How Playtika's best game became its biggest headache
By Tom Storr, founder of The Experimentation Group
Playtika's second-quarter results contained the best news the company has had in years, yet its share price fell 25% in two days. Disney Solitaire did $142m in the quarter, with CEO Robert Antokol calling it potentially "one of the best games we have ever built". Now SuperPlay, the studio behind the game, is reportedly a $1-1.5bn target for Tencent.
The puzzle is a decade in the making. In 2016 a consortium led by Giant Network bought Playtika for $4.4bn, then had the company borrow $2.8bn to pay itself dividends. The owners recouped most of their purchase price; the debt stayed with Playtika. Today it stands at $2.41bn, most of it due for refinancing in 2028 and 2029 at what will likely be higher rates, against a market cap under $1bn. Servicing it costs the best part of $200m a year before Playtika earns a penny for anyone else.
SuperPlay, built by former Playtika staffers, entered the picture in 2024 when Playtika bought it for $700m plus an earnout of up to $1.25bn. Disney Solitaire launched seven months later and blew through the targets, leaving Playtika ending the year with a $206m GAAP loss for the year. Playtika is booking losses because its new game is a hit. With none of its other games growing, cash fell from $820m to $438m in six months.
With two hit games in three releases, it’s clear the team are high-level operators. Disney Solitaire is Domino Dreams, their previous release, reskinned as cards: a game the team already understood, turbo-charged with an IP that fits the Solitaire audience.
They’ve also tuned the game in a number of smart ways. Firstly, the economy. Solitaire games run like a casino table: players put coins down to start each level, then win a slice back. Grand Harvest, Playtika's own former genre leader, tuned that machine for extraction: one bet's worth of coins released into the economy per hour, and difficulty set to an uncomfortable squeeze. Disney Solitaire turned the dial the other way. Coins start out generous and difficulty rises slowly, like a match-3 funnel with a deck of cards, which lets cohorts stack and monetisation turn up as players get deeper into the game.
Another thing SuperPlay borrowed from puzzle is pace: complete a scene, it animates quickly and players are back to a level, keeping them where the money is. They also brought a modern live ops schedule to the genre, high tempo (610 event instances in 90 days against Grand Harvest's 392), with a different temperament: Disney's calendar is streak-heavy, with a win-streak event live almost every day, while Grand Harvest's is focused on sales, with a quarter of its calendar given over to coupons and store offers.
Playtika's owner, the Giant Network consortium, has a tough decision: keep SuperPlay and let the earnout drain the cash that should be paying down the debt, or sell it to Tencent, fix the balance sheet in one move, and give up its only growth engine. When every financial year starts $200m in the hole, selling the golden goose you caught last year for a massive profit could be the logical move.
Seven years ago they took $2.8bn out of Playtika. The debt that was left behind may now be the reason they sell the only part of the company that's working.
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