two & a half gamers – 🚨📢BREAKING NEWS: AppLovin Fingerprinting Exposed, Sensor Tower’s M&A, Embracer’s $192M Write-Down

Summary

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.

📌 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.
— A white-hat hacker decrypted AppLovin’s mediation cipher and published a detailed analysis claiming that bid requests carry enough data to deterministically re-identify the same iPhone across apps from different publishers — even when users deny ATT. Roughly 50 device parameters are extracted per ad call, every 30 seconds, on every banner load.
— The hacker’s claim is that this fingerprinting reaches AppLovin plus 12 downstream networks on every call, and that it’s not unique to one network — every major ad network is doing it. If true, it explains why post-ATT iOS performance has been so strong industry-wide.
— 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.
— Organic growth in Embracer’s remaining mobile portfolio was just 2%, EBITDA up 4%. The market is pricing in another major acquisition — Embracer’s share price is up from 45 to 68 SEK since April, signaling investor expectation of a buying spree to deploy the Easybrain cash.