We don't cover mobile game discovery - here's why!
Also: plenty of platform news and our latest Steam game debuts analysis.
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
We’re back in the building, folks. And as the weekend swiftly looms, time to dispense some additional helpful content. Our lead story looks at a hit mobile game whose initial hook is based on a hit indie PC game, surprisingly….
Before we start, we love the fact that somebody made a free ‘cheese rolling’ game for Steam, using ragdoll physics to emulate the vintage, but currently viral British ‘sport’. (We mainly associate the wonderful art of cheese rolling with this obscure Spinal Tap exhibitor reel, featuring ‘found footage’ (lol) set in ‘the heart of Denmark’s cheese belt’.)
Game discovery news: behold the Silksong hype…
Checking out a whole variety of intriguing game platform & discovery links, here’s what we’ve got:
The latest Footprints.gg ‘trad media’ mentions chart has a lot of Gamescom and new title-related hype, headed by Hollow Knight: Silksong (duh), MGS Delta: Snake Eater, Black Ops 7, Battlefield 6, Resident Evil Requiem and Borderlands 4 crowding the top of the charts. (Franchise, franchise, franchise!)
The folks at The Game Business also compiled multiple ‘hot at/around Gamescom’ charts, with Fancensus & PressEngine data on YouTube/press showing Bloodlines 2, Lego Batman, the new Black Myth title & Silent Hill F as also high-ranking. (And here’s a more detailed ‘top trailer’ analysis, woo.)
More fallout from the UK’s Online Safety Act? Per VGC: “Steam is rolling out the requirement for all users in the UK to verify their age in order to access store pages for games with mature content.” (You only need to add a valid credit card to your account to verify, tho.)
There’s been some monocle-popping about Cyberpunk 2077 announcing 75% of its Switch 2 units LTD were on physical carts. But remember - it’s a) great b) one of the few third-party physical releases at launch on a 64gb cart instead of a game key card. (GDCo is estimating 400k+ sales for the game so far on Switch 2.)
The newest Circana U.S. game hardware/select software chart - for July 2025 - shows hardware spending up 21% to $384m, and the Switch 2 now at 2 million sold LTD. Otherwise, EA Sports College Football 26 ‘won’ premium game spend, with Donkey Kong Bananza at #3. (YTD spending is down 1% to $32.6b.)
Microlinks, Pt.1: Microsoft is bringing PC gaming apps and stores to its Xbox app on Windows; PlayStation Plus’ Monthly titles for Sept. 2025 are Psychonauts 2, Stardew Valley, and Viewfinder; GameDeveloper.com on how devs can make the most of streaming showcases.
We cover ‘games as platforms’ & UGC, so seeing the folks at Rec Room announce a 50% layoff is rough. Takeaways from the honest post? Most of the good UGC is coming from PC and VR makers, and “some of our efforts to bridge that gap (e.g., Maker AI) just frustrated our more impactful creators.” The result: “less work on broad UGC expansion” and a renewed focus on paid UGC on PC.
Much drama re: the lack of Switch 2 devkits. The Digital Foundry folks heard it a lot at Gamescom this year: “[Devs] want to ship on Switch 2. They would love to do Switch 2 versions. They can't get the hardware.” (Switch 2 eShop top-seller charts are Switch 2 SKU-first, btw, so lacking a devkit has a real $ effect on developers.)
Spiral Up Games’ Aldric Chang had some good takeaways on market trends from Gamescom 2025, including: “Smaller projects with strong [streamer] potential are gaining traction… some games are built mainly to test the market first… traction matters more than originality.”
Our hunch on visitor numbers for Gamescom 2025 on Tuesday was confirmed by Koelnmesse PR - they’re using FKM standards: “Visitor numbers are calculated based on ticketed entries per day. This means that if the same individual attends on both Friday and Saturday, they are counted once per day.” (So ‘unique’ visitors is <357k - we’d guess 150k+? Tokyo Game Show does this, but not most other game events..)
Microlinks, Pt.2: giant VR hit Gorilla Tag looks to be adding a mobile version with a new exec hire; Xbox Insiders subscribed to Xbox Game Pass Core or Standard can now cloud-stream games too; Sony added an easier ‘request game refund’ option to the PlayStation app and PS Store website.
We don’t cover mobile game discovery: here’s why!
So yes, GameDiscoverCo is a PC and console game discovery company, and we don’t cover mobile games, except in passing - despite it being a huuuge market of >$100 billion in 2025. So it may seem a tad weird to have a lead story about why…
But Matej Lancaric’s latest newsletter about Century Games’ Kingshot is a perfect opportunity to contrast how the ecosystems work. Lancaric, whom we link to often, is a sought-after (if maverick!) paid UA - user acquisition - mobile game expert. He’s also very willing to talk about ‘how the sausage is made’.
