Gameloft shuts down Minion Rush after 13 years, exposing thin margins on legacy licensed IP
Summary
Gameloft will shut down Despicable Me: Minion Rush on January 29, 2027, ending a run that began in 2013.
App store listings close and in-app purchases stop on October 30, with a farewell event running October 1-28.
The endless runner generated $45.7m in IAP revenue across close to 500m downloads, or roughly $0.09 monetized per install, according to AppMagic estimates.
"As the mobile gaming landscape continues to evolve, we have made the difficult decision to wind down our services"
01
Shutdown mechanics leave a narrow window before the servers go dark
Downloads and new in-app purchases end October 30, 2025, marking the last point new spending can enter the game.
A farewell event runs October 1-28, with prices and rewards subject to adjustment during the title's final months, per Gameloft's FAQ.
Servers shut down fully on January 29, 2027, ending online play; existing installs remain playable offline with no further content updates