2023’s most-read stories: Unity’s Runtime Fee fiasco, Playtika, Apex Legends Mobile and more
Our industry-leading coverage of the Unity drama dominated this year. Read on for the complete top ten.
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The most-read stories of 2023 on mobilegamer.biz confirm it has been a wild year for Unity.
The top four reports document the Runtime Fee drama that unfolded in September, bled into October and ended with multiple apologies, a partial reversal and the departure of CEO John Riccitiello.
It all means that mobilegamer.biz ends 2023 having gathered more than 660k views from over 440k readers. I published 354 stories this year, which is decent.
Some further context for this list: mobilegamer.biz is still a relatively new site, and so its search footprint is pretty light; Google still doesn’t surface my content in its powerful News feed – even when I break a story and countless other websites link back to it as the source.
Sometimes, Google will feature a story in Chrome’s ‘Discover’ feed, which does make a difference. But ultimately, this list is built on readers sharing things on LinkedIn, Slack, Teams and elsewhere. So if you read something and think a friend or colleague would be interested: share it. It all helps.
So all that considered: here’s a run-down of the 10 most-read mobilegamer.biz stories of 2023, with a little bit of context and commentary on each.
Unity boycott begins as devs switch off ads to force a Runtime Fee reversal
This one went bananas. Almost as soon as the Runtime Fee announcement was made, there was a feeling of mutiny in the air – I felt it in person at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki, which happened to be taking place right as the Runtime Fee policy was announced. Speaking to multiple folks at the event and by other means produced this story, which summed up the initial reaction.
But this boycott effort that came a couple of days later was something I’ve honestly never seen before. A week later, Unity had announced a partial reversal of the Runtime Fee policy, apologised a lot, and then by early October Unity announced the departure of CEO John Riccitiello.
It was a collective two fingers up at a company with too much power, and an unprecedented demonstration of developer strength and, well, unity.
Unity is offering a Runtime Fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay as it tries to “kill AppLovin”
Again, this was a result of being right there in a crowd of mobile game developers at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki. I was told directly by several folks about what their Unity account manager had said to them, and verified the information by other means.
It added rocketfuel to an already blazing fire, and the report was picked up by a multitude of major outlets, including BBC News.
“Fuck you, we’re not paying”: inside Unity’s Runtime Fee fiasco
Swearing in headlines doesn’t help the site’s ranking with our friend Google, but this one was irresistible – a direct quote from someone who spoke very frankly to the then-Unity CEO John Riccitiello, we’re told.
This one had many fascinating nuggets in it, ones that maybe got a little overlooked in the fire and fury around this topic: the idea that the Runtime Fee never really applied to Unity’s bigger clients anyway, or indeed that this whole ordeal was apparently driven by Unity’s desire to ‘kill Applovin’.
The Unity boycott worked: its ad network and UA business have both taken a hit
This story is based on industry experts’ estimates, which suggested that Unity’s ad exchange had shrunk by up to 30% since the boycott, with an estimated 35% rise in CPI for Unity Ads.
Things have calmed down somewhat since then, to say the least. And as the last Unity story on this list, let me say that I will miss Riccitiello – he was also responsible for 2022’s most-read story, in which he suggested some Unity customers were “fucking idiots”.
Playtika suspends new game launches until marketing landscape improves
“Based on the current marketing environment, we made the decision to temporarily suspend our new game development pipeline until the ROI for new games is economically viable,” said Playtika president and CFO Craig Abrahams in the firm’s Q422 earnings call.
Eyebrow-raising stuff. And the level to which this story got shared around the business suggests Playtika said out loud what plenty of other folks were already thinking: if launching new games is harder than ever, why bother doing it at all?
It has, for many, been a year of consolidation and of optimising what you already have – and this story seemed to sum that up.
Apex Legends Mobile hits $40m, but EA’s blockbuster shooter could be in trouble
It turns out EA’s big-brand shooter was in more trouble than we thought. The day after I published this story, EA announced it was cancelling the game, and also shuttering Battlefield Mobile developer Industrial Toys.
As you can see in the story, I’d noticed that Apex Legends Mobile revenue had completely flatlined, and a little further investigation of the game’s socials and its Discord showed us that the game’s next season update had been delayed indefinitely. Separately, a source had also told us that the exec responsible for the game had moved on, and was a major advocate for all things mobile at EA. Trouble indeed.
With all this playing out in January, EA rather set the tone for the year to come across the games business, which saw many other studio closures and layoffs in 2023.
2022’s top grossing mobile games: Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, Genshin Impact and more
2023 began with a detailed look at the previous years’ Appmagic estimates, and it turns out my great friend/enemy Google liked it; this one was widely shared among readers upon publication, and then kept pulling in search traffic throughout the year.
The formula for these kinds of data stories has evolved a little in the last twelve months; expect a better presented, more concise version of this story in early January.
Honkai: Star Rail has likely passed $1bn already – but has seriously eaten into Genshin Impact’s earnings
Leaning on some estimates and research from friends at Naavik, this story crystallised what had already been noted in the regular monthly top grossing games articles: just as Honkai: Star Rail shot into the top earners worldwide, Genshin Impact had suffered a sudden drop in IAP revenues.
The problem, according to Naavik, was that Mihoyo had done a terrific job of promoting its new game to Genshin Impact players, moving them over to Star Rail almost too well. To compound the issue, Star Rail does not monetise as effectively as Genshin, meaning a loss overall for the portfolio.
Since this report came out in September, Genshin has got its mojo back, and Star Rail is settling into a more predictable pattern after a post-launch boom.
New Supercell game Flood Rush is in limited beta now
This story was randomly blessed by the Google gods and served to several thousand folks through Chrome’s ‘Discover’ feed. To be fair, it also helped that I was the first to report on this new game and that it had gone into limited, Android-only beta that same day, adding to the surprise.
Sadly there was no happy ending for this title. Having announced it in May, Supercell announced it was no longer working on the game in August. Some aspects of Floodrush may live on in Mo.co, though, given the broad similarities between the two.
How Playtika fumbled its $600m acquisition of Redecor
Just after Playtika submitted its bid to acquire Rovio, again I leaned on some data and research from friends at Naavik to assess how another of its Finnish acquisitions has turned out.
No, not Best Fiends maker Seriously – we all know how that turned out – but its buyout of Reworks, maker of Redecor.
In short, the story suggests that post-acquisition, Playtika had applied some social casino-style monetisation techniques to this home decoration game with a very different player base, only to drive players away.
The story was shared and picked apart not just by the usual crowd of mobile game industry folks, but also by the Redecor subreddit and its Facebook community, which helped push it into the top ten most read stories of the year.
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