My.Games CEO Elena Grigorian: “The mobile market is fighting for margins at all costs”

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Keeping up with industry trends is key to staying ahead in the games industry and ensuring you don’t fall behind.

At Pocket Gamer Connects, we regularly run our ‘Global Trends’ track, providing an expansive view of the sector’s latest ttrends, facts, figures and insights from around the world. In fact, the track will return once again at PGC London 2025 on January 20th to 21st.

In this series, we’ve reached out top industry leaders to share their insights and expectations on the state of play and how they see the next few years shaping up.

We spoke to My.Games CEO Elena Grigorian about her thoughts on the latest top industry trends, and why direct-to-consumer strategies are a big opportunity for developers.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you tell us a bit about your company and what you’re currently working on?

Elena Grigorian: My.Games is a leading European publisher and developer headquartered in Amsterdam, with over one billion registered users worldwide.

The company develops games for mobile, PС, and console platforms. War Robots, Hustle Castle, Rush Royale, Left to Survive, and many other games are produced by My.Games. The company unites 10 development studios and a strong team of specialists working together from across the globe.

Our primary focus is on key projects in areas essential to our business — particularly mobile development, publishing midcore projects, and buy-to-play titles for PC and consoles.

We closely analyse game performance to identify titles with unique market potential, allowing us to target our efforts on optimizing and expanding these games. We continue experimenting with new mechanics and monetization strategies, and of course, with new launches, with recent releases of Zombie State and Castle Duels serving as great examples of this.

We’re also focused on further expanding our presence in the Asian market for both mobile and PC projects. The successful launch of War Robots in China has been especially encouraging, and this positive reception motivates us to keep broadening and enhancing our products across the Asian region.

How have the last 12 months been for your company?

The past year has been transformative for My.Games, marked by strategic expansions and launches of new titles across various markets. 

In April, we celebrated War Robots’ 10th anniversary. With over 270 million registered players and $900 million in lifetime revenue, War Robots has consistently shown year-over-year growth.

Our team’s dedication and commitment to expanding into new markets, such as China, were instrumental to this success. Obtaining an ISBN and relaunching the game in China were key steps, allowing us to tap into a new audience even after a decade.

Our portfolio also grew with the launch of two new mobile games: Zombie State and Castle Duels. Zombie State combines rogue-like and first-person shooter elements for the F2P mobile market, breaking new ground in the PvE mobile shooter space.

Castle Duels, our dynamic tower defense game, has already surpassed one million installs worldwide since its beta release in July, offering a unique twist on classic tower defense with real-time PvP battles.

A major highlight was the launch of our new publishing label, Knights Peak Interactive, dedicated to premium PC and console games. While My.Games has vast experience in free-to-play publishing, this move represents our strategic entry into the premium space.

Led by industry veterans Eugenio Vitale, Mario Gerhold, and Jan-Eric Lauble, Knights Peak is already supporting six exciting titles, including Starship Troopers: Extermination, Hela, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker, with more projects in the pipeline.

This label underscores our commitment to reaching new markets and supporting emerging and established studios alike.

What do you think the biggest trends in the industry have been over the last 12 months?  

When we’re speaking of trends making an immediate effect on the mobile games market, I can definitely highlight D2C (direct-to-consumer) communication; changes in regulations when it comes to app stores. The mobile market is fighting for margins at all costs, as the market becomes harder. 

On PC and console, we can observe the rise of the doube-A/indie titles, and the general struggle of F2P titles releases. Premium seems to secure itself as a primary business model on PC/console for some years ahead. 

Speaking of more general industry trends — AI is a big word. It’s far from showing instant results, but the probability of this technology speeding up and improving processes is enormous.

We are already implementing AI in some aspects of our game development, and we’re feeling positive about helping our teams become faster and more productive in content creation. This will enable us to release better games that millions of people worldwide can enjoy.

From the investment perspective, the market is showing early signs of positivity, but I wouldn’t expect it ever to be as it was in 2022. Receiving money now — from investors or a publisher—  is a challenging task that requires a lot of skills, and a great product.

It feels somewhat right, as the overall cooling down of the industry might play a good role for everyone to focus on the sustainable development of their businesses. 

What do you think are the key trends, challenges and opportunities for the next year, and how will you be taking them on?

The games industry is facing challenges, but key trends — diversification, intense user competition, focus on existing hit titles and franchises, and cross-collaborations — are expected to grow further in 2025.

One major trend is the shift towards direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategies, particularly through alternative payment methods. This approach strengthens developer-user relationships by enabling direct marketing and facilitating seamless, direct interactions up to the payment stage.

This broadens opportunities for a more engaging user experience. With limited targeting abilities for paying users, products increasingly need to appeal to broad audiences. Games with wide appeal are generally proving more successful than those with narrow focus.

Collaborations and reboots of popular IPs will remain central. Launching new products around established IPs with built-in audiences reduces the risks of building new fan bases from scratch and supports the trend of prioritising safer, less risky investments.

Developers are returning to long-running successful titles, leveraging known audiences for higher reactivation and monetisation. Thus, in 2024, newly released games generated only 4.88% of total revenue.

Speaking about the most successful new releases, hybridcasual ‘puzzle’ games and ‘idle RPGs’ stood out, making a noticeable impact on their genres.

Asian influence in Western markets continues to grow, especially in the US. In 2024, 78% of new mobile games earning over $500,000 monthly were Asian projects.

Asian developers dominate midcore genres like 4X strategy games, with titles such as Whiteout Survival and Last War: Survival Game ranking among the top-grossing mobile games.

Asian casual games like Love and Deepspace and Truck Star Match have also gained traction. These titles tend to capture high engagement and revenue from the start, driven by strong community engagement, pre-registrations, and monetisation models based on gacha mechanics and hero collection.

What do you think is most important to a mobile game’s success in 2024?

In 2024, a mobile game’s success hinges on broad audience appeal, seamless onboarding, long-term retention, and sustainable monetisation.

Games now need to reach a wide audience, so both simple and complex titles are adjusting their difficulty to appeal to a broader user base; the strategy of targeting only “whale” players has largely faded.

Equally important is a smooth onboarding experience, focusing on immediate gameplay with minimal text. With the high cost of each install, it’s crucial to make every initial experience as engaging as possible.

Long-term retention is essential, especially as top developers, notably from Asia, are sustaining engagement through extensive live ops teams that provide diverse content from launch onward.

Finally, sustainable monetisation that balances revenue with user enjoyment is key; it’s essential to customise monetisation strategies by individual or cohort to keep players engaged and avoid detracting from the gaming experience.