Keep the core game free and unlimited, and never lock content behind payment

Mathias Gredal Nørvig… started playing since also play Subway Surfers. So now we know that also a lot of kids are playing the game, but it was never designed for them and it is just a product of a really good and intuitive game that can also be played by everybody. It starts capping off at 45, 50, then people think it gets a bit too twitchy and a bit too hard to move the fingers, not judging. But I think overall we've been able to stay evergreen first and foremost.

Mathias Gredal NørvigI think we are in that bracket of Angry Bird, Subway Surfers, Candy Crush, all from the Nordics, funnily enough. And then I think the founders very early on said, it's about longevity. We want to be a truly free-to-play app where you can play the co-run as much as you want. We will never pinch you, we will never guard you from content. Anything is achievable through playing. And then I think that, as you say with TikTok, we've become a cultural phenomenon as well. So we can see that when Jimmy Fallon mentioned us on Tonight Show as an example of how you make sludge content. When Justin Bieber tweets us or the last week tonight, John Oliver mentions us that those are things that other companies would pay for and we're having the luxury of being mentioned because they think that this is how you do TikTok or this is how you work on virality.

David BarnardHow have you all leaned into that aspect of things? I believe I read that you've made it very clear that folks can use your IP in video and you're not going to come after them and things like that, but are there any other ways you've leaned into that virality?

Mathias Gredal Nørvig… gaining from just being an evergreen and seeing that we in the top downloads every year, we are in top five. We have been since launch. Every year there are a couple of... Not every year, we have also been number one. But in most years there are a couple of positions that are taken by companies paying, so that's currently Roblox and Garena Free Fire. They are above us and they're paying for their traffic, they're making a lot of money, all good.

Mathias Gredal NørvigThen you see the occasional, the yearly trend, so you had among us, you had the Piano Tiles too. Then you had another game that people remember very well from that year, but they're out the next year of top 10. And we are still third or fourth and that means that every year we're also gaining because either the spenders will stop spending or the one year peaks will go out, but we are the evergreen that keeps giving.

Jacob EitingIt's much better to be in position three not spending to be, than to be in position one or two and having to spend a lot to be there, right? In terms of a business which margins aren't everything, it's a much more enviable position.

Jacob Eiting… maybe the most likely to pay people are the ones who don't die. So you've actually completely blocked off monetization from them. So yeah, you have to figure out how can and what can we sell them. And then to some degree, another thing they bring to you, which not necessarily their attention, but it's their word of mouth. And so if you're extracting from them, are they going to be as likely to share you on TikTok and get you your next 10 users?

Mathias Gredal NørvigAnd 13 years and we still have a million daily new installs. And as I say, half of those are reinstalls, but that means that it's also worth for us to keep the content furnace and the virality going and not jeopardize it by trying to extract too much value. I think that's part of the discussion we have is that okay with these feature we can try these new mechanics with the co-run, we want to keep it clean. But then of course, we see more and more game companies saying, well now you need a short break from the game, we'll show you an ad. And that helps pay for the business that serves this game to you. I actually think that's fair as well. I have a nine-year-old son myself. When he watches an ad, I'm also explaining him that this is the way that we pay for that game. Entertainment is business. No one goes to the cinema and doesn't expect to pay.

Mathias Gredal NørvigSo the fact that ads came in and I know that that annoys some people, the premium segment that just would like a core experience from the story driven sort of A to Z, that's fine by me. I like the fact that in mobile gaming you can actually play a lot of games without spending and you use a part of your time to watch games. And then the playable ads are now so fun that people actually also sometimes just get stuck in playing a quick level of some …