Monopoly Go pulled in US$2b of revenue in under 12 months as a free-to-play game

While I enjoy the occasional game of Monopoly, I had no idea the smartphone variant of it is so damn popular. Since its launch a year ago, Monopoly Go has generated over US$2b in revenue and was downloaded over 150 million times. To achieve this, they spent US$500m on "marketing and user acquisition alone". That is fucking insane levels of money for what is essentially a digital version of a board game. To put that into perspective, Cyberpunk 2077, a vastly more engrossing and detailed game cost US$440m to develop - roughly the same as what Monopoly Go spent on simply marketing the damn thing. Also, if we assume that iOS purchases made up 50% of that $2b, and Apple got a 15% of all the in-app purchases (Monopoly Go is a free to play game), that's US$150m. No wonder they're so desperate to protect that golden egg laying goose.