1. Side acquires art studio Roboto Entertainment to expand its presence in China. Undisclosed.

2. Roblox brings the Audioscape team in-house to build AI audio tools. Undisclosed.

3. CONCODE secures development funding from Outersloth, Innersloth’s indie initiative, for mystery action-adventure Graytail, now confirmed for late 2027. Undisclosed.

Fund Launch

4. $10M → Mika Games raises to back mobile studios stuck between soft launch and scale. Led by Flint Capital, founded by Wargaming cofounder Nick Katselapov, targeting $50M deployed.

Adjacent Capital

5. LCKY Group completes its acquisition of the RoyalCasino brands. iGaming, gaming adjacent. Undisclosed

PS As an agency guy, wondering if Side buying Roboto is a trend on art outsourcing consolidation. Or a one off?

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

What works in our favor:

1. Wishlisted games land on players cal automatically, another organic nudge to push towards purchase/conversion :)

2. no minimum wishlish count

3. algo defined, not curated (no waiting on Valve email), no publisher relationship

4. Defining factors: playtime patterns, wishlists, player behavior towards simialr games

What you control: 1 thing, a visible coming soon page with SPECIFIC RELEASE DATE

What disqualifies you: no date, a demo-only page, or a late slip inside the 2week window.

Date discipline is where your credibility lies. Delay your release date by more than 24 hours once you are inside two weeks of launch, and Steam removes you from the calendar until the game actually releases.

A two-week slip used to cost you a bit of momentum. Now it costs you a discovery surface at the exact moment it matters most.

Tip from Steam team: set your release date atleast 60 days before launch.

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

Where AI assets are tolerable:
→ Storefront art: Steam capsules, banners, App Store icons
→ UI: icons, inventory, menu framing
→ 2D card genres: character portraits, backgrounds, event cards
→ In-game props: graffiti, book covers, minor environment props inside a 3D scene
→ Localization
→ VO
→ Gamejams

Rule of thumb: All AI art needs technical cleanup and artistic review. Three iterations, minimum.

Where AI assets are not tolerable:

1. Anatomy and structure

   → Hands and limbs: extra or missing fingers, fused digits, joints bending at impossible angles, limbs merging into clothing

   → Architecture: stairs leading nowhere, broken door symmetry, rooflines clipping into walls

   → Hardware: trigger guards placed wrong, barrels that do not align, armour straps anchored to nothing

2. Texture and material

   → The glossy sheen: leather, stone and skin all sharing one high-specular surface

   → Melting and smearing: chainmail, fur, embroidery that reads at distance and turns to noise up close

   → Incoherent lettering: pseudo-alphabet gibberish instead of typography or clean runework

3. Lighting and composition

   → Light sources that contradict the scene behind them

   → Foreground and background unintegrated in scale, tone, blur

Root cause and best practice:
→ Skipping the polish pass. Production-ready means human paint-overs, cleanup, line-art tracing, retopology.
→ Prompting as a substitute for pipeline. Treating agents as a replacement for concept artists, tech artists and art directors.

Either you hide it or tag it under Steam’s AI disclaimer. Next Fest is not a gamejam.

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

Fast fwd now I exchange reels. I don’t play games with my friends and family anymore. The genre moved and nobody pointed it, where did the social play go?

1. Steam, under friendslop

2. On Mobile: It became a feature, not genre

3. The living room, couch play

4. Roblox

Steam, under friendslop:

1. R.E.P.O at 18.4M copies, PEAK at 15.5M copies….

2. As games that are snackable by design

3. Priced under $10, which pushes bundle purchase behavior. One friend buys, group follows.

4. Built for clips and reels for tik tok and IG. Not battle passes.

5. I still see people playing Valorant with the same passion (co-play)

On Mobile: It became a feature, not genre

1. Yalla Ludo Q1 2026: $79M rev. 62% is paid conversations from social layer: voice rooms, gifting, majilis….

2. The Ludo board is the funnel, the chat room is the business.

The living room, couch play

1. Nex Playgorund is nearing 1M units

2. Netflix now streams party games to your TV, can it be a successor to family board game night?

Roblox

1. 132M DAY, 38% of age checked users are 13to17 (teens).

