Flexion today announced that they had agreed on a third deal with mobile game developer tap4fun to publish their new game Age of Apes on alternative app stores, including the Samsung Galaxy Store and Amazon App store. This will include an extension of their existing deals to publish Kingdom Guard and Kiss of War on alternative app stores as well up until February 2024. The company currently takes a 10% cut of revenue for games it publishes.
Alternative app stores have always been a key competitor to established first-party app stores such as Google Play. CEO of Flexion, Jens Lauritzson said about the deal “Alternative app store distribution is our core business so we understand them in depth. Our team has expertise, experience and technology no-one else can offer. We can’t wait to bring a new audience of paying players to Age of Apes.”
Kingdom of the Apes
The decision to extend the deal for publishing on the alternative app stores will likely be seen as an increased indication of the opportunities these storefronts present. By publishing to alternative app stores, games can reach a smaller but still significant audience than just publishing on major storefronts alone. Flexion themselves have also made a neat business out of this publishing.
In an interview we previously conducted with Lauritzson, he spoke about how the impact of decisions by companies such as Google and especially Apple were driving the development of alternative digital ecosystems.
“However, in our opinion the biggest driver [in major mergers & acquisitions of the year] is the changes made to user tracking introduced by Apple last year. These are negatively impacting most of the ad-tech market including giants like Meta and Twitter. Games are the biggest entertainment market and most big companies want a piece of this, which in turn is driving deals. This effectively means that new ecosystems are being created that are not dependent on Google and Apple. Flexion is perfectly positioned to help some of these new ecosystems grow and become successful.”
These alternative ecosystems consist not only of advertising and analytics, but also of alternative app stores that bypass decisions by major companies that have monopolised these storefronts.
We’ve also previously featured Flexion in special guest posts on the site. Where they argue for the benefits of utilising alternative app stores to attract more engaged and monetizable players to developers’ games.
