$60M Marketing, $65M Revenue, What Happened to Good Job Games?

Good Job Games sold Zen Match to Moon Active near its peak, then raised $83m to do it all again with Match Villains. But did all they do is prove building a hit Match-3 is the hardest bet in mobile?

In Episode 4 of Puzzle Monthly, Ahmetcan Demirel, David Nelson, Laura Taranto and I turn to Good Job Games: two exits behind them, two sizeable rounds, and a rumour going round that they're running out of money.

We dig into:

➡️ The history of exits, from selling Zen Match to Moon Active for a reported $100m+ at the peak to offloading a 2.5bn-download hypercasual portfolio, and what that capital funded

➡️ Why Match Villains has scaled everywhere except tier-1, and what that does to the economics

➡️ How a payback period north of two years turns you into an ad-network subsidiary

➡️ What two new sub-branded hypercasual releases, after nearly two years of silence, say about managing cash and

➡️ Whether "running out of money" is real, or shorthand for a down round, an acqui-hire or an IP sale