Good morning or good afternoon to our earnings call for the second quarter of 2026. My name is Andrzej Ilczuk, and with me is Magdalena Jurewicz, our CFO, and Janusz Dziemidowicz, our CTO, and Nina Graboś, who is our Investor Relations Officer. Let's move on to our performance in the second quarter, where we consistently implemented our strategy, which is based on three pillars. Stabilizing the core portfolio, strengthening our growth titles, and thirdly, building new product lines.
By way of introduction, we have seen an improvement in our performance, so we can increase our marketing spends. In Trophy and Wings of Heroes, we have improved metrics, and we launched our Medal Hunter, which we are very pleased of. Before we discuss all those games individually, let us give you some background information about how we do marketing.
Right. Before we move on to the business results, we have those two slides because we believe that it makes sense to explain how marketing works with free-to-play, because this will help you draw more informed conclusions. To grow, you need to invest. In mobile gaming, we mostly invest in marketing. Marketing and P&L approach is divided into periods.
The long bar here is the zero period, and payback is distributed over consecutive periods. First, we have the first bookings from the players acquired in a given period. First, we break even over a couple of periods, and what happens after the break even is our pure profit, our return on investment. In TSG, we want to publish profitable games. We want to make money on our marketing spend. This is also the idea right now as we publish Trophy Hunter and after launching Medal Hunter.
We pay here and now, and we expect earnings in the future. This is perfectly normal, and it looks like this everywhere. It is not something endemic to us. The cohorts we acquire now pay back over a longer period of time. It is important for us to have good long-term performance and player retention. If players keep coming back, if they enjoy the game, then the bookings are recurrent, and they continue for longer. This is the payback from a single cohort over time, and this slide is pretty much the same, but from the bookings perspective. Where the bookings come from.
We have bookings in month X or period X. It is not only bookings from the players we acquired in that period. That is the bookings accumulated from many different cohorts, especially when we have a new title such as Trophy Hunter or Medal Hunter. In the beginning, we have one cohort, then we add another one, and next, and so on and so forth. In our growth titles, where we do not have a long history, it is obvious that we need to wait until the cohorts accumulate to generate more bookings.
Then in later periods, as you can see with these colors, the final result is the revenues from many cohorts, the older ones and the newer ones. Please take this perspective when you look at our marketing spend. Quite importantly, we look at marketing from the perspective of efficiency of each separate cohort. We do not look at each period separately. We just want to make sure that each dollars we spend on marketing brings money over time.
Now, let me move on to discuss our performance. Let us start with our core portfolio. What good news is the improvement in Fishing Clash after we have improved our parameters recently. Over the last couple of months, we have been spending more and more on marketing, and our benchmarks remain the same. We haven't changed a thing. It's pure product improvement here. In Hunting Clash, we have focused on improving the technical layer, which is very important for games that have a lot of organic traffic.
Apple and Google Stores are looking at this quite carefully, and we expect the first results in two or three months. Things take time. The algorithms take some time before they pick up the performance improvement. Both games still require new updates, new features. They have to stay fresh because, as Magda explained, we want to make sure that those players who started with us nine years ago in Fishing Clash, some of them still keep playing.
This is why we keep making those efforts. Real Flight Simulator, a very stable subscription-based game. In the second quarter, the revenues have been slightly lower, mostly because we have a new feature in a competitive game and some players hop on and off between the two games. Right now, obviously, we are working on yet another large major feature. After we launch it, we hope to regain some of those hopping players, and hopefully, they will stay with us. Last but not least, quite importantly with Real Flight Simulator, we keep increasing the size of the cake.
Our game, piece by piece, takes over this segment of players, and we want to accelerate the whole process with our new features. With Real Combat Simulator, that's obviously a new game launched in 2025. Right now, we're working on a major update that will address all those issues that need improvement, and we'll see if that update will allow us to expand to the entire segment. Will it be as big as Real Flight Simulator?
Or perhaps this will be just an update to Real Flight Simulator and Real Combat Simulator will become a part of RFS. This is still a question. We are working on that update, and then one or two months after it's launched, we will know more. Wings of Heroes, as you probably recall from the previous conference, we have a lot of expectations regarding this game, and we want to repeat the leap we did in 2024 and 2025. If you look at the bookings after the global launch, the bookings stabilized at PLN 2 million per quarter.
