Gameloft has released a free game without IAP

The unexpected is nearby: Gameloft yesterday released a very unusual project for itself — an addictive two-dimensional arcade game without micropayments.

The new product is called Ninja UP!. In the project, the user draws ropes under the game hero – a small ninja. Starting from them, the hero jumps higher and higher. The higher the jump, the higher the player's position on the leaderboard. The difficulty lies in the fact that there can only be one rope on the screen at a time. By drawing it, the player must guess where the ninja will fall to send him even higher.

Ninja UP! It is distributed free of charge and is devoid of IAP.

The release of such a game was a big surprise for us, because we are used to Gameloft developing and publishing completely different games (three-dimensional blockbusters with hard monetization). Therefore, we contacted representatives of the company and asked them to tell us how it happened that Gameloft released a similar game. 

Polina Nefidova, Senior Marketing & PR Manager of Russia Gameloft, answered the questions.

Polina Nefidova

Hi! Why did you take up the creation and publication of Ninja UP!

Hi! Our company's goal is to make games as accessible as possible to players around the world. We have been successfully using various monetization schemes in our games for a long time — premium, freemium, but now we have decided to release absolutely free games, without any in-game purchases and payments. We are always trying to do something new and try different business models - this is what led Gameloft to success and this is what we profess in our work.

The game "Jump-Jump Ninja!", which is the name of the game in the Russian App Store, became the first pen test in this direction, followed by new free projects this month.

How do you plan to earn money from it? 

Firstly, due to the cross-promotion of our other games in the "five-minute games", in other words, it notifies the players in the "Jump-Jump Ninzda" about other Gameloft games.

Secondly, due to the built-in advertising, which includes static and dynamic banners, videos from third-party advertisers. One of the reasons for using such a distribution and monetization model was the offer of our community, which wanted the game without any in-game purchases. In addition, it should be noted a recent study by eMarketer – the volume of mobile advertising will continue to grow, and investments in it will reach $ 32.7 billion this year.

I see, thanks for the interview!