🥟 Mystery Dumpling Unbox ASMR: The Game that isn't a GAME (It's an Ad Simulator)

Mystery Dumpling Unbox ASMR launched in mid-August, spiked to a million downloads a day, is still pulling 300K downloads a day and 1.1M DAU, shows $2 of IAP revenue in the last 30 days. Every one of those 12 million monthly downloads comes from a viral toy trend: RMS "Real Magical Stuff" mystery dumplings, unboxing videos on TikTok and YouTube doing 47M, 70M and 82M views each, and a developer that named the app so precisely ("mystery dumpling" + "unbox") that it sits as the first Google result when a kid searches for the toy. The monetization is textbook ultra-casual pumping: interstitials triggered by action count starting at 15 and dropping to two or three, a permanent MREC on a 10-second refresh sitting on top of the "claim free legendary pack" Felix runs the math: mostly Indonesia and Tier 2/3 traffic, only 33K DAU in the US, so somewhere between $18K and $29K a day in ad revenue, call it $1M a month and roughly $900K banked since launch. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Cold open: 70 million views on a dumpling unboxing video 01:32 – What Mystery Dumpling Unbox ASMR is and why $2 of IAP is the wrong way to look at it 02:29 – Gameplay walkthrough: interstitials on action count, a permanent MREC, Google billboards and four ads per screen 11:07 – The toy behind it: RMS mystery dumplings, Amazon, €50 diamond editions and a safety recall 12:50 – The numbers: 1M downloads/day spike, 300K/day now, 1.1M DAU, 12M downloads a month, all Tier 2/3 15:23 – Felix's Panini FIFA theory and the $18–29K/day ad revenue estimate 20:32 – Zero paid UA: TikTok, YouTube, Google search #1 and how ASO did all the work 29:07 – Fake 4.7-star reviews, the ultra-casual category and the Miniclip clone 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. http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100 -------------------------------------- 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 - Have PvX take downside risk alongside you + Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors --------------------------------------- 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: Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years They power top mobile publishers around the world Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg. --------------------------------------- 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 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 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 - [email protected]