two & a half gamers – 🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: $3.83B Liftoff, 20% Minigames, $28M UA Financing and Supercell!

Summary

Liftoff finally went public this week — at a valuation that tells you exactly what the public market thinks mobile ad networks are worth. That’s just one of four stories this week that genuinely matter if you run UA.
Matej Lančarič flies solo for the breaking news segment, ranked from biggest to most practical. Liftoff listed on Nasdaq as LFT after a second attempt, raising $437M at a $3.83B valuation — a 25% haircut from the $5B it wanted in January, and below the private valuation General Atlantic paid in 2025. A Niko Partners report buried a number most Western publishers still aren’t modeling: minigames are now almost 20% of mobile game spending in China. Akin launched AMF Capital with Makers Fund, opening with a $28M UA financing facility for Birhack. And the throughline of the week — mobile has officially shifted from core-first to event-first, with Monopoly Go’s Simpsons crossover, Rovio’s own admission, and Supercell’s MoCo reboot all pointing the same direction.
The bar keeps moving up. The industry is consolidating around scale, capital, and live-ops.

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS
— Liftoff went public on Nasdaq (LFT) on its second attempt, raising $437M at a $3.83B valuation. That’s a 25% haircut from the $5B it wanted in January, and below the private valuation General Atlantic paid in 2025. Even with 1.4B daily active users on the SDK and 40% growth in core advertising, the public market said no at the higher price. The money is going to pay down debt — this is balance-sheet cleanup, not a war-chest IPO.
— A Niko Partners report projects China and MENA games revenue passing $100B by 2030, but the buried number that matters is this: minigames are now almost 20% of mobile game spending in China. WeChat minigames, Douyin minigames — this is a real distribution channel with real ARPU and real LTV, not 2018-era HTML5 prototypes.
— The minigame opportunity is concrete: small companies in China can spend $20K/day and recoup it within roughly seven days. If you’re advising a studio serious about China and the plan starts with TapTap, you may be knocking on the wrong door — minigames are the door.
— The lesson lands in the West in ~18 months. The Western playable-ad ecosystem is converging on the same mechanics: instant play, no install friction, opt-in attention. New companies (e.g. Jest) are moving in this direction. Pay attention now or pay more later.
— Akin launched AMF Capital with Makers Fund, opening with a $28M UA financing facility for Birhack. This is performance-tied UA capital — not equity, not VC, not a bank loan. You spend it on UA and pay it back from the revenue those users generate. PVX Partners, Pollen VC, and Bravo have been doing this for years; the category is now getting crowded, which is good for studios with strong UA economics blocked only by cash flow.
— Mobile has shifted from core-first to event-first. Three data points: Scopely launched a Simpsons crossover in Monopoly Go (June 3, Will Ferrell voicing Mr. Monopoly, Harry Shearer back as Mr. Burns — IP on top of IP), Rovio published a piece explicitly arguing the shift (a notable admission from the Angry Birds company), and Supercell rebooted MoCo by changing the live-ops layer (seasons, free gacha pools) rather than the game itself.

🎙️ HOST
Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant