two & a half gamers

Has AppLovin been fingerprinting iOS users all along? A white-hat hacker says yes — and they cracked the mediation cipher to prove it. Felix Braberg breaks down the three biggest mobile gaming stories from the week ending May 22, 2026. Sensor Tower acquired App Magic to build out their SMB offering and consolidate market intelligence even further. A white-hat hacker published a detailed breakdown...

A 5-year-old location-based game just 5x'd its downloads. There were no new creatives. No new geos. No marketing push. Just one regional event that changed how the game actually works in Taiwan. We break down Pikmin Bloom by Niantic — the quiet survivor of the post-Pokemon-Go location-based wave that everyone forgot about, but which has been quietly making $30-50M/month for years and just spik...

Long-form playables aren't just back — they're crushing it. The top playable in April hit 75% impression share. Whiteout Survival is doing it with 3 new playables a month. And the format that's winning everywhere is the one your mum would recognize. Matej Lančarič is joined by Ondrej Monsberger and John Wright for another Playable Trends deep-dive. The crew goes through Sensor Tower&#3...

The first AI-native programmatic stack for mobile publishers is real, and the early numbers are absurd. 10-20% revenue lifts across every publisher they've launched. Felix Braberg sits down with Dan Sack — Co-founder of CloudX, formerly MoPub, Twitter, Max, and AppLovin — for round two of their conversation, three months after CloudX went GA in February. The company now works with dozens of pu...

Dream Games swore they would never add ads to Royal Match or Royal Kingdom. In February 2026, they quietly did it. Here's the proof — and what it means for the rest of the industry. Felix Braberg flies solo this week to break down the three biggest stories in mobile gaming: Playtika officially walking away from social casino to chase Disney Solitaire (with D2C revenue now at 62% of their IAP),...

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 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 w...

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...

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 un...

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 Game...

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 l...

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 r...

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&#39...

How do you pick the right core for your next puzzle hit? Jakub Remiar breaks down the methodology behind some of the most successful puzzle launches of the last two years — Domino Dreams, Magic Sword, Block Out, Hexa Out, Arrow Gem — and explains the pattern that connects all of them. The short version: stop trying to invent new cores. Find a puzzle sub-genre that already has massive download volu...

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 farmin...

Habby goes ALL-IN on midcore… and removes ads Today, we break down Dicero, the latest game from Habby — and honestly, it’s one of the most surprising strategy shifts we’ve seen in a while. 👉 No rewarded ads 👉 Deep midcore progression 👉 Heavy gacha monetization 👉 Roguelite dice gameplay inspired by Balatro This is NOT the Habby we knew. We cover: 🎲 Core gameplay (dice poker + roguelite systems...

Today, we finally break down one of the most overlooked parts of UA strategy - playable ads. https://lancaric.substack.com/p/playable-ads-trends-in-mobile-games-b16?r=7qqaf And the truth is… 👉 most teams are doing them wrong 👉 most teams are not doing enough of them 👉 and most teams don’t understand why they work We cover: 🎮 Why longer playables create higher-quality players ⚙️ Simple vs compl...

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, we break down over 120 AI-powered creatives and uncover what’s actually working in 2026. From Golden Goblins physics hooks to Last Asylum’s 70% AI-assisted pipeline, the scale is insane — with some games launching thousands of creatives and iterating faster than ever. We dive into: 🎬 AI hooks vs real gameplay ⚙️ Heavy post-production on top of AI 🎭 Consi...

Major shifts in mobile gaming, UA, and investments This week’s Two and a Half Gamers Breaking News covers three massive trends shaping the industry right now: 📊 Chinese games dominating global top-grossing charts 💰 $7.7B in gaming M&A activity in Q1 2026 ⚖️ Freecash controversy and removal from app stores From Gossip Harbor climbing into the top revenue charts to massive acquisitions fueling...

We break down the latest creative trends shaping mobile game marketing in 2026. And honestly… things are getting weird. We cover: 🎬 AI-generated hooks (K-pop, interviews, weird realism) 🔁 Infinite iteration loops across games (copy → remix → scale) 🎮 How games like Golden Goblins keep winning with creatives 🧠 Why “failure mechanics” dominate ad performance 📈 How small tweaks create entirely n...

In this solo episode of Two and a Half Gamers, Felix breaks down one of the most underrated growth levers in mobile gaming — your mediation setup. The reality is that ad monetization performance varies massively by geo — especially in Tier 4 markets like India and Indonesia. Low-end devices, low LTV, and poor fill rates create a completely different optimization problem compared to Tier 1 markets....

We break down one of the biggest and most misunderstood “games” in the world - NYT Games Wordle & crossword. With over 8.5 million DAU, this app sits among the largest mobile games globally. But here’s the twist: 👉 It barely monetizes like a game 👉 It relies mostly on subscriptions 👉 It avoids aggressive ad strategies completely We dive into: • Why NYT Games is a retention machine, not a ga...

This week’s Breaking News covers one of the most important shifts happening right now across mobile gaming and ad tech. Here’s what’s happening: 📉 Mobile gaming is stabilizing but growth is slowing 💰 Investment is dropping, consolidation is rising 📊 AppLovin is reshuffling leadership while expanding beyond gaming 🧹 Unity is officially killing IronSource and doubling down on its new ad stack 🤖...

In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, we break down Butcher Hero / Hook RPG, a new game from Multicast that’s currently pulling 20–30K downloads per day , but struggling to reach the scale of its predecessor, Alien Invasion. At first glance, the concept is strong: • Warcraft-inspired hook mechanics • Idle-RPG progression • Weapon-based scaling and map farming But after hours of gameplay, the c...

In this solo episode of Two and a Half Gamers, Jakub breaks down 5 advanced ad placements that are actively driving revenue in top mobile games. No theory. No fluff. Just practical systems you can implement today. He covers: 🎯 Before-level boosters that increase win probability ⚙️ Idle stacking mechanics that multiply impressions ✈️ Dynamic “random drop” placements 🎰 Gacha-based ad conversion sy...