2. We need to see how the social components get shaped here. They rolled out age check, restricted in-platform communication….

Social game didn’t shrink, they left the phone. What survived is a dating and handout product wearing games as a skin.

Whats the last game you played with someone in the same room?

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

1. iOS leads with 52% ad rev

2. AppLovin leads iOS and Droid (Android) Ad Rev share

3. US leads as the market, its share is declining on both platforms

iOS leads ad rev
- iOS accounts 52% ad rev vs Droid 48%
- QoQ decline for Droid it was 55% in Q2

Ad Rev stats:
- AppLovin leads ad rev on both the platform (53% on iOS and 29% on Droid)
- on iOS: Unity is next to AppLovin with 14%, followed by Mintegral at 11%
- on Droid: AdMob is next to AppLovin at 22%, followed by Unity at 13%

Ad rev share by country
- US leads as the market, 52% on iOS and 28% on Droid
- iOS Ad rev share leaderboard: JP (8%), UK (5%), CA, DE, RU at 3% each
- Droid Ad rev share leaderboard: RU (8%), JP, TR BR at 5% each

TY, for more insights and trends visit iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

TL;DR
→ $146M disclosed equity into gaming across 4 deals
→ $5.7B raised by Tencent as debt, roughly 39x the equity
→ Tencent borrowed for AI and led a $46M round into Turkey in the same week
→ Nazara’s $82M share issue is the largest single gaming raise of the week
→ 4 deals closed without a disclosed price

Funding & M&A
1. $82M → Nazara approves a Rs 731 Cr share issue and plans to put Rs 743 Cr into its UK subsidiary
2. $46M → Flow Games (Turkey) secures a funding package led by Tencent.
3. $10.5M → Spill Games, led by Elevation Capital, with Centre Court Capital and PeerCapital participating.
4. $7.42M → iDreamSky raises a share placement to fund an AI agent push.
5. SKYWALK acquires global service rights and joint IP ownership of Welcome to My Home from Kakao Games and MetaBora. Undisclosed.
6. MyDearest buys Roblox studio Moze to deepen its Gen Alpha push. Undisclosed.
7. Skillful Craftsman (NASDAQ: EDTK) takes a 70% stake in Singapore’s URAY, with the founder keeping 30%. Undisclosed.
8. ModCraft, an AI game-mod creation platform, raises a seed round from SenseTime Guoxiang Capital and L2F Lighthouse. Undisclosed.

Debt Financing
9. $5.7B → Tencent closes a four-tranche bond sale across dollar and dim-sum notes. The order book topped $23B against a $4.5B target. Proceeds go to AI capex, not games.
10. $6.8M → East Side Games secures $2.8M in Canadian credit and a $4M loan.

Grants
11. £270K+ → BAFTA awards 112 recipients across games, film and TV to support career growth.

If the majors fund growth with bonds, what does that leave for everyone raising equity?

tCARe, CARtic P
Curated weekly at iCartic.com

1. A pseudonym closes the deal in front of you, it cannot close the one 3 years out.

2. Nobody refers Rachel, nobody remembers Max/Patricia.

11 years of one name, in public, every week.

This month it turned into my first international speaking confirmation. Topic and details soon.

PS. if you're running a second name because someone told you it converts, how many more years are you giving it?

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

1. NA is 7% of the world’s players and accounts 27% of rev, EU is $81.

2. Run the per-payer gap for your geo, install vs rev ratio is heavily concentrated towards in Tier1.

3. Weigh if you acquire a payer from this region, what is that payer actually worth?

is Tier2 a backup?: Rev per payer for APAC region
South Korea ~$350
JP $240
China $80
IN $2

1. IN is 31% of APAC players and accounts for 1.3% of rev to APAC.

2. Treating China as an EU equivalent is madness, the numbers are comparable. The access is not, shipping your game to China means ISBN license, local partner, new store landscape, approval process... Its is the H1B of game launches, the quota decides not your product.

3. Korea and JP earns more than NA, both are RPG-led market, with their own genre preference. For Casual/Hybrid these markets are not a substitute for NA and EU.

Having sat on both sides pitching western studios from Bangalore, and helping IN games build for desi players (who cannot fund). The lesson is “Always weigh if you acquire a payer from this region, what is that payer actually worth it”.