But even back then, not even for a while, we considered this to be the ceiling. We knew that we can do more. That's why we combined the two worlds. RORTOS, specialists in simulators, and our team, specialists in product development. After a few years, we can see revenues that are much higher. When we reach a level that is not a ceiling, we take decisions that help us grow. In the third quarter, we focused strongly on searching the future for Wings of Heroes.
We did lots of A/B tests, lots of experiments, and we have the idea for a plan using which we want to break through the ceiling. Our product team is working on the last details, and we hope that the plan will be completed in a few months, and we will know whether this is a growth title or a sustainment title. I believe that Wings of Heroes still have a story to tell. Now let's move on to Trophy Hunter. Here, our goal remains the same. We want to improve lifetime values in the game. We want to build monetization. Nothing changes here.
This is what our team is still focusing on. In the second quarter, our revenues exceeded marketing expenditure for the first time. We had some production problems with one of the features. It will be somewhat delayed. We're not very happy about this. I'm not happy about this personally, but things like this happen. We have to be more attentive to make sure that such things do not happen or happen hardly ever. But the direction stays the same. We build monetization. We will keep adding more layers of monetization, and we will improve our product.
In July, bookings reached PLN 5.1 million. I'm mentioning this because there's one interesting thing here. For the first time ever in July, we worked a little bit more with Live Ops. This is the moment when those Live Ops become important. We have more advanced players, and this is bringing new results. Now, the whole second quarter shows very significant progress in implementing our product line-based strategy. As a group, we are committed to growth. We want to build on a more repeatable development model.
With approach like this, we want to test new concepts quicker, test new games quicker, mitigate risk, and keep the cost of game production under control. Why is cost so important? Well, currently, we have games that have huge production and marketing budgets, but they are unsuccessful. This is why our approach is completely different. We publish games quickly, we test them quickly, so development itself up to the point of optimal readiness takes a little bit of time, but the game is already on the market, but this takes a lot of risk off our shoulders.
As we add more and more games, we strengthen our portfolio, we add more sources of revenues. Now, our first product line is a shooter line. We have two games here. We have Trophy Hunter and Medal Hunter. Why is it important to have two or more products in one product line? Firstly, we can move features between the games, and it's already happening. So what works with Medal Hunter can work in Trophy Hunter and vice versa. This has a lot of advantages, shorten development, less risk, same conclusions from A/B tests.
We can learn things from both games as far as features or changes are concerned. Fishing Trip, potentially, that's a start of another product line. The game is at an early stage, but our KPIs are growing even before we hit the soft launch. Right. Let's say a few words about Medal Hunter because I expect that this is an interesting topic right now. It premiered on July 30th, and this is not going to change. This is set in stone. It was developed over the course of 12 months, so it's half the time compared to Trophy Hunter.
The cost of production was a bit less than PLN 2 million, so fast development, low costs, and this is very good info. The development time and the low cost was possible to reach, despite the fact that this game is far more complex than Trophy Hunter. Once you see how many vehicles we are shooting at, so ships, motorbikes, armored vehicles, so it's very complex, as well as the range of weapons that we are using as well, so sniper rifles and so on.
We can talk about the complexity of the game. This is the thing that makes the development period far longer. Despite that fact, we managed to make it even shorter. It's also important to reach outside of our comfort zone. We are reaching to a completely new segment, a significant segment with greater competition, but greater potential as well.
What we can see after the first 14 days of the marketing's teamwork is that we have twice the number of downloads compared to Trophy Hunter within that same time period. What is also very interesting is that this game propagated into many different markets. We see what we expected to see. Hunting is mostly U.S. No other market is even close to that. Owning a weapon, shooting in there is far more popular in there.
For Medal Hunter, we see interest from more exotic locations. We have presence in South Korea, very important market, but the market that we didn't break through with, for example, Trophy Hunter. Also, we have far greater coverage, so the rankings in shops are greater as well, only after two weeks. This is very important information because it shows us that this segment is very significant. It's big. I cannot say a lot about marketing right now because right now we are in the period of observing the algorithms. They need to learn of what type of players we need.
