M&A on the horizon: Interview with Glu Mobile’s Chris Akhavan

This Week's Top Mobile Stories [Grow with ironSource]( | [LevelUp]( M&A on the horizon: Interview with Glu Mobile's Chris Akhavan According to [InvestGame]( some 132 acquisitions (and counting) took place in the gaming industry in 2020, and in mobile alone, a total of $4.4 billion was invested. Glu looks set to be part of this trend, having raised $151.8 million in a secondary offering back in June 2020 to help fund new M&As for the company. ironSource sat down with Glu’s SVP of Business Development, Chris Akhavan, to discuss the publisher’s M&A strategy, the growing consolidation of the market, the power of IP, and exciting trends in the gaming industry. “We look for teams that have a track record of success and really understand what drives modern free-to-play games and effective LiveOps strategies. On the quantitative side, we spend a lot of time going deep on KPIs to understand what the potential of a title or studio could be.” Read the full piece on [LevelUp]( 'Appy days Apple has made a gesture of goodwill to small app developers by halving its 30% commission on all in-app purchases and paid installs. Developers will have to apply to a program to get this benefit and will only be eligible if they generate $1 million or less per year from all their apps. For Apple, this will have little impact on bottom lines: although up to 98% of apps will be affected by this change, these apps made just 5% of the App Store revenues last year, as stated in this New York Times article. This change comes a few months after Apple was sued by Epic Games over the 30% fee. The two companies have become embroiled in a legal and PR war since, and Apple will be hoping their reduction will grant them some goodwill among small developers. Read the full story in the [New York Times]( 1.5M DAUs: How Avakin Life scaled by building a community & hosting virtual concerts Earlier this month, Lockwood Publishing, the maker of 3D virtual world Avakin Life, raised a $25 million round of funding led by Tencent. Not long before this was announced, we sat down with Oliver Kern, Lockwood's COO, to discuss how Avakin Life scaled, plans for the metaverse, and the role of games as the new social media. We loved this quote: “Live events for us are a mix of live ops and growth tools: from the live ops perspective, they are providing users new experiences all the time, giving them a reason to return to the game. At the same time, we think about ways to activate our existing community to see how they can create amazing content, and they’ve done that for instance with World of Dance where they created 20,000 videos around a certain dance style”. Listen to the [full episode on Spotify]( or read the [edited transcript here](. How PikPok increased ARPDAU 14% with LevelPlay in-app bidding and Facebook Audience Network [See how]( Everything you need to start monetizing with in-app bidding from day 1 [Read the 4 steps]( Q&A webinar with Mail.Ru about how to increase IAPs, ad revenue, and retention using offerwall ads | November 24 [Register here]( PocketGamer.biz: [Square Enix Montréal design team on crafting beautiful gaming experiences for small screens]( Sensor Tower: [U.S. Mobile Strategy Game Spending Surges by 22% to $2.8 Billion in First 10 Months of 2020]( NME: [Lil Nas X in-game gig is one of the most viewed concerts of all time]( TechCrunch: [Tencent Music Entertainment is backing Wave to bring virtual entertainment to China]( GamesIndustry.biz: [Embracer Group acquires 13 studios: Here's everything you need to know]( [Spotify]( [Medium]( [YouTube]( [LinkedIn]( Monitor your game business on the go. Download ironSource's new mobile app [Download on the App Store]( [Get it on Google Play]( ironSource provides leading marketing and monetization solutions for app developers. [Head to LevelUp for more great content](. We don't like saying goodbye, but if you want to [unsubscribe]( we understand.