The mobilegamer.biz podcast is a concise, banter-free digest of what’s driving the mobile games business.

Every week, mobilegamer.biz founder and editor Neil Long goes on a walk and tells you what’s going on in under 20 minutes.

In this episode:

• A brief history of Mario Kart Tour, which Nintendo killed this week after earning an estimated $270m
• King and Mojang have spruced up Minecraft Blast and quietly put it back into soft launch
• Zynga founder Mark Pincus has claimed that he had agreed to buy Supercell for $400m in 2012 – but the board blocked the deal
• Supercell has put its underperforming monster hunting game Mo co back into beta – meaning there will be relatively little brand new content added to the game until some “big changes” get made in the next update, coming later this year
• King averted those strikes at its Malmo and Stockholm offices right at the last minute by signing a deal with two Swedish unions
• Some chat about Meta’s Horizon Create app, which suggests the tech giant sees Instagram and Facebook as potential games platforms
• YouTube Playables – a range of YouTube-native webgames, essentially – are now live in over 50 countries. IAP monetisation is coming soon too, apparently, though YouTube is being very quiet about it all
• Gameloft is closing Minion Rush after a 13-year(!) run
• Tencent and Capcom’s Monster Hunter mobile game is coming October 29, pre-orders are live now
• Trophy Games bought Airlines Manager maker Playrion for what looks like a bargain $2.5m
• AI firm General Intuition, which trains its models on gameplay footage from sister firm Medal, got another monster funding round – $220m
• Your regular news nuggets from our soft launch, new games and data digests
• A passing ambulance making a right old racket

#65, 01/10/26.Supported by Xsolla.