After the end of the last week and the beginning of this one, we are starting with optimization of marketing, and we can add more. For now, the marketing budget, paid traffic costs more compared to Trophy Hunter for the respective period, because during the period of soft launch, we saw that this player's life cycle is similar, and we can say that it's not identical, but it's similar to Trophy Hunter. We know how to act, how to behave.
The test is yet to come. It's similar to the case of Trophy Hunter. Medal Hunter also has to add monetization. It's going to be simpler because we have two games that can exchange the features between themselves. Going to Fishing Trip, it's potentially the start of our second line of products. It's first and foremost the expansion of our fishing segment. Gradually, we are adding new territories, new fisheries, and we observe whether the players like it or not.
We are observing the engagement KPI because this is the most relevant to us. Why? Because if we start touching the monetization right now, the engagement will disappear, and this is something natural for the cycle of the game. Right now, we are focusing on engagement, and what I'm happy about right now is that every single update right now, every modification that we are implementing, is improving the metrics, and this is a good prognostic. What it means? It means that we understand that segment very well. We understand the player, so that's why we are seeing the improvement.
Right now, the KPIs are matching, and we are approaching the soft launch. A couple of words about the development funnel. Based on the Fishing Trip, we are on the stage of market testing, so right now we are focusing on engagement. Those are the metrics that we pay attention to. The second thing is paying attention to the updates, how they affect the perception of the game. We need to observe, and we need to wonder what's the next thing to do. Everything that we see right now is very optimistic. The soft launch is not threatened in any way, but from the prior experience, we are cautious as well. Before we continue, a couple of words from Janusz on the D2C channels.
When it comes to D2C, direct-to-consumer platform, this is the cost initiative that allows us to optimize the interest that we have to pay, and it's composed of two elements right now. This is the shop, the website, apart from the game that allows the players to purchase items. The shop is present in Fishing Clash and Hunting Clash.
The second part of that platform is the alternative payment methods or booking methods. The decision of the United States courts allowed us to use other options of payments directly in apps. Consequently, we have been implementing those in all of our titles. It's in Fishing Clash, Trophy Hunter, Wings of Heroes, Hunting Clash as well, and in Medal Hunter. This is the first game that at launch has the elements of the D2C platform in it. That's how we reach the 24% of the revenue. That's 33% share of Fishing Clash, 26% of Hunting Clash.
Shop and the alternative payment methods for Trophy Hunter, it's 11%. For Wings of Heroes, it's 21%. Wings of Heroes has only alternative methods of payments active in the U.S., and that gives 21% going to D2C, so that's a very good result. When it comes to those numbers, we have to admit that we have a slight problem. This is our marketing that is active right now. The new players are less eager to use the alternative methods.
The older the game is, the easier it is for the players, and this is something that we observe in other entities on the market. The share of D2C is changing in those, but it's most frequent for the games that have no marketing. It's very important that this very active marketing is not making that easier, but we will be working on that, and it's completely natural to preparing that for Trophy Hunter, Wings of Heroes, and other titles as well. When it comes to legislation in the U.S., we can use those alternative payment methods, and those legal decisions from the U.S. are confirming that.
Last week, we received an information about an amendment when it comes to Apple in European Union. For us, nothing changes at this very moment. We are expecting that sooner or later, those provisions will be. Those interests will be decreased, but this is probably about the situation on the market, and right now we are just using the legislative provisions that are active within the European Union.
Right now, we can continue to the financial results summary when it comes to bookings. Revenue, what we want and what is successful is to be an increasing company. We want the bookings to increase, and we want to be perceived as a rising company. The increase of 11.5% year-on-year compared to the previous year. In 2025, there was no Trophy Hunter in that period. Mainly the new titles are responsible for that growth and the sustain or maintenance of the existing titles as well. This is what is happening right now.
The strategy brings results in numbers as well. A comment on the Q2 as well. You can see that this is a sort of fresh scent of spring. After long winter months, people are always more eager to go outside, but this is just a temporary decrease in interest in games. They return. In Q2, we have less expenditure as compared to the first, more complex quarter, related to Trophy Hunter as well. Less market expenditure. This is the slight sort of strip of new cohorts is smaller as well, so it decreases the bookings level as well.
But in the long run, we are the rising, increasing company, and this is how we want to be perceived. When it comes to the results, we present the marketing expenditure, because it was marketing that was the biggest lever when it comes to the intensification that was happening in Q1 of 2026. Automatically, our EBITDA was lower as compared to the previous periods.
