Here every Monday, we’ve got the biggest moves and promotions from across the mobile games business, all in one spot.
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Double Loop Games: Founder and CEO Emily Greer announced on Friday via LinkedIn that the studio is to close.
“We struggled to break through in a very hostile funding and marketing environment, particularly for mobile games,” said Greer. “In November we received an offer from Scopely to bring on most of the team to work on a new project within their casual GSN studio, and decided to accept.”
Greer and fellow cofounder Shelby Moledina will now be taking some time off before pursuing new projects. The studio never released a game globally, but did have two merge games in soft launch, Puzzle Farm and Ashe Cove.
Greer also noted that Double Loop staff Jason Everett (VP of production), William Shook (producer), Kieran King (QA lead) and Kim Herbst (senior concept artist) were not able to find roles with Scopely and are now looking for work.
Freelancers Jeffrey Lance, Olivia Hutchison, Ilsa Zhang, and Jacob Rosenberg were also among those affected by the closure.
Applovin: The marketing and analytics firm has hired Paul Kennedy as its new VP of ecommerce.
He moves over from his role at performance marketing firm LifeStreet, where he was cofounder and president and, most recently, strategy consultant.
Lucky Kat: Cofounder Herdjie Zhou is stepping down from his position as CEO and moving to an advisory role two years after the publisher was acquired by Fragbite.
Christian Batist takes over as CEO at Lucky Kat, having previously worked as senior live ops producer at Paladin Studios while advising and mentoring several other companies. Batist is also the former MD at Perfect Earth, head of Europe at Glu, head of publishing at Kuuhubb, MD at WildWorks and SVP of marketing at Habbo Hotel maker Sulake.
Sandsoft Games: The Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based publisher and developer has hired Juliana Vasconi as senior talent acquisition specialist. Vasconi moves from a similar role at King, and has previously worked in recruitment at Klarna.
E-Line Media: The maker of Never Alone and Beyond Blue has appointed Kellee Santiago as EVP of game development. Santiago previously cofounded Thatgamecompany and worked in senior roles at Niantic.
Eyeball Games: The studio founded by the makers of 8 Ball Pool has two more hires. Phil Worobey has joined the firm as art director, moving over from Versus Evil, where he was creative director.
Petur Arnorsson joins as senior designer, having previously worked for several different clients as cofounder of Ulfur Stufio and also senior 3D artist on Star Atlas.
TapNation: Four new faces at the hyper/hybridcasual publisher: M&A analyst Hugo Lefondre, artists Julien Landez and Perl Bonnemain and HR manager Albert Nonga.
Tactile Games: Two new faces at the Lily’s Garden maker: senior data analyst Yarden Peled, who joins from Playtika and former freelancer Niklas Bak, now 3D artist at Tactile.
Zynga: The Take-Two-owned publisher has promoted Mark Avidan to director of growth strategy. He steps up from his previous position as UA director, having joined the firm in April 2021 from Playtika.
Singular: The attribution and analytics firm has promoted Niels Beenen to the position of EMEA’s strategic partnerships director.
