After the World Cup and before the domestic football season begins, the world’s most popular sport tends to enjoy a relatively quiet period. For some though, the need for football remains.
This summer that demand has been met by the creation of a raft of mobile sports games in which players can dive into nostalgia and storytelling. This craze has seemingly been inspired by the viral 82-0 basketball game in which players can draft an all-time NBA starting five by spinning a random wheel for teams and decades.
Inspired by this, Deniz Sancar, a hobbyist coder who works in advertising, created 38-0-0. Sancar told “mobilegamer.biz” that despite having no previous coding experience, he built the game overnight with Claude Code, an advanced AI assistant that is designed to help with coding. The game was number one in the UK App Store games charts in June.
Destiny Eleven: From TikTok to France and the world
Another example is Destiny Eleven. Maxence Pigne, a PSG fan and a project manager, was inspired by a game he saw on TikTok that allowed players to play out the career of a professional footballer. After the 2026 World Cup, Pigne released his version, also created with the help of AI assistant Claude, which took the original idea further by offering more variety and choices in the career.
The man who specializes in computer science told French weekly “Le Point” that the decision to publish the free game earlier than planned paid off because by the end of July, the game had over one million players with 14 million careers having been created. Leverkusen striker Martin Terrier is reportedly a fan of the game, which has seen many variations in different languages emerge in the weeks since its arrival.
Mobile games are big business
It’s clear mobile games have come a long way since Nokia released “Snake” back in 1997. They are now big business. According to digital market intelligence platform Sensor Tower, approximately 50 billion mobile games were downloaded in 2025, generating $82 billion (€71 billion) in in-app purchases. According to “Game, the German Games Industry Association,” revenue in Germany in 2025 was approxiamtely $3.12 billion, with 28.1 million players.
“This clearly indicates that mobile gaming in Germany is no longer a niche topic, but rather a serious genre with significant purchasing power,” Kyle Kuscu, chairman of the German Mobile Gaming Association (DeMoGa), told DW.
“This is also relevant for the esports sector: Germany has a broad player base, and mobile gaming is the largest platform in the country in terms of user numbers.”
This summer, the emergence of sports-drafting games has clearly benefited from a World Cup summer but also because of game design.
“The World Cup or tournament effect only amplifies this, but it doesn’t fully explain the hype on its own,” Kuscu said.
“Such games satisfy a fundamental human need shared by many users: control, optimization, and imagination in a very compact format—in other words, the feeling of having it all in your own hands, of building the perfect team or career, without a long learning curve or complex controls.”
What counts is the ‘idea and final execution’
AI has been involved in video game creation for years, but with smarter and faster AI in 2026 comes an even more financially efficient approach for game developers. This is particularly important in the tough economic conditions in which free-to-play mobile games operate.
“The trend toward smaller, faster-to-develop games with AI support is likely to continue and may even grow. But I don’t believe that every viral success story will be repeated,” Kuscu said.
“Based on our own experience and confirmed by external sources, we know that AI has long been used extensively and intensively in game development, especially for coding, prototyping, research, and repetitive tasks. At the same time, many people remain skeptical about quality, dependencies, and creative limitations. Even if we advocate for the use of AI-assisted programming, what ultimately counts is the idea and the final execution of a game, and that won’t change.”
Short shelf life a key problem in a competitive market
The challenges for such games to maintain their success remains a major challenge though, especially given the overall gaming market remains a far from profitable industry. More teams can release more games, but that makes competition stiffer than ever.
“The biggest hurdle is no longer just production, but the business model behind it: Mobile games are extremely dependent on user attention, repeat usage, and, above all, in-app purchases,” Kuscu said.
“A viral launch does not yet equate to a viable, let alone successful, business. They must get a handle on session duration, community building, update frequency, and monetization very quickly. This is precisely where the crux of the matter lies, because otherwise the hype will fizzle out before the game can become a sustainable title.”
Whether it’s the immersive storytelling nature of these games or the ease with which a virtual world can be reached, it’s clear that these games have found a gap in the market. History suggests they might not be popular for long, but even if this summer is their moment in the sun, their emergence appears a significant reminder of the challenges the mobile game industry will face with the increased involvement of AI.
Edited by: Chuck Penfold
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