Interview: The $2 billion success of Monopoly Go, the world's hottest phone game

Plus: Embracer sells, a Microsoft-Activision freeze attempt, and some Nintendo flattery

Monopoly Go. Screenshot: Scopely captured by Game File)

Just one month ago, when I sat down to chat with Scopely’s Eric Wood, the wild number we were discussing was $1 billion.

That’s how much revenue Scopely had acknowledged that Monopoly Go—the company’s mesmerizing free-to-play twist on a board game classic—had made. No mobile game had reached that mark faster. Wood, Scopely’s senior v.p. of publishing, was understandably proud.

But I’m sure he was quietly even prouder. It was a dated figure, but Scopely wasn’t ready to refresh the stats publicly just yet.

This week, Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira gave an update: Monopoly Go has now taken in $2 billion since launch. 

Equally astounding: Ferreira said Scopely has spent under a quarter of that—meaning less than $500 million (is that all??)—on marketing and user acquisition. 

Sorry, pause for a second: Yes, you read that right. Scopely’s marketing spend for Monopoly Go is implied to be somewhere in the ballpark of the sky-high, nine-figure development costs of PlayStation blockbusters like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Scopely also spent about seven years making the game, so bear that in mind the next time some game company talks about pivoting to mobile like it’s going to be easy.

Anyway, back to Monopoly Go and my chat with Eric Wood. How did they do it? I wondered. Who was paying?

It’s not about “whales,” Wood said, referring to the free-to-play games jargon for those scant few people who do most of the spending. 

No, it was something else.