Craig Chapple’s top stories of 2024: Inside Lilith Games, Tim Sweeney’s app store war, Sensor Tower’s data.ai acquisition, and more

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Regular readers will be used to the PocketGamer.biz team’s usual week in views round-ups but as the year draws to a close it’s time to take a deeper look at some of the biggest stories of 2024. 

Here’s Pocketgamer.biz head of content Craig Chapple sharing some of his favourite stories of the year.

Earlier this year I caught up with Lilith Games’ Vincent Ou to take a deep dive into the developer’s culture that has spawned billion-dollar hits like AFK Arena and Rise of Kingdoms, as well as its latest title, AFK Journey.

The interview offers a fascinating glimpse into the developer’s greenlighting process, how it builds teams, and how it supports titles post-release.

One of the most interesting takeaways was the company’s ‘Aladdin Plan’. It establishes a standalone subsidiary company for each game project, and the core members of the development teams collectively hold a 20% stake. Once a project goes live, profits are then calculated on an annual basis and distributed according to their share.

“As long as the employees stay in the firm, even if they were on another project, their shares will be maintained and they’ll receive their dividends,” explained Ou.

It’s frankly rare for a Chinese company to be so open about its processes. We recently spoke to Reverse: 1999 developer Bluepoch about the game’s first year, and, as is sometimes the case with studios’ based in China/Asia, the studio asked for respondents to our questions to remain anonymous.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney embarked on its assault against Apple and Google’s 30% fee and other restrictive platform policies in 2021, sparking the removal of the global phenomenon Fortnite from the leading mobile app stores.

The battle continues to rage, and Sweeney has taken big wins and losses. Its Apple case went all the way to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the Supreme court did not take up the case), where it only won one of its claims: the ability for developers to link-out to outside stores and payments. Meanwhile, a US jury ruled in Epic’s favour in a lawsuit against Google last year, which said the latter held an illegal monopoly. That case continues to rumble on.

PocketGamer.biz got the opportunity to speak with Sweeney earlier this year and asked if he regretted his campaign against the mobile giants. He was defiant.

“I have no regrets. I wish that, especially the legislative and regulatory processes would be faster,” he said. “The slowness of that makes it really hard for everybody.

“But this has to happen and we want our kids to grow up in a world that’s better than this one. I grew up in an awesome world for developers and opportunities, in the early days of Apple, two computers and PCs.

“Anybody growing up coming of age in this industry right now is best case going to be an Apple and Google serf and that has to change, that must change.”

There have been a few significant M&A deals, including Playtika’s big $1.95 billion purchase of SuperPlay and Nazara’s acquisition spree.

But I’m hard pressed to think of a more impactful deal than the merger of two mobile intelligence giants when Sensor Tower acquired data.ai.

For starters, it was widely considered that data.ai was a larger company than Sensor Tower. Data.ai had previously raised $157 million through investments, and employed around 400 staff prior to the purchase. Around half lost their jobs post-sale.

As noted by AppMagic CEO Max Samorukov, the two companies had engaged in price wars, driving down the value of the mobile intelligence ecosystem at large.

A deal between the two leaders has huge ramifications for a sector that relies heavily on data and analytics. I caught up with Sensor Tower chief operating officer Tom Cui to discuss the deal earlier this year.

I also delved further into the topic of the future of mobile market intelligence here.

As I note at the start of this article – 10 years ago, I called Finland and Helsinki the mobile games startup capital of the world.

But the sector has found itself in tougher times in 2024, struck by layoffs and notable closures. Meanwhile, some of its giants have not been the powerhouses they have in the past.

Earlier this year, ahead of Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki, I visited Helsinki and Turku to get a lay of the land in the country’s games hub.

Finland is like a mirror to the rest of the mobile games industry – it has reached maturity, and is struggling with a post-pandemic industry decline, Apple’s privacy shakeup and wider economic factors.

And much like the rest of the industry, there was big concern about the sector’s future at the time, in particular for studios that aren’t Supercell, Rovio and Remedy. But as is customary to its culture, the community continued to get together and share knowledge and learnings as it looked to ‘survive to ‘25’.

For all the talk of web shops and direct-to-consumer strategies this year, one of the big trends has been the rise of rewarded play platforms. The space includes companies such as Almedia, Gamelight and Mistplay, to name just a few.

I spoke with Almedia CEO Moritz Holländer to discuss the trend and get insights into how exactly it works.

“Advertisers have realised that rewarded user acquisition works, and they are willing to spend a lot of money when the performance is there. So the demand is pretty high. I think in general, gaming apps have to deal with rising CPIs no matter where they buy users.

“And it’s not easy for them to, for example, scale to an unlimited pace on Google and Facebook anymore due to that competition. So I think they were pretty happy when they saw that there’s a completely new vertical that’s suddenly opened up. Rewarded user acquisition has existed for 15 years, but it changed in the way it works.”

Almedia has been expanding fast to capitalise on its earlier success, and the space looks set to grow and get more fiercely competitive in 2025.

I couldn’t leave my stories of the year without this wild announcement: games commerce company Xsolla unveiled a deal this year to be the gaming and shirt sponsor for a local football club of mine: Stevenage FC.

For those not familiar with the town, it has a population of around 90,000 people, while the club’s stadium a capacity of 7,800 fans. The team, meanwhile, sits in the third-tier of English football in League One. In the 2022 to 2023 season, it sat in League Two.

So why is Xsolla sponsoring Stevenage? Well, I visited the stadium and caught up with the company’s chief marketing officer Berkley Egenes to find out.

The football club already has strong connections with the games industry, and it may surprise you to know that League One also now has ties to Hollywood and Apple TV.

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Embracer Group to split into three separate companies as it aims to pay off debts

Royal Kingdom is here – Are new hits reshaping the top grossing mobile games charts?

Remember Facebook Instant Games? It’s back

Everything is a games platform

Are publishers leaving games behind?

Apple to the EU: Catch me if you can

What is Microsoft doing on mobile?