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Cellular-first recreation developer Scopely has achieved outstanding success with its hit title, Monopoly Go, which launched in April 2023.
In simply over a yr, the sport generated over $3 billion in income, cementing its place as a standout performer each for the studio and the broader cell gaming trade.
Whereas Monopoly Go is a stand-out achievement, Scopely has seen success throughout a lot of its portfolio, together with titles corresponding to Yahtzee with Buddies, Marvel Strike Power, Star Trek: Fleet Command, and the cross-platform title Stumble Guys, which boasts over 50 million month-to-month gamers.
As we start 2025, Scopely’s Co-CEOs Walter Driver and Javier Ferreira sat down with Pocketgamer.biz to mirror on 2024, Monopoly Go’s influence on the studio, and their imaginative and prescient for the longer term.
A yr of challenges and achievements
The video games trade has confronted quite a few hurdles lately, and 2024 was no exception. From widespread layoffs to evolving market dynamics, together with privateness adjustments and rising growth prices, studios have needed to adapt. For Scopely, 2024 was a yr of “each successes and failures, together with many learnings,” based on Driver.
“Having a long-term mindset is vital to game-making,” he explains. “Our tradition is rooted in perseverance, which makes the yr’s outcomes so gratifying for our groups.”
Ferreira echoes this sentiment, highlighting key accomplishments, corresponding to surpassing 15 million hours of playtime, reaching one billion downloads, and attaining $10 billion in lifetime income as an organization. These milestones had been among the many causes Pocketgamer.biz named Scopely the primary Recreation Maker in our Prime 50 listing for 2024, and why the trade voted it Greatest Writer and Monopoly Go as Recreation of the Yr on the Pocket Gamer Cellular Video games Awards 2024.
“This recognition from our friends is unimaginable for our groups,” says Ferreira. “This yr, we achieved key milestones that allowed us to pause and have fun the journey that’s Scopely.”
The success of Monopoly Go and making milestones
One in all Scopely’s most notable achievements in 2024 was the continued success of Monopoly Go. The sport not solely grew to become essentially the most profitable cell recreation launch of all time but in addition got here full circle because it impressed a bodily board recreation model. The title additionally noticed a star-studded advert marketing campaign that includes Will Ferrell, Chris Pratt, Jason Momoa, and Keke Palmer.
“Monopoly Go has expanded our imaginative and prescient of what a recreation expertise — particularly an informal one — may be.”Javier Ferreira
“Monopoly Go has expanded our imaginative and prescient of what a recreation expertise — particularly an informal one — may be,” says Ferreira.
“The journey to its success displays the dedication, conviction, and resilience of our group. One in all our core cultural tenets is to ‘iterate to greatness,’ which roots us in a must all the time study and pivot as wanted and have area for failure. That is the philosophy behind all the things we do.”
The Scopely group accepted the award for Greatest Writer on the Pocket Gamer Cellular Video games Awards 2024.
Ferreria emphasises the group’s long-term dedication to innovation and participant engagement through the growth journey of Monopoly Go.
“In dwell companies, our work is rarely achieved,” he says.
“Greatness is a transferring goal to make sure we’re staying dedicated to our gamers’ expertise.”Javier Ferreira
“Greatness is a transferring goal to make sure we’re staying dedicated to our gamers’ expertise. Monopoly Go is a product of this mindset.
“The sport’s seven-year journey to launch and subsequent deep engagement from gamers additional highlighted and solidified how vital it’s for our tradition tenets to drive our choices, as with out them, I’m undecided Monopoly Go would have made it to launch.”
Crafting experiences and leveraging IP
Scopely’s strategy to new initiatives is centered on creating experiences that resonate emotionally with gamers. Ferreira explains that each one initiatives start with a deal with the viewers.
“Greenlighting a challenge includes in depth exploration to uncover the ‘magic’ of a challenge, guaranteeing that it meets our excessive requirements and delivers one thing really particular for gamers,” he states.
When working with established mental properties — which the writer has in depth exprience in — Scopely prioritises staying true to the essence of the franchise whereas introducing recent components for gamers. Ferreira cites Star Trek: Fleet Command for example of a recreation that captures the spirit of its supply materials whereas providing a deeply participating expertise that feels recent.
“Our partnership with Savvy has offered us with a long-term mindset, enabling us to carry new expertise and concepts into our rising ecosystem.”Walter Driver
“Discovering the fitting game-makers for the fitting property, and subsequent recreation style, can also be essential for an genuine and revolutionary expertise,” he says. “We prioritise partnerships with manufacturers that share our imaginative and prescient, and construct a group that’s extraordinarily obsessed with making that imaginative and prescient come to life.
“Our work with Hasbro is a superb instance of a collaborative partnership with each side respecting the unique manufacturers together with having a need to broaden them additional. As certainly one of our earliest companions, we’ve now created three reimagined experiences of their iconic properties.
“That belief and understanding of what makes a recreation partnership work is what finally led to the good outputs of those video games.”
Strategic development by means of partnerships and acquisitions
In 2023, the studio was acquired by Savvy Video games Group for $4.9 billion, marking one of many largest offers in gaming historical past. Regardless of the acquisition, Scopely has retained its independence beneath the Savvy umbrella.
“Our partnership with Savvy has offered us with a long-term mindset, enabling us to carry new expertise and concepts into our rising ecosystem,” says Driver. “What we shared after we signed the deal is strictly what has taken form, with Scopely working as an autonomous enterprise unit beneath Savvy.”
Driver states that M&A has been a key component of the Scopely technique. Having “accomplished billions of {dollars} of offers” over the previous couple of years, he says its “monitor file establishes us as a driving drive in a aggressive trade”. One thing which the studio has acted upon not too long ago with the acquisition of Excellent World’s Chengfeng Studio in a $34.5 million deal.
Looking forward to 2025
As Scopely enters 2025, it’s poised for continued development. The corporate’s chief income officer Tim O’Brien said only a few months in the past that it hopes to announce a “mega deal” this yr, doubtlessly for a franchise “doing hopefully no less than a billion {dollars} in income”. Driver and Ferreira didn’t elaborate on any specifics when requested.
With a strong M&A technique, profitable partnerships with main IP holders, and a confirmed capability to rework beloved manufacturers into hit video games, the studio seems well-positioned for the longer term.
“We’re hyper-focused on our total dwell portfolio and have an formidable and extremely numerous in-development slate that can proceed to mirror our mission to encourage play,daily,” concludes Ferreira.
“We wish to maintain pushing the boundaries of socially-driven, revolutionary recreation experiences.”
