Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm, influencing nearly every facet of human life to some degree. The video game industry is no different, and while executives often view AI as a reason for excitement, many video game writers and designers express intense concerns regarding the new technology. These fears are not without cause, however. An estimated 10,500 people in the video game industry were laid off in 2023, according to Wired. Layoff projections have only increased in 2024, with studios dropping what is believed to be more than 11,000 workers in the nearly $200 billion sector.

AI has become especially important to the mobile gaming industry, creating opportunities for new mobile-tailored programs. Today Reforged Labs announced the official launch of its new ad-creation service into open beta. The company utilizes AI to create video advertisements specifically for mobile games, claiming that their service simplifies what would otherwise be a complex process. The service’s intent is to cover all of the work involved in producing a mobile game ad, including adding voiceovers, text-to-speech, and the creation of human-like avatars. It also claims to localize speech and text in more than 30 languages and to provide seamless transitions between scenes.

The Reforged Labs website prompts users to choose from a large storefront of advertisement templates, each of which showcase a 15 to 30 second sample. These examples clips are tailored toward specific game genres, such as tower defense and puzzle games. One specific clip features an AI Avatar explaining the concept of AFK games while gameplay footage plays in the background, while another advertises Merge Mansion, an actual mobile game currently available on both Android and iOS devices. Reforged Labs claims that it can generate market-ready ads within 24 hours for its users, which will allow developers to produce advertisements at record-breaking speeds.

The company released an article in October 2024, announcing that the company had raised $3.9 million in its seed round of funding. DCM led the round and Y Combinator, Epakon Capital, Goodwater Capital, Phoenix Fund, Asymmetry Ventures and the company’s angel investors all participated. The article stresses that Reforged Labs worked alongside a variety of partners to pilot the AI platform, “ranging from young founders looking to amplify their first launch, to marketing leads at AAA studios, tapping into AI to understand and replicate the success of their ‘hit’ ads.” Founder of King and industry veteran behind the Candy Crush franchise, Sebastian Knutsson, is quoted expressing his enthusiasm for Reforged Labs.

The technology that Reforged Labs is building will make it much easier for game studios of all sizes to experiment with video ads and achieve better, more consistent UA performance at scale. Other players try to address the individual factors that make game marketing successful – the creative, analytics, or performance management pieces. But Reforged Labs has the ambition and unique ability to deliver a solution that improves on the entire marketing cycle.

Robert Huynh, Reforged CEO and co-founder, shared his thoughts about the company’s launch during interview with GamesBeat. He described the platform as “this crazy AI brain that takes in all the ad creatives on the market in order to learn from them.” The software then goes on to generate “different templates that we humans can understand and then pick from.” Huynh claims that this process might save developers weeks of trying to “figure out what kind of ads people want and what to generate.”

According to Huynh, Reforged Lab’s ideal customer is a smaller mobile game studio, with very few employees assigned to advertising. The ads are not designed for triple-A titles developed by major publishers, and are instead intended for mobile games alone. Its training and research are based entirely on failures and successes within the mobile game advertising sphere. Huynh is catering toward “small indie game studios [who] want to level up the playing field.”

Pricing options for Reforged Labs are mainly subscription based. A Starter subscription is currently $50 per month, and provides users with standard priority in queue and 10 credits (about one video) every month.  A Professional subscription is currently advertised as $200 per month, and provides priority in queue and an increase to 50 monthly credits (about five videos). Reforged Labs also offers custom pricing for unique terms and volume-based discounts.