Laurens Rutten

Thank you to Paul Radu and the team over at Floodlight Project and The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project to partner up with us! INDIGO's mission is to spotlight games, initiatives, and opportunities across the games industry, helping to foster collaboration and drive success. Floodlight Gaming is a strong example of that mission in action, and we’re excited about the new opportunities this collaboration will create!

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Zero Latency VR to open location in Slovakia Location-based virtual reality operator Zero Latency VR has announced plans to open a new location in Košice, Slovakia. Read more: https://ow.ly/qgzp50WmOIv #InterGame #Amusements #ZeroLatency #Slovakia #Expansion

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One of my highlights at IBC - International Broadcasting Convention this year in Amsterdam was attending the EDCF Cinema Seminar, where leading voices came together to discuss the future of movie theatre business operations and theatrical exhibition technology. Key discussions included: 🎬 Industry update with David Hancock (Omdia) — mapping the health and direction of global movie theatres business. 🔐 Content protection & security for theatrical exhibition with Steve LLamb (Deluxe). 🌱 Sustainability & energy efficiency in theatres with Araceli Vaello (CinemaNext). 🌈 HDR workflows & mastering for exhibition with Stuart Bowling (Barco) and Cedric Lejeune (Unified Pixels). 🤖 AI’s role in theatre operations with Patrick von Sychowski (CinemaNext) and David Hancock (Omdia). 🎥 Variable dynamic range in projection technology with Chris Connett (Christie Digital Systems). My biggest takeaway: the future of movie theatres is not just about better screens or immersive audio — it’s about balancing technology innovation with sustainability, content security, and operational intelligence. Cinema ecosystems that embrace these elements will thrive in a rapidly evolving market. A big thank you to Guillaume Branders, the EDCF - European Digital Cinema Forum team, and all the speakers who shared insights connecting technology, theatre operations, and audience experience. Feel free to comment below about your opinions about these key subjects — sustainability, AI, HDR workflows, content security — shaping the future of theatrical movie exhibition in the next 5 years. #IBC2025 #EDCF #TheatricalExhibition #MovieTheatreTech #Sustainability #ContentSecurity #HDR #AI #MediaTech #fullofhope

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On 7 November in Kortrijk, Music Tech Belgium and Unwrap are teaming up for a day full of breakdowns, demos and hand-on sessions, showcasing innovation and technology in music and entertainment. As we all know, music is immensely important for videogames. It defines scenes and characters, guides gameplay and sets the overall mood. Many game soundtracks have become classics themselves, and large concert halls regularly feature orchestral performances of game music. But how does "music in videogames" actually work? What kind of music are developers looking for, and for what specific purposes (trailers, gameplay …)? What’s the difference between licensed music and original scores - and what are the practical and legal aspects? And also: how do you get your music in the next blockbuster game, or how do you become a successful composer for video games? (<-- there's no secret sauce, but tips, and understanding the need of developers, can definitely help) I'll try to answer these and many more questions in a fireside chat with Jan Pauly.

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Dutch ticketing start-up Celebratix has claimed a first by introducing Apple Wallet NFC ticketing in the region. Celebratix has been authorised to allow iPhone users in the Benelux region to enter events using only their Apple Wallet, without QR codes, PDF files or third-party apps. Tickets are stored directly in Apple Wallet and validated via Near Field Communication (NFC) at the entrance to an event.

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The Epic ruling and the EU’s DMA are changing the rules of the game for mobile studios. With app store monopolies cracking, the need for Growth and Monetization leads who understand this new, complex regulatory landscape is at an all-time high. You don't just need a 'mobile expert' anymore: you need a strategist who can navigate the post-walled-garden world. The talent that can pivot your monetization strategy is the talent you need to find *now.* #MobileGaming #AppStore #EpicGames #DMA #Monetization #GameRecruiter