So we wanted to take his article - about a new ‘secretly 4x’ iOS/Android game from Century Games, the Chinese creator of titles like ‘secretly 4X’ hit Whiteout Survival - the latter is regularly grossing >$100m per month - to talk about how different mobile discovery is. Let’s list the ways:
Paid UA is the only real way to scale mobile: console and PC game hits spread via word of mouth and organic visual social media (like Twitch, YouTube, TikTok.) But organic reach on mobile, where players are even more casual than even console, is waaaay more limited. So it’s paid, paid, paid all the way.
Ad sophistication needs matching with monetization to win: in mobile, it’s a two-sided battle: you need hot, clickable creative, but you need to monetize the player reliably - and aggressively. If you get it right? You get way greater predictability, but at much lower margins to a viral PC/console hit.
The ‘upper limits’ of spend really change things up on mobile: we see this trend moving onto PC/console in games like Genshin Impact. But most F2P console & PC games aren’t designed to have players spend $2k in a month like Kingshot, and then say “other whales on the server will always spend way more, some over $10k.”
Not all mobile titles are designed whale-first or ‘pay to win’-adjacent. (Here’s a good analysis of Royal Match, which we doubt is quite so top-heavy on the $.) But many titles doing well in the mobile market - including social casino games, of course - are designed so it’s the small percentage of high-spending players that allow for profit.
It’s important to note that Kingshot, like Whiteout Survival, isn’t a ‘bad game’*. (*although you can argue sucking people into larger payments with sunk cost fallacy is bad morally, haha.) At its heart, it’s a skilfully-crafted clan-based 4X strategy game, with very complex, data-driven live service rollout - check out this fan video to get an idea of its sophistication:
But there’s no way you would get players to sign up to this complex a 4X title by showing them its gameplay upfront. Which is where the ‘growth hacking’ comes in. Century Games’ smash hit Whiteout Survival advertises itself as a zoomed-in ‘arctic survival game’, but fairly swiftly morphs into the ‘pay to win’- heavy 4X battle title.
And Kingshot - which Lancaric notes should gross ~$60m+ in August and is in the Top 15 in SensorTower’s mobile revenue charts - clones another game as its upfront ‘hook’. That’s Grizzly Games’ stripped-down build/defend PC game Thronefall, which GDCo covered back in Oct. 2023.
Kicking off with real-time Thronefall-clone gameplay - as the real start of Kingshot, this isn’t a ‘fake gameplay ad’ - is a very hook-friendly way to onboard players onto a more monetizable 4x meta. As Matej says: “Utilize lightweight ‘X’ mechanics in creatives to appeal to a broad audience…. Then, let the 4X loop retain the real players…. Profit.”
This is also just very, very different to most PC and console game discovery, where less direct ad tracking, less ‘revenue per user’ variability, and player pushback to ‘over-aggressive’ monetization mean you’re relying waay more on organic hook and retention - for better or worse.
So that’s why we aren’t covering mobile, besides us not being experts in it, duhh - although there’s plenty to be learned about iteration & hook. (We recommend Matej’s newsletter, Deconstructor Of Fun, and MobileGamer.biz to keep up with this space.)
Finally, since this whole newsletter segment is about a ‘hit’ game that very nakedly ‘borrowed’ large chunks of Thronefall for its initial hook, we reached out to Thronefall’s dev GrizzlyGames to ask them how they felt about it. Co-creator Paul Schnepf didn’t mince words in his reply:
“While imitation might be flattery and I don’t believe it hurt us much financially, I'm still disgusted how shamelessly they use other peoples work to lure users into an experience that is eventually completely different than advertised. Not even to mention that it then ends up just being a bunch of crappy microtransactions designed to milk every last penny out of users, even if well executed.
Don’t misunderstand me - there’s nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from, and maybe even directly copying some parts from other games. Being inspired by.. work around you is at the core of every creative process - and Thronefall itself was hugely inspired by other games - such as the Kingdom series, for example.
The folks at Century Games however literally stole footage, assets and music from us to falsely advertise their trash product. How you can be satisfied with your work by putting out this crap is beyond me.”
Steam this week: snakes, robots dominate debuts!
Next, for our GDCo Pro & Plus subscribers, were going to take a look at the big Steam debuts - and some initial console data impressions - for the raft of new games that launched on PC and console this week. And we’re starting with snaaaaaake….