Candy Crush Solitaire: The Solitaire Showdown on a Gaming Battlefield

Because my main point here is why everybody has insane expectations that every game that's going live immediately, just everybody shit their pants. Because we see a lot of games that go live immediately, everybody shit their pants.
Yeah, but the thing is, as we discussed with Royal Kingdom, it takes time until you build that revenue, until that stacks up. It's 4 a.m.
and we're rolling the dice. Mate drops knowledge made of gold and ice.
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Matej, UA, master eyes on the prize prize Tracking data through the cyberspace skies Felix acts colors like a wizard in disguise Jackups, crafting realms Lift Welcome. This is Two and a Half Gamers.
is mate lancharic i'm felix braunberg and we are your hosts and we are going to talk about what else than candy crush solitaire because well, as we are the experts on the Solitaire games, because, of course, everybody played in their lives 10 Solitaire games, except that's a lie. You mean like being no Solitaire? Yeah.
That's the only Solitaire most of our listeners and all both of you played most probably. Yeah, right? That's what I thought.
No, but like... There's the thing, there's zero creatives like that.
Like, I'm pretty sure that they should be creative as... Harrowman does it at the end of the level.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course.

Of course.

What do you want to say, Felix?

But we also want to congratulate our dear co-host

for the birth of his daughter yesterday.

So, Jakob, congratulations for that.

We want to congratulate his wife, not him.

His wife, ah, right.

Because he did episode zero.

He was there just a moral support.

And he is recording a podcast episode

the day after.

Look, so there's the

tradition in Slovakia says

when your child is born, you need to get

shit-faced, as I mentioned.

You drink

for the child's health.

The more you're shit-faced,

the healthier the child is. But he doesn't't drink so he needs to record a podcast that's the most Eastern European shit I've ever heard absolutely yeah it's like you didn't even hear what we do at Easter yeah alright, the Remyars.

Congratulations.

Now let's get on to this amazing show.

Yeah, of course.

Especially Yanka.

Okay, anyway.

So what should we ask?

Should we just jump straight in?

Metrics.

Let's take metrics first.

I don't know.

Because there's lots of happening. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, okay, let's go Matrix. In between.
So, I think, still, you made those predictions that this is gonna be whatever. It's gonna be a battlefield this year.
Yeah. That's still on the table.
A battlefield of what? Of wounded soldiers? Fucking, I'm talking. You mean like rats run by a van yeah exactly because this is exactly what's gonna happen yeah it's gonna be quite let's say interesting because yeah let's go one by one a little bit of history lesson so this is the important thing and let me get back to my predictions and we get a smooth transition into this episode.

So what's happening with all of these games that are anchored in reality,

such as board games, such as Domino, Solitaire,

probably also stuff like Megamon or whatever,

like all these other kind of things,

it will also reach from time to time.

So what happens here is that if you go into the top charts of these games,

you see that most of these are, okay, let's remove Candy Crush Solitaire

because it's getting right now, so it's an outlier here.

But all of these other games that you see here,

like Solitaire Classic Card Game is literally 20 copies of that same game.

I'm not kidding.

They're mainly driven by organic.

If you look into them, how

they actually look, it's basically your

old Windows Solitaire.

That's what people are looking

for, that old good

thing. It's similar to something like chess

or domino or

I don't know, Ludo or

all these other games that people

played in their childhood, they want to play now

on mobile.

But because

there's this thing

Thank you. All these other games that people played in their childhood, they want to play now on mobile.
But because there's this thing where you see a potential blue ocean market, because these games don't make that much IP revenue. They're mainly organic traffic driven by ads, yada, yada, yada.
Hello, Felix. But at some point, somebody thought, hey, this is a great idea.
So let's use all that organic traffic and everything and funnel it into our money-making machine of puzzle-based, you know, whatever monetization juice, as we know. And create stuff like Domino Dreams, which, again, if you know how actual Domino is played and I work on some like real Domino games this is not Domino at all Domino has very clear rules, it's a PvP game between two people and so on and so forth this is basically some kind of iteration of a puzzler where all these...
Solitaire is what we are looking at it's the same thing it's the same thing you take mechanics like with solitaire that people know because you know these bricks you know we need to continue with each other blah blah blah like you have here but it's not domino at all it's like creates a puzzle basically so it's like something similar to like zen match or whatever like i guess or basically it it's level based puzzler with mechanics from the board

game, that's the important thing

and Domino Dreams is currently killing it doing something

like 200-300k a day

I don't know what's the latest number

but that's there

Only if you had

Sensor Tower so you can check it

Yeah, you're right

Oh my god

Yes

That would be awesome, right?

I'm going to be... sensor tower so you can check it.
Yeah, you're right. Oh my god.
Yes. That would be awesome, right? That would be amazing.
Dice streams made 16 mil in the last 30 days. Yeah, 260k, like I said.
So I think it's top scaling a little bit. Ah, it's still scalingk a day? Wow.
260, not 600. 260.
Why is my camera trying to get my spotlight? Nice. Hello.
Hello, camera. Return back.
There we go. Wild camera appears again.
It's super effective. By the way, the listeners, if you are watching this, well, not if, but when you are watching this, you already recorded an episode about another game.
And I have to tell you, that camera was wild. It was really wild.
Felix almost didn't make it. It remembers Felix, it seems.

Anyway, so this is the dynamic that is happening.