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

3 trending mechanics to evaluate for your LiveOps.

▸ Card album collection
Who has it: CSR2 (The Circuit, July 2), Clash of Clans (Clash of Cards, August) Cheapest of the 3. Runs on currency you already have. Needs a trade layer to work, so it only lands if you have a social surface.

▸ Cannon smash minigame
Who has it: Toon Blast, in its event rotation, lifted from the Stack Smash and Angry Smash hypercasual family.
Most expensive of the 3. New physics, new art, new tuning. Clone this only if your meta is thin and you need a session-length fix.

▸ Exploration tracks
Who has it: Coin Master, Royal Match, Tasty Travels.
Lowest risk of the 3. Pure visualization spend, zero economy risk.

Which one fits your title?

Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

5 Reasons Türkiye’s Game Subsidies Are More Mature

1. Subsidizing the cost of being wrong (UA refund)

2. Subsidizing the platform tax

3. Subsidizing operational cost

4. Subsidizing growth talent

5. It’s cash refunds, not just tax credits

UA refund: In search of Product Market Fit, UA spend goes on creatives, ad networks, target audiences. The Govt reimburses 50% to 70% of eligible UA spend on platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, and Unity.

Platform tax refund: The state covers 50% of Apple App Store and Google Play commissions on overseas sales. I have not found another government doing this.

Infra refunds: The state covers hosting costs for delivering your game to overseas users, including AWS and Azure bills.

Growth talent: TÜBİTAK R&D grants cover developer and engineering salaries. A separate export incentive framework subsidizes marketing, sales and BD salaries, which lets you bring on overseas talent to upskill local teams and sell your game harder.

It’s CASH refunds, not just tax credits: A tax credit requires profit, a refund does not. This is a non-repayable, Turkish-Lira-denominated cash grant covering 50% of eligible internationalization expenditure, paid against invoices you have already cleared.

These schemes absorb a massive chunk of the financial risk required to test a game on the global market. It gives a studio the runway it needs to experiment, survive the soft-launch phase, and hit product-market fit.

P.S. Credit to the Türkiye officials, this is how you back an ecosystem.

Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

AI in Asset production is already here with Hunyuan, Midjourney, Leonardo, Rodin, Luma, Meshy….

What changes in 2027:
→ Engineering work skews to prompting, restructuring and QA. “No programming”
→ Both Programming and Art production will be a low-key work

The best programmers were never the best because of years served or engines known. They were the best because they think like game designers. AI just removed every other reason to hire them.

If you’re an indie/AA studio, here's the priority mantra to follow:
Distribution > Design > Development

Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

Funding & M&A
1. $35M → Gardens Interactive Series B, led by Lightspeed, with Sequoia and Yamauchi No.10
2. $500K → Vatar pre-seed at a $10M valuation, closed in under a day, three days after incorporation. Its browser game Lagos Life launched on Nigeria’s Independence Day and hit 4.3M users across 15 countries.
3. $500K → CGT Capital backs micro studio Job Studios.
4. Mobge Games raises from Joygrid Ventures at a $10M valuation. Undisclosed.
5. Fireshine Games (Enad Global 7) acquires Fair Games ApS, the Danish studio behind Necesse. Undisclosed.

Liquidity & Exits
6. $55M → FIRY (formerly Skillz) sells its entire 10.5% Exit Games stake back to the company. It paid $50M in July 2021, so roughly 1.1x in five years. Exit Games, the maker of Photon, is founder-owned again.

Public Funding
7. $1M → South Australia launches a Digital Games Fund.

Adjacent Capital
8. $3M → Thrixel inception round, AI-native 3D creation platform.

