Alex Karelin

2025 WINNERS 🏆 BY IAP REVENUE "Follow the market, follow the leader." 🥇 The Follow-the-Leader Strategy is successful in many industries, but it is crucial in mobile gaming. 🎯 In a highly competitive market such as mobile gaming, Follow-the-Leader means leveraging shortcuts to learn and save time. ⏱️ For this reason, today I bring you the list of mobile gaming companies that earned the most in IAP revenue in 2025. 💰 I considered only companies that made last year's 🔝 100. My highlights. 4𝐗 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐭! 🔥 Some gaming companies whose 4X Strategy titles are their flagships skyrocketed last year! 🚀 Century Games has generated nearly $1 billion in revenue🤯 , with YOY growth of more than 86%, driven largely by its two main 4X Strategy games, “Whiteout Survival” and “Kingshot”. In addition, the Chinese giant 🇨🇳 also scored a Merge-2 hit, “Tasty Travels.” Growing by leaps and bounds, “Travel” opens up a new flank of big hits in another genre (puzzle), making Century one of the most promising companies in the mobile gaming market. 💎 Other highlights in 4X Strategy are First Fun, which remained at the top of the charts with its “Last Z: Survival,” and the unknown Florere Games, which exploded last year, accumulating nearly half a billion dollars. 𝐏𝐮𝐳𝐳𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲. 🧩💵 Here are two highlights. Chinese giant Microfun 🇨🇳 exploded its Merge-2 “Gossip Harbor,” placing it third in revenue among the puzzles of 2025 🥉. And the Turkish giant Dream Games 🇹🇷 began scaling its new Match-3 “Royal Kingdom.” Do you want to break into the puzzle market? 🤔 Then follow these two companies. 𝐈𝐏𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤. ®️ This is the case with The Pokémon Company International, which exploded onto the charts with its highly anticipated Pokémon TCG Pocket 🎴 , amassing over $380 million in IAP revenue last year. 𝐇𝐲𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥? 𝐘𝐄𝐒, 𝐈𝐓’𝐒 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐇𝐎𝐓 𝐓𝐎𝐎! ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 Last but not least, Hybridcasual publishers have firmly established themselves in the mobile gaming market in 2025. Two years ago, surrounded by doubts, the Hybridcasual model is a tested and validated business model today. 💪 Many Hybridcasual publishers grew last year. I would highlight Turkish giant Rollic 🇹🇷, which grew by more than 137% yoy to more than $120 million in IAP revenue, with performance driven primarily by its big hit, “Color Block Jam”. And the Vietnamese iKame Global Zego Studio 🇻🇳, which grew more than 390%, driven by the big hit, “Screwdom”. Did this post help you? 👀 Save and share it with your colleagues. 🫂 👇 Swipe through the slides below to see other mobile gaming companies that stood out in 2025. 👇 Datasource: AppMagic 🫶.

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When I worked at Zynga, the Poker product almost doubled in audience and revenue in a single year. How a 10-year-old game did this is one of my favorite growth stories in tech. The poker team did it by focusing on its 𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁. Every product has one — the single action that everything else builds on. For Spotify, it's tracks streamed. For Netflix, it's minutes watched. For Duolingo, it's completing lessons. Zynga Poker's story is a great example of this in action: * 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿. Millions of players, reliable revenue, but growth had plateaued. They needed a North Star to pin their product bets against. * 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁: "𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗱". Two players can sit at the same table for an hour, but the one playing more hands is more deeply engaged. Their thesis: if hands played went up, session length, frequency, retention would follow. * 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰. Three initiatives took priority: Challenges, Matchmaking and Leagues. All three hit and built on each other — Challenges drove sessions, better Matchmaking kept them competitive, Leagues kept players coming back. A year later, mobile revenues had grown by 78%. Most products I work with have plenty of features, but lose sight of the atomic unit that ties them together. I advised a non-gaming app about reframing their experience around their atomic unit of engagement, and we saw double-digit lifts in retention and revenue. Poker's story has stuck with me over time because of this: knowing your atomic unit clarifies what to build, but it also aligns people who are building it. And in the best cases, it changes the trajectory of the product. **𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘡𝘺𝘯𝘨𝘢 𝘗𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮, 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴. 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘎𝘋𝘊 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘵.