And this dynamic is, it already happened basically in the solitaire genre. Because if you look at solitaire genre from revenue perspective,

all of these top games that are making big revenue,

it's like Grand Harvest basically, currently only.

It's again, it's a solitaire gameplay but puzzle based it's not really something because again it's pretty much this where what we did is we took the solitaire mechanics of like card you need to play on each other by the order but that's it there's like completely different things there and in the end it ends up like this where you have or even cluster where you have boosters you have streaks you have all the puzzle based mechanics of like bread and butter stuff like match three basically so it's a puzzle the big question is why everybody thinks they can pull off Monopoly Go?

Because they just do... Rushing head on.
Yeah. I mean...
Yeah. Yeah.
So what's happening here is that Platica Solitaire Grand Hardware is currently the category leader with 15 million a month revenue, which is very stable. if you look at the numbers, it has been doing pretty much 600k per day from start of 2023 and that's it what's wrong with your camera yeah don't worry that's just don't talk about it it starts doing more if you talk about it ignore it yeah ignore it i worked on this game way way way long ago and it was already making quite a quite significant amount of money and oh my god yeah yeah it's 72 62 percent driven by us so it's like solid and uh yeah active users i think are a little bit of a downward but still very solid anyway so this is play tic as main category leader there if we continue there we see the Scopely game, which is Tiki Solitaire Tripeaks, which peaked in May 2021, somewhere like 300k per day.
Now it's what, like still solid 130k per day. Look at the lifetime revenues, 500 million.
Yeah, 500 because this is from 2014. yeah yeah yeah yeah it's all downloads as well if you buy downloads you don't feel 40 million you mean you don't see the trend no the download size when they see the overall downloads second but look you know how drippalot started they they took solitaire and they started that Solitaire as their first game.
Exactly because of this. So there's the Copling thing and then there's the Playrix things with Fisdom Solitaire that did scale very aggressively in May 2023 to something like 150k per day.
Would you say this is an unfortunate shark fin? Yeah, this seems like a UA pushed, UA induced shark fin basically. Making this shit up, come on man.
But it's like, let's say this is completely UA induced shark fin man. Yeah, of course.
So this is there. Maybe they thought that they could strong arm in the competition.
Just like roll over them with UA and then like, you know, their share would go down. It's a different game.
It's not your usual match free. I guess freezing families didn't work out here.
No. There is one actually solitaire game which is using this bullshit.
It's not working. Oh, okay.
Not effective. Yeah, so...
You will see what they're doing on the Candy Crush side. And we kind of talked about it in the last creative trends.
Yeah. By the way, fifth game on the chart based on revenue is King's Game.
Pyramid Solitaire Saga. By the way.
saga by the way pyramid sorry which is currently making uh half of the money of solitaire candy crush game uh but yeah like i guess like one of those like side games that king made 87 million lifetime revenue from 2014 yeah for king i I don't think that's very relevant. Back then I think it was okay.
Back when? Back when Candy Crush wasn't doing 100 million a month. Jesus Christ, but it wasn't 2014.
You tell me. I'm just saying they're in the top charts.
That just tells you how the top charts are lower. Like you see, like, great harvest is basically wiping forward everyone.
That's it. Like, goodbye.
If you're not great harvest, we don't need to talk about you. Yeah.
So, and now it brings us into these, again, back to my predictions, all the people that are rushing into the category. So, in the first place, we have Candy Crush Solitaire, which we're going to talk about today more in detail.

That was launched on February 5th, and the results are mixed, or even worse than mixed. Well, I don't want to be really harsh on them too much, but yeah.
Then we have the other category entrants, which are Disney Solitaire, which is basically a continuation of Domino Dreams from Superplay, which is now owned by Playtica. So I would guess this game was built before the M&A merger.
Absolutely, yes. It takes time to actually build a Solitaire game.
Even though it's pretty much on that same pipeline. Just saying.
because it's literally their pipeline especially if you see the transitions between the meta gameplay thing it's basically the same so yeah they just kind of re-skinned and changed the core like a hobby playbook but no no no no no no no no no this is not hobby playbook meta, different core? That's hobby. Okay, sorry.
I was thinking... I heard re-skinned, and then I felt like, wait a second.
Anyway, the question is, and please let me understand this. Who from the target audience, which is predominantly female audience, Old female audience.
Old meaning 40 plus. Who cares about Tinkerbell? That's what I'm trying to get.
Who really, from this audience, cares about Disney characters? Beauty and the Beast? Beauty and the Beast, yes. Maybe you would be surprised.
I don't know. That's why I'm trying to understand.
I thought you would help me understand this. Because the only thing...
Yeah, exactly. Moana? No.
That's a new thing. Lion King, maybe.
Maybe. Beauty and the Beast, maybe.
Aladdin. Pocahontas, maybe.
Aladdin seriously Lil and Stitch no one cared about Lil and Stitch Cinderella maybe yes okay fine but I mean I can look so my mom like took me to to watch all of these when I was really little but I but you're still not old enough to play solitaire exactly yeah exactly I mean I'm the vacuum is I mean honestly I like the solitaire games so I'm kind of but I'm different I like all the actual games for some reason yeah so this is pretty much Playtica's attempt number one in the soft launch. And there's Claire's Chronicles, which is Playtica's attempt number two, because this is done on Journey's Journey metagame engine, which just switched into Solitaire Core by Vuga, of course.
And Vuga, as we know, is owned by Playtica. Yes.
And I feel sorry for all those teams.

