Playtika said that for the foreseeable future, it won’t be launching any new games.
Per Mobilegamer, the mobile publisher broke the news during its recent earnings call for the Q4 2022 fiscal period. President/CFO Craig Abrahams explained that the suspension period was brought on by a “challenging” marketing period, and the company’s games couldn’t be properly scaled for profit.
“Based on the current marketing environment, we made the decision to temporarily suspend our new game development pipeline until the ROI (return of investment) for new games is economically viable,” he said.
Abrahams continued by saying that Playtika would focus on marketing “higher quality traffic sources,” and continue to work on games published in 2022. But he acknowledged the investment return on its games wasn’t entirely working, hence the halt on new releases.
“Until that fundamentally changes, we don’t believe it’s prudent for us to invest significant dollars into new game development.”
Playtika ended 2022 with some highs and lows
Looking at that aforementioned earnings report, Playtika ended 2022 with its overall revenue at $2.615 million, up from 2021’s $2.583 million.
But for the Q4 period specifically, the developer saw some declines. Revenue was $631.2 million, down 2.7 percent from the $649 million of Q4 2021. Social casino games also reportedly dipped by 8.6 percent, and revenue for Slotmania specifically went down by 9 percent.
At the same time, profits for its assortment of casual games were up by 2.7 percent in the quarter. Those games made up 54.7 percent of the company’s overall revenue. Titles such as Bingo Blitz and Solitaire Grand Harvest rose their respective revenue by 18.4 percent (or $155.1 million) and 18.7 percent ($72.8 million).
Speaking to the “challenging” year for the mobile game market, CEO Robert Antokol remarked that Playtika achieved its overall financial goals for 2022. “We are delivering immersive personalized entertainment experiences and advancing our position as the industry’s premier game operator.”
Outside of its financial report, Playtika ended 2022 by laying off 15 percent of its work force, or 600 employees. Shortly before that, it sunk $25 million into Turkish studio Ace Games. Over the summer, Joffre Capital put $2.2 million stake into Playtika, but later withdrew that investment.
At the start of 2023, the mobile publisher announced its intentions to acquire Angry Birds developer Rovio.