China-based mobile games publisher Yodo1 has launched its brand new data platform for IP and licensing, called IPVerse.
The free-to-use venture is intended to help developers and publishers figure out which intellectual properties work best for in-game partnerships and vice versa. IPVerse features data from 80,000 in-game events, 20,000 brands and 15,000 titles across mobile, console and PC. There’s also “specialised data on the Chinese market”.
Yodo1 claims that in-game collaborations have increased by 280% since 2020, though the company argues that these have not always been successful. The Beijing-based publisher says that having the wrong IP in a game can “negatively impact player growth and long-term retention,” per an announcement for IPVerse.
“Yodo1 has created IPVerse to streamline the highly fragmented process of identifying valuable in-game collaborations,” Yodo1 Games product lead Eliyar Eziz said.
“As the games market evolves, studios prioritise player retention, making strategic IP partnerships crucial for growth. Traditionally, decisions have depended on intuition and scattered data, leading to costly mistakes. IPVerse resolves this by providing a comprehensive view of global trends and specialised regional insights, including a deep dive into the Chinese market, enabling developers to identify ideal partnerships confidently.”
Yodo1 was founded in 2011. Within two years, the company had raised $18 million in funding, from seed to Series B.
In 2019, the company faced controversy after CEO and co-founder Henry Fong announced that one player had spent $150,000 in Transformers: Earth War. This led to a conversation about how developers and publishers, especially in the mobile side of the industry, view their audiences, especially as Fong was discussing how Yodo1 had developed an AI tool to spot such “whales”.
