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Axios Gaming

Wordle usage peaked in March of last year but has remained strong since the game’s purchase by The New York Times last January.

Why it matters: Despite some players' fears that it would, the NYT hasn’t ruined Wordle, according to player stats. Far from it.

Making that case today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was Zoe Bell, a 14-year industry veteran and executive producer at NY Times Games.

The paper’s strategy, she said, was to “preserve Wordle as an internet treasure” and follow a simple ethos of “do no harm,” with admittedly mixed results.

Details: Bell described the Times’ management of Wordle throughout 2022 as a careful process focused on keeping changes to the game minimal, rolling them out slowly and being transparent with players.

The company didn’t rush to monetize Wordle, spent months preparing to change its codebase for better stat-tracking, months to bring it into the Times’ mobile app, all while keeping the user experience as similar to its indie incarnation as possible, Bell said.

The game’s post-acquisition growth was actually a surprise, she said: “We thought people would think that Wordle had peaked and how long can exponential growth go on?”

One positive not usually cited by big game publishers: The addition of an editor to Wordle in late 2022 put a human face to the game. Having that human element is "so important for our brand and the delight of our players," she said, joking that now frustrated Wordle players had someone to blame when they struggled.

Yes, but there was occasional friction with Wordle's users.

There were easily tolerated grumbles over the game’s change in font and the creation of its icon for the Times hub.

Some players were also upset when the paper removed words from the word list because they were deemed too obscure (agora, fibre) or in violation of the Times’ sensitivity guidelines (slave, wench, lynch). That decision was partially reversed due to player feedback, Bell said, letting users input some problematic words. The thinking: doing so wouldn’t harm other players.

The Times’ Wordle team also faced complaints mid-year that the game’s difficulty had been increased, which Bell denies was the case (that said, a September puzzle solution PARER was the year’s top snapper of players' streaks, quadrupling the average daily number of broken streaks).

The company also got some grumbles over offering a themed solution — FEAST — on Thanksgiving. During a post-presentation Q&A, Bell told an Ars Technica reporter that the Times had no plans for more themed Wordle solutions.

Between the lines: Some 35% of the users who subscribe to the Times’ gaming subscription service now cite Wordle as the reason they subscribed, Bell says.

Sign up for the Axios Gaming newsletter here.

New York Times touts continued Wordle success

Despite some players' fears that it would, the NYT hasn’t ruined Wordle.

Image showing two graphs from the New York Times of Wordle player data.

The New York Times' data on Wordle usage (including a brief July outage). Photo: Axios

Video games

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

A somber montage aired annually during the Game Developers Choice Awards has become one of the key ways the video game industry honors its dead.

Why it matters: The gaming industry, and the culture around it, is no longer young. As the decades stack up, more of gaming’s pioneers and its day-to-day contributors are passing on, creating a need to recognize them.

The opportunities to do so have developed informally, and those who strive to honor pioneers face the challenge of even being aware of lesser-known but vital people from gaming’s past.

Details: The GDC Awards, which will be held Wednesday night in San Francisco (6:30pm PT) and streamed on Twitch, will include an In Memoriam reel for about 40 people.

As in years past, honorees include game developers, executives and even members of the media.

Among the names: longtime Sega producer Rieko Kodama (Skies of Arcadia), Sound Blaster creator Sim Wong Hoo and Andrii Korzinkin, an animator for Metro Exodus who died fighting in the war to defend Ukraine.

This year’s list will also include my friend and former colleague, Kotaku reporter Mike Fahey.

The big picture: The GDC Awards’ In Memoriam reel remains relatively unusual.

The glitzy Game Awards, airing each December with Oscars-chasing pomp, do not include one. Nor does the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) awards held annually in February at the DICE convention.

GDC organizers first produced an In Memoriam reel for the 2013 edition of the awards, honoring a handful of developers.

“There were more important people from video games passing on every year, and we thought they should be commemorated,” former GDC organizer Simon Carless, who worked on the early lists, tells Axios.

What they’re saying: “It's important to honor the industry and who shaped it and where we've been,” GDC manager Stephenie Hawkins tells Axios.

This year’s montage will include double the names usually honored, gathered as a result of outreach to a wide range of GDC advisers and obituaries run in the event’s sister publication Game Developer.

