What Happened to Coin Master After Monopoly Go! and What Happens Next
Written by Mishka Katkoff, with Sensor Tower’s Sam Aune playing Batman to his Robin, bringing the data firepower that made this analysis possible.
There’s an unspoken rule in gaming: if your mechanics are good, they’ll be copied. If your game is a megahit, it’ll be copied by countless other games. Most will do it worse, but eventually someone will do better.
Jelly Button’s (acquired by Playtika) Pirate Kings can be considered the kickoff of the coin looter sub-genre. But it was Moon Active’s Coin Master that built it into a top-5 grossing market segment.
Coin Master blended idle mechanics, gacha, and PvP sabotage into a sticky, absurdly monetizable loop. For years, it stood alone. Then, in 2023, Scopely’s Monopoly Go! landed, a spiritual remix with a billion-dollar brand, broader appeal, and a much bigger ambition.
The short history of coin looters: Jelly King makes Pirate Kings. Moon Active takes the idea, replaces cannon shooting with a slot machine, and rakes in BILLIONS. Jelly Button makes Board Kings, a combination of dice and a board game. Scopely takes the board, replaces the dice with slots, adds a massive IP, and makes BILLIONS.
So… did MONOPOLY GO! kill Coin Master? Not even close. There’s only one loser in this story, Playtika. The company had both Pirate Kings and Board Kings through its Jelly Button acquisition. But more about Playtika later…
Let us examine the numbers and debunk the concept of saturated markets and cannibalization.
MONOPOLY GO! Didn’t Steal Market Share, It Built a New One
Despite almost identical core loops, Coin Master’s revenue has remained remarkably stable since MONOPOLY GO! launched. The green MONOPOLY GO! line on the revenue chart soared post-launch, peaking around late 2023 before tapering. Meanwhile, Coin Master’s line remained flat and healthy — proof that genre overlap doesn’t always mean cannibalization.
When Monopoly Go passed 5 Billions in two years, Coin Master’s revene stayed unaffected.
The two games seem to have activated entirely different segments of the same machine. In fact, when Monopoly Go passed $ 5 billion in two years, Coin Master’s revenue stayed unaffected.
Monopoly Go! Brought Board Game Players to a Casino Fight
Scopely pulled off something masterful: they retargeted the coin looter formula to a new psychographic. MONOPOLY GO! attracted a staggering +1100% overindex in board game players vs. the general population, thanks to its Monopoly IP, family-friendly visuals, and packaging as a board game.
Meanwhile, Coin Master stayed true to its roots, dominating the casino segment (+1600%) and still pulling in strong overlap with casual and board game players, albeit less intensely.
MONOPOLY GO! wasn’t a Coin Master killer; it was a category expander.
The IP wasn’t simply used to expand the top of the funnel and lower CPIs. The carefully chosen Monopoly IP helped to connect with a new audience that wasn’t captured by the overwhelming rival. That’s a truly strategic move by Scopely, which has mastered the use of external IPs over the past decade.
Blending Board Game CPIs with Casino RPDs
The genius of Monopoly Go! lies in its hybrid audience targeting. It leverages cheap board game CPIs (Cost Per Install) and combines them with casino-style monetization (high Revenue Per Download).
In 2024:
Casual board games drove 1.5B downloads
Casual casino games had much higher monetization
Monopoly Go! hit the sweet spot: 2nd most downloaded board game + 50% higher LTV than Coin Master
Essentially, MONOPOLY GO! is selling scratch cards to Monopoly fans, and it’s working.
The Coin Looter Market is Fragmenting
Success invites followers. While Coin Master and MONOPOLY GO! still lead the category, new challengers are grabbing slices of the pie — Carnival Tycoon, Animals & Coins, and others are driving downloads upward while revenue per download (RPD) is slipping slightly: from $29 in 2024 to $27 in 1H 2025.
This fragmentation isn’t just noise; it’s a signal. The category is evolving from a two-horse race to a crowded battlefield. Expect market saturation to accelerate, especially as new entrants experiment with new themes, influencer-led launches, and country-specific spins.
Dice Dreams: The Silent Beneficiary
If there’s one sleeper hit worth watching, it’s Playtika’s Dice Dreams (the developer SuperPlay was acquired by Playtika for $1.25 billion). After MONOPOLY GO! launched, Dice Dreams’ monthly revenue nearly doubled, propelling it to #3 in the coin looter category by revenue.
From 0 to $35M in monthly net revenue in just 5 years. SuperPlay has been unfazed by market realities as it scaled to a multiproduct company with rapidly growing revenues. This is Playtika’s third attempt to take the crown.
Whether through genre momentum, smarter UA, or good ol’ copycat compulsion, Dice Dreams has been riding the tailwinds of MONOPOLY GO!’s cultural moment without competing directly.
Sometimes, the best way to win a war is to fight in the same direction as the winner.
But one thing is for sure: the post-mortem from the Jelly Button acquisition should be analyzed at Playtika every month. They can’t miss their third attempt at the crown with SuperPlay.
Philosophical Musing: It’s Not a Zero-Sum Game (Yet)
The coin looter category isn’t winner-take-all — not yet, at least. Coin Master proved that brandless execution can build an empire. MONOPOLY GO! proved that IP can expand the total addressable market. Dice Dreams showed that proximity to power can be enough.
But this is just Act II.
As RPDs decline and CPI pressure grows, studios will need to find new ways to differentiate — whether through social gameplay, liveops innovation, or… actual fun? The category is wide open, but the next breakout won’t come from copying Coin Master or MONOPOLY GO!.
It’ll come from reinventing what “looting” even means.
