Major entertainment studio Warner Brothers is expanding its gaming division—Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment—with a new mobile games studio. Based in San Diego, this new studio will focus especially on development for mobile free-to-play titles.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has had successful mobile titles in the past, such as Golf Clash, developed by UK-based Playdemic, and Game of Thrones: Conquest, based on the massively popular HBO show. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment president David Haddad cited the success of these games as “a testament to our continued evolution in the mobile game space, as we have grown to become one of the top grossing mobile games publishers” in a statement regarding the new WB Games San Diego studio to Fortune.
This news is good for anyone looking for work in the gaming industry, as a new studio means more jobs. And seeing as it’s Warner Bros., the new studio is likely to have at least a good handful of open spots. Fortune argued that because WB Games San Diego will focus solely on mobile games, it won’t suffer premature closures or massive layoffs that other gaming studios have in recent times.
Seeing how successful many other free-to-play games have become, including the examples Haddad mentioned, Warner Bros.’ decision makes sense, according to HIS Markit analyst Piers Harding-Rolls. Specifically, he speculated to Fortune that Warner Bros. made this move based on “the dynamic of the [free-to-play] market” because Warner Bros isn’t “over exposed to that market.” It definitely helps that Warner Bros. owns a couple of studios that already specialize in mobile games. According to SuperData’s 2018 year-end report, free-to-play games made up a large majority of digital game revenue—80% of it, in fact. In monetary value, these games brought in $88 billion for companies last year, while just general mobile games only made $61 billion.