“I don't know that there's more people that have passed away this year,” Hawkins says. “We just got more responses this year than we ever have before.”

Yes, but even with expanded efforts, the list has largely been male, raising questions about the lack of diversity in gaming’s roots or lost awareness of hidden figures.

“I think it's dangerous to just say like, ‘Oh, well, the industry is only recently getting diverse,’” says Game Developer senior editor Bryant Francis, who has been helping assemble the In Memoriam reels since 2016.

Francis says that many people from marginalized backgrounds leave the industry early, often because their path is harder. That makes it more challenging to recognize their impact when they pass, he says, instilling the need for more thorough searches when assembling each year’s list.

Former GDC director Meggan Scavio helped launch the reel a decade ago and now oversees the AIAS show. “We regularly debate adding an In Memoriam section, but I always get stuck wondering if it's more meaningful and impactful to let this tribute remain a focused and special event,” she tells Axios.

“If the GDCAs ever stop doing them, however, the academy would 100% carry the mantle. No question.”

Video game developer Don Daglow, whose career dates back to creating games for PDP-10 mainframes in the early 1970s, has been building an online memorial to game industry figures who have died.

Since 2017, he has maintained a publicly sourced list of more than 600 people, noting the year of their death and their contribution to the scene.

Carless cites Daglow’s list as a key resource for the awards show’s effort years ago.

Daglow tells Axios he takes extra effort to acknowledge obscure industry veterans.

“In 2013, when my longtime friend and art director David Bunnett died of a heart attack, I started thinking about the ‘memory disparity’ in our industry,” he says.

He observed that bigger-name developers at least had their names memorialized in online databases for game credits. More unsung contributors — people in sales, finance, HR and IT — “had nothing.”

“I also noticed how some of my game dev friends who had passed away had no record of their death anywhere online, and that made the disparity in being remembered so clear to me that I became even more determined to grow and maintain the project,” he says.

Continued updates: Daglow adds about one name a week, relying on messages from peers and the public, as he tries to corroborate people’s passing.

“The list, sadly, has now grown quite long,” he says.

“But even with people from all over the world sending me updates on someone I've missed, I know that the list of our lost community members is far from complete.

“It scares me how often I learn of someone's passing via a friend's post on social media — and without that one post there'd be nothing about it online.”

Paying tribute to video game pioneers

More of gaming’s pioneers are passing on, creating a need to recognize them.

Illustration of an animated pixelated candle.

Netflix plans to launch 40 more video games before the end of 2023, as it pushes forward with its plans to be a global force in gaming, company reps tell Axios.

Why it matters: With a massive subscriber base of more than 200 million people and a drive to find new areas of growth, Netflix is signaling that its investment in games is just getting started.

Driving the news: The company has 70 games in the works from external partners and 16 games in various stages of development from Netflix’s growing roster of internal game studios. (Some of those teams were acquired, some built.)

Upcoming games include an April exclusive from Ubisoft called Mighty Quest: Rogue Palace, an unspecified tie-in to a Netflix show from Super Evil Megacorp and a 2024 re-release of the iconic mobile puzzle series Monument Valley – which first appeared on Netflix in a very different way back in 2015.

Be smart: Netflix has been offering games through its mobile app at no extra cost to subscribers since late 2021.

The company has launched 55 games so far, from indies and one big publisher: Ubisoft.

The roster includes acclaimed multi-platform games such as Immortality and Into The Breach as well as spin-offs of Netflix shows (the platform’s most popular game is a tie-in to Netflix reality show “Too Hot To Handle”).

What they’re saying: "Our north star is to become a world-class publisher who delivers must-play games to our millions of members around the world,” Netflix’s VP of external games, Leanne Loombe, tells Axios.

Loombe says members have been especially receptive to new and exclusive games, “so you’ll be seeing more of those going forward.”

The company intends to keep working with indies and large-scale publishers beyond just Ubisoft, Loombe says.

To increase awareness, Netflix has experimented with promoting some games via QR codes that prompt TV viewers to get games. “We are still early in our journey but we are constantly evolving and testing out new ways for our members to discover the games they love,” Loombe says.

Between the lines: Among the most intriguing aspects of the Netflix operation is how its gaming business model works.

Games on the service are offered for free to paying subscribers and have no in-app purchases.

