two & a half gamers 🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: AppLovin Just Cut Off Everyone's Data: The MeowDoku Studio Got Sued & more
AppLovin's CEO published a blog about "ad quality tools" — and buried in it is the real move: MAX will stop exposing user-level ad data, because competitors have been using the mediated stream (who saw which ad at what price) as training data for their own bidders. Felix Braberg flies solo for the Friday news and reads between the lines: AppLovin's biggest advantage is that everyone mediates on MAX, and anyone training on that data erodes it — so the vault is closing, and this won't be the last ban.
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Friday news — three stories and the weather
00:45 AppLovin's blog: ad quality tools, not data collection
04:20 Reading between the lines — protecting MAX's data moat
05:50 Sega x Netflix: Crazy Taxi, Sonic, Stranger Than Heaven
07:20 Games make movies now — the pipeline flipped
08:00 Oakever sued: lost to Hungry Studio, fighting Avia Games
10:15 The weather — Meow Doku #1 on both stores
📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS
— AppLovin Ad Review will only show aggregated data by network, ad unit, and creative — no more user-level ad journeys.
— Felix's read: it's about stopping rivals from training bidders on MAX's mediated stream. Expect more restrictions.
— Games now spawn movies, not the reverse — Sega x Netflix is the proof.
— Oakever lost to Hungry Studio in April (QBlock vs. Block Blast) and faces an Avia Games case over copied ads.
— Cloning may finally have consequences; these rulings become precedent.
This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.
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This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric
Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA
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Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
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