Glu Mobile has made its name with celebrity games such as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, and it has figured out another way to make money with celebrities. Today, the San Francisco company is launching iMessage stickers for Kendall & Kylie, the free-to-play mobile game based on celebrities Kendall and Kylie Jenner.
Glu has created a number of games based on celebrities who, collectively, have more than a billion social followers. When the celebrities tweet about their games, they draw lots of fans into the mobile experiences, resulting in huge free publicity. That has turned into a great way to monetize games such as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.
Glu hopes that the iMessage stickers for Kendall & Kylie, which launched on iOS and Android in February, will be another way to make money. Glu is launching the stickers on iMessage on the App Store, just as Nintendo has done for its upcoming Super Mario Run game. But in Glu’s case, you have to play the Kendall & Kylie game in order to access the stickers. (Existing players have to update their games.) At the outset, players can get 50 free stickers.
But overall, more than 250 stickers are available for purchase or unlocking through gameplay.