SmileyGamer
About SmileyGamer
SmileyGamer is a mobile games publisher based in Belgium, with a strong focus on, and success with, seasonal match-3 games. The company was founded in 2016 by Jochen De Schepper, following 10 years as a self-employed online and mobile game developer.
Best known for its popular Christmas Sweeper franchise, SmileyGamer was acquired by Phoenix Games in 2020 to help grow and increase its footprint. SmileyGamer’s biggest title is Christmas Sweeper 3, with a dedicated user base that has been playing, and spending, for years, returning to the game every season without fail.
Phoenix Games saw SmileyGamer performing exceptionally well in the industry, having hit 10 million downloads as a result of successfully finding its niche in the incredibly competitive match-3 genre. While annual revenues were already exceeding €5 million, Phoenix Games identified substantial uplift potential with the studio’s seasonal evergreen titles.
While these seasonal titles were evergreen on a year-on-year basis, maintaining their popularity and profitability throughout the year was one of the studios’ biggest challenges to overcome.
Phoenix Games saw SmileyGamer performing exceptionally well in the industry, having hit 10 million downloads as a result of successfully finding its niche in the incredibly competitive match-3 genre. While annual revenues were already exceeding €5 million, Phoenix Games identified substantial uplift potential with the studio’s seasonal evergreen titles.
While these seasonal titles were evergreen on a year-on-year basis, maintaining their popularity and profitability throughout the year was one of the studios’ biggest challenges to overcome.
CASE STUDY
Following the acquisition in October 2020, Phoenix Games implemented a plan to improve user acquisition, ad monetization and live operations, working with SmileyGamer on executing new and upcoming seasonal titles, alongside further scaling the success of the existing games portfolio.
The full suite of Uplift products was brought in. Ad monetization, user acquisition, and live-ops were all optimized. As a result, return on ad spend increased my +74% within the first Christmas season following the acquisition. In fact, SmileyGamers most profitable Christmas season of all time came as a result of Phoenix Games’ platform.
You can find out more about how we have helped SmileyGamer below.