Q2 Adjusted EBITDA was higher thanks to lower marketing expenses. But as we progress, those are significant marketing expenses. As we compare the matching periods from 2025- 2026, those are double the expenses. The investments in marketing are investments in development of our products and development of the whole company group. When it comes to free cash or cash flows, we are scaling a lot.
Even if we are investing, we are generating free cash flow quarter-to-quarter, year-on-year. Operational cash flow was PLN 20 million. We paid out the dividends as well, PLN 65 million, and the latest earn-out as well. That decreased the cash flow, and yet at the end of the half of the year, it was at the level of PLN 73.1 million. It is a safe level. It allows us to keep investing in new products as well. We feel safe because we know that we have enough assets, resources, and what we want to highlight as well, so that you can perceive our business in that way, the investment in new products is low cost.
Of course, you can interpret PLN 3 million in different ways, but considering what is happening on the market, for example, the other titles from free-to-play segment. Trophy Hunter, just above PLN 3 million. The next one, Medal Hunter, PLN 1.7 million. And Fishing Trip, PLN 0.6 million. This number is expected to be bigger, but it is still PLN 600,000 . If we look at the balance sheet when it comes to the assets, it is 1.5%. We want to be a light company, as understood.
We want to try to seek for new prototypes to act in an agile fashion, because maybe we will discover some new great product line. This is not something that puts a big strain on our business in the long run. Of course, the amortization is decreasing as well in consider to the Trophy Hunter. This lightness and the financial results translate into the numbers looking as they are right now. We are in a very comfort situation right now.
Some comments from me. We have had a lot of updates today. More updates are coming soon. In early October, we will publish our sales update for the third quarter, and on November 9th, you can expect our financial report, followed by an earnings call the next day, and the Board will surely tell you more about our achievements and the progress with our strategy. We will also be present at investors' conferences. The first one will be the Back to School, organized by Bank Ochrony Środowiska on September 3rd.
Then Trigon TMT and Gaming Conference, October 8th. Both events are available online. Join us, talk to us. Also, today, we have spoken a lot about our new strategy and our new game development model. These are exactly the topics we have addressed previously in our financial reports and in presentations and at the Investors Day. A presentation that shows our new game development model split into different stages is available on our corporate website in the presentations tab for those of you who would like to find out more. The last word, last comments from our CEO.
Right. We have four pieces of good news. Fishing Clash has improved its KPIs significantly. As a result, over the last couple of months, we have been spending more money on marketing while maintaining the same benchmarks. Please remember that Fishing Clash is nearly 10 years old. Also, Trophy Hunter parameters are improving. You can see this when you look at bookings per player improved nearly threefold. We keep working hard to increase this even further.
We have launched Medal Hunter, and our product line model is starting to work. In practice, we have Trophy Hunter, Medal Hunter, two games that can inform each other. Development becomes quicker, costs become lower, and we gain competitive advantage. We have two teams that can share insights. This is very, very important. We also have improved our Fishing Trip KPIs. The game is approaching its soft launch stage. As you can see, interesting times are ahead. We will keep increasing our portfolio, we will keep developing our growth titles, and we will be building new product lines. We will keep you up to date when it comes to the progress in those areas. Thank you very much for your attention. Nina, I think we can move on to our Q&A.
Right. We have the first question. The question is about marketing. The currently expected return on marketing, is it the same as it was a few years back? Or perhaps have you reduced your expectations because the market is more difficult?
Let me put it this way. We take a shorter perspective in mind. That is all I can say.
That was very succinct. Now, a question about Trophy Hunter. A series of questions about Trophy Hunter, and here comes the first one. New monetization models in the third quarter. In the beginning, will it be limited tests?
Always. Each feature goes through A/B tests. Usually one, but in 30% or 40% of cases, we have to rerun the A/B test if we have some concerns after the first test. Sometimes it is just a question of balance, and we have to rerun the A/B test.
What marketing expenditure in Trophy Hunter is planned in the quarters to come? Will you still have an aggressive campaign, or will you gradually reduce the spendings as you did in the second quarter?
