Problem: Clash Royale created an entire genre of casual-competitive mobile game, amassing 1bn lifetime downloads (and raking in over $1bn a year at its peak). But a swarm of copycat games — same progression structure, same world, almost the same name — buried it. How could we reignite people’s interest in the real thing?

Insight: Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. Some people wanted us to sue. Instead we reasoned: if people liked the imitators, they’d love the originator - IF we could provide a graceful onramp from those games, to ours.

Idea: Copycats Welcome. Those games’ similarity became the weapon: we made a tool that could turn players’ progression in a copycat game, into a headstart in Clash Royale. The imitators were no longer a threat… instead, they were just the tutorial level.

Result: We didn’t have a media budget - the media was the communities surrounding those other games. And they responded: New player inflow rose to 27.8%(+9.1 points vs baseline), delivering an effective cost per acquisition of just over 5 cents. And some Lions.