“As with film and TV our game deals are based on flat fees,” Loombe says. "Additionally for games, we pay for development costs depending on the deal terms.”

She described Netflix’s gaming deals as flexible. “We do not have a standard contract or deal term sheet — everything is tailored to the game and the developer we are working with.”

Yes, but for all of Netflix’s bravado, other tech and entertainment giants that have committed to the industry have retreated after learning how rare success in the field is.

Just a few years ago, Google was building game studios, signing games and launching a game-streaming platform, only to shut it all down by January after failing to gain traction.

Netflix plans 40 more game releases in 2023

The streaming giant wants to offer more exclusive games for subscribers.

Illustration of an 8-bit video game screen with a Netflix logo.

A Brazilian video game publisher wants to defy decades of industry wisdom by promoting a line of new games based on how quickly they’ll take to complete, not by how long.

Driving the news: Flux Games is rolling out a new label called Short N Sweet, promoting games for console and PC that can be completed in as little as a sitting or two.

The initial lineup will include the one-player/two-character game Mirrored Souls and delivery game FoodBoy.

Why it matters: Playing video games is a time-consuming pastime — one where many players, aided by marketing campaigns that brag about game length or promise multiple seasons of future content, have come to equate a game’s duration with its quality.

Many great games do demand many hours of their players’ lives. Two of last year’s most acclaimed games, God of War Ragnarök and Elden Ring, have average completion times of 25.5 and  55.5 hours, respectively.

Not so with Short N Sweet’s games, which may run as short as two to four hours, the label’s founder tells Axios.

What they’re saying: “A significant number of players just want to chill and play a nice, fun game on, say, a Tuesday evening or any short time window,” Short N Sweet founder Paulo Luis Santos tells Axios. “But that is surprisingly hard to find!”

Santos says his company’s market research shows that people are looking for shorter games but can’t find them, especially on consoles.

He also believes developers would benefit from a label that can successfully sell short games. “We really want to remove the pressure of adding content for the sake of game length, allowing developers to make their game last as long as they envision it to keep it to the highest quality they can.”

Though Santos says Short N Sweet is still working out pricing for games, he says they’re “committed to pricing them in a way that’s fair and affordable to our community but at the same time fairly rewards the devs and us.”

The big picture: Game publishers have long pointed to lengthy playing times as justification for console and PC games’ relatively high costs, and in recent years, some of the biggest publishers have built business models around maximizing player time in a game.

But backlash hits from time to time. Assassin’s Creed developers promise the franchise’s next installment will be “on a more intimate scale” (aka shorter and also cheaper), following its fans grumbling about swelling playing times.

Short games are also not a new phenomenon. Some of the field’s most acclaimed games, including Gone Home, Unpacking and Portal (running time: 3 hours) were brief, even if there was no label at the time to hype their brevity.

The bottom line: Santos believes Short N Sweet can make money with short games. “Our sales targets are not too high,” he says.

“They are just enough to enable us to get the developers that we are working with in a good position to establish and grow their studios, while Short N Sweet can sign and fund more great games for our 2024-25 games lineup.”

Video game publisher tries a novel strategy: Hyping shorter games

Short N Sweet's PC and console games are for people short on time

Video game screenshot of two robed figures in mirrored positions

Mirrored Souls. Screenshot: The Bricks Studios

WWE chairman Vince McMahon is a playable character in the latest WWE 2K23 video game, despite controversies that have largely kept him out of the public eye. 

Why it matters:  McMahon announced last summer he would retire from the WWE shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported that the longtime wrestling promoter had secretly paid off a former employee with whom he allegedly had an affair. 

A company investigation last year found that McMahon had paid almost $15 million to settle allegations of sexual misconduct.

In January, McMahon returned as board chairman, saying he intended to facilitate a sale of the company.

McMahon, who used to regularly appear on WWE programming as the evil boss character Mr. McMahon, had largely been absent from the company's TV shows in recent years. He did appear on-air shortly after the Journal's report. 

Details: Players of WWE 2K23 can select "Mr. McMahon" as a playable character. He can grapple with other wrestlers, male or female in a multitude of matches.

His daughter, Stephanie McMahon, who resigned as co-CEO and chairman of the board of WWE days after her father's return, is also available in the game as a general manager character in the MyGM mode.