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Roku just shocked Wall Street: 15% revenue growth + a surprise profit in Q2 2025. Here’s why this matters if you’re an indie filmmaker or small production company: Roku isn’t just selling devices anymore—it’s becoming a serious streaming powerhouse. ✅ $1.11B in revenue (beating expectations). ✅ 35.4B streaming hours (+5.2B YoY). ✅ Platform growth (+18% YoY) from ads + subscription revenue. ✅ Acquisition of Frndly TV (low-cost streaming) to expand content reach. This surge isn’t just numbers—it’s a clear signal: ad-supported streaming (AVOD) is booming. Roku thrives on free, ad-driven content, making it fundamentally different from subscription-heavy giants like Netflix or Hulu. And here’s where it gets interesting for creators: 🎬 Launching content on Roku is far more accessible than pitching to closed platforms. If you’ve got a finished indie project or micro-series, Roku offers a legitimate OTT pathway—without the gatekeepers. 🎯 With better ad-tech (Amazon DSP integration), your niche content stands a greater chance of reaching the right audience. 💡 Indie takeaway: The streaming wars aren’t only for billion-dollar studios. As platforms like Roku profit and scale, they open new doors for small creators willing to think like distributors, not just filmmakers. 🔑 If you’ve been looking for a practical way to test your content in the streaming market—Roku might be worth a serious look.

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🔥 🔥 400% audience growth. One operator. Broadcast-quality live streaming on FAST.💥💥 “Grabyo has completely transformed how we approach live production. We’re now producing TV-quality broadcasts, often run by a single operator. It’s been a true game-changer for our operations.” (Casey Murawski, COO, SPACEMOB) With Grabyo’s cloud-native tools, they ditched the OB trucks for browser-based production, complete with graphics, promos, and live ad-inserts. 🎥 The results: - 400% jump in viewership via Wurl - Instant ad monetization - Scalable workflows: multiple broadcasts run by just 1 or 2 operators 👉 Read the full story for more: https://lnkd.in/eMn6TJgM #LiveStreaming #FAST #Cloudproduction #Grabyo

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For many publishers, ad blocking is unfortunate, but not critical. For high-quality tech publishers, who attract developers and engineers, it’s a real struggle. Dark traffic is becoming one of the biggest hidden threats. According to Ad-Shield’s latest report, 57% of dark traffic users never actively chose adblocking, their settings were enabled by third parties like VPNs, workplaces, or bundled apps. As a channel partner of domains with developers and engineers audiences we understand the struggle and have solutions in hand.

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Software in ticketing is evolving fast, faster than most people realize. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: a lot of the biggest primary ticketing companies aren’t evolving with it. Not because they don’t see the future… but because the past is expensive. When you’re running legacy infrastructure at scale, “upgrading” isn’t just shipping a new feature. It’s replacing (or reworking) the entire foundation underneath it: - Venue servers and local networks - Entry scanners and handheld devices - Credentialing systems - Integrations with POS, access control, and fulfillment - Staff training and operational workflows across thousands of events That’s a massive bill. And if the current system is still “working,” the mindset becomes: if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud: if we force primaries to modernize overnight, that cost doesn’t disappear; it gets passed on. Higher service fees. Higher ticket prices. More “convenience” charges. And ultimately, more fans priced out. So progress slows. Innovation gets throttled. The industry stays stuck with patchwork updates instead of real transformation. This is also why the secondary market matters more than people want to admit. The secondary ecosystem has always been forced to innovate: pricing, automation, mapping, real-time data, fulfillment workflows, fraud detection, customer experience… all of it. Because if we don’t evolve, we don’t survive. That innovation doesn’t just help brokers or marketplaces, it pushes the entire industry forward. It raises expectations. It pressures everyone to improve. It proves what’s possible. That’s exactly what we’re building with PricerQX and ProcessorQX. We’re not waiting for legacy systems to catch up. We’re building modern tooling for a modern market, software that moves at the speed the industry should be moving. Because the future of ticketing won’t be won by whoever has the most venues locked down. It’ll be won by whoever builds the best technology. #ticketing #livetickets #liveevents #sportsbusiness #concerts #secondarymarket #resale #ticketresale #eventtech #saas #software #innovation #automation #datadriven #pricing #operations #PricerQX #ProcessorQX #businessgrowth #entrepreneurship

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