It's going to be a bloodbath.

Yeah, it's going to be a bloodbath. I don't think so this category can support even more than two games at all in that scale of revenue.

It would be amazing if we have two games on the side of Solitaire Grand Harvest.

Yeah.

But honestly, you were super like, eh, Solitaire games. Remember remember what I said it's not gonna work none of these is gonna work I didn't say it's gonna work of course like you know battles there's lots of corpses at the end of each battle yeah so this is happening and happening.
And then the last... This is kind of like...
It looks so similar. Black horse here.
But there's something like, what else can you actually... Oh, Jesus Christ.
Really? How is this a black horse? It's not called a black horse. It's called a dark horse.
Yeah, it's a dark horse, sorry. It's a dark horse.
I would say maybe it's a white horse in this case. This is a confused horse.
This is a very confused horse. I'm the confused horse.
No, but what's Metacore doing? They got in here? Yeah, he seems to be getting there. Why? I why i mean you know maybe they like how much did they get like 150 mil like lifeline for supercell like maybe some of that money would be better spent on this rather than pedro pascal i don't know honestly no i don't i don't see that why because the CPIs are higher than the merge games.
What are the CPIs right now? Just out of curiosity, like what are you trying? Yeah. Look, this is very, very similar to match.
It's not exactly match, but it's somewhere between match and merge. So you really can't.
Yeah, you can't steal. You have $30, $50 easily.
And I know those numbers because of recent conversations. And yes, it's like 20, 27, 30, 50 depends on the country.
Pay optimization, yeah. Exactly.
So if you haven't worked in this before, it's going to be very hard for you because all of the different tricks and stuff, raising families and bullshit. You need to learn the hard way, which means it's going to cost you money.
Yes. And, you know, if you look at the merch category and how you are actually losing against the Chinese, losing heavily, now you are actually trying to compete with the Israelis.
Good job! It's really going to work. It also works really hard.
Literally, how? Seriously, I mean, points for being very adventurous, and I really want to be wrong on this but having worked on this it's really gonna be tough out of these like four new games we're talking about I think like three or more is gonna be dead Superplay has the best chance you mean your Disney Tinkerbell? Yes. But only because of their previous

games. Because Ice streams

and Domino streams.

Because they have Platyka behind their back.

But also VUGA has Platyka.

Yeah, but VUGA doesn't have...

I think this is just like much better Polish

and overall...

It's the approach

to work and the attitude

and everything.

It's like that's gonna make

Thank you. It's the approach to work and attitude and everything.
It's like that's going to make a difference. Of course.
You see how Domino's Dreams and Dice Dreams started? Yeah. And where is it now? Yeah, they sold the company for 4 billion.
Yeah. So that's the thing.
Yeah. I'm not saying theU guys also didn't sell for a lot of money before, but I just...
There's a little bit of, you know, it's just that the attitude work is different. Isn't this in the end going to be like a CPI battle? In the end? Where everybody's like bringing their own guns? Where like Candy Crush is bringing the Candy Crush IP.
These guys are bringing the Disney IP.

These guys are bringing the grandma.

And these guys are basically bringing the narrative spin.

And that's how I see it, basically.

I think this is not going to be decided on the UA battlefield, to be honest.

But for most part of it, I think still will be. Like, yeah, be product monetization LTV stuff is super important but if you don't have the users from low LTV or low CPI but there is no low CPI but you're going to make it with those tricks yes you know, mighty magic mighty magic when I I heard.
Matemagic, Matemagic.

Matemagic, when I was working on this,

which was a long time ago,

nothing really... Worked.

Well, they worked,

but definitely different than what you would say.

You would expect.

Simple stuff.

Very simple stuff for audience like this.

Of course, I would now use different concepts,. Different magic.
But yeah, I mean... Let's get to the review.
Because lots of things to talk about. So let's get to it.
So Solitaire... No, no, no.
I have to say I'm level 49 and you are level 48

and I played all

I restarted playing Solitaire Grand Harvest

as well and I'm a 42 or something

I'm 14 also

I just wanted to see it

yeah because

that game definitely changed

from the previous

years and I think it was a good comparison

to have because these games are

similar, but different.

Different in the RPU.

Yes, and also

Devil is into details.

Yeah, there's a giant

Devil into details. Anyway, so

what's happening? February

5th, the global launch of Solitaire Grand Candy Crash Solitaire, sorry, which was soft launch on if I understand February It was February, yeah. I checked it because Sensor Tower gave me one creative which was apparently based on Sensor in june to july 2023 but

