FreePlay talks 2bn downloads and hybridcasual’s rapid growth

• FreePlay has achieved two billion downloads across its portfolio in 5.5 years.
• The developer’s earlier games made up to 5% of their revenue from player spending, versus up to 50% in modern hybridcasual titles.

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As the mobile games industry’s many genres continue to evolve and refine, some segments have seen their time in the sun come and go, while others have risen in new and creative ways.

In the casual mobile scene, hybridcasual marks the latest conqueror – overtaking hypercasual in this post-pandemic age, often borrowing midcore elements while maintaining an accessible feel. Unlike hypercasual, development can prove to be a longer process, but the rewards for those efforts can be fruitful.

Florida-based mobile studio FreePlay is among those seeing the boons of such a pivot – having started to focus on hybridcasual and hybrid monetisation models in January 2024. 18 months later, and around 30% of the company’s revenue now comes from this subsection of its portfolio.

Not only that, FreePlay has officially surpassed two billion global installs.

As the developer and publisher celebrates this milestone, we speak with FreePlay’s head of publishing Ivan Spijarskiy about the journey so far, game design, marketing, and how the studio monetises different genres.

Right now, he says FreePlay is most confident in runners, shooters, puzzle games and a few other “interesting niches” like idle RPGs. But the publisher isn’t looking to limit itself.

“We come up with more ideas in these niches, but we’ve never followed a strategy to only target specific genres,” he states.

Spijarskiy suggests one advantage of mobile is that FreePlay doesn’t have to consider coordinating release schedules or avoiding clashes, unlike triple-A games on consoles “where people tend to focus on one major game at a time”.

Thus, over the past five years, FreePlay has published more than 60 games, with 36 active titles and “a steady stream of new projects”.

Hypercasual vs hybridcasual: ads, monetisation and more

FreePlay launched its first game Join Clash in early 2020, which remains one of its four “super hits” to this day. Alongside Count Masters, Twerk Race 3D and Fidget Toys Trading, these four mobile titles account for over one billion downloads – slightly over half of all installs across FreePlay’s portfolio.

A number of its titles include games from other developers. The company opened its publishing division in 2021, helping scale to such a broad portfolio, but many titles are still developed in-house.

“Publishing accounts for about 50% of the current flow and about 30% of the total base,” Spijarskiy explains.

“When we opened our publishing division, we adopted the same approach we use in our core development team: fewer titles but higher quality. We still have more titles coming from publishing, but the number is relatively small – about one game every two months.”

Outside FreePlay’s four “super hits”, Spijarskiy highlights shooters like Zombie Apocalypse, Crazy Office and Shoot Out as having particularly strong performances, in addition to car building game Ride Master and lawn mower title Stone Grass.

In fact, Stone Grass and Zombie Apocalypse were the company’s first hybrid games and currently account for approximately 50% of total in-app purchase revenue portfolio-wide.

Hybrid games are also responsible for generating around 30% of FreePlay’s revenue overall and have strong LTV, which Spijarskiy argues makes installs “a pretty useless KPI” when discussing the category. Rather, he highlights earnings.

“In our earlier games, 3% to 5% of revenue came from player spending, with the remaining 95% to 97% generated through ads. In hybrid games, in-app purchases generate between 15% and 50% of revenue, with the other 50% to 85% coming from ads,” Spijarskiy reveals.

“Ad revenue comes mainly from two formats: interstitial videos and rewarded videos. Rewarded videos usually generate more revenue per view and are considered less intrusive as they require player consent. That’s why we try to focus more on rewarded videos.”

The balance between ads and in-app purchases also depends on the individual title. Spijarskiy highlights Stone Grass’ progression system as one which encourages players to spend to advance more quickly, meanwhile Count Masters sees interstitial ads play a more significant role.

With this rise in in-app purchases, we ask whether FreePlay has considered utilising direct-to-consumer strategies, which are seeing a new wave of potential since landmark legal rulings against the major app stores.

Spijarskiy shares that most implementations he has seen don’t “align well with our portfolio”, but that FreePlay intends to test out creating a web shop for one of its biggest games “as they improve”.

Marketing to millions and billions

After hitting two billion downloads, FreePlay has set its sights on five billion as the next major milestone. Spijarskiy hopes to achieve this by exploring new genres and continuing to expand FreePlay’s playerbase.

“We don’t chase trends. Instead, we focus on areas where our teams have more experience or vision,” he says.

“The same goes for marketing: we prioritise creating better-quality ads rather than making a thousand creatives to find a working one. We consider creatives production to be one of our core strengths.

“Our team constantly monitors the market and conducts thorough performance analysis of our creatives. This approach has become an important part of our success. To keep it simple: creatives must be clear, no fluff, no overload, yet they must grab attention and explain the meaning of a game within a few seconds to keep a user focused.”

We ask about marketing strategies within FreePlay’s well-known titles, and Spijarskiy confirms that established games are used to promote newer releases to existing players of its portfolio. However, the impact of this alone is “relatively minor”.

Rather, Spijarskiy attributes 90% of FreePlay’s success to its use of creatives.

Spijarskiy suggests that, often, continuing to work on an existing title is more beneficial than starting development on a new game. FreePlay dedicates much of its time to maintaining games, therefore, a number of which continue to attract substantial new downloads years after release.

“However, the longer a project lasts, the greater the interest in the next one.”

Finally, we ask what FreePlay is working on next. Spijarskiy confirms new projects are in the works, including “several” hybrid games. Some of these titles have spent over a year in development and may release in the remainder of 2025.

“We can’t share too many details, but some of our dedicated players who have been keeping an eye on our account may have already taken notice.”

Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki (October 7th to 8th) will host a panel on ‘Casual, Mid-Core, Hybridcasual — What’s Mobile’s Next Destination?’. To join the discussion and network with other industry professionals, you can register for the show here.