A screenshot of Mr. McMahon and Roman Reigns from WWE 2K23. Photo: WWE 2K23 screenshot

Between the lines: It's unclear whether the decision to include Vince McMahon in the game was made before the Journal's report. 

Games have long production cycles and rosters of playable characters are generally established a year or more in advance. 

Wrestler Winham Rotunda, who performs as Bray Wyatt, returned to WWE in October, but won't be available in the game until July as a downloadable extra.

2K Games did not respond to Axios' request for comment.

But, but, but: Roster cuts can happen closer to or even after release. 

Electronic Arts has previously removed NFL stars from its Madden games when they've been suspended by the league or run afoul of the law.  

EA also removed Manchester United striker Mason Greenwood from FIFA 22 after he was arrested on allegations of rape and assault.

Vince McMahon included in new WWE game

McMahon has largely been away from the public eye after allegations of sexual misconduct last year.

Vince McMahon battles Roman Reigns in WWE 2K23. Photo: WWE 2K23 screenshot

Games

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

As it opens up to self-publishers, the Epic Games Store will not allow pornographic video games, one of the store’s few content prohibitions alongside hateful content and fraudulent games. 

Why it matters: The ban on adult content, common for many major online gaming storefronts, is another point of distinction between Epic’s marketplace and Valve’s Steam service, which allows some types of sexual games and sees them chart well.

What they’re saying: “This isn't Epic moral preaching here,” Epic Games Store CEO Tim Sweeney tells Axios.

“Where there's lawful porn, if adults want to engage with it, that's their right,” he said. “But we're building an ecosystem that tries to convey a set of values about the content it hosts. It would be very hard to be a porn company as we're trying to be the things that are really hardcore to our business model.”

Epic also didn’t want to have to sort through the legalities of different types of adult content, Sweeney says.

“I've always thought that porn businesses should be separate businesses from mainstream businesses because they require a different philosophy and ethic than a typical mainstream company.”

Be smart: During the high-profile Epic vs. Apple trial last year, Apple’s lawyers challenged Epic executives over the risque content sold on the independent gaming marketplace itch.io, which is among the non-game apps offered through the Epic Games Store.

“We make the distinction between apps we distribute,” Sweeney says, noting that even Apple distributes browsers that can be used to view adult content. “You really have to distinguish apps that are browsing open bases of content from games.”

Regarding Itch, which has been a haven for indie game makers, Steve Allison, vice president and general manager of the Epic Games Store, praises the “good in the world that Itch does for small developers."

Epic Games has big plans for its store, has its mobile apps ready

Epic says some crypto games in its store have done 'pretty well'

Epic explains its game store's ban on adult content

CEO says this is business, not "moral preaching"

The next 12 months will show whether blockchain games have sufficient drawing power on the Epic Games Store, one of PC’s largest online gaming marketplaces.

Why it matters: For all their funding and fanfare, crypto-based games have been blocked from or kept off most traditional gaming marketplaces. That has left the store run by the makers of Fortnite as one of their largest proving grounds.

Driving the news: Epic’s store has five crypto games in its marketplace now and “close to 20” in the pipeline, Epic’s store GM Steve Allison tells Axios. None are made or published by Epic.

The marketplace’s first blockchain game was Mythical Games’ Blankos Block Party, a social multiplayer game, which debuted in Epic's store in September.

Epic isn’t sharing usage stats, but Allison said the game is “pretty well-played” and noted that another crypto game on the shop, the metaverse platform Core, “does pretty well.”

What they’re saying: Allison expects more crypto games to roll out on the Epic Games Store this year and into early 2024, “and then we’ll really know” what the scene’s future will be.

Be smart: Crypto games have primarily emerged from new game developers and publishers (with some traditional game dev star power joining the ride) but have drawn deep suspicion from many traditional gamers and industry players.

The promise of crypto games is that they contain digital assets, in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that players can purchase, own and sell, ostensibly allowing users to profit from playing.

But skeptics say many of the games in the scene are scams and simply not fun or interesting to play.

Steam, the leading PC gaming store run by Valve, barred crypto games in late 2021. Valve co-founder Gabe Newell later told Eurogamer the scene around them was “sketchy” and rife with fraud.

