Acquisition of Belarusian Mamboo Games: is there a future for hyper-casual games and why Mail.ru needs it?

As a follow-up to its investment last year, MY.GAMES, the gaming division of Mail.ru Group, has acquired a controlling stake of Belarusian publisher Mamboo Games. The latter specializes in hyper-casual games and will receive at least $2M in the course of the deal, but in the long term more —  it will depend on the performance of Mamboo Games.

The Belarusian startup has existed since 2020, its office is located in Minsk, and the team includes 35 people. Among 30 projects, the company's portfolio also includes hybrid-casual games, a number of which have shown explosive success on the international market.

The deal will allow MY.GAMES to expand its expertise and influence in the hyper-casual gaming market, adding that competence to its broad mid-core experience. According to the Facebook for Business report, the mobile games market in the post-covid world is showing stable and strong growth: they do not require special skills, reduce stress and form a community around them.

The same Facebook released a research of the motivation and behavior of users of hyper-casual games. According to them, this genre occupies half of the market, and also has a strong potential to generate a community around it.

A few years ago, the most popular model of monetization of hyper-casual games has spread: almost all of the publishers' income comes from user viewing ads. At the same time, the retention of the latter is the main task for the formation of LTV (lifetime value —  the total income received during the lifetime of the user in the product). When LTV > CPI (cost per install —  the cost of attracting one user) —  the game is considered commercially successful.

Returning to Facebook's study of hyper-casual game users, they note that their audience is largely loyal to internal advertising. Therefore, entering this market will allow MY.GAMES to increase its revenues, and Mamboo Games will receive additional resources for partnerships and multiple scaling.