i checked facebook ads

library and the first creative was launched in

february 2024 so it's

a year ago

basically yeah but i guess they worked on it before

it's just that that's the soft launch phase

anyway yeah um so

what's the games about there's candy crush ip

as they like to do because

they also have like candy crush match 3d

currently which is again the similar thing

to match factory or all these other things

Thank you. the game's about there's candy crash ip as they like to do because they also have like candy crash match 3d currently which is again the similar thing to match factory or all these other things so they're doing like the rovio playbook where let's let's go after different genres and put our ip into it and hope for the best basically which rovio did at one point and most of those things failed horribly um as you would expect so what we have here is basically the i would say a little bit of old version of these puzzlers where we still have the restoration meta which is i hate i hate that like i was like guys i think we passed this why are we just doing this again where we have it's not really restoration especially but you can't replace it can replace it.
You can't decrease sugarization, basically. So what's happening, you have these postcards, and then by each of these levels, you get energy, and when you have that energy, you use it, and it's similar to restoring something in the gardenscapes.
You just remove part of the picture and switch it with candies or whatever. And that's it.
To be fair, I was reading some comments and people like it. If you're a core fan of Candy Crush, probably, yeah.
But this is a question I do really want to have only core fans of Candy Crush here. I don't think so.
No. I don't know.
I still don't think... I think it's a little bit of a stretch that people think that these IPs from the big games that we have on mobile can drive down CPI or give you any kind of advantage.
Yes, yes. They can't and they won't.
Like Squadbusters basically. Kind of.
No. That's a stretch, but still.
Okay, fair. Kind of.
No.

That's a stretch, but still.

Okay, fair enough.

But it's exactly what's happening in here,

unfortunately.

Yeah, but this works with Monopoly Go

because Monopoly is a worldwide game,

not a mobile game.

Yes.

Yes.

It's a brand.

Yeah, it's a brand.

Candy Crush is also a brand, but only brand on mobile yes yeah it's yeah it doesn't have that pool so i think this is like wrong assumption the other thing is for me the whole game looks like five years old i'm sorry i'm just sorry but like the whole UI visual. It's just like, guys, have you seen Royal Kingdom, how it looks now? And all these other things.
And by the way, you could do these things in portrait, old landscape. That's one thing I'm really giving to Metacore that they could do portrait.
I think even it's a great harvest in's not a great harvest. Okay, so this is the only port-a-gid one, but it can be done.
I guess, again, UX is a little bit worse. It's just better.
The other thing is that... Let's go to the gameplay, and this is the thing that I'll show you, which is the giant differentiator between the other games so we have typical like now like solitaire and harvest pretty much these guys took solitaire and harvest as their base one to one almost one but there's one one mechanic which is yeah i guess it has to do with monetization so absolutely you put these cards on top of each other

and they need to go in order so let's say we have j here we can now do either q or 10 so on so forth actually what we can do we can take both and this is the thing that candy crush solitaire there gives you much bigger strategic depth, which also make it much harder. Which is a giant good decision.
Maybe Felix can help us decide if it's good or bad. Because I'm saying, this additional card...
It's an up-to-home mechanic. It actually helps you a lot in the gameplay so it's easier if you know how to use it but then Jakob is saying you need to actually think way more and then strategically think about the next steps which is more difficult for the audience but then then, yeah, I think it could be.
But also, you need to think in match-free games in very late stage levels as well. So I think they're used to this.
And this is the main differentiation. Yeah, this is the main differentiation with all these days.
This is the one. Because, for instance, again, the situation here, I go for Q and normally if I would go for Grand Harvest, I would go for K and again, I go from there.
But I also want to get the 10. So what I do here is I put Q into this top two whole thing, leave it for later, and then go for the 10.
See? Which makes it easier. Makes it easier, but also the game balance is based around this advantage, which means it's much harder if you're not using it, therefore you're losing.
But if you have these scores, then you need to use it. Yes, but if you don't know how to use it properly, because there's so many tricks that this mechanic can do, like with the double pairs and stuff like that, where I can put the pair of the same card here.
And for instance, let's go with, you know, we go with King again. Then we go with Q.
And again, because now it's only J, but of course it's not only J, it's also A, C, and then it's the Jack, and so on and so forth. So you need to think much more.
Whereas if we go to Solitaire Grand Harvest and pretty much all the rest of the games, they work on a very simple premise. It's just one card that goes in the order.
No saving, no nothing. You're just looking one next card.
So if I get Q, K, I can do either Q or A. That's it.
If I go for Q, I need to plan around. So like, okay, there's Q.
I cannot do A anymore. That's it.
I cannot, like, nothing's happening. So I can go for J here and then another Q and so on.
And it's, like, quite simple. Yeah, it's just a tapping simulator, basically.
Yeah, but you still need to pre-plan your moves, man. You need to pre-plan which card

after you jump to connect in the chain.

Here, the chain just gets much

bigger. It's more complex,

that's true. Yes.
And because

I think they're balancing the difficulty

around it, because this game, like, the difficulty

kicks in super fast, like level

15, 14, like you're getting your ass kicked.

Where, here?

Yeah.

Okay. I'm terrible at this, and I pass up to 16 without losing a level.
Without losing a level C? Okay, but that's 16. That's really where it kicks in.
Don't play until 40. Man, I'm 49.
I lost once. Once.
Then I'm playing it wrong. This is the beauty part of us three and listeners if you

listen to this and then you listen to Good Sword

episode I was fucking terrible

at that game and this is

my type of game

so I guess I'm thinking no time

pressure yes

exactly

anyway

honestly I first started

playing I was like eh

rather solitary and then I started playing more

it's not actually that bad

I don't know. they hate temperature anyway no i honestly i first i started playing i was like eh another solitaire and then i started playing more it's like it's not that actually that bad what was the the solitaire i need to i need to play that again so now i was playing two games both on level 50 for like a couple of days but i lost then kind of motivation to play anymore but anyway uh the the biggest difference in here and the Solitary Grand Harvest, as you mentioned, is the balancing.
Because here, if you lose, it's really expensive. Because, I mean, you have more options when you play and you can strategize, but it's really expensive.
So you'd rather go and play that level again. But in Solitary Grand Harvest, you just buy those five cards because it's really cheap and you get you have shit ton of yeah which also goes to the other big change which is the only change is the boosters on the right yeah they have the wild card they have the lollipop and they have the refresh but if you convert with all the other games they have just the wild card with the price price is the key here it's a price because if i go here i think i just have like yeah but you just yeah come on you can you just use all of them and it's also price what do you mean oh really yeah just use them so let's just use all of them then i just use free hammersers.
Okay. Just give me a second.

