Latest news with #MonopolyGo!
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SHOPBACK, ASIA-PACIFIC'S LARGEST REWARDS PLATFORM, LAUNCHES IN THE U.S. WITH EXCLUSIVE AMAZON CASHBACK AND GAMIFIED OFFERS FROM OTHER RETAIL TITANS INCLUDING WALMART, EXPEDIA AND EBAY
Rewards Platform Offering Real Cashback on Amazon Purchases; U.S. Shoppers Now Join 50 Million Globally Saving More Through Gamified, Mobile-First CashBack Experience AUSTIN, Texas, May 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ShopBack, Asia-Pacific's dominant shopping and rewards platform with over 50 million users across 13 markets, today announced its official launch in the United States. Known for making everyday purchases more rewarding through its gamified earning model, ShopBack is now available to U.S. shoppers with a slate of features and offers exclusive to the U.S., from over 2,000 merchants including Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Expedia, iHerb, Ulta, Macy's, Kohl's, Uber, CVS, DoorDash and more. Founded in Singapore in 2014 by Henry Chan and Joel Leong, ShopBack has become a household name across Asia-Pacific by offering its 50 million users cashback and personalized deals from over 20,000 merchant partners. With more than US$4 billion in annual sales driven to its brand partners, ShopBack is now setting its sights on becoming a go-to destination for smart shopping in the U.S. "American consumers are more savvy, value-conscious, and increasingly focused on maximizing their savings, especially in today's economy," said Joel Leong, Co-Founder of ShopBack. "We're excited to introduce ShopBack's innovative reward-driven shopping experience to all U.S. shoppers who are looking for an easier and more fun way to save on everyday purchases. From auto-applied coupons and shipping rebates, to earning cashback while playing popular mobile games like Monopoly Go, no one else offers the real cashback incentives like we do." With a U.S. base now operating out of Austin, Texas, ShopBack's American launch introduces several distinctive features tailored for this market: Exclusive Cashback on Amazon — ShopBack is the only cashback platform where users can earn real cashback on Amazon purchases whether on the ShopBack browser extension and/or mobile app. ShopBack Play — ShopBack offers a gamified experience where shoppers can earn cashback by completing milestones and playing games within the app including Monopoly Go!, Township, Block Blast! and more. Shipping rebates on participating stores — In addition to earned cashback, ShopBack enables shoppers to receive money back on shipping fees, an added perk available only to U.S. users. Quests — ShopBack introduces an engaging way for users to earn additional cashback bonuses when they complete shopping quests, whilst allowing brands to connect directly with high-intent shoppers through customized rewards campaigns. Auto-applied coupons — ShopBack's browser extension automatically finds and applies the best available promo codes at checkout — no manual searching required from users. ShopBack is available through its mobile app (iOS and Android), web platform ( and browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari on mobile), providing users with a seamless way to activate cashback, automatically apply coupon codes, save on shipping fees and maximize savings at checkout. "This is a major moment for our team as we introduce the ShopBack experience to a new generation of U.S. shoppers — from students and young professionals, to busy parents," added Josephine Chow, Head of Expansion at ShopBack. "By combining cashback, deals, and gamified experiences, we've built a platform designed for today's digitally-savvy consumer. In fact, new users who engage with Shopback's 'Quests' globally each month go on to spend 80% more than average users - proof that saving money can be fun and rewarding for both users and partners." ShopBack's U.S. launch follows a $200 million Series F funding round, led by Asia Partners and 65 Equity Partners, with backing from renowned investors including Temasek, Rakuten, and East Ventures. "We're excited to partner with ShopBack as they expand into the U.S. market," said Neil Folgate, SVP Global Marketing at iHerb. "Their ability to drive meaningful engagement through cashback and gamified experiences offers a fresh, effective, and valuable way for U.S. shoppers to connect with brands like iHerb, while saving money along the way." For more information or to start earning cashback today, visit About ShopBackShopBack is a cashback and loyalty platform that helps American shoppers get more out of every purchase. Already trusted by more than 50 million users across 13 markets, ShopBack officially launched in the U.S. in 2025, bringing exclusive cashback, personalized deals, and new ways to save through gamified shopping experiences. With major partners like Amazon, Walmart, Expedia, Ulta, Kohl's, Uber, and DoorDash, ShopBack helps shoppers earn real cashback online through its app, website, and browser extension. U.S. users also get access to features like shipping rebates and ShopBack Play—a new way to earn even more cashback by completing shopping quests and playing games. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Singapore, ShopBack powers over $4 billion in annual sales for more than 20,000 brands and retailers around the world. Its U.S. operations are based in Austin, Texas, as the company builds on its mission to make shopping more rewarding, every day. 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Business Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Times
Mobile games turn into boom-or-bust industry as spending rises
[HONG KONG] Mobile gamers ramped up their spending by 4 per cent last year even as the number of downloads and new releases fell, highlighting the narrowing of the industry to a handful of huge titles that dominate users' time. New hits took less time than ever to reach their first US$1 million in revenue – 106 days – but competition from evergreen titles meant there were fewer of those standouts than before, according to Appfigures data. Only 399 new games achieved that threshold, and there were 43 per cent fewer games released overall in 2024, the researchers said. The games industry is struggling to develop a sustainable economic model, with many publishers and studios in recent times cancelling projects and cutting staff after the pandemic-driven boom in entertainment faded. The surging cost to develop and promote new titles has dampened investment and pushed console makers Nintendo and Microsoft to announce the first US$80 retail games. On mobile, Tencent Holdings earned roughly four times as much as the second-biggest publisher in 2024, Monopoly Go! creator Scopely, with longtime favourites Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite in the top four highest global earners. The most profitable and downloaded games for the year were almost all long-lived mobile titles – less than US$4 billion of the total US$65.7 billion spending came from games actually released in 2024. Among those, eight came from Chinese developers, including Mihoyo's Zenless Zone Zero, and two from Japan. Appfigures researchers said developers seeking a slice of the industry are fighting to retain existing players and recruit new ones. One strategy is to use cross-promotional work and other forms of entertainment. 'Collaborations between mobile games and major IP from TV and movies to comics and fashion are nothing new. But in online multiplayer and live service games they shine, boosting both player acquisition and spending,' according to the Appfigures report. 'Monetisation through branded events has grown more sophisticated over time and is now a core strategy in top titles.' American gamers were once again among the world's most valuable, as they spent an average of US$6.43 per download, across iPhone and Android devices, more than four times the global average of US$1.52 per download. Both figures increased by 11 per cent, underscoring the underlying trend of increased spending. BLOOMBERG
Mint
13-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Mobile Games Turn Into Boom-or-Bust Industry as Spending Rises
(Bloomberg) -- Mobile gamers ramped up their spending by 4% last year even as the number of downloads and new releases fell, highlighting the narrowing of the industry to a handful of huge titles that dominate users' time. New hits took less time than ever to reach their first $1 million in revenue — 106 days — but competition from evergreen titles meant there were fewer of those standouts than before, according to Appfigures data. Only 399 new games achieved that threshold, and there were 43% fewer games released overall in 2024, the researchers said. The games industry is struggling to develop a sustainable economic model, with many publishers and studios in recent times canceling projects and cutting staff after the pandemic-driven boom in entertainment faded. The surging cost to develop and promote new titles has dampened investment and pushed console makers Nintendo Co. and Microsoft Corp. to announce the first $80 retail games. On mobile, Tencent Holdings Ltd. earned roughly four times as much as the second biggest publisher in 2024, Monopoly Go! creator Scopely Inc., with longtime favorites Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite in the top four highest global earners. The most profitable and downloaded games for the year were almost all long-lived mobile titles — less than $4 billion of the total $65.7 billion spending came from games actually released in 2024. Among those, eight came from Chinese developers, including Mihoyo Co.'s Zenless Zone Zero, and two from Japan. Appfigures researchers said developers seeking a slice of the industry are fighting to retain existing players and recruit new ones. One strategy is to use cross-promotional work and other forms of entertainment. 