Kate Upton in Game of War: Fire Age ad.
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Machine Zone to dump Kate Upton for Mariah Carey in Game of War ads

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Machine Zone has been printing money with its Game of War: Fire Age mobile strategy game. And it has been spending a lot of that money on ads with supermodel Kate Upton, decked out as the goddess Athena from the game.

But TMZ has reported that Machine Zone is preparing to dump Upton for pop singer Mariah Carey. That may seem like an odd choice, but Upton never really had much to do with the game, either. But using a big name to find new players is key in the $30 billion mobile gaming market, where keeping users — and getting them to spend money — is a constant challenge.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.