Can you, by the way, store them?

Where? On the wild card.

No, you can't. I don't think so.

Let's just check.

But it's still like they have three or four more things here.

There we are.

I can see you. This is your

type of game. This is my

type of game, of course.

There we go. There's your type of game.
This is my type of game, of course. Yeah.
There you go. There we go.
Yeah. This is much, much, much more expensive.
It's more expensive. Yes, exactly.
That's what I'm saying. That's like the biggest change is on the balancing side.
Yeah, because we can't compare the numbers, but we can compare the ratios. So one live here is like 2,000 coins.
2,700. Yeah, whereas here, one live here is if we quit.
One live here is what? 1,000. 1,000.
And the wild card is for 1,000. Yeah, but it scales as you go and you're on level 14.
And if you're level 40, I can check. Yeah, anyway.

Maybe, maybe. Maybe I'm just like over-scratching it.
But yeah, that's minimal difference. The top two hold mechanic, this is the main difference.
That's the thing. Which just, I think people in this category won't be able to utilize it to their full potential.
Therefore, they could be just making the game too deep of a strategic depth

for the audience question why doesn't this game have any ads rewarded ads can someone answer me why you can't blame it on Solitaire IP here. It's not Solitaire IP.
It's just where would you put them? In the buying cards? It's a monetization pool. It would cannibalize the IPs.
Okay, what about if you go into the shop, you have the free spin every day. Put that behind the rewarded ad.
Man, this is your usual moment to be or not to be, to have the ads or not to have them. Also, we forgot to say, the biggest difference is between those two games is this.
You are getting smashed with special offers. That's the other big difference.
Every minute. I was expecting because I heard a lot of people talking about this.
Wait, no ads? Just no good placements? That's where we're finishing up? No, there could be definitely good placements and as we talked before, we could double the revenue by 4 ads per day. This is king, which is going after IP revenue.
You still have Candy Crush and then you have the ads there. But you have the ads there if you play 4,000 level.
That's true. Okay, fair enough.
Also, if you play level 3, then the third booster is saying coming soon it's coming soon

by the way the

Solter Ground Harvest level 35

it costs like 1500

so it goes up

that's my bad so it's the same

but the other thing I was

disappointed

basically literally disappointed

why guys are you doing this

postcard thing, renovation thing

where you should be literally doing

Thank you. disappointed, basically.
Literally disappointed. Why, guys, are you doing this postcard thing, renovation thing,

where you should be literally doing this,

which is the

Royal Match Factory

aggressive events rotation

meta, where you have all of these

team goals,

all of these events that

are triggered completely based on the

player-like stuff like this, basically,

where we are just searching

for opponents, which are basically bots

Thank you. all of these events that are triggered completely based on the player like stuff like this basically where we are just searching for opponents which are basically bots and they just give you the incentive to play and be faster than the bots and stuff like that and this rotates all the time yeah forever they even have like a mission center for it now it works like charm and everybody's doing it like we literally reviewed the game two days ago, which is doing exactly the same thing.
It's scaling like crazy. Quadruple the revenue of Candy Crush Solitaire, by the way.
When we had the last Creative Trends, we were really thinking, oh my god, they're using this saved whatever. Candy Crush.
Candy Crush, yeah. Yes.
So maybe, just maybe, they implemented it in the game. No.
Dead answers. I don't know, like, I don't know what was happening here, but I think, like, they're literally missing the train.
Like, why didn't you, like... I mean, if you're still talking about one of the biggest companies in the world.
I know, but... Yeah, yeah.
The biggest companies in the world still stumble. Are you sure that the revenue in the last 30 days...
7 euros. No.
It's not 7 euros. It's basically, here is the launch, and it's something like 25K.
Yeah. And we really wanted to wait for this.

So we don't jump on this because the revenue recalculates are not a good estimate.

This definitely is to estimate now after two weeks, basically.

Go on the active user base.

So here's what I worked at.

Activate user base.

Activate user base. Activate user base.
Order 66. So basically, I took the liberty here of just calculating with the user base in US, non-US, right? And if they got 55% of their user base to watch four rewarded ads, they would literally double the overall revenue.
No, it still wouldn't help them at all. I know, but still.
I'm just saying, I guess it's not going as well as they thought with the launch. I would guess so.
I would like to say we might be missing something. 600k a day.
Now. Again, that's why I don't want to be really harsh on them because it took them so long to actually get where they are at the moment and from the very beginning.
If you do a lot... Let's do the very beginning and we'll compare.
That's a good thing. So let's go hard though because this metric, you know, this is not revenue per download.
Jesus Christ. Okay, Mr.
Game Designer here. Teach me.
Teach me, Master. $0.15, $0.20.
Just put the other app or the game on the same graph and then just align by app launch. You know how to use Sensor Tower.
That's it. Easy as that.
There we go. Up launch.
And then just zoom there and that's it. See? Still not there.
Yeah, but not that different. No, no, man.
Sorry. This is, look here.
This is where you need to this is soft launch this is soft launch that's why it's on par this is global launch then countries oh no that's not gonna do the same thing no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, an interesting point, Matty. That's the thing.
Also, go to revenue since launch. It's the same thing.
It's just... Of course, it's not comparing apples to apples because it's different, but still, see? But they were scaling it differently.
They weren't doing 500K downloads a day. Yes, I know, but it's also not 500K because it's like...
Yeah, the thing is that let's just get into like an overall agreement that we all expected that this would scale

much faster and much bigger.