Let me repeat. We do not have a marketing budget. We have parameters that we follow, and each campaign has to stick to those parameters. If the campaign allows us to acquire 1,000 players, then that is what we do. If it is 1,500 players, that is exactly what we do. If it is 7,000, then 7,000. 300? 300. Sometimes you cannot compare month-over-month for many different reasons. It is a large market, but there are also large players, meaning large publishers.
If we have a competitive game being launched in a given period, then we cannot acquire that many players. Also, it is seasonal. If the physical fishing season begins, then we have fewer virtual fishing enthusiasts. We do not have a budget. It is always a question of what we can do. We do not want to say $1 million or $5 million up front and then try and follow that goal. We just want to be practical and reasonable about our return levels and return times.
What is your opinion about the effect of new monetization functions on Trophy Hunter performance improvement? Is the current improvement a result of those changes or greater spending on marketing?
It is both. Magdalena showed you the slide with cohorts as they accumulate month-over-month. In July, we managed to repeat the performance from the first month. In Trophy Hunter, the best days are usually those when we have new locations, the premieres of new locations. But in July, we had major spikes through our Live Ops operations. This shows us that the game is increasingly mature and the players are at a level where we can start monetizing. It is like a system of communicating vessels.
A question that actually was answered during the presentation. How many of the monetization systems planned have been already implemented, and how many will still be implemented?
We tested the first system, but I would say that everything is still ahead of us. 80% or 90% of systems is still coming. As for now, this is kind of expert's view. It does happen that players actually surprise us, but I would say that it is all still all ahead of us.
In August, is Trophy Hunter still improving its performance, and what is marketing scaling right now? Is there still space to increase marketing expenditure?
You have to be patient about this.
MAU in Trophy Hunter is still going down despite greater marketing expenditure in the first quarter. Does it worry you?
No, not really, because the tail is still building well. The players who are more involved, they have been with us for more than a year. They stay with us and new players keep coming. Trophy Hunter, as a rule, was never supposed to be a game that is mostly based on MAU, pretty much like in Fishing Clash. It has never been a game that would attract millions of players each day or tens of millions of players each month. It has always been a game that, as a rule, built its tail well, and each cohort added a little bit to our performance. This game is pretty much the same. As I explained before, our strategy is to launch our products real quick.
As a rule, they are not as ready as they could be after two or three years of development. In principle, we keep improving them as players play. You can see that improvement month after month, quarter-after-quarter. All of this, unfortunately, takes a little bit of time. MAU itself is not our KPI. That is a KPI for Brawl Stars or Clash of Clans. Mass market games. Let us see what it is going to be like with Medal Hunter. Perhaps that is more of a mass game. Still, that game also repeats our Trophy Hunter monetization model, so we will be looking at other KPIs.
Now we have a long list of questions about Medal Hunter, the newest game from Ten Square Games. Lots of marketing questions. Perhaps I can cluster them into one. At this moment, the investments in Medal Hunter, are they greater or lower than investments in Trophy Hunter? What is the plan? Does the company plan to spend more or less than it did for Trophy Hunter?
We spent more than we did in the beginning of Trophy Hunter. Firstly, we already have proof of concept. We know how Trophy Hunter behaves. We know how Medal Hunter behaved in the soft launch stage. We are more relaxed about performance. Also here, the segment is larger, and we have a worldwide campaign. This means the world, with the exception of U.S., and we can see a lot of traffic here. That is why we spend more than we did for Trophy Hunter in its initial stage.
How do you compare Medal Hunter to your key KPIs and monetization when compared to Trophy Hunter at the similar early stage?
The data is very early. The fresh retention looks a bit better, but we have a smaller share of U.S. players, so conversions are somewhat weaker. It is hard to say after such a short period. We need two or three months of data to give you more informed conclusions. The first conversion improvements were started last week, and after the release, we need another two or three weeks to monitor the situation to have more data, because we do not want to change things too early. That is why I am very conservative about these comments. The differences are still very, very small. It is nothing that could be a concern.
After a couple of weeks after the premiere, is there anything that surprised you positively or negatively?
Well, the whole epic operation that is going on in Medal Hunter right now, this seems to be the way to go. We have a game at a very early stage. Few players that have progressed into the game, and still we have clearly better monetization, but still the scale is very low. The number of players is moderate. So that was a nice surprise.
