Draft Showdown is a Voodoo-published auto-battler that is, by the admission of the two people on this podcast who actually worked on it, Battle Legion with the friction removed, and that's why it's doing what Battle Legion never could: roughly $120K a day, 45–50% of it from ads, 400K DAU, a $70K IAP spike on the new Draft Pass season, and 1,200 new creatives in the last three days.
Felix estimates $38–43K a day in ads alone, and he's already messaged Voodoo begging to know how they did it.
On the UA side Matej is surprised to see Facebook still the biggest channel over AppLovin, Unity and Mintegral, then explains why: the creatives are fake-as-hell mass battles, 4X hooks, Mob Control tubes, Plants vs Zombies clones, Hero Wars, Rush Royale, a dinosaur you never get to pick, all 59 seconds, no AI, "as soon as you see these type of ads, you know it's expensive."
Plus Teut Weidemann's new book "I Told You So: Why Fairness Wins in Free-to-Play"
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Cold open: $38–43K a day in ads
01:20 – Battle Legion trauma: Matej did the UA, Jakub did the design, Voodoo did the iteration
05:54 – The core loop: roguelite draft, live counters, four-card deck and no placement
11:35 – Legendaries behind the Draft Pass, shard gacha and the two-plus-one ad shop
19:26 – Felix's admon breakdown: seven rewarded placements and the double-interstitial trick
23:44 – Numbers: $120K/day, 400K DAU, $70K season spike, Voodoo portfolio and the $200–300K prediction
30:25 – UA and creatives: Facebook still number one, 1,200 creatives in 3 days, all fake, no AI
40:06 – Rigged matchmaking: why 70% win rate feels fair and games push it to 95%
This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.
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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
Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA
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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