What did you expect, like millions a day?

No, no, no, like just, I don't know,

50, 100k a day.

50 or 100k

a day? Yeah.

Why? Based on what?

Based on Candy Crush IP?

Based on the

expectation that this will just have

much better monetization

with the LTV that you're talking about there.

Because of Solitaire Grand

Harvest.

My main point here is

why everybody has

insane expectations that

every game that's going alive

immediately, just everybody shit their pants. Because you see a lot of games that go live immediately everybody shit their pants.
As we discussed with Royal Kingdom it takes time until you build that revenue. Until that stacks up.
Obviously yes, I would expect this to be higher but because it it's King, because it's Candy Crush, because everybody was talking about it.

But I still feel, I mean, obviously, it's kind of almost half dead on arrival, but I think it's going to grow.

But maybe I'm wrong.

I just want to be a little bit more positive about this.

From my point, from product-based perspective, as you said, I don't see the events.

I don't see the events I don't see the offers I played numerous onboardings Royal Kingdom Match Factory all the hybrid casual games that we see and it's just much more aggressive but you know what is really really important go to albums and yeah this is gonna save them go paris click on the left on the side there is a unicorn there you go that joke at the end thank you very much by the way their album isn't even resetting i was like oh they have the album mechanic it's like more collections soon go and play the level 48 and check the third booster. Click on it and then just click.
More booster coming soon. It's not finished.
It could be. It's not finished.
That's the thing. More things are...
But why release a game with Candy Crush IP after five years and not finish it? I don't know. Ask Supercell about Squadbusters.
Why? Well, because of reasons. I mean, because whatever.
Okay, so let's talk about this. You're like, it's going to grow.
I don't think so it's going to grow because of this, this, this, and this. All of these are half dead.
The only thing... You're very pessimistic always.

I'm going to side with Mate.

Man, they're going to increase the CPI so much that your growth that you can take time to do

is not going to happen.

You know how much money these guys have?

You know how much money Platika will throw into this?

Of course.

But it's a pizza blue ocean.

Wait, wait, wait.

They would just agree on that the biggest winner of this is Apploving? Yeah, as usual. No.
Actually, no. Really? No, I don't think it's Apploving.
Actually, Facebook and Google for this. Man, I really think like I buy.
Okay, they didn't finish it properly.

They still can learn from blah, blah, blah,

and all these things and slowly throw it.

Yeah, I'm okay with that,

but not in that bloody environment

when there's, like, four or five other

solitaire games coming after it,

and we didn't even see the Chinese one.

So judge us in six months, basically.

Yeah.

Look, no, no, no, look.

Until summer, there will be two updates. I'm saying, I'm telling you, there will be two updates.
One beacon in like three months, and then, well, it's almost summer, fuck. You mean like what, like the third booster? New content, the booster, and the events.
In the meantime, they maybe are going to focus on special characters. I don't know.
Candy Crush has excellent live ops pipeline. Candy Crush itself.
King has excellent live ops capabilities. Don't get me wrong.
They know their shit. They know their shit, but they don't know how to build solitaire games.
I mean... I don't know.
Who knows? I'm just like... Maybe maybe i'm completely wrong on this but i still think that tap to hold mechanic is making it more problematic than easier my opinion yeah i have a different opinion right i would just invest more into those event rotation meta sure and also i mean again you play solitaire grand harris you exit you win you the level, special offer, bam.
You open the app, bam, special offer. Here, it's there.
Yeah, hello. Hello, special offer.
Good. How are you there? It's not even moving.
It's not even like all this like basic stuff, it's not doing. Like if you compare it with

match factory

this thing is after every

single level is like bonanza

of stuff that's being thrown at you.

Again,

cultural difference.

Think about it.

It all comes back to that.

It's simple as that.

I'm pessimistic

about this. I'm sorry.

I'm pessimistic about this. I'm sorry.
You're pessimistic about everything. It doesn't count.
Who would have thought? Yeah, it doesn't count. You should be optimistic.
Like Marvin in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Yeah, I don't know.

I just think this needs much more push in order to make a dent here.

I think it's too early.

Too early for what?

I think it's too early to judge it.

You said the same thing about Squadbusters.

I said it's too early to judge it?

Yeah.

No, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

I don't think I even was on the pod for that. Yeah.
For various reasons. For various reasons.
Yeah, no, no. Give me the screen so I can share the creators.
Give me the screen. Honestly, everything we talked about on the product side, you can expect on the UA.

It's not as advanced. Is it videos of gameplay?

No, not only.

Not only, but it's kind of running different things

from Google, App Lab, I mean, Integral even to Facebook.

Moloko.

Oh, hello, Moloko. You were not here

before. It's good.

Welcome to the big boys club.

Okay. So

good old

greatest. Not an actual

gameplay, which is interesting.