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I realized the real profit engine in FECs isn't the ticket—it's mastering the 'Experience Ecosystem. 🤓 For years, the industry operated on a Linear Model: Sell a ticket, user plays, user leaves. This model is fragile, especially when facing market saturation. ☺️ The next evolution, which successful "Growth Third Spaces" are mastering, is the “Scenario Economy,”  where "Play + Dining/Retail" integration becomes the core value driver. 🤯 From Cost Center to Profit Center We are moving past the idea of a sad, under-resourced snack counter. Modern FECs are redefining F&B and Retail as experiential anchors: Narrative Fusion (The Themed Experience): The F&B outlet shouldn't just sell pizza; it must integrate into the IP story. Think of a "Mythical Supply Station" (as seen in Shan Hai Jing inspired parks) or a "Rescue Base Cafe." This elevates perceived value instantly. Extended Dwell Time: Quality dining/lounge areas solve the parental need for relaxation and socialization, naturally extending family stay time from 1-2 hours to 4-6 hours. Longer stay = higher chance of impulse purchases. Revenue Diversification: By making dining and retail integral parts of the experience flow (not just tucked away at the exit), you create a multi-revenue stream model. This dramatically lowers reliance on volatile ticket sales and increases financial resilience. The Barrier to Entry is Integration Design: The key is seamless integration—the dining experience must feel like a natural next step in the adventure, not an awkward interruption. This requires strong cross-category design capabilities (Entertainment + F&B + Retail). 🤐 For operators looking to boost their ATV (Average Transaction Value): Which secondary revenue stream (F&B, Courses, or Retail) do you believe has the most untapped potential in your current venue? Share your thoughts! 👇 #FEC #BusinessModel #AOV #ExperienceEconomy #RetailStrategy #ContentDriven

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TV PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION: This week vendors from around the world will convene at IBC in Amsterdam to showcase their vision for the future of TV. AI is already reshaping the underlying workflows and accuracy of content discovery and personalisation. As more workflows move into the cloud, we will see new possibilities for user interface design, with increasingly dynamic and data-driven propositions. Recent years have seen access to technology futher democratised, and this latest wave of the application of AI seems to be breaking down some of the geographic and linguistic boundaries that have traditionally defined the shape and structure of our industry. However, innovation alone doesn’t guarantee success. Features that aren’t explained, contextualised, or marketed in a way that resonates with consumers can wither, even when they are genuinely transformative. The three TVCs I’m sharing here will cause raised eyebrows for some of the people that worked on early interactive sports features in the late 1990s, but is shows how ideas more than 25 years old, can still resonate when positioned effectively. They are reminders that technology remains a powerful differentiator, but great marketing can build and sustain the value of such features. Example 1 of 3. DIRECTV Pro & College Football Experience, September 2025 #ibc #technology #marketing #enhancedtv #interactivetv #sport #innovation #brand #product #directv

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2025 WINNERS 🏆 BY IAP REVENUE "Follow the market, follow the leader." 🥇 The Follow-the-Leader Strategy is successful in many industries, but it is crucial in mobile gaming. 🎯 In a highly competitive market such as mobile gaming, Follow-the-Leader means leveraging shortcuts to learn and save time. ⏱️ For this reason, today I bring you the list of mobile gaming companies that earned the most in IAP revenue in 2025. 💰 I considered only companies that made last year's 🔝 100. My highlights. 4𝐗 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐭! 🔥 Some gaming companies whose 4X Strategy titles are their flagships skyrocketed last year! 🚀 Century Games has generated nearly $1 billion in revenue🤯 , with YOY growth of more than 86%, driven largely by its two main 4X Strategy games, “Whiteout Survival” and “Kingshot”. In addition, the Chinese giant 🇨🇳 also scored a Merge-2 hit, “Tasty Travels.” Growing by leaps and bounds, “Travel” opens up a new flank of big hits in another genre (puzzle), making Century one of the most promising companies in the mobile gaming market. 💎 Other highlights in 4X Strategy are First Fun, which remained at the top of the charts with its “Last Z: Survival,” and the unknown Florere Games, which exploded last year, accumulating nearly half a billion dollars. 𝐏𝐮𝐳𝐳𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲. 🧩💵 Here are two highlights. Chinese giant Microfun 🇨🇳 exploded its Merge-2 “Gossip Harbor,” placing it third in revenue among the puzzles of 2025 🥉. And the Turkish giant Dream Games 🇹🇷 began scaling its new Match-3 “Royal Kingdom.” Do you want to break into the puzzle market? 🤔 Then follow these two companies. 𝐈𝐏𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤. ®️ This is the case with The Pokémon Company International, which exploded onto the charts with its highly anticipated Pokémon TCG Pocket 🎴 , amassing over $380 million in IAP revenue last year. 𝐇𝐲𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥? 𝐘𝐄𝐒, 𝐈𝐓’𝐒 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐇𝐎𝐓 𝐓𝐎𝐎! ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 Last but not least, Hybridcasual publishers have firmly established themselves in the mobile gaming market in 2025. Two years ago, surrounded by doubts, the Hybridcasual model is a tested and validated business model today. 💪 Many Hybridcasual publishers grew last year. I would highlight Turkish giant Rollic 🇹🇷, which grew by more than 137% yoy to more than $120 million in IAP revenue, with performance driven primarily by its big hit, “Color Block Jam”. And the Vietnamese iKame Global Zego Studio 🇻🇳, which grew more than 390%, driven by the big hit, “Screwdom”. Did this post help you? 👀 Save and share it with your colleagues. 🫂 👇 Swipe through the slides below to see other mobile gaming companies that stood out in 2025. 👇 Datasource: AppMagic 🫶.

