In the first of this two-part interview series, TheGamingEconomy speaks with Yat Siu (pictured), founder and non-executive chairman of Animoca Brands, following its acquisition of nWay, Inc. in December 2019. In part one: integrating nWay, advertising partnerships, and upcoming developments in mobile gaming. How do you plan on leveraging the technology and expertise of nWay to enter the competitive gaming space? One of the things that nWay has really cracked is real-time multiplayer fighting games, which in mobile is not at all [...]

TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the trending stories in gaming. In today’s news: Tencent set to acquire Funcom for USD$148m (£114m); AppsFlyer raises USD$210m (£161m); Stillfront Group acquires Storm8 for USD$300m (£230m); and US state intervention attempt on Riot Games discrimination lawsuit. Tencent set to acquire Funcom Tencent Holdings Limited has made a formal offer to acquire the remainder of shares it does not currently own in Funcom SE, in an all-cash bid valuing the developer-publisher at NOK 1.33bn (£114m), which has [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: CWA launches campaign for video game unionisation; Square Enix focusing on cloud gaming; and Anzu.io partners with Vivid Games. CWA launches campaign for video game unionisation The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union has launched the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), which will focus on the unionisation of US companies within the video game and technology industries. The campaign was established in cooperation with Game Workers Unite [...]

It’s easy to feel instinctively optimistic about in-game advertising. In recent years there’s been a powerful sense that in-game ads aren’t simply an increasingly valuable means of income for developers and publishers; perhaps they’re now understood and embraced by more consumers and industry figures than ever before. Furthermore, there is an ever more diverse spread of games, markets and consumers where ads are fitting. And now it feels like there are a greater number of platforms, approaches and tools through which [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Facebook acquires cloud gaming outfit PlayGiga; Bidstack secures £10m Agency Trade Deal; and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare clears USD$1bn (£776.4m) in sales Facebook acquires cloud gaming outfit PlayGiga Social networking giant Facebook has acquired Madrid-based cloud gaming company PlayGiga. As reported by CNBC, the move furthers Facebook’s increasing presence in the gaming space, following the news that it picked up VR studio Beat Games last month. Equally, with [...]

In our latest guest post Vanessa Goff-Yu, marketing director at in-game advertising platform Bidstack, takes an optimistic look at the sizeable female gamer demographics, the rise of the strong female game character, and the role brands can play in aiding female representation across games. The news that Natalie Portman will take on the lead role in the fourth Thor film in 2021 wasn’t just the start of Marvel’s next phase; it was part of a wider radical shift in female representation [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Qualcomm and Niantic collaborating on new AR glasses; Wildlife Studios raises USD$60m (£45.7m) for mobile portfolio; Gameloft closes UK studio. Qualcomm and Niantic collaborating on new AR glasses The studio behind the phenomenally popular augmented reality mobile game Pokémon GO is working with semiconductor and telecommunications equipment giant Qualcomm to develop a new AR headset. While Pokémon GO was pivotal in introducing mobile to the masses, as highlighted by [...]

In this guest post by the CEO of the mobile game insights and market data specialist GameRefinery, Markus Ramark considers a new way to build your targeting, and looks at why understanding player ‘affinity’ with given games might unlock new levels of success.   At its heart, the mobile games industry is a multi-billion dollar battle to find the highest spending, frequently playing, most loyal new players. Top-performing games are supported with marketing spend in the tens of millions, and app stores [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Hyper-casual games proliferate by 170%; Valve Index sells out in some regions; and Genvid raises USD$27m (£21m). Hyper-casual games proliferate by 170% Hyper-casual gaming titles have proliferated by 170% over the course of the past year, three times more than the industry average, according to The State of Gaming App Marketing report released by AppsFlyer. The lightweight, ad-supported titles now form the genre with the highest average installs [...]

Late last year mobile marketing platform AppLovin acquired in-app bidding start-up MAX. The AppLovin team has since built out the MAX platform, and integrated the real-time mobile header bidding solution into its wider ecosystem. Now MAX has had a little time out in the wild in the hands of mobile developer and publisher customers, we caught up with Carl Livie, MD EMEA of AppLovin, to talk in-app bidding. Could it be that the long-promised in-app bidding revolution is finally underway? And [...]