Mobile Mavens’ highlights and lowlights of 2024: “While 2024 has been a tough year, I remain optimistic”

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Once again it’s that time of year where we all start feeling reflective and look back on the year just gone.

So to that end, we thought we’d ask our Mobile Mavens – a collection of games industry experts – a few questions about the year gone by, and what lies ahead in 2025. Here we asked:

What were the highlights and lowlights for you and your business in 2024?

You can read part two of this article here.

2024 has been a challenging year for the industry, with continued layoffs, studios closing, and other disappointing news throughout much of the year.

However, in recent months, we’ve begun to see some positive signs. M&A activity has picked up, with companies like SuperPlay and Plarium making moves. We’re also seeing a higher volume of new game releases, some of which, like Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, generated over $100 million in its first month. The green shoots are finally emerging, and the phrase “survive to ‘25” is nearing its end.

Developers have made significant strides in cracking hybrid and casual games after an 18 to 24 month learning curve, and there’s a broader rebalancing in the industry. Initiatives like the Digital Markets Act and trends such as direct-to-consumer (D2C) are enabling companies to reclaim much-needed profits.

All in all, while 2024 has been a tough year, I remain optimistic. Our industry is incredibly agile and quick to adapt, so it’s only a matter of time before we bounce back and achieve another year of record growth.

Will that be 2025? Time will tell, but I’m confident that the future is looking much more positive, and we have a lot of exciting developments to look forward to!

2024 was a year of resilience and transformation.

Highlights included the explosion of GenAI, which is growing at a pace and scale unseen before. Just look at the developments from the last week — Sora’s appearance, video recognition by ChatGPT, and Google’s new Gemini, to name a few. GenAI is set to transform creativity, decision-making, and cost structures in gaming.

On the flip side, the stagnating industry and oversaturated market reminded us how essential differentiation and efficiency are in today’s gaming landscape.

Highlights have been the incredible shower of incredible titles, from Space Marine 2 or Helldivers 2 to Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. We have been spoiled this year by some incredible passion projects and the bar has been raised for next year! 

Lowlight for me was the pain the industry folks have been put through, whether you were directly affected by layoffs and studio closures or just reading about it constantly in the press.

It’s been a hard grind to level 2025, but hopefully the XP gained through this hard year will be enough to conquer level 2025 and beyond. 

Reflecting on 2024 it was a hard year and all of us were affected but I did see green shoots and also some runaway successes that renewed my faith in the industry, especially the incredible indie games like Balatro, published by Playstack.

We had an incredible year. It kicked off with Atomic Heart, developed by our portfolio company Mundfish, taking home the Outstanding Visual Style award at the Steam Awards. We followed that up with investments from Krafton in Red Rover and Eschatology Entertainment, where we were the first investors. 

The announcement of Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era, the long-awaited next installment in the legendary series, by our portfolio company Unfrozen and Ubisoft, was a highlight of Gamescom. 

And to top it all off, AppMagic, the second-largest mobile analytics service, joined our GEM family. We are deeply grateful to the founders and their teams for their trust and shared enthusiasm in creating new projects and services together.

We were also honored to be nominated for “Investor of the Year” at the MENA Games Industry Awards. As an investor focusing on multiple regions, including MENA, this recognition is a significant honour and inspires us to strive for even greater achievements!

For AdInMo the highlight of this year has definitely been building out our developer programme and launching InGamePlay 3.0. Working more closely with partners to test and learn new formats and models drives greater innovation and impact across the board.

Highlight: We have opened a subsidiary named Game Town, the first co-working space for game developers in Stockholm.

As a small team, it’s incredibly fun and inspiring to share an office with 25 other game developers. Winning ‘Best Indie Developer of the Year’ at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards was a great honour!

Lowlight: We haven’t faced any major setbacks. However, the fact that The Battle of Polytopia didn’t win ‘Apple Arcade Game of the Year’ at the GamingonPhone Awards was a bit disappointing.

In 2024 we launched our iOS Game Store. It was unimaginable for this to happen 15 years ago, when we launched our first Android store. This is possible thanks to the DMA in Europe and the ongoing changes that regulators and competitors are imposing to Google and Apple.

On the other hand, there’s still a long way until we will have a truly leveled field where competition flourishes and both developers and users can truly benefit from more dynamic and innovative distribution and discoverability platforms.

2024 has been a positive year for the growth of Clear Angle Studios. A highlight has been forming new partnerships with other companies; DI4D, TexturingXYZ/Symbiote and Prism AI, which has allowed us to expand our service offerings across new fields such as 4D and radiance fields.

We have also opened a new studio in Culver City, Los Angeles, which marks a significant step in expanding our global footprint, and allows us to be closer to the heart of the entertainment industry, offering our market-leading scanning solutions to our clients in Hollywood and beyond.