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Rami makes some excellent points on the lack of recognition of games as a (cultural) behemoth in the Netherlands and internationally. I’d like to add a couple more fun examples to further add to Rami’s points: The Dutch Gouden Televizier ring had 1.8 million viewers, and the international Oscars had 19.7 million viewers. The annual Game Awards in December 2024? 154 million viewers. The 2019 League of Legends esports final drew in more viewership than the American Super Bowl, a gigantic phenomenon backed by million dollars of ad spend. The finale of Game of Thrones (a cultural phenomenon at the time) had 19.3 million viewers in the US. Grand Theft Auto V (a 12-year-old game) continues to sell 5 million copies per quarter to this day, totaling over 220 million sold units. The entire movie industry itself made $32.3 billion in revenue in 2024. Games made $187.7 billion dollars that same year. Now.. this isn't a competition (if it was, games would win by a landslide) but a wake up call: Games have been the #1 entertainment industry since the early 2000’s and it's time to address ithe importance of this industry, its influence on culture, economics, and more - and treat it as such.

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Equal Access in Global Music Distribution: A Call for Inclusion. As music continues to grow into a truly global industry, one issue remains: access to leading distribution platforms is not equally available everywhere. Top-tier delivery systems like FUGA, AudioSalad, Revelator and others play a critical role in how music reaches DSPs worldwide. However, for many independent artists, labels, and distributors in emerging markets — including Pakistan — access to these infrastructures is still limited. This isn’t just a regional challenge, it’s an ecosystem challenge. When certain markets don’t get the same entry points, it creates gaps in opportunity, slows down innovation, and prevents independent voices from fully participating in the global music economy. The way forward is clear: ✅ Transparent and inclusive access criteria for all regions. ✅ Clear onboarding pathways for independent distributors and aggregators ✅ Collaboration between platforms, DSPs, and local ecosystems to support growth in markets like Pakistan. ✅ A commitment to fairness so that every artist, every label, every distributor — everywhere — has the same chance to deliver their music globally. Pakistan has a rapidly growing independent music scene full of talent and potential. By ensuring fair access to global distribution infrastructure, we can help unlock not only opportunities for local creators but also add to the richness of the global music ecosystem. The future of music distribution must be built on inclusivity. Only then can we make sure no region — and no artist — is left behind.

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Nazara is acquiring a controlling stake in Bluetile Games and Bestplay Systems. A transformational transaction for Nazara. Bluetile is a scaled, profitable casual mobile gaming business — 17 live titles, 375 million downloads, 22 million MAUs. Bestplay is their owned engagement and distribution platform. Together, they generated ~$153M revenue and ~$27.7M EBITDA in CY2025. This is a platform acquisition — content and distribution in one stack. The structure is disciplined: performance-linked earnouts, a formula-based path to full ownership, and a business that funds its own acquisition cost from operating cash flows. We are building a scaled, global, data-driven gaming platform. This moves us meaningfully forward. Welcome to the Nazara family, Raymond A. Stauffer — we are excited to build this together. Thank you to our advisors on both sides for getting this across the line. Kartik Prabhakara Simon Laborde Ravi Kiran R Vikram Srinivas Murtaza Somjee Ankur Chhapolika #Nazara #NSE #Gaming #MobileGaming #Acquisition Nitish Mittersain

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Blanket licences treat a café playlist the same as a headline festival set.   Streamify is changing that — bringing track-by-track fairness to royalty billing through on-device fingerprinting and metadata intelligence.   Smarter insights. Faster payments. Fairer outcomes.   #MusicRecognition #FairRoyalties #MusicTech2025 #RoyaltyTransparency #StreamifySolution