But

I was hoping the cards would start falling on his

head.

I mean, that's exactly. There's nice music.
This is fine. And nothing really...
It doesn't really need to... It needs to appeal.
Matty, I think you engaged some submarine microphone. Yeah, you just...
You just dived into the water. Oh, that's all good now.
I did? What? That was really weird. Or maybe because of this.
Is it still under the water? No, it's so good. Now it's not, right? No, it's okay still.
Okay, so I'm back. Because you were trying to sell your soul? Yes, exactly.
Oh, sell my soul?

I'm not selling my soul, but you don't have to sell your soul either.

Because today's episode is brought to you by our sponsors, PVX Partners.

Because if you use PVX Partners, there is no equity dilution.

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So visit pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you grow your game. You repay as you get paid, very fast and flexible.
So you can secure funding in 30 days and get a turn sheet in 24 hours. Very nice.
Very nice and smooth, Mr. Jakub.
Thank you very much for that. One more soul.
One more soul. Sold.
Scale like a king with PVX partners. I'm not sure if they're using it, but maybe you should.
Anyway, so this is the playable. Great, right? It's basically an end card, and it's live on Upload.
So, guys, you definitely need a little bit more love on the playables at the end. And this is our good old creative.
Save the king. Save the king.
Save the yeti. We showed this in the previous episode and the previous, like, the creative trends.
And we were hoping, oh boy, we were hoping that this is going to be in the game. But it's not.
It's not. I mean, but how can you, how can you edit in the game anyway? I mean, you can figure it out, obviously.
What do you mean? Like everybody has it. I know everybody has it.
Yeah, it's true. And every playrix game is using pin puzzle creatives and they have it every second level.
I know. Also, we also saw this previous episode.
Heavy CGI. Yeah, heavy CGI narrative stuff, which is kind of story-driven and then you have the gameplay afterwards.
And that's my problem with all of this. It's super interesting, by the way.
Like you said, that nobody's using the concepts of Age of Empires mobile, like old CRT, Solitaire, Windows. Nobody's doing that.
Nobody's doing it. Exactly.
And it's surprising because... I would expect that you would get it for the audience.
My mom was playing Solitaire on my old Windows 95. Almost every day I could see all that animations.
I can already imagine the creative. Camera zooms on old CRT monitor.
You're playing Windows Solitaire and then cards turn into candies and you go from there yeah it's like you can do all

this nostalgia stuff from

the past exactly like Age of Empires

Mobile did

you can use it here

but instead

of course because it's slightly different

because it's Forex

and instead you're

doing this, hello

guess what

best game ever

I'm going to go ahead and get started. and instead you are doing this hello, guess what best game ever Random UGC you see it's a classic solitaire game we all know and love but it's a candy crush twist I mean, can you even believe this person saying this believing people it's just a bit boring I mean of course boring is absolutely terrible thank you very much for this that's my problem with these UGC videos because it's just random people they don't really care at all and they have a few of these obviously they have playable which is kind of nice what is this it's not even a solitaire oh my god okay exactly yeah yeah.
So let's go back. But they're full on fake stuff.
Why don't they use it in the game? Exactly. I guess that's the next thing they need to cross before they let it happen, right? Also you have January, let's say February.
I'm literally thinking there's like random brand guidelines that are holding them down it's kind of nice playable I like the rainbow it's really really short looks like Skatel's rainbow very loud also this this one is old yeah is old. Yeah.
Heavy CGI hook. And the old guy.
Grant Pound the Top. Yeah, Grant Pound the Top.
Exactly. Grant Pound the Top.
At least I guess he's real. Yeah, but this is an old creative that they were running in the past.
And you know, like, see, you have one page of creatives on Uplavin. So, Felix, Uplavin is not going to win on this that much.
Because this is... That was the part where Uplavin was.
Yeah, that was the part. So they're running on Facebook?

It's mainly Facebook.

No, it's mainly Facebook for Candy Crush Solitaire.

And I will show you mainly. Let's see.

Free networks, all of these.

And not even that much.'s weird honestly and they have this I think this is the one this is really good actually this is really nice really really nice CGI stuff really cool it's really satisfying to watch it's too fast for me and I think for the audience because so many things are happening aren't all these things that go directly into gameplay just have atrociously high CPI no no no you have still a hook in here and it's kind of not only you mean like compared to that Yeti killing Save the Yeti thing? Yeah, look. Look good.
The thing is, I'm going to share also this latest analysis, which is the impression share. And look, they launched.
Basically, it's 80% Facebook. And you saw how many creatives there on Facebook? It's really, really low, guys.
I don't think... Yeah, and I saw...
I don't think they're spending a lot of money, to be honest. Because look...
Because they saw the revenue numbers? No, because... We'll have to revisit this when we get path metrics.

Like, really.

Because you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Eight creatives launched in February.

Everywhere.

It's not all... Or Facebook.

Facebook, it doesn't matter. It's just all the countries.
Yeah. A Facebook audience, it doesn't matter.

