From the Editor
What's up friend?
This one's about ownership. Owning your creative identity. Owning your stack. Owning the way you work with AI. Because as creatives become easier to produce, the question shifts from "can you make more?" to "is it actually yours?"
We've got a new podcast with Scopely's Director of Performance Marketing, a piece I wrote about what happens when AI agents run the UA loop, a solid GDC recap, and a breakdown of why copycat creatives stop scaling after 7 days. Plus some billion-dollar deals that tell you where the money thinks mobile gaming is going.
Let's go.
Sett Featured Content
Unpredictable Hits S2E4: Marilyne Chasseur, Director of Performance Marketing at Scopely
Paris, Suzhou, Amsterdam. Marilyne Chasseur's career in gaming has taken her around the world, from Ubisoft to mobile startups in China to Scopely. She joined us for a conversation about what happens when you stop treating UA and brand marketing as separate departments.
On building marketing squads: Marilyne compares the marketing director role to an orchestra conductor. UA teams should sit inside creative meetings, translating data and contributing to ideation. "They should be contributing on the ideation, and they should be the best partner to the creative team and to the branding team."
On creative testing as risk management: Testing isn't about volume for the sake of volume. It's a safeguard. "Creatives can be expensive. You want to lower the risk." And on studios that produce massive variations with minimal differences: "Very little differences. Is it really going to be impactful? I'm not sure."
On UA becoming growth hacking: As automation takes over campaign management, the job shifts from running campaigns to hacking growth in the system. "Even though [the algorithm] is a black box, how do you put it at your advantage? What do you change inside your game, inside your strategy, to really come out on top?"
On AI: Not a replacement. A time machine. "What took ten hours, now takes five minutes." The freed-up time goes to thinking, not more output.
👉 Listen on sett.ai | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
The Future of Work in UA Is Managing a Team of AI Agents
I wrote something this week that's been sitting in my head for a while.
The #1 use of AI agents right now is coding. The best developers manage teams of AI agents that write the vast majority of their code. This exact same thing is going to happen to UA.
The piece walks through the entire UA loop, research, ideation, production, deployment, analysis, and paints what it looks like when AI agents run each part while you steer. You wake up to a report. Agents turned research into creative briefs. You swipe through ideas on your phone, approve most of them, grab your coffee. By the time you sit down, 30 new playables are QA'd and packaged for every network.
Not science fiction. The early version of this exists today. I wrote this article, tracked the task, got daily performance summaries, all without touching our project management tool or logging into analytics. My agent did that.
I'm also working on a 1-hour crash course on agents for UA people. Coming out for free on the Sett website soon.
👉 Read the full piece on sett.ai
Industry Buzz
1. GDC 2026 Post-Mortem: Smaller Crowd, Sharper Conversations
Author: Michail Katkoff, Deconstructor of Fun
If you missed GDC this year, this is a great summary. Attendance dropped below 2012 levels, nearly a third fewer visitors than the year before. But Katkoff argues the smaller crowd made for better conversations. Less noise, more access to senior decision-makers.
On AI adoption: Most honest conversations revealed genuine AI implementation in back-office operations, accounting and process automation, not game development. But "AI-native teams make post-2022 funded studios look obsolete," with demos built in weeks rivaling projects that took millions and years.
On investment: Major VC firms have largely exited gaming. Capital now concentrates in specific geographies: Turkey, Israel, and Vietnam. Founders without AI-native credentials face steep fundraising walls.
On Roblox: The most striking insight. Major publishers now run competitive development processes across multiple studios on Roblox simultaneously, selecting partners based on IP execution quality. Genuine franchise development, not marketing positioning.
2. Ad Fatigue Is Real: Why Copycat Creatives Stop Scaling
Author: Alexandra Pulinets, Gamigion
This one is worth your time. The core argument: you can only own an ad format if it feels like it was made for your brand.
Royal Match didn't invent the rescue ad. But they built a character that makes it feel like it belongs to them. The King isn't just a mascot. He's a real character who lives in the game, and everything about his personality makes the rescue format natural. He's curious, brave, capable. He ends up in dangerous places because of who he is. That's why "save the king" became synonymous with Royal Match, not with the concept itself.
The copycat trap: The article looks at Match Villains, whose main character The Count is smug and competent enough to escape anything on his own. He doesn't need your help. The format doesn't fit his world.
The data: Copycat creatives lose traction within the first 7 days and stop scaling after minimal impressions.
If you're not building creatives around your game's world, your characters, your brand, you're just reminding people of someone else's game.
3. Last Asylum: $300K/Day by Exploring the Creative Space at Scale
Great analysis worth your time about Last Asylum from Matej and Two and a Half Gamers.