Yes, but: Epic founder Tim Sweeney, who presents his shop as a needed rebellion against standard online marketplaces, says there’s another way of looking at this.

“Let's just be honest about what was really happening there. The other stores aren't blocking crypto games because they think ‘crypto’ equals ‘bad,'” Sweeney said of marketplaces like Steam. Meanwhile, he maintained other marketplaces still “distribute all kinds of bad stuff.”

“They just want to collect their 30% fees and they're blocking everybody who doesn't go along with it.”

Between the lines: Epic is still keeping a safe distance from most financial aspects of its store’s blockchain games.

Crypto games’ publishers are responsible for transactions, customer service and dealing with refunds and fraud, Allison says.

But Epic’s trust and safety team is watching, he says: “If there's any bad behavior, we are going to be very swift to shut that down.”

About 20 more games are in the pipeline, but the next year is the test

Blankos Block Party. Screenshot: Mythical Games

Epic Games is moving full steam ahead with its 4-year-old online store, launching tools today to self-publish video games and prepping it for the day it can finally appear on iPhones and Androids.

Why it matters: The company behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine has major ambitions to change global marketplaces for games and apps.

What they’re saying: “I've always believed there's a tipping point that we're getting closer and closer to," Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney tells Axios, "a new breakthrough, a new Cambrian or evolution type of event in the history of stores, that gets us out of the doldrums we've been stuck in for so long.”

Sweeney says most digital marketplaces “have a single store per platform charging fees that are far, far higher than any real store would charge as a markup on goods, because they’re the only ones.”

State of play: The Epic Games Store is trying to close in on its PC rival, Steam, which it immediately challenged at launch in late 2018 by offering an 88%/12% revenue split for developers rather than a traditional 70%/30%.

Epic is also tilting at Apple and Google, suing both companies — with mixed success — over their app store policies.

The end-game there, Sweeney says, is to get Epic’s store on iOS and Android, which he believes legal challenges and regulatory pressure will eventually allow. (Asked if Epic has the apps for those platforms built and ready to deploy, Sweeney says: “Yes, we have them.”)

There’s more: While Sweeney doesn’t express a vivid ambition to put Epic Games Store on an Xbox, PlayStation or Switch, he says Epic wants to work with all platforms to “agree to some industry standards to recognize player entitlements and also player social systems.”

In other words: buy a game on one device and own it everywhere; connect with a friend on one platform and be linked to them anywhere.

Numbers: For 2022, the fourth full year of operation, Epic says its store drew a peak of 68 million monthly active users, up from 62 million in 2021.

Valve reported 132 million monthly active players on Steam in 2021, but switched to emphasizing record-breaking concurrent player counts in 2022.

Epic Games Store’s library is far smaller, at about 1% of the games sold in Steam, estimates Steve Allison, general manager of Epic’s Store.

The new self-publishing tools, launching from Epic today, are meant to address that by opening the marketplace to many more games, though with tighter restrictions than Steam on content — no porn, for example —that Allison says will prevent them from fully catching up on overall game count.

The operations of the store are profitable using Epic's 12% cut of revenue, Allison says, though the company is spending beyond that on exclusives and marketing (reportedly keeping it deep in the red for now).

Between the lines: The Epic Games Store’s popular release of monthly free games will continue in 2023, but the company is de-emphasizing EGS as a place for exclusive games.

In the early going, Epic paid millions, in at least one case nine figures, to exclusively sell some major PC games like Borderlands 3 and the celebrated Hades.

A sustainable approach can’t rely on shelling out for expensive exclusives, Allison says, noting the portion of store revenue coming from exclusive games has healthily declined from 75% in the store’s first year to 40%-45% in 2022.

“The message is definitely changing from 'we're the place to go to do exclusive partnership deals' to 'we're a great option that you should be launching with the same time you launch everywhere else across console and PC,'” says Allison.

Epic will generate some PC exclusives through its nascent game-publishing division, which has about 15 PC/console games in the pipeline, including Remedy’s Alan Wake II. Games from acquired studios like Psyonix and Mediatonic help, Sweeney said, though he downplayed the chance of Epic buying more teams. Epic, he says, has “no intent to expand to become a massive game conglomerate, like Activision or Electronic Arts.”

What's next: Sweeney wants Epic's store going well beyond games and the relative handful of non-game apps it currently offers. 