'Collaborations between mobile games and major IP from TV and movies to comics and fashion are nothing new. But in online multiplayer and live service games they shine, boosting both player acquisition and spending,' according to the Appfigures report. 'Monetization through branded events has grown more sophisticated over time and is now a core strategy in top titles.' American gamers were once again among the world's most valuable, as they spent an average of $6.43 per download, across iPhone and Android devices, more than four times the global average of $1.52 per download. Both figures increased by 11%, underscoring the underlying trend of increased spending. More stories like this are available on
Business Mayor
02-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Monopoly Go passes $5B in gross bookings at a speed unseen in mobile gaming
Scopely announced today that Monopoly Go! has surpassed $5 billion in gross bookings, and that it has hit this target within 24 months — faster than any game in mobile gaming history. The company revealed the figure and thanked the players who have helped the title reach that goal, and gave a sneak preview of what's coming in the near future. Massimo Maietti, Scopely's president of gaming, said in a blog post, 'To provide context: over the past decade, more than 1.4 million mobile titles have launched globally. Among them, MONOPOLY GO! reached this financial milestone in just 24 months—significantly ahead of the previous benchmark of 40 months.' Monopoly Go! recently celebrated its 2-year anniversary, during which time it's hosted millions of players. The studio also noted that, in terms of numbers, players have made 500 million in-game connections and 450 million invites, and that 20 million players engage with the game's community channels on a regular basis. Maietti also gave a view on what's coming next for Monopoly Go!, including that the studio plans to implement new board designs and enhanced PvP mechanics, alongside a roadmap of tournaments and themed events. It's also planning to continue evolving the sticker system. Maietti said, 'As we enter our third year, our mission is unchanged: to continue delivering a best-in-class, deeply socially connected, and creatively engaging experience for our players.'
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Monopoly Go! Passes $5 Billion In Two Years, But Journey Wasn't Easy
(Image courtesy of Scopely) The mobile game Monopoly Go! just passed another big milestone, generating $5 billion in revenues in slightly less than two years, what its publisher, Scopely, says is the fastest a mobile title has ever reached that prodigious height. But it wasn't easy creating a game that perhaps no one expected would ever, especially so quickly, join an elite club (others include Genshin Impact, Pokemon Go, and Royal Match) among the 1.4 million games released on mobile app stores, said Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira. Scopely spent $70 million and seven years, beginning in 2016, trying to figure out the best way to adapt the original board game for a very different experience of gaming on a mobile phone, with a free-to-play mechanic and a strong social component. 'We knew Monopoly was a beloved (intellectual property), which in some way is saying it was a beloved experience,' Ferreira said. 'This is the key. Or maybe a beloved feeling when people were playing Monopoly. The question for us was how do we bring the game to mobile?' A screen shot from Monopoly Go! (Game image courtesy of Scopely) A straight conversion wasn't likely to be successful because it couldn't really replicate the actual feeling of 'of getting rich, of bankrupting others, not just others but family members,' Ferreira said. 'And do it in a way where the stakes are low, where it felt very playful and fun.' Early iterations of a mobile version were 'too skill-based. We didn't see audiences reacting positively to that," especially for a game that relies so heavily on luck and dice rolls, Ferreira said. Other early versions weren't social enough. 'That's kind of a key idea,' Ferreira said. 'It's a game that's fun, not just because of the mechanic itself, but because of who you are playing it with.' One key in unlocking a successful mobile take on a very well established board game was optimizing it so people could easily play with friends and family in 'your real social graph,' rather than 'the social graph inside the game," Ferreira said. That social web of connections helped encourage people to keep coming back repeatedly over weeks and months, and now, years. Now, some 10 million players access the game daily, according to Scopely. And Ferreira said that while a $70 million development budget seems steep, 'you can't complain. In free-to-play live services, when you're thinking about titles that can have a life cycle of 10 or 20 years, how much you invest in development isn't that expensive. (Focus instead on) how do you make a good game? Your investment will always be really good." The company, like all operators of live-service mobile titles, relies heavily on data to track what's working for which players, and constantly adjust its various parameters. 'How do you use data to listen to what players are telling you, so you can continually evolve the game and make it better every day,' Ferreira said. Such constant tuning is more vital than ever in a highly competitive fight for players' attention, not just from all those other games on mobile and other devices, but also social media, traditional media, live events, sports, music and so much else. The game business has been severely challenged the past couple of years, after the peri- and post-pandemic game-playing rush abated beginning around 2023. People are back to many parts of their old routines and ways to spend their leisure time, cutting game time notably for many. That makes careful construction of games to maximize engagement vital, said Nate Jones, vice president of corporate strategy and development for Sony Interactive Entertainment, the PlayStation unit of Sony. 'Consumer media time is plateauing,' Jones said, speaking at Monday's Los Angeles Games Conference legal & finance summit. 'Games have avoided (problems with) that, but they may not in the future. There's been no net new growth, and more competition for audiences than we have seen a few decades.' Ferreira said Monopoly Go!'s monetization structure isn't 'particularly unique,' but it was built around two big key performance indicators: 'an incredible long-term retention curve for the game that was better and higher than we had ever seen here at Scopely. The second thing that's driven success is the virality, the social dynamics in the game. Those social dynamics have been key to driving retention, but also downloads.' FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder The game's success over the past two years wasn't a big factor in the $4.9 billion 2023 acquisition of Scopely by Saudi-backed Savvy Games, Ferreira said, but it certainly has made the transition to Savvy ownership a much easier experience. 'It mattered not so much pre-acquisition, but post-acquisition, it allowed Savvy to feel pretty great about the investment they've made," Ferreira said. It's worked so well that that Scopely just announced another big deal, buying Niantic's game unit for $3.9 billion. That deal brings rights to augmented-reality pioneer Pokemon Go among much else. To help keep Monopoly Go! top of mind with different slices of its audiences, the company has done multiple cross-over deals, including with Marvel and, beginning today, a two-month collaboration with another big Disney brand, Star Wars (see trailer at end of story), said Ferreira. Monopoly Go's first-year success, when it topped $3 billion in revenues, was invoked multiple times by LA Games Conference panelists. 'You couldn't get two more different studios, but Scopely and (Baldur's Gate III maker) Larian Studios understood what their communities needed, and delivered,' said Eugene Evans, a former long-time executive at Hasbro (which has owned the Monopoly IP for years) and founding principal of Infinite Ventures. One advantage Monopoly Go! had is what Evans called 'a 90-year first-time user experience. They have been training people to play Monopoly for many years. Many players who paid there (for in-game assets) have never paid for an online game before. That game broke through all expectations. Nobody knew it was going to do $3 billion in its first 12 months.' Both L:arian and Scopely, in building very different kinds of game experiences for PC and mobile respectively, understood that merely delivering a good game wasn't enough, Evans said. In each case, giving players reasons to keep coming back, keep sharing about the game, and keep recruiting friends and family to join them, was crucial for long-term success. 'People only have two things, disposable money and disposable time,' Evans said. 'It used to be (the formula for success was), 'How many products can we sell them.?' Now, it's, 'How much time can we get them to spend?'' Evans also suggested that Monopoly Go! and similar well-constructed, easy-to-learn mobile games have been riding a wave of democratization in who plays games these days, even if they don't identify as 'gamers.' 'The average age of gamers is 25 years older now than it was 25 years ago,' Evans said. 'We're all gamers now. We've all grown up with it. That includes people who play Candy Crush or Monopoly Go! every day, and they'll still say, 'No, I'm not a gamer.''