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Since 2021, we've expanded our Music business, now operating in close to 60 countries around the world. The combination of transparency, accuracy and a common data model enables our customers to navigate the complexity of the global music industry. We've benefitted from the support of our global partners, but we always recognized that achieving the comprehensive market understanding our customers require, necessitated establishing strong local partnerships. This is why today's announcement or our partnership with Tencent Music entertainment Group is so important. This landmark deal allows the integration of streaming and sales consumption metrics from QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and JOOX, into Luminate’s industry-leading music data platform CONNECT, providing a unique view into the explosive growth of this market and the potential for C-Pop artists worldwide. 🌏 Significant Global Player: By recorded music market size, China ranked as the fifth largest globally in 2024. Despite this high rank, its market size is still considered low relative to China's status as the world's second-largest economy, suggesting near-term growth will continue to outpace peers. 📈 Rapid Subscription Growth: The Chinese subscription streaming market is estimated to grow 17% in 2025, which is faster than any other global region, including Latin America and North America. 🎤 Inverted Value Chain: China's market structure is the inverse of the rest of the world. Distribution is highly consolidated, while content ownership is highly fragmented, with the top 5 labels controling less than 30% share. 🇨🇳 Consumer Preference: Chinese consumers show a strong preference for local Chinese content (85% of consumption) and heavily favor catalog music, with songs released over two years ago accounting for 60% of activity 💰 Synergy with Premium Tiers: Platforms like Tencent Music strategically leverage this "super fan" engagement to drive premium uptake. The most important mechanism is offering ticketing priority for select in-demand concerts (inside and outside China) exclusively to its Super VIP members. 🐉 International Footprint: TME is proactively engaging with the international market through these initiatives, exemplified by its role as a strategic partner for G-Dragon's global concert tour in 2025, as host for Asia ex-Korea & Japan. In addition, we will soon incorporate this data in the Billboard Global Charts. This will mark the first time that activity from the Chinese market will be measured and reflected in the Chart. Please see the comments below for more information.

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WILL THERE STILL BE DEMAND FOR PHYSICAL DIGITAL VIDEO FORMATS SUCH AS DVD / BD / UHD IN 2026? 💿 For several years now, a steady downward trend in the purchase of physical video formats has been noticeable. In 2025, this decline reached approximately 60% (based on the reference U.S. consumer market) compared to 2020. Despite this decline, there are still many buyers interested in DVD and Blu-ray, which continue to maintain a strong position as a niche / nostalgic format (the so-called “new vinyl”). At the same time, the UHD Blu-ray (4K) format recorded an unexpected 12% year-over-year increase, becoming a premium collector’s format. Despite the fact that in 2025 VOD platforms accounted for approximately 70% of home entertainment spending, the market for physical video formats is slowly stabilizing. This applies especially to UHD Blu-ray (4K), which recorded around 12% sales growth in 2025 compared to 2024. In some countries, such as Poland, video companies and broadcasters, including TVP, have completely withdrawn from releasing films and TV series on DVD / BD / UHD discs. Their role has been taken over by other companies, such as DVD Max from Konin, which is still actively operating in this industry. Market analyses predict that demand for Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats will continue at least until 2035. This applies in particular to the growth in sales of 4K UHD Dolby Vision editions and Steelbooks. A collector’s niche has emerged, for which the most important factor is excellent picture and sound quality (the highest possible bitrate), which no VOD platform is able to achieve. In addition, so-called “streaming fatigue” is slowly becoming more visible. We want to own our discs, without worrying that they may suddenly disappear from a VOD platform. Moreover — and this is rarely talked about — for the first time in nearly 30 years, there are no announcements of a successor to the Ultra HD Blu-ray 4K format, which makes it currently the highest achievement of home cinema. In summary, DVD / BD / UHD discs are slowly changing from an everyday product into a luxury item for enthusiasts. One could say that they are following the same path as vinyl records, which guarantees their presence on the market for many years to come. Even professional formats like HDCAM SR (pictured) remind us that high-end physical mastering has always been the gold standard for quality. 🎥 #PhysicalMedia #HomeCinema #4K #Scenarist #Technology

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True Gamers has never been only about gaming cafés. To grow a global network, you need more than powerful hardware — you need people who can scale it. ⚡👥 That’s why we’re building our own educational core: — Modular training programs (online & offline) — Acceleration tracks with PDCA cycles, metrics, and management tools — Sessions with our own leaders and industry experts — Internships and hands-on workshops 🚀 The goal is simple: to give our partners and employees the knowledge, structure, and mindset to grow with us. Because creating a new industry isn’t just about technology — it’s about building teams who can set new standards. #TrueGamers #GamingInfrastructure #Leadership #Growth

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