Free-to-play mobile game Monopoly Go has been a surprising success story in the mobile space, coming out as 2023’s most successful mobile launch with $1 billion in revenue. Developer Scopely has revealed in an interview that the game has now brought in over $2 billion in its first 10 months–and that the game has spent an eye-watering $500 million on marketing and user acquisition.
Scopely’s senior VP of publishing Eric Wood revealed the marketing numbers in an interview with Game File, after Monopoly Go’s $2 billion milestone was announced by the CEO earlier this week. To put the $500 million marketing budget in perspective, a poorly redacted document last year leaked a set of budgets for some of PlayStation’s biggest AAA titles, which revealed that The Last of Us Part 2 cost $220 million to develop, and Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million to develop.
Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira delved a little deeper into where that marketing spend went in his blog post, revealing that Monopoly Go’s marketing tem created localized marketing for every region where the game was available. “Our marketing team was a fierce advocate for taking a hyperlocal approach,” Ferreira said. “In turn, much of our upfront marketing investment went to developing individualized creative that reflected the language and culture of every country where the game is available.”
Ferreira also revealed that the game’s approach to marketing helped it recoup its spending in days or weeks, something that usually takes months or years for comparable titles. “We didn’t set out to create a blitz campaign, but as the game rapidly grew, so did our marketing efforts,” he explains. “For much of the title’s first six months, we were fully recouping our spend in a matter of weeks, something not often seen in games today.”
The game’s marketing budget gives an idea of the massive scale some mobile games operate on, with its revenue figures also far beyond what even big blockbuster AAAs make in their lifetime.