TL;DR
→ $36M disclosed into game studios across 3 deals
→ $35M of it went to one unreleased game
→ $500K went to a game built in a night that already has 4.3M players
→ FIRY’s five-year hold on Photon returned 1.1x
→ South Australia put $1M on the table

Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

PS other posts from me (last weeks) CPI benchmarks, Sept game chart

4 reads from Avg CPI by genre, iOS vs Android

1. Top 5 by CPI is identical on both stores. Even the order.

2. Android had 10.4% of mobile game revenue last year. It now has 39.7%.

3. Bidders bid to LTV

4. Hypercasual costs $7.67 an install on iOS. That number ends a business model.

Same five genres, same order, both stores.
→ Casino: $24.70 iOS / $13.62 Android
→ RPG: $19.16 / $6.09
→ Party, Strategy, Hypercasual in that order on both

But the premium is nowhere near the same: Casino 1.8x, RPG 3.1x, Casual 10x.
You cannot platform-switch out of it. The store is not your lever. Genre and geo are.

Android now carries 39.7% of revenue, up from 10.4% (YoY). 84.3% of installs against 39.7% of revenue. iOS sits at 15.7% and 60.3%.
→ iOS revenue per install fell from 73x to 8x. Android is 75% of your spend and 40% of your return.

Bidders bid to LTV, so that premium is a verdict.
Casino says 1.8x because whales pay on both stores. Casual says 10x because Android Casual runs on ads at near-zero ARPU.

Hypercasual at $7.67 on iOS: Not a scaling problem, a business model that stopped working at that price.

Are you seeing this on your own numbers?

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

Top grossing
→ HoK: $135.0M
→ Gossip Harbor: $99.1M
→ Roblox: $98.0M

Top downloaded
→ Free Fire MAX x NARUTO: 22.2M
→ Roblox: 20.4M
→ Block Blast!: 15.5M
→ Learnings now places 3 titles: Meowdoku, Amaze GO!, Vita Mahjong

Which one will fade first in October Bus Fever Party!’s jump or Pokémon GO’s spike?

Charts are curated monthly at iCartic.com
tCARe, Cartic P

1. Jade Dragon Games raises seed from CRIT Ventures (Com2uS’s VC arm) and Mainstreet Ventures. Founded by Odin: Valhalla Rising devs. Undisclosed.

2. Confidence Interworks buys 70% of Flaggs, moving into development. Undisclosed.

Adjacent Capital

3. $220M → General Intuition, at a $6.2B valuation. World models trained on gaming clips via Medal.

4. $40M → Flam Series B, AI interactive content for enterprise.

5. $3M → Notey seed, EdTech games (includes a $1M Malta Enterprise grant).

UA Financing

6. Leus Capital launches Cohort Purchasing, which it calls the first platform of its kind for mobile studios.

New Studio Launches & Spinouts

7. Jason Jones (Bungie co-founder, Halo and Destiny) launches Stone Kite with ex-Destiny 2 narrative director Margaret Stohl, after Sony layoffs.

8. Grasshopper Manufacture (Suda 51) goes independent from NetEase, effective October 1.

TL;DR
→ $263M disclosed, all of it adjacent
→ $0 disclosed into any game studio (both gaming deals came in undisclosed)
→ $220M went to AI trained on gaming clips
→ Jason Jones launches Stone Kite, Grasshopper exits NetEase

Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

Tools expire. Fundamentals are what let you survive the next tool.

My thoughts:
» Freshers used to enter this industry through concept passes, basic asset work and first-round testing. Those are the exact tasks AI absorbs first.
» Core skill first. AI second. Reverse the order and you get someone who can prompt but cannot judge the output.

Detailed blog and Sessions YT reel here:

https://theyouthtalks.com/ai-is-rewriting-gaming-careers-what-should-young-indians-be-preparing-for-cartic-p/

If you are hiring juniors right now, what are you screening for that you were not screening for two years ago?

tCARe, CARtic P
iCartic.com

1. $298M → Kingnet bought its way into control of Wemade (40.25%). That ends a 10-year Mir IP war. Kingnet stopped fighting and bought the IP instead.

2. $25M → Circle Games Series A, led by Tencent (Turkey).

3. $2.5M → Topdog seed, real-time multiplayer. Trophy Games acquired Playrion from Paradox. Undisclosed.

4. Scopely (Savvy-owned) took a strategic stake in China’s Bokura. Undisclosed. (Savvy was reportedly short on cash last week. Scopely still deployed.)

5. Feijiu Technology raised from Lilith Games. Undisclosed.

Debt Financing

6. ~$190M → Embracer opened a new SEK 2,000M revolving credit facility. A credit line, not a raise.

