Arseny Lebedev

"Publishers are overrated." You've heard it. Maybe you've said it. But in 90% of cases, the people saying it are talking about PC games. Mobile is a completely different thing. → 80% of mobile revenue goes to the top 50 publishers → UA costs can be 10X your entire development budget → Growing organically is possible (but almost impossible to predict or rely on) So if you're a mobile developer thinking you can skip the publisher... you're not saving yourself. You're just spending years building something the market may never see. Harry Phokou brought on Elena (Olena) Lobova, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Burny Games, and someone who has been on BOTH sides of the publishing table. What do publishers really look for in a pitch? How did Burny Games go from idea to soft launch in 60 days? And what are the new publishing models most developers don't even know exist? 🎙️ All answered in the full episode. Link in comments.

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Got you guys something nice for Christmas and wrote my first article 🎄 As the year winds down, it’s a good moment to reflect on what truly drives success in mobile. More often than not, it’s not the quality of the product but access to growth capital. In this piece, I share why UA financing can be a powerful equaliser for the industry: 💡 How predictable UA funding allows studios to compete on merit, not balance sheet size 💡 Why non-dilutive financing helps strong teams scale without sacrificing ownership or control 💡 How better cash-flow alignment turns UA into a disciplined, repeatable growth engine At its best, UA financing enhances meritocracy, giving great games a fair chance to be discovered, regardless of studio size. A short read before signing off for Christmas 🌲 https://lnkd.in/e57Pyfrk

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Mika Games just secured $10M in new funding led by Flint Capital to help mobile game studios scale up faster. Founded by Wargaming co-founder Nick Katselapov, the company focuses on bridging the critical gap between soft launch and large scale marketing. Early stage studios often struggle because UA providers demand months of campaign history and hundreds of thousands of dollars in prior spend. Mika Games solves this by investing early through equity and providing dedicated capital for paid marketing tests. These campaigns help developers gather crucial retention and payback data to prove their potential. With older games dominating the market, early capital is essential for fresh titles to stand out. Mika Games is stepping in to give promising studios the push they need to reach global success.

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After closing that Sensor Tower-AppMagic deal, Kirill Gurskiy, CFA says GEM Capital’s next investments will be in founders with a strong track record, first movers and high-potential indies: https://lnkd.in/eBxrrsNh

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Mobile games were the #1 money printer on phones for… basically forever. Not anymore. Came across a TechCrunch report: in 2025, users spent more on apps than on games - for the first time globally (it happened in some markets before, but not worldwide). A few numbers that explain why: - App spend: ~$85B in 2025 (+21%) - That’s ~2.8x what it was 5 years ago - The growth engine: generative AI - AI app revenue grew 3x+ to $5B - AI app downloads: 3.8B (2x) - AI assistants did the heavy lifting: all top-10 apps by downloads were AI assistants - 2025 AI leaders: ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek - ChatGPT alone generated $3.4B from in-app purchases - People spent 48B hours in AI apps - Sessions: 1T+ So yes - we’ve officially entered the era where “What game are you playing?” is being replaced by “Which assistant are you using?” 😅 Curious: what’s your bet for the next category that AI assistants will absorb - productivity, education, health, finance, something else?

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AppQuantum VC breaks from the traditional VC model of betting on 10 companies to find one winner. Instead, we seek like-minded partners and commit fully to their growth within our ecosystem — because their success is ours. Research confirms indie studios face a particular struggle: last year, they released hundreds of times fewer profitable projects compared to major players. However, capital alone isn’t enough. True success comes from seeking solutions, even where none seem to exist — learning, experimenting, failing, and getting back up, again and again. We help studios navigate this journey, enabling them to avoid costly mistakes and accelerate their early-stage growth. Thanks to PocketGamer.biz and Paige Cook for the chance to expand on these ideas. https://lnkd.in/gxzHSjaq

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This year I stepped into a new role, a lot had to change, and inevitably some of my views changed too. Here are a few of them. 1️⃣ The role of a leader The hardest part was stopping myself from personally putting out every fire. It feels good for the ego, but it works terribly long-term. The best moment for CEO is when you see the team start making decisions better than you expected, and sometimes better than you would have made yourself. 2️⃣What I actually manage I moved from managing people to managing context: goals, priorities, and constraints. When the context is clear, people become unexpectedly strong. 3️⃣A new way to think about value At one point, I defended a strategy not with numbers, but with their absence. I showed which metrics we don’t see yet, and what that blindness could cost us. 4️⃣ Growth without burnout If the business grows over the year and the team says, “It feels calmer,” then the goal is achieved. I don’t want growth that creates chaos or puts unnecessary pressure on people. People are the main value and the main resource. I’m happy with how this year turned out, and I hope everyone feels the same. I’m confident that next year will be even better. Merry Christmas and a steady, thoughtful New Year 🎄✨

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Six years ago, I've started InvestGame as a small personal blog about gaming deals. Week after week, we kept collecting and reviewing them, and today we have 4,600+ subscribers to our digest. You read, corrected us and shared news with us, and you kept asking one follow-up: where does all of this data live? Today, we are opening it to everyone, in one place, the InvestGame platform: → 16,500+ companies → 7,500+ deals We built it for the people who move this industry: founders raising a round, investors looking for the next deal, BD teams mapping the market, analysts who need numbers they can check. We believe gaming deserves its own data, not a corner of "software", and that a clear view of who funds, buys and builds games makes the whole community stronger 💪 The platform is free to start 🆓 Link in the first comment. None of this exists without you 🙏 Thank you to our readers, partners Aream & Co. Arcadia Gaming Partners Xsolla, and patrons who backed us before there was anything to log into, and to the team behind every record in the database! Some of you have been reading us for years. This launch is yours as much as ours. It is the first step. Try it, tell us what is missing, and we will keep building it with you. Sergei, Co-founder of InvestGame

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Is it possible that most of the tech industry doesn’t even know about the antitrust changes happening right now? I spent October in California attending Techweek SF, Techweek LA, Gamesforum SF, and TechCrunch Disrupt side events. Surprisingly, only at Gamesforum were people discussing strategies for growing their business in the new landscape. 99% of the non-gaming founders and funds I talked to had no idea that antitrust is actively developing in the mobile market worldwide, including the U.S. But why? I think it’s because a gaming company (shoutout to Epic Games) became the catalyst for this market shift, and the whole gaming industry has been closely watching the progress of the legal battles all these years. Your thoughts?

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