two & a half gamers

MAU Vegas 2026 is over, the biggest booths in mobile gaming, and a single conversation dominating every panel and corridor: AI. Specifically, what happens when AI creatives cut your CPI in half.
Matej Lančarič and Jakub Remiar catch Felix Braberg up on what he missed while taking care of his baby. The 2.5 Gamers Gaming Summit kicked off Tuesday with ~100 attendees (roughly 10x the next-biggest competing summit), Christina Larionova from the Last War / Whiteout Survival team shared CPI and ROAS data showing AI creatives are literally half the cost of human-made ones, AppLovin had the biggest booth and announced Pixel Portal, UA financing went fully mainstream (per Jeff at PVX Partners), CTV is exploding, and retention is now openly being talked about as "the new UA" — partly thanks to Mistplay's Mychips acquisition.
If you couldn't make it to Vegas, this is the catch-up. And if you weren't already planning Bellagio 2027 (May 4-6), make yourself available.
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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Cold open — Bellagio 2027, why you have to be there
02:32 Felix missed MAU + the 2.5 Gamers Summit's 10x outperformance
04:31 "MAU is the new GDC" — Jeff from PVX nailed the framing
06:23 The standout talks: Nebo, Christina, Marion, Katja
08:55 AI is everywhere — 70% of creatives are now AI-generated
13:24 AppLovin's biggest booth + Pixel Portal announcement
15:38 CTV explosion: TV Scientific, Vibe, Roku, Pinterest
20:01 Bellagio 2027 + closing thoughts on what's coming
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📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS
— MAU has become the new GDC for mobile gaming. The vibe is right, the people are right, the venue is walking-distance, and unlike San Francisco there's no feces on the street. Pocket Gamer Connects and other industry events still matter, but MAU is now the must-attend.
— The 2.5 Gamers Gaming Summit on Tuesday's kickoff day pulled roughly 100 attendees — about 10x what competing summits brought in. The format (multiple practitioner-led sessions in a focused half-day) is now a proven model.
— UA financing went fully mainstream. Jeff from PVX Partners had to explain what UA financing even was 12 months ago; this year he was being approached by founders saying "I saw your post, we need this." The conversation has moved from "what is it" to "how do we deploy it."
— CTV is the fastest-growing channel almost nobody is talking about correctly.
— Retention is now openly being framed as "the new UA." Mistplay's Mychips acquisition reframed the rewarded ad category, and the broader argument is that retention engineering produces more LTV per dollar than UA acquisition once your funnel is saturated.
— MAU 2027 moves from MGM Grand to the Bellagio, May 4-6. Write it down.
---------------------------------------
This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠
Podcast:

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
⁠https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
---------------------------------------
Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!
Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!
Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

AppQuantum's Golden Goblins is five years old and still dropping new creatives nobody else is matching. Magic Sword is running 5,000+ new playables per month. Match Villains just flipped the "save the king" formula and is converting harder than ever. And AI creatives are now indistinguishable from human ones in roughly half of the libraries we looked at.
Matej Lančarič is joined by Felix Braberg and John Wright (Playable Maker, sitting in for Jakub) to walk through Sensor Tower's April creative trends and figure out what's actually winning right now. The conversation covers the Golden Goblins production machine and why they're still using gates (yes, gates), Match Villains flipping the king-rescue formula into peasant-rescue, the AI invasion of creative libraries, why near-death experience hooks are showing up everywhere, the $40 vs $10 CPI gap between 4X and idle arcade creatives, the brutal volume race (Magic Sword 5K, Royal Match only 300), and the 80/20 iteration rule that separates winners from everyone else.
If you ship creatives every week and want to know what's actually working in April 2026, this is the episode.
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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Cold open — "what signals do you look for anymore?"
02:14 Golden Goblins is still dropping new stuff (and using gates)
09:13 The 5,000 creatives per month volume race
13:55 The 80/20 rule — iteration beats new concepts
21:00 "Save the Peasants" — Match Villains flips the king formula
30:40 The Royal Match Apple billion-dollar problem
35:30 AI creatives are now 50% of some libraries
39:13 The $40 vs $10 CPI gap and the Tasty Travels playbook
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Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop
--------------------------------------
PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.
Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/
They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.
- Scale fast
- Keep your shares
- Drawdown only as needed
- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you
+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors
---------------------------------------
For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.
Our sponsor FastSpring:
Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years
They power top mobile publishers around the world
Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.
---------------------------------------
This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠
Special guest: John Wright