37 Entertainment's Last Asylum is making $300K a day right after launch. The onboarding loop is literally My Perfect Hotel. Players think they're playing an idle game. In reality, they're being conditioned into a full 4X economy from the first minute.
The creative machine: The publisher openly states that around 70% of videos involve AI generation and most art assets are AI-assisted. This lets them produce thousands of creatives while iterating on proven concepts from competitors like Whiteout Survival or Kingshot.
But the real takeaway is the volume of net new concepts. They're not just making variations. They're exploring the creative space at massive scale. That's where breakthrough creatives come from.
They did it with videos. The principle is the same whether it's video or playable. Production scale lets you explore more. But the article about creative fatigue above still holds: scale means nothing if it's not yours. The teams winning combine massive exploration with creative identity and their unique mechanics and game.
4. Savvy Closes $6B+ Moonton Deal, ByteDance Out of Gaming
Sources: Gamigion + Craig Chapple, PocketGamer.biz
The deal is done. Savvy Games Group acquires Moonton for over $6 billion. ByteDance bought it for roughly $4 billion in 2021 and walks away with solid upside. No disruption, no restructuring. CEO Zhang Yunfan stays, HQ remains in Shanghai, team and structure unchanged.
ByteDance's signal: This confirms it. ByteDance is out of big gaming bets. Refocusing on TikTok, the ad machine, and AI infrastructure.
Savvy's stack is serious. CEO Brian Ward describes a federated holding structure where mature assets like Scopely run with full autonomy. Scopely "looks at 800 or 900 deals a year" on its own.
Recent moves tell the story. The $3.5 billion acquisition of Niantic's gaming division. A majority stake in Pixel Flow's Loom Games, valued over $1 billion. The Public Investment Fund has transferred $3 billion in Take-Two shares and roughly $12 billion in Nintendo, Bandai Namco, and Square Enix holdings to Savvy.
On China: Ward sees opportunity. Numerous studios "looking for good homes." Savvy is building mobile plus esports plus IP dominance, powered by sovereign capital.
Premium mobile IP still commands billions. Saudi capital is buying the throne.
👉 Gamigion coverage | 👉 PocketGamer CEO interview
5. Nazara's $100M Acquisition: Building the Full Stack
Source: Gamigion
Nazara acquires 50% of the great studio the folks at Bluetile built (formerly PlayValve) and BestPlay for $100.3 million. Their largest acquisition to date.
The numbers: Combined 2025 revenue of $153.6 million. EBITDA of $27.7 million. 375 million downloads, 24 million monthly active users across 17 live games including Yatzy, Domino, and Mahjong.
The play: BestPlay brings a built-in UA, retention, and cross-promo engine. Bluetile brings AI-driven game development with 90-95% of data infrastructure and 80% of backend AI-generated, enabling five games shipped in six months.
Nazara now owns the full loop: build, distribute, scale. Content plus distribution plus AI, all in one stack. Similar to NCSoft buying 70% of JustPlay for $205 million recently. Legacy publishers aren't just buying games anymore. They're buying the machine.
6. ZiMAD's CCO on AI Adoption and What Actually Differentiates Studios
Author: Paige Cook, PocketGamer.biz
Anastasia Zaiceva, Chief Commercial Officer at ZiMAD, gives one of the more grounded takes on AI adoption you'll read this month.
On the real differentiator: AI access is no longer the advantage. Everyone has the tools. The actual differentiators are "taste, decision-making clarity and strong operational discipline." Production cycles are shorter, but faster doesn't mean better. Quality and brand consistency are harder to maintain at speed.
On UA as portfolio investment: "Growth begins when companies stop thinking about user acquisition purely as fuel and start treating it more like a portfolio investment strategy." The most durable products adopt multi-year perspectives rather than quarterly thinking. That framing alone is worth the read.
On leadership in an AI era: "At the executive level, emotional intelligence becomes less of a 'soft skill' and more of a strategic necessity." Speed without judgment creates problems. Player trust, once lost, is extremely difficult to restore.
No hype in this one. Just operational clarity from someone who's clearly done the work.
Wrap Up
The throughline this week is ownership.
Own your creative identity. If you're not building creatives around your world, you're advertising someone else's game.
Own the stack. Nazara and Savvy are buying entire build-distribute-scale loops.
Own the workflow. AI agents are about to turn you into the CEO of your role.
Own your taste. When everyone has the same tools, taste is the last differentiator.
More creatives, more deals, more agents. The teams winning are the ones who make it theirs.
See you next week.
Yours, Jonathan (lover of my daughter, games, and pizza, in this order) Fishman
About the Author
Fishi is the Head of Marketing at Sett. His brain is a chaotic jukebox of ideas with more cultural references than any feed can handle. He collects sneakers and plays chess while you’re still counting sheep.
