Today Kiloo Games is revealing the first success milestones from its new game business model. Pioneered by Kiloo, the co-production business model takes AAA game developers with console and PC backgrounds and pairs them with Kiloo’s team that has a free-to-play mobile development background. The result is high-quality mobile games with seamless and meaningful free-to-play integration.
Built in partnership with SYBO Games, Subway Surfers is seeing 25 million daily active users and about three times average retention rates.
“The idea of partnering two distinct talent sets and giving them a common goal was made popular with paired programming in Silicon Valley,” said Jacob Moller, founder and CEO of Kiloo. “We’ve taken the same concept but applied it to mobile gaming, and so far, it’s paying off with Subway Surfers. We’re hoping to see this become the next generation of free-to-play game development across the industry.”
At its core, Kiloo’s co-production model is a 50/50 split between two development teams. Kiloo funds early developer teams and manages user interface, monetization, marketing, user retention and community. Their developer partners only need to focus on making great content, while Kiloo handles everything before the gamer presses play—and all revenue from the game is split 50/50.
“The 50/50 business model was inspired in part by my and my brother Jacob’s relationship growing up,” said Simon Moller, chief creative officer of Kiloo. “When everyone’s equally invested, everyone has the same incentive to make the game a success—it’s the perfect model for mobile gaming.”
Kiloo’s co-production model is paying off. At 130 million total downloads, Subway Surfers is seeing about 25 million DAUs. The game has also earned user retention rates that are triple the industry average: on iOS, Subway Surfers keeps 91 percent users after day one, 81 percent after a week and 60 percent after a full 30 days. Additionally, the game has been among the top 25 grossing iOS games in the U.S. since December, and frequently breaks into the top ten. At its current rate of popularity and growth explosion, Kiloo anticipates as many as 250 million downloads for Subway Surfers by the end of the year.
Subway Surfers is available for free download on iOS, Android and Amazon.