Adjacent Capital

7. $12M → Keewano, game analytics infra, built by an ex-Plarium team.

8. $1.6M → Gamindo, gamified corporate training (EUR 1.4M).

New Studio Launches & Spinouts

9. Undead Labs completed its separation from Microsoft. Independent now.

TL;DR

→ China on both sides: Tencent, Kingnet, Lilith out, Scopely in
→ $298M ended a decade-long Mir IP war
→ ~$325M disclosed gaming capital, mostly buying control
→ Embracer’s ~$190M is a credit line, not a raise
→ Undead Labs is free of Microsoft

When you cannot out-raise a rival, out-own them.
Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

Funding & M&A:

1. $150M → Nex raises debt + equity to take Nex Playground global

2. $71.5M → Kakao Games acquires 39.56% of Me2on

3. $12M → ex-Plarium leaders raise for a new venture

4. $2.7M → Everplay lifts its Super Media (Bulkhead) stake, 20% to 28%

5. $1.7M → Kalank closes first round for international expansion (EUR 1.5M)

6. $1M → 1312 Interactive seed

7. $0.5M → Arcustin Games pre-seed (Turkey)

8. LEGO Digital Play acquires Offroad Games, a Space Ape spinout - undisclosed

9. Pocket Worlds acquires Hotel Hideaway from Sulake - undisclosed

10. NEXUS acquires ~3.52% of One Store from KT - undisclosed

11. Bohemia Interactive takes a minority stake in Enjoy Studio - undisclosed

12. Gamigion acquires HIT Games Conference - undisclosed

13. UA Financing: $12M → Burlingame Studios UA financing, from PvX Partners

14. Hardware: $1.1M → ARC pre-seed, gaming hardware (Rs 10.5 Cr)

15. Adjacent Capital: $445M → Tripo, GenAI 3D-asset tooling, gaming adjacent

16. Developing Story: PIF mulls an EA + Savvy merger, with Savvy reportedly short on cash

17. New Studio Launches & Spinouts: Ex-Epic devs launch The Drop Circuit, a music-games studio

7 buyouts, 1 fortnight.
The money is consolidating studios, not seeding new ones.

Stay ahead. Curated weekly at iCartic.com
tCARe, CARtic P

Funding and M&A
2. $1.5M → Takahouse (Saudi) raises from Impact46
3. Trivelta acquires Kerma Games, moving into proprietary content and entertainment IP → undisclosed
4. Piko Interactive acquires 7 Raven Studios (Thailand indie) → undisclosed
5. Hitai acquires Quell (fitness gaming studio) → undisclosed
6. 4399 takes a 22% stake in Guangzhou-based Zhuwei Network → undisclosed
7. SteamDB joins Nexus Mods both now under Chosen → undisclosed

UA Financing
8. $12M → Burlingame Studios secures non-dilutive UA financing from PvX Partners

New Ventures and Ecosystem
9. Ánima Games steps into video game development

3D asset generation just pulled $446M. Threat to studios, or their biggest cost saver?

Stay ahead. Curated weekly at iCartic.com
Take CARe, CARtic

Other posts from last week
» unicorn is a vanity
» floor notes from gamescom2026

Stats from Pitchbook unicorn list (2026)
1. 256 companies have hit unicorn status of with 4 are from gaming (not studios) and 2 are from game-adjacent (AI)
2. 5.1B combined value from gaming, its the smallest sector

4 gaming companies are not game studios:
» Brave Group runs VTuber IP
» ModRetro is into selling retro consoles
» Odyssey is into building world models
» Shengshu is into building world models

2 gaming adjacent Unicorns from AI space:
» Meshy, AI that generates 3D assets
» General Intuition, AI that trains on gameplay video


Trends with public markets:
» Devolver listed in 2021 at 940M, now its worth about 45M. In action to delist from LSE. Its revenue grew 60% in H1 2026, but the market simply would not pay for it.
» EA just went private
» Delisting and going pvt is the trend.


Gaming unicorns are from either in AI or tooling space in 2026.

Craft business or the technology business? In 2026, capital only showed up for one of them.
Take CARe, CARtic
iCartic.com


Source: link to Pitchbook