Tencent’s subsidiary Miniclip recently announced a $1.2 billion acquisition of Easybrain from Embracer Group, with the deal expected to close in early 2025. Miniclip, which joined Tencent in 2015 as a pioneer in the global casual gaming sector, has not only made significant progress in casual sports games but has also acquired over a dozen studios in recent years, greatly expanding Tencent’s footprint in the international casual gaming market. The acquired company, Easybrain, is a top-tier developer in the casual puzzle genre, specializing in Sudoku, crossword, and jigsaw puzzle games. Just recently, Easybrain announced that its mobile games have surpassed 2 billion downloads, cementing its position in the global gaming market. At first glance, the acquisition appears to be a […]

At the end of last month, 4399 launched another WeChat mini-game in the Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Southeast Asian markets. The game successfully entered Taiwan’s iOS game bestseller list, reaching a peak position of sixth. Although this game bears the name 热血大作战, it is unrelated to the WeChat mini-game 热血大作战 released by 4399 a few months ago. In fact, its counterpart is 指尖无双. With its distinctive artistic style and a hybrid gameplay combining "simulation + SLG," 指尖无双 broke into the top ten of the WeChat mini-game bestseller list back in April this year. The mainland China success of 指尖无双 and its impressive overseas performance naturally spark curiosity: how did it stand out in the fiercely competitive mini-game market? And […]

Here is an analysis of the global non-gaming App user acquisition marketing trends for October 2024, based on ad data from 50 countries/regions and 28 global media platforms, according to AppGrowing's report. In October 2024, shopping, finance, and Tools apps continued to lead the app advertising landscape in terms of app count. However, in terms of the share of newly launched apps, the leading categories were food & drink and health & wellness categories. Entering the year-end promotional period, overall ad volume for shopping apps surged, surpassing 5 million ad groups. Ranking second to fifth in ad volume were food & drink, entertainment, Tools, and finance categories. Regarding ad formats and video lengths, image-based ads saw an increased share this month, […]

The following analysis of mobile games marketing trends for September 2024 is based on advertising data from AppGrowing across 50 countries and regions, and 28 global media platforms. In October, the category distribution of ad placements for mobile games ranked Puzzle, Casual, and Casino games as the top three in terms of active ad placement. Notably, the Casino category saw a continued rise in new app ads, now accounting for 40.75% of new placements this month. In terms of total ad volume, Casual, Puzzle, and Role-Playing games remained the top three categories. Looking at ad format types and video length distribution, video-based creatives continued to dominate mobile game ads this period, rising to 80.07% of total ad placements.Video lengths were […]

In September, a mobile game called Capybara Go! has been launched in a few markets and has achieved good results in some Southeast Asian markets, successfully breaking into the Top Grossing iOS Games 10 in both Vietnam and Singapore. Since its exposure, Capybara Go! has attracted significant attention in the industry, not only for the product's own performance but also because of the manufacturer behind it, Habby, which has launched several hit casual games. By the way, the R&D studio behind Capybara Go! is Gorilla Games, the same team that brought us Archero and Survivor!.io. Archero helped Habby establish its reputation in the industry after only a year of existence, while Survivor!.io once again refreshed the industry's perception of Habby […]

Here is an analysis of the global non-gaming App user acquisition marketing trends for September 2024, based on ad data from 50 countries/regions and 28 global media platforms, according to AppGrowing's report. In September 2024, the top three categories for active apps in remained Shopping, Finance, and Tools. However, the top three categories for newly launched apps were Health & Fitness, Food & Drink, and Lifestyle. While dominant mainstream categories continue to focus on stable customer acquisition for already-launched products, niche categories are seeing more new products entering the market. In terms of ad volume, the Shopping category maintained a commanding lead, with ad volume further growing to nearly 5 million. The top 2-5 categories in ad volume were Entertainment, Tools, […]

The following analysis of mobile games marketing trends for September 2024 is based on advertising data from AppGrowing across 50 countries and regions, and 28 global media platforms. In September 2024, the top three categories for mobile game advertising remained consistent: Casual, Casino, and Puzzle. Among them, Casino games continued to aggressively release new titles, with new advertising campaigns accounting for 32.19% of the total in September. The top three categories in terms of ad volume were Casual, Puzzle, and Role-playing Games. After deduplication, the number of creative assets for Casual and Puzzle games were quite similar. The majority of the advertising materials for overseas mobile games in this period were video-based, accounting for 79.46%. Most of the videos were […]

Here is an analysis of the global non-gaming App user acquisition marketing trends for August 2024, based on ad data from 50 countries/regions and 28 global media platforms, according to AppGrowing's report. In August 2024, the top three app categories in terms of app share in global ad placements remained Shopping, Finance, and Tools, consistent with July's data.  The top three newly placed apps for the month were in the Business, Food & Drink, and Health & Fitness categories, reflecting the continued activity of niche products in the "new arrivals" trend. In terms of ad volume, Shopping maintained a clear lead, with ad volume surging to 4 million, further widening the gap with other categories. The number of de-duplicated creative assets […]

The following analysis of mobile games marketing trends for August 2024 is based on advertising data from AppGrowing across 50 countries and regions, and 28 global media platforms. In August 2024, the top three categories for mobile game advertising remained consistent: Casual, Casino, and Puzzle. Casino saw continued growth in new launches, with its share of new apps nearly reaching 40%, making it the highest-ranking category for the month. The top three categories in terms of ad volume were Casual, Puzzle, and RPG, reflecting a stable market structure similar to July.However, ad spend across all categories saw a month-on-month decline in August. In terms of creative content, video remained the dominant format, though its share slightly decreased to 79.11%. Most […]

Recently, a fishing game called Fishing Master soared to the top of the free games chart on the U.S. iOS App Store.  The publisher, Ark Game Limited, links this game to another fishing game that went viral in China a few months ago—欢乐钓鱼大师. It turns out that these two are indeed the same game. According to the loading screen of 欢乐钓鱼大师, the software copyright belongs to a company called 在线途游（北京）科技有限公司(Tuyoo Games).  When visiting the Ark Game Limited website, you can see that it shares the same website icon as the official website of Tuyoo Games, suggesting that Ark Game Limited is a publishing account under Tuyoo Games. 欢乐钓鱼大师 might still be fresh in many Chinese players’ memories. Besides breaking into […]