Another nice surprise was the reception of our marketing efforts. We try to add current conflicts, previous historical conflicts, and perhaps future conflicts into the game, and players are very enthusiastic about this. Guys my age, somewhat older or somewhat younger, they are interested in history. They take interest in what is going on in the world. They want to be part of it. So yeah, it works well with our marketing, and we will continue this. If you want to know more, you have to wait till the next conference.
One of the potential risks for Medal Hunter's relatively low CPI, does it really limit the scaling possibilities of marketing expenditure, or is it possible thanks to the results that are happening right now?
Right now, the expenditure is stable, so we've reached a certain point. Right now, we are not planning any increases, so the results are stable, satisfying. Right now, we are approaching the most interesting stage of the marketing work. In the next two, three months, we'll be searching for-- Let me give you an example. One video can work well in South Korea and work bad in the U.S., and this is the moment where we have to observe and see what is encouraging for the players and what is not. Through the course of the next few months, we'll be adjusting those needs, so it can turn out that we need twice the creative work, so the marketing will have full hands of work. At this stage, it's very difficult to say. We don't have the sufficient data to tell.
Do you observe any risk of migration of players from Trophy Hunter to Medal Hunter, or is it a chance for the company to have players active in two titles? Is there any trend in here?
We don't see any trend. It's a small portion. If a player is migrating from Hunting Clash to Fishing Clash or between some other titles, it's okay. We just want to retain the players. If the player were to go from Trophy Hunter and to go to Brawl Stars for some reason, we want that player to pick up a different title of ours. It's still a good info because the player stays with us.
Because we are talking about Trophy Hunter and Medal Hunter, we can see that some shareholders are players as well, and we can see some remarks about the mechanics that is used in two titles, Clash of Clans or Clubs. Is it possible to change the hour of ending the race not to be 3:00 A.M.? It could start at 2:00 P.M., for example, and it could. Ending the race in the middle of the night, it's not fair because we will never be able to compete with players from U.S., and that's why many players are backing away from the game. Can we address that somehow?
We'll address that topic with a product team, and we'll see if there's anything we can do.
Speaking about the project that is at the stage of soft launch, Fishing Trip, how do you evaluate the potential of that project as compared to the other titles, and what about the KPIs?
As I stated before, we have specific benchmarks, so the title can either fit in those or not, depending on the perspective. What's going to be the potential of that title? It's too early to say. There's no monetization in there, so it's very difficult to speak about the potential. There's one interesting thing. It depends on the scale. As you probably can recall, there are different types of campaigns. The cheapest ones, the CPI, they usually bring low-quality traffic, but allow you to test the game at the very early stages.
We can see that even the CPI campaigns are behaving very, very well. For that moment, we don't know what it means for this specific title. As a principle, because this is the first game of that line I would say that this approach towards marketing, as in case of Trophy Hunter, it's going to be more cautious. This is all I can say for now about that title.
Our discussion today was dominated by new projects, but we have a question about Fishing Clash as well. Do you see any space in August to increase this expenditure for Fishing Clash?
As stated before, we cannot comment on that.
The next question: What do you think about the dividend for 2026? At the actual marketing expenditure, the net result is relatively low, and there's going to be expenditure for Medal Hunter as well.
As the CEO said, we are not thinking about that right now. The idea is to create a long-term business. Let's just wait for the year to conclude. Let's see the numbers. Yes, stating the fact that the marketing is decreasing the long-term low net result is true, but we are not thinking about that in the middle of the year.
As a principle, we want to be a dividend company. Nothing has changed in that regard but a s Magda stated, it's still too early to tell. When the time comes, we will see the exact numbers, and this will be the time to discuss how the new titles are behaving. For now, it's still too early. Sometimes it's very difficult to state some facts even a month or two months ahead, and this is not because we don't want to, but we've seen so many direction, the courses of actions and the changing information that sometimes the things can change from one week to another.
Thank you for that answer. Now we have a couple of questions concerning the D2C, so direct sales. There's a request from one of the viewers to summarize the changes in the Android and iOS and how the changes in App Store is changing, and are those changes a big chance for TSG?
In short, the most important thing is that the situation in Apple and Google is different, and it depends. It's country-specific. The general principles are country-dependent, unfortunately. The most important thing that resurfaced, a third-party App Store, so alternative shops, we are not using that because for Apple, it's available in European Union, but it's extremely unpleasant to use for users. I don't know anybody who would like to use that.