"It's the ‘Epic Games’ store,” he tells Axios, “Not the Epic ‘games store.’"

Sweeney: We're close to an "evolution type of event in the history of stores"

Photo illustration of a phone displaying the Epic Logo, with video game title screens displayed behind the phone

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Google is positioning itself as a go-to tech partner for publishers of live-service video games, as it revises its messaging around gaming.

Why it matters: Google is pitching its Cloud program as proof it remains invested in gaming, after it shut down its Stadia platform in January.

What they’re saying: “It was at that moment when we basically had to make decisions about Stadia that we realized that, at Google Cloud, we are at our best when we’re helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves,” Google Cloud’s director of Game Industry solutions, Jack Buser, tells Axios.

Buser had joined Google from PlayStation as the 10th employee at Stadia in 2016, which aimed to compete with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo by offering (and at times developing) games that could be played via streaming connections from remote servers, with no console or PC required in the player’s home.

In late 2021, Buser shifted to Google Cloud’s gaming team, where Google’s tech is being harnessed to operate third-party games running on consoles, PC or phones.

Details: Google is selling a bundle of services to game publishers with a strict focus on the operations of live-service games, the kind of games that are meant to be played and updated in perpetuity.

The three-part Google Cloud bundle, some of which has been offered previously, includes a game-centric server platform, cloud storage data management and a searchable player and game analytics through BigQuery.

Google’s pitch is that its tech can ameliorate risk for live-service games, which are lucrative but prone to numerous technical problems, including being potentially overloaded by surges in popularity.

Ubisoft, Niantic and Unity are active clients, the company says. Google is courting other big publishers to come on board.

The big picture: As Google pushes its Cloud business as a strong option for game companies, it will compete with Amazon and Microsoft’s own cloud and server infrastructure.

But Buser’s team is selling itself as a solution strictly for live-service games.

Google, like many companies, is staking its space in gaming ahead of the Game Developers Conference in March, an ideal time to attract clients in the field.

“Google is absolutely committed to games that are such a big part of our messaging,” Buser says. “When we made the decision with Stadia, we were just like, Look, we are committed to games as an industry.”

Google sees a post-Stadia future in supporting live-service games

"Google is absolutely committed to games"

Illustration of the Google Cloud icon on the background of an 8-bit video game landscape. 

The controversial de-listing of a beloved Angry Birds game from the Google Play Store last month could be reversed — or repeated on iOS — a senior executive for publisher Rovio tells Axios.

Why it matters: Rovio’s recent, radical moves around 2022’s Rovio Classics: Angry Birds have been misunderstood, its publisher says, and are not the case of lucrative free-to-play games clipping the wings of a popular paid game. 

Catch-up quick: Rovio launched Rovio Classics: Angry Birds in March 2022, but announced in late February of this year it would remove the game from the Google Play Store and rename it Red’s First Flight on iOS.

In a statement at the time, Rovio blamed the classic game’s “impact on our wider game portfolio.”

Fans criticized the move, believing Rovio had ditched Classic, released just a year prior after years of popular demand because it had become too popular.

Instead, Rovio believes it was forced to act because it believes the introduction of the classic game early last year created a search problem that resulted in fewer downloads of Angry Birds games of any type.

The theory: Mobile users searching for Angry Birds since the launch of Rovio Classics: Angry Birds would see the $1 classic game dominating search results, opt not to buy it, and download nothing, according to Rovio.

The company says it does not yet know if its latest measures, essentially designed to deprecate the search results for the classic game, will prove to be the necessary fix.

What they’re saying: “We've spent the last, whatever it is, 10 or 11 months trying to solve this problem,” Rovio’s head of Angry Birds strategy Ben Mattes, tells Axios.

Before delisting the game, the company already tried renaming it to Rovio Classics: AB and tried removing the term “Angry Birds” from the game’s metadata, but Rovio still could not revive downloads for its Angry Birds portfolio, Mattes says.

The failure of those attempted remedies left the company “no choice but to do something a little bit more drastic” to prove its hypothesis, he says.

What’s next: If the renaming test on iOS works, the game could return on Android as Red’s First Flight, Mattes said.

Surprise Angry Birds takedown could be reversed, publisher says

Publisher Rovio says game's removal was due to a search problem

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