Mag Interactive’s 2016 sales surpassed 28 million euros ($29.8 million), up 70 percent from a year earlier thanks to revenues from casual puzzle mobile games such as Ruzzle.
All told, the Stockholm-based Mag has had more than 100 million downloads for games such as Ruzzle, Wordbrain, and Wordalot. Overall profit was €5.8 million ($6.1 million).
“2016 was a truly great year for MAG, as we not only surpassed 100 million downloads across our portfolio, but the end financial result exceeded our expectations”, said CEO Daniel Hasselberg in a statement. “There’s no magic trick in achieving strong growth other than constantly improving and scaling up existing games as well as releasing new titles. The continued success of our first game Ruzzle shows that with a little love and pruning, the older games can flourish for years and play a big part in your business along with new releases.”
Sweden itself is doing pretty good in games, with 236 companies that have 3,709 employees.
Mag said its success is a direct result of analyzing the successes and failures of its previous mobile launches and drawing conclusions on how to optimize and streamline the development process for its future work. It eliminated the “normal” top-down managerial structure in order to encourage teams providing an open, collaborative, and constructive environment.
Ruzzle itself has had more than 70 million downloads. Mag itself is just five years old, and it has more than 50 people, mostly in Stockholm, with 15 in Brighton, England.
“We are continuously expanding, but not at too quick a pace,” chief technology officer Kaj Nygren said in an interview with GamesBeat at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. “We value our internal company culture. We want to grow slowly enough to keep the DNA of who we are.”
Mag also has a couple of more games that are coming soon in soft launches.
“Mobile games are continuously maturing, and there will be new things coming,” Nygren said. “Pokémon Go was new in 2016, and I don’t think we have seen the last of the changes. Obviously, the big players will stay here for a very long time. We have learned that we have to be humble.”