Subway Surfers · B2C · endless runner mobile game
Swap characters with other hit games, with no money changing hands
Brings back lapsed players and boosts both games; Crossy Road got the bigger bump
Workedpartnershipsretention
What they did
Two-way crossovers with other popular games: Crossy Road, 8 Ball Pool (Miniclip), and Brawl Stars (Supercell), where each game visits the other. The CEO sources them through conferences and industry relationships; concepting starts at least a year ahead, then engineering and legal. Deals are traffic exchanges with no commitments beyond delivering quality assets; each side keeps what it monetizes. Chosen where there is large player overlap. The Brawl Stars mode is a time-limited event that also tests a PvP mechanic and whether it scares players off the core run.
What happened
Guest says collabs reactivate lapsed players and help virality of both games; Crossy Road saw a bigger download bump than Subway Surfers.
- Stage
- scale
“So we actually haven't made commitments to each other than delivery of quality assets.”
“So we think there is a lot of also reactivation of players that would come back just for the fun of it and see what does that look like in the other game.”
“The initial exploration for deals like that usually start a year before, at least a year before.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Subway Surfers: Move the game to a new city every three weeksGuest credits it with keeping the game fresh for 13 years; no numbers
- Subway Surfers: Keep the core game free and unlimited, and never lock content behind paymentTop-5 downloaded game every year since 2012; 1M installs a day
- Subway Surfers: Have a small in-house team post 5-10 videos a day riding pop culture trendsViral hits of 75M-100M views on salaries only; guest says it lifts app store featuring
- Subway Surfers: Let anyone use the game in their videos, and repost the cool onesCreators, including a K-pop star, make unpaid content; the game became a meme format
- Subway Surfers: Put a few hundred dollars behind posts already going viralTens of thousands of dollars total; helps hits spread to other platforms
- Subway Surfers: Let players watch an ad for a reward instead of payingAds bring in 80-85% of revenue; still the top game in tier-2 and tier-3 countries
- Subway Surfers: Ask players' age, show kids only child-safe ads, and block gambling and gun adsVery few complaints across a billion ad impressions a month
- Slopes: Sell day and season passes next to the subscription for occasional usersHost cites it as working; no numbers