I tried to use it and I gave up, and it was implemented by the request of the European Commission because we just had to do it, but there's nobody using that, so right now it doesn't make any sense. There are certain payments on the Apple side which are lower, but after you take into account all the costs, it's going to be 30%. For Google, it works well in U.S. It's something new this year. There are certain restrictions as well. If something appears a big shop that will be popular, I'm not saying no, but we are trying to limit our enthusiasm, and maybe Epic will be one to provide that, but right now there's no popular shop in the U.S.
Right now we are using all resources that make sense. The second aspect, the operators of those payments, everything that we are doing in the U.S. is once again, country-specific, country-dependent. The U.S., I said that the users have the chance to choose, and this is something that we use. We are not bearing any costs because of that, so we have that option. When it comes to other countries, for Google, it's not allowed, and for Apple, in theory, it's possible within the EU. But once again, this is restricted.
There are certain things that you have to meet, because there are certain pop-up windows that are stating, for example, "Dear player, you're leaving that environment. Please be cautious and careful." We had to do that, but it's not user-friendly. Just to summarize this, third-party app stores, the enthusiasm is limited. The change in interest will be continuing. There's one more program called Level Up on the Google part that allows to decrease the interest to 25% for new players, if I can recall. The new Google accounts that have not installed the game before.
Once you meet those requirements, and we are working to meet those requirements to implement that, the payments will be decreasing, but it's going to be happening slowly, so we cannot provide any timeframe because this is something that is postponed by Apple, by Google. If something like that is implemented, because we are trying to stay up to date with all those solutions and use them.
At certain stage, there was an info that the platforms will be collecting payments for purchases in external stores. Is this implemented?
Yes and no. Yes. This is something that is planned, but it depends on the options that I was referencing. As a principle when it comes to our shop, the external website, if the user accessed that website, individually or by clicking a link from our social media channels, there's going to be no additional fee, because there's no need to collect that.
What was announced by two platforms is the possibility to advertise the shop within the apps and there are payments in those. In theory, they are created in a way that it doesn't make sense. Right now, there are certain decisions or judgments in the U.S.A., in which the court stated that or the judicial system stated that it's not possible to have it this way. In the U.S., we are using that option. The remaining countries, in theory, they exist. In practice, nobody's using them or it's just not suitable for use. What's going to be happening in the future, it's very difficult to tell.
Thank you very much for that. What about the user, acquisition costs? Do you see any decrease in those costs in Europe after July 1st, the restrictions for the Chinese companies?
Once again, even if for a second, there is a small hole or gap, this is something that we can just see for a small period of time, but this is not something that we are observing right now.
Also, the possibility to track the results of the company, based on the publicly available data. Does it make sense to evaluate the company's results based on Sensor Tower? Where does Sensor Tower take their data from?
The data from Sensor Tower does not come from the company. Those are the estimations of Sensor Tower based on the publicly available information. The rankings from both shops that they are calculating that based on. They have some machine learning models as well that make it possible for the Sensor Tower to show that.
Two comments when it comes to Sensor Tower, they are rounding up the data to full millions, so 2.1 million or 1.9 million, so pay attention to that. The second thing is that if you have a look at September 1st, if you look for the data at Sensor Tower on September 1st, it is not full. Does it make sense to have a look at that data? Of course, it is an estimation. You can compare different sets of data as well, but it is very difficult for me to tell.
One more question. I do not think we will be able to ask all those questions, but the one that I have right now, could you please explain what is the reason of the monetization in new products, but in older ones, the strategy applies as well.
Right. The presence of ads makes a lot of sense because if a player sees the ad, that is a signal for our advertising partner. Let us imagine we bought that player for $1, and then we have $0.10 for one display of the ad. These are not the actual numbers, but it gives you the idea. That is a signal for Google, showing us that we can have return on investment, not only through purchases, bookings in the store, but it is also from advertising. Players initially watch more ads, but later on they move on to a model where they make a booking every now and then, and in this way, we have our return on investment. This is why we have ads in our products.
Thank you. We still have individual investor chat ahead of us and everyone is invited. That is today at 2:00 P.M. We will try to take the other questions. Unfortunately, our earnings call comes to an end. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your attention. Hopefully, we have answered all your questions and looking forward to see you next time.