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A monthly look at the best examples of IP licensing in video games and the latest news on collaborations, brand partnerships and in-game events.
Are we entering a new golden era for IP licensing in video games? The Ringer seems to think so, and with the rave reviews for Bethesda’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle closing out an incredibly busy year for licensed games including Star Wars Outlaws, Marvel Rivals and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero – not to mention hundreds of IP integrations in live-service games – it’s hard to disagree.
With that in mind and another full year behind us, we wanted to take a look back at some of the biggest licensing in games success stories from 2024, along with some additional insights and data from Sensor Tower showcasing the benefits of IP integrations. As an added bonus, you’ll find a wrap-up of the various licensing in games deals made possible thanks to Layer’s Licensing in Games marketplace.
You can find all of this below, along with the biggest news stories covering the latest IP integrations, crossover events, and collaborations from the last month.
Whether you’re a fashion aficionado, sports fanatic, or anime binger, 2024 was a hectic year for IP integrations in video games. That said, it’s not surprising when you consider the dominance of live service games, the growing competition in the video game market, and the UA and monetization benefits of IP integrations through limited-time events and crossovers.
Here are some of the integrations that impressed us the most, but make sure you check out the Licensing in Games Collab Tracker for a full rundown of all the biggest collabs and integrations.
Launching a new live-service game in today’s competitive gaming environment isn’t easy. Sony’s hero-based shooter, Concord, was shut down after one month of launching this year, and plenty of other live-service games stopped being updated in 2024. Despite this, Netease’s Marvel Rivals has been an overwhelming success, averaging 300,000 concurrent players while boasting the largest Discord server (2.4 million members) for a video game.
By sheer numbers alone, Marvel Rivals is one of the most successful licensed games of the last decade. While its IP powerhouse of established Marvel superheroes has undoubtedly helped this hero-based shooter resonate with so many players, collaborating with Fortnite for a launch campaign was a super clever move. Fortnite players could unlock a special Marvel Rivals Fortnite Glider for free by linking their Epic account with Marvel Rivals and completing 10 matches. Marvel’s longstanding relationship with Fortnite means plenty of Fortnite players own Marvel skins in the game, so not only is this collaboration a great fit, but it likely converted a lot of Fortnite players into Marvel Rivals players.
At the end of 2023, Stumble Guys announced a collaboration with the hit animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. This collaboration was so successful that Scopely returned it with a 15-day event starting 27 June 2024. Daily downloads for the game on mobile doubled, while daily revenue from the day before the event’s launch grew by 61% thanks to the launch of in-game items such as SpongeBob character skins.
This collaboration worked because Stumble Guys' 3D cartoon aesthetic is a natural fit with SpongeBob's animation style, and both IPs are popular with younger audiences. That, and the abundance of SpongeBob cosmetics, will have encouraged many players to keep engaging with the event and its gacha chests to unlock them.
When you’ve got an upcoming movie adaptation of a video game IP, promoting the film release in any active video game only makes sense. And that’s exactly what Sega did with the Sonic Movie 3 event in its endless runner Sonic Dash, where players could collect the film’s main antagonist, Shadow the Hedgehog, as a limited edition character.
This event was the most significant download spike for Sonic Dash in 2024 and highlights the importance of capitalizing on wider transmedia adaptations of video game IP by running in-game events.
NetEase’s Sky: Children of the Light is available worldwide, but it’s one of the most popular mobile games in China, accounting for 39% of the game’s total 81 million downloads and 59% of its $200 million revenue, according to Sensor Tower. With that in mind, any IP collaboration needs to have global relevance, particularly so in China, which might be why the in-game collaboration event with The Moomins, one of the top-10 international brands in China, was such a success.
Sky: Children of the Light based an entire season around The Moomins with the launch of Season of Moomin, which ran from 14 October to December 19. While the event didn’t lead to any significant download spikes, it did trigger one of the biggest revenue spikes of the year, causing weekly revenue to grow from $423k to $3.4 million, an increase of 700% primarily generated by the purchases of a new season pass and in-game currency for Moomins cosmetics.