It's just all the countries. And this is it, I mean, how can this spend a lot of money? Tell me.
Yeah. Also this...
Very high CPIs. Not very high CPIs.
It's just not spending money at all in big quantities. also that all those numbers are just a high kind of uh featuring yeah because that's that's the point what matthew was trying to get with the comparison that those numbers are like what like india indonesia all of this it's not us only so like us is still first like for let's say yesterday's downloads like 30 30k US, but then there's 15k, 14k India, 7k Brazil, 5k Mexico, stuff like that.
Here we have, it's quite a lot of installs, but then we go here and we go countries, then they stuck it's 30k US and everything has like 150k downloads not that much yeah it's not that much and by the way this is very interesting Germany is the biggest revenue country. Not US.
Germany.

There you go. Ah, yeah.

Come on. Okay, they overtook them.

Yesterday it was... Yeah, so yeah.

When we checked it, it was a little bit different.

Still, yeah, this

is... Look.

Look.

I mean, it's still not bad, but

honestly, 500,000 downloads and only 100,034 revenue. That's quite low.
Yeah. So this is not high-quality users.
Because if these were high-quality users, there is missing a zero. Or there's monetization, not aggressive enough to monetize them.
Could be. Could be that as well.
Yeah. We'll begin for review radar, I guess.
Of course. Like, man, we're going to do like solitaire body count episode at the end of the year.
The body is at the flow. That's what I had in mind.
I'm going to get a tattoo of every sol as a tear here as a tear here it's gonna be all of them like an anime with all the tears I'm just gonna cry solitaire games jeez I really wanna show you something interesting on the UA side but I don't have anything to share that's super interesting.

I can share, look at this, which is a solitary grand harvest.

And they're doing a lot of spend on Google,

a little bit of uploading and all over the place,

Lyft of and stuff, and then some DSPs.

But Google was the biggest in the previous years and it still is even if we go like the last 30 days still 40% it's Google so that's where that's where Candy Crush is kind of missing out because they already run Facebook and not that much so that's why I think we are still very very early but I'm not sure what they are waiting for that's my I'm just checking DominoDreams how the curves look in the beginning and their basically, if I see this right, was... Can you give the screen to Jakob? Yeah, sorry, I'm just dying.
You can't have six pages of craze when you launch a game. Especially on the giant scale, because they...
And this is the, I think this is the source of the expectations that I'm having when i see games is having like 500k downloads that i'd be driven and stuff like that did you expect that it's gonna get some scale because again let's like let's check domino dreams which is very similar concept and again so you see how um revenue pretty much this soft launch and slowly like take you like really slow hockey stick this

is like textbook slow this is a slow hockey stick yeah this is if you check downloads they never went over some kind of giant amount of downloads ever like there's why because it's also expensive it's expensive but you know they're paying for quality they don't care and they're like slowly But honestly,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I, don't care and it's like slowly scaling it but honestly I don't want to say it but look it's a big company and we always talked about like how they kind of approach UA and I if I look at this I would say this is a classic UA global launch from the 2015 that's exactly that where they run a shit ton of mobile app install campaigns you get traffic that's it and by taking the days it was actually revenue but now it's not. Yes.
You know, that's what I'm thinking. So how would you do it instead then if you're not doing a 2015 launch? How would you do it instead? Step-by-step purchase campaigns, value campaigns, US tier ones, rest of the world, basically everything.
Facebook Facebook, Google, AppLavine, look at whatever else is running, the lift of Molokov, like all the channels that Solitary Ground West was doing before because now it's different. Now it's like super old game, so it's not really comparing apples to apples.
But like what they're doing now, they were doing like maybe a year ago and they just go there and then not have 8 creatives for February you have 20 40 you think it's because they have to do branding like approval and that's why it's taking so long you are in SoftLad for a year come on man this is not their argument they're also funneling players from their other games like there's an ad in Candy Crush Soda Saga yeah, Cosmode Solitaire and stuff like that yes and still with that amount of traction it's just this yeah I guess it's cross promo so I think Gonzalo could say King I think, is a pretty good spot for cross promo. Yes, sure.
But again, it's a big company and you don't want to send the best payers from Candy Crush. I wouldn't expect the teams would even allow to.
Trumpets. That's why it's not in Candy Crush, but in Soda Saga.
Which still makes a lot of money, though. Yes, of course.
Yeah, well, look. I think we discussed a lot.
And I think we should create a merch for Candy Crush, Solitaire. Or Solitaire, I will create a merch.
So everybody who's listening, go to 25gamers.com, slip shop, and just buy buy all the merch we have and in the meantime I'm going to work on the Solitaire collection because this is going to be interesting what are we going to do 52 cards of dead games yes tears tears tears of dead Solitaire games geez alright we're going to Anyway. All right.
Yeah. We're going to talk about it more.
But yeah, best of luck to King Team to, you know, battle it through the battlefield, basically, because it's going to be hot and rough very soon. Even though it's not, like, yet hot and rough.
My battle comes from Disney Solitaire. I'm sorry.
Like, this is my bet. But basically, as Maciej said, these guys are going to roll over it.
We'll see. We'll see.
You need to make some predictions, man. Comment.
Says who? Why do you need to make some predictions? You can also talk shit as half of the industry. Because I don't want to say shit depends.
Of course. But then...
Yeah, but still, it's better to say nothing than just say yeah let me just look into whatever crystal ball and say just whatever bullshit yeah thank you very much for listening please subscribe comment under the YouTube because you are doing that

and we love it.

You are an excellent crowd.

Thank you very much.

See you, GDC.

I will be there.

Guys will not be there.

Game dead conference.

Game dead.

Yeah.

You are going to be dead.

Double dead.

Double dead.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, see you next time.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Ciao. .