This episode is special. We sit down with Akin Babayigit — early Facebook gaming, Audience Network launch team, King, co-founder of Tripledot, investor at Arcadia — to talk about what actually builds winning game studios.

We go deep into:

Why Pixelflow exploded

Why Match Villains keeps growing

Why China, Turkey & Vietnam are ahead

Why copying doesn’t kill winners

Why are ads misunderstood?

Why execution beats everything

And why is there no such thing as an “end game” in your career

This is not surface-level advice. This is 15+ years of pattern recognition distilled into one conversation.

🧠 Key Takeaways

Execution beats ideas (but intuition is back)

If you know you have something, scale aggressively

Ads are not the enemy. Poor integration is.

Turkey’s gaming ecosystem is structurally advantaged

China wins because of patience + scale

Match-3 is not dead — the bar is just brutal

Long-term greedy beats short-term greedy

There is no finish line in building

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PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

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+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

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For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

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This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Special guest: Akin Babayigit

https://www.linkedin.com/in/akinbabayigit/

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

Chapters

00:00 – Why This Episode Is Special

02:10 – Akin’s Background (Facebook → King → Tripledot → Arcadia)

06:00 – The Birth of Audience Network

10:00 – Ads: The Most Misunderstood Revenue Stream

16:00 – Hybrid Monetization & CPM Decay

20:00 – Pixelflow’s Explosive Growth

27:00 – Copycats, China & Scaling Fast

34:00 – Why Match Villains Keep Growing

40:00 – Turkish Gaming Incentives Explained

48:00 – China’s Work Ethic & Competitive Edge

55:00 – Career Philosophy: There Is No End Game

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Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

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Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

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If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Mobile Gaming OG Akin Babayigit: The real truth about mobile gaming success

two &amp; a half gamers

Mobile Gaming OG Akin Babayigit: The real truth about mobile gaming success

two & a half gamers