2024 marked a slight shift in music activations on Roblox, as major labels, bands, and artists moved away from building their own experiences on the platform to activating in existing games instead. Charli XCX's integration in Dress to Impress, the most popular fashion simulator game on Roblox, is arguably one of Roblox's most successful music activations so far.
The collaboration with Charli XCX introduced new fashion cosmetics themed around her latest album, Brat, and daily visits jumped from 22.49 million on 16 August to 34.09 million on 17 August when the campaign launched, an increase of 41%. This collaboration showcases that music IP integrations in video games don’t need to have a heavy focus on music. In this case, the focus was on fashion and the aesthetic of Charli’s latest album.
2024 saw no shortage of automotive integrations in video games, with Volkswagen, Ducati, Tesla, Nissan and Bentley making up just a handful of vehicle manufacturers and car brands that spun into the space. While most of these integrations followed the simple formula of introducing a new car skin into an existing game, Overwatch 2’s collaboration with Porsche took this to a new level.
Two of the game’s characters, D.Va and Pharah, got new legendary skins featuring custom paint textures and sound effects from Porsche’s electric Porsche Macan and Taycan vehicles. Of course, Overwatch 2 doesn’t have cars, but Porsche and Activision Blizzard found a way to make this collaboration work regardless. And if you take a look at the skins for both characters, there’s no escaping how cool they look!
Supercell’s Clash of Clans is one of the most popular mobile games in the world, and you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s not much the publisher can do to bring new players into the 13-year-old game. Yet its collaboration with legendary footballer Erling Haaland was one of the biggest IP success stories from 2024. The story was picked up by some of the biggest news publications in the world, including the BBC, with extensive media coverage causing downloads to grow by 40%.
The collaboration itself was a month-long event that introduced Haaland into the game as a playable Barbarian King, making him the first character in the game to be based on a real person.
K-pop is one of the most popular music genres for IP integrations in video games, especially in the mobile market as many of the most popular games share an overlap with countries where K-pop is the most popular. New Jeans, one of the biggest K-pop groups in the world, collaborated with Krafton’s PUBG Mobile game for a limited-time event that introduced New Jeans-themed characters, weapon skins, vehicle skins and music kits from the group.
While the event didn’t have a notable impact on downloads or revenue, it showcases how music IP can be integrated across different cosmetic items. Unfortunately for New Jeans, this collaboration also caused a bit of a communications storm due to the characters' unrestricted customization.
We are living in a new age of transmedia, where superhero adaptations look like they’re fading out in favor of new films and TV series based on iconic video game IP. Fans were skeptical when an Amazon-produced TV series based on Bethesda’s ‘Fallout’ RPG franchise was announced, but it ended up being one of the biggest video game transmedia success stories from 2024. It catapulted sales of older Fallout games on Steam while bringing in new revenue streams from a busy merchandising strategy around the TV series.
On Steam and mobile alone, the Fallout games managed to generate $60 million, and we estimate the value of Fallout’s licensing strategy to Microsoft and Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax to be more than $100 million. Make sure you read our full rundown of Fallout’s licensing strategy in our Fallout Licensing S.P.E.C.I.A.L report.
2024 was a blockbuster year for anime, with a growing number of anime and manga IPs reaching audiences in The West as major streaming services such as Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime fight for the rights of major franchises. As more and more people become fans of anime, this makes anime IP a great fit for IP integrations in mobile games.
Back in January, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang hosted a limited-time Attack on Titan event, introducing three new character skins, avatar borders, animation effects, and notifications. These cosmetics could be unlocked through gacha chests, with daily revenue doubling from $400k to $800k throughout the week.
2024 was a busy year for the Layer team, too, with no shortage of new video games based on non-gaming IP for some of the biggest brands and celebrities popping up in limited-time integrations. These deals came to life thanks to Layer’s licensing marketplace, a matchmaking platform for game studios and licensors/IP holders.
Here’s a quick round-up of some of Layer’s 2024 activity. You can read a full rundown of the games and IP integrations in the relevant links, and be sure to get in touch with us if you’re a game studio looking to work with IP in 2025, or you’re a licensor/IP holder looking to make a splash in the video game market!
Here are some of our other favorite brand collaborations, licensing deals, and partnerships from the last month.
And in other news…