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA
---------------------------------------
Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
⁠https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
---------------------------------------
Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!
Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!
Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]
---------------------------------------
If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Has AppLovin been fingerprinting iOS users all along? A white-hat hacker says yes — and they cracked the mediation cipher to prove it.
Felix Braberg breaks down the three biggest mobile gaming stories from the week ending May 22, 2026. Sensor Tower acquired App Magic to build out their SMB offering and consolidate market intelligence even further. A white-hat hacker published a detailed breakdown of AppLovin's mediation cipher, claiming 50+ device parameters get extracted per ad call across 12+ downstream networks — effectively recreating deterministic IDFA-level tracking even when users deny ATT. And Embracer wrote down their mobile business by $192M after divesting Easybrain to MiniClip for $1.2B last year, with the market now pricing in another major acquisition.
The cipher story is the spicy one. If confirmed, it explains why iOS performance has been so strong post-ATT — and it sets up a potential antitrust collision course because Apple's own ad business would be exempt from any policing they did against everyone else.
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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Cold open — the cipher and what gets extracted
00:30 Sensor Tower acquires App Magic for SMB market
03:00 White hat hacker cracks AppLovin's mediation cipher
05:30 What 50 device parameters means for ATT
07:00 The Apple antitrust collision course
08:00 Embracer writes down mobile arm by $192M
09:30 Why the market expects another Embracer acquisition
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📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS
— Sensor Tower acquired App Magic, positioning it as their SMB market-intelligence offering. The play is funnel-building — Sensor Tower is expensive at the top end, so App Magic becomes the entry point that captures small studios and indie developers before they grow into enterprise customers.
— The 50 parameters include OS version, screen size, language, font, volume, mute switch, IDFV, and dozens more — together creating a fingerprint that's effectively as good as an IDFA for tracking purposes.
— The Apple problem: if Apple polices fingerprinting, it would have to act against every major ad network simultaneously. And Apple Search Ads would be in the crosshairs of any antitrust response, since Apple's own ad business benefits from the same tracking infrastructure. Felix's read: Apple won't act because they'd lose downloads and IAP revenue.
— Embracer wrote down their mobile business by $192M in their Q1 full-year results, following last year's $1.2B Easybrain sale to MiniClip. Top mobile earners (Crazy Labs, Thinking Ape, Deca, Subway Surfers, Glow, Lamar, Flophouse, Party in My Dorm) generated $72-73M in net sales — down 28% YoY due to the Easybrain divestiture.
---------------------------------------
This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

--------------------------------------
Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
⁠https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
---------------------------------------
Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!
Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!
Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

A 5-year-old location-based game just 5x'd its downloads. There were no new creatives. No new geos. No marketing push. Just one regional event that changed how the game actually works in Taiwan.

We break down Pikmin Bloom by Niantic — the quiet survivor of the post-Pokemon-Go location-based wave that everyone forgot about, but which has been quietly making $30-50M/month for years and just spiked dramatically in early 2026. The conversation covers the Pikmin IP history, the game's walking-based resource-conversion mechanics, why 58% of revenue comes from Japan, the brutal scale comparison to Pokemon Go ($85M in 5 years vs $75M in 30 days), and the most interesting product story of the episode: Niantic's regional experiment in Taiwan where they moved mushroom locations weekly from November to February, driving a 5x download spike that's still scaling.
The takeaway isn't about Pikmin specifically. It's about what product-driven UA looks like when creative-led UA stops moving the needle.
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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Cold open — Pikmin Bloom is scaling, why?
03:16 Pikmin history lesson — Nintendo IP, RTS origins
06:16 The actual game: walking, flowers, Pikmin work for you
13:01 The 5x download spike and Taiwan's surprise dominance
14:53 The brutal comparison — Pikmin Bloom vs Pokemon Go
17:01 The Japan IP rule: everything Nintendo touches is sacred
24:12 The Niantic Taiwan experiment that changed everything
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📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS
— Pikmin Bloom is doing $30-50M/month consistently across five years, with 58% of revenue coming from Japan. The game just 5x'd downloads and crossed into Taiwan as its second-biggest revenue country — and almost none of it is driven by UA.

— Niantic ran a quiet regional product experiment in Taiwan from November 12 to February 15: mushroom locations changed weekly (normally fixed), which created persistent engagement and surprise discovery. Result: 5x downloads and revenue acceleration that's still running.

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.
Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/
They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.
- Scale fast
- Keep your shares
- Drawdown only as needed
- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you
+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors
---------------------------------------
For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.
Our sponsor FastSpring:
Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years
They power top mobile publishers around the world
Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠
Podcast:

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------
Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
⁠https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
---------------------------------------
Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!
Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!
Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Long-form playables aren't just back — they're crushing it. The top playable in April hit 75% impression share. Whiteout Survival is doing it with 3 new playables a month. And the format that's winning everywhere is the one your mum would recognize.

Matej Lančarič is joined by Ondrej Monsberger and John Wright for another Playable Trends deep-dive. The crew goes through Sensor Tower's top playable creatives for April, focusing exclusively on long-form playables and what's actually driving impression share right now. The conversation covers the production trick of building one playable script and shipping 20 variations, why the "mum test" puzzle format is dominating, the BitLife "find the shoes" frustration mechanic, Royal Match's redirect-then-return experiment, and the awkward truth that Whiteout Survival made only three new playables in April but still has 99% impression share on puzzle creatives.

If you make playables — or you're trying to understand why CPI keeps climbing despite shipping more creatives — this is the episode to bookmark.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 the "mum test" and recognizable formats
02:24 Welcome — the never-ending playables debate revisited
06:15 Sensor Tower setup and April's top long-form playables
09:27 One script, 20 variations — the production playbook
13:50 The completion-rate vs engagement-clicks tradeoff
21:00 The 75% impression share playable of April
25:48 Royal Match's redirect-then-return experiment
30:05 Whiteout Survival: 99% impression share, 3 new playables
38:24 Predictions for next month — and the arrows trend
📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS
— One playable script can become 20+ variations without rebuilding anything: vary the length, vary the CTA timing, vary the color scheme, vary the redirect point. Stop asking "can I make a new playable" — ask "have I drained the variations from the playable I have."
— Long-form is not a problem if players are engaged. John spent 9 minutes finishing a Cell Survivor playable. Ondrej spent 5 minutes on Magic Sword. Both downloaded. The frustration isn't the length — it's getting cut off before finishing.

— Royal Match is experimenting with letting users redirect to the store and then return to finish the playable.

— Prediction for next month: long-form continues, puzzle format keeps dominating, arrows-themed mini-levels start appearing inside casual game playables (already showing up in Royal Kingdom), and AI playables become indistinguishable from human-made for the simpler concepts.
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🎙️ HOSTS
Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant
Ondrej Mosbergert — Game Design + UA consultant
John Wright — Playable Maker
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This episode is brought to you by Potensus — the premium ad network with direct deals to Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Vodafone (no programmatic middlemen), partnered with Playable Maker for native gaming creative formats. Head to potensus.com to get started.
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#mobilegaming #useracquisition #playables #creativestrategy #liveops #f2p
--------------------------------------
PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.
Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/
They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.
- Scale fast
- Keep your shares
- Drawdown only as needed
- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you
+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors
---------------------------------------
For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.
Our sponsor FastSpring:
Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years
They power top mobile publishers around the world
Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.
---------------------------------------
Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
⁠https://lancaric.me