile gaming industry just posted record revenue ($195.6B) while simultaneously firing 44,000 developers. Here's what's actually going on. Matej Lančarič flies solo this week to break down the five stories that matter most: NTE's massive global launch, IronSource's official shutdown after one of the worst acquisitions in mobile gaming history, the State of Mobile Gaming 2026 report and what its genre data really tells us, Adam Foroughi's spicy 20VC interview, and Google's ad tech antitrust ruling that's about to reshape programmatic advertising. Five stories, one signal: the market growth is real but extremely concentrated. If you're not in the right two genres or one of the live-service giants, you're competing for table scraps. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Record revenue, record layoffs paradox 00:50 NTE / Neverness to Everness global launch 02:30 IronSource is officially dead — RIP $4.4B acquisition 03:45 $195.6B revenue + 44K layoffs — the concentration story 05:15 Adam Foroughi on 20VC — $83M payday, AI, layoffs 05:45 Google ad tech antitrust ruling — what comes next 06:30 Closing — the week ahead ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS — Global gaming hit $195.6B in revenue in 2025, the highest annual total on record. Meanwhile 44,000+ dev jobs have been cut since 2022, with another 2-3K already gone in 2026. One in three US developers laid off, 48% still jobless. — IronSource is dead. The $4.4B Unity acquisition is one of the most controversial deals in mobile gaming history — Supersonic is being sold off, and three and a half years later there's almost nothing left of IronSource inside Unity. Unity Vector grew 48% YoY though, so the ad business itself isn't dying. — NTE (Neverness to Everness) launched globally April 29 on PC, Android, iOS, PS5, and Mac with cross-platform progression. Same team behind Tower of Fantasy. Massive IP, production values, and gacha — benchmark is Genshin and Zenless Zone Zero. — Adam Foroughi's 20VC interview is required listening. $83M CEO payday after a 92% stock drop, AI vs layoffs, AppLovin's run as one of the best-performing tech businesses right now. --------------------------------------- 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 Lancaric⁠ Podcast: Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA --------------------------------------- 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 --------------------------------------- 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 - matej@lancaric.me --------------------------------------- If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

    9 min
  8. 💀​ Review Radar #11: 80% of the games we covered are already dead!

    30 APR

    💀​ Review Radar #11: 80% of the games we covered are already dead!

    Welcome to Review Radar #11 — the "broken dreams and hopes" edition. We revisit every game they reviewed between September and December last year to see which ones survived, which ones got killed, and which ones genuinely broke through. The verdict is brutal. AceCraft dropped from 800K downloads a day to 4K. Galaxy Defense never scaled. The Squad Busters of the world joined Supercell's graveyard. But there were real winners: The Tower, Level Devil, Sunday City (the "Casino GTA"), and Heads Down all proved that smart design beats hype every time. If you want to understand what actually predicts mobile game survival, this is the episode. #mobilegaming #gamedesign #useracquisition #liveops #f2p Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop -------------------------------------- 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 years They power top mobile publishers around the world Launch 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 Lancaric⁠ Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Cold open — "broken dreams" radar incoming 01:51 AceCraft, Galaxy Defense and the September graveyard 07:54 The Tower — one of the best games we've reviewed 12:01 Sudoku Master and the puzzle category check-in 20:11 The Supercell post-2018 graveyard + MoCo's slow death 28:38 Sunday City — the "Casino GTA" winning at $100K/day 34:00 Final verdict — who survived and who didn't --------------------------------------- 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 --------------------------------------- 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 - matej@lancaric.me --------------------------------------- If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

    35 min
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About

This is a no BS gaming podcast. We share insights, knowledge and fun gossip relating to the topics of User Acquisition, Game Design and Ad monetisation. You will find here actionable insights in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. A safe space where we mimic the honesty of a 4am conference discussion. Enjoy & let us know your feedback!

Information

  • Creator
    Lancaric.me
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    437
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Lancaric.me
  • Show Website
    two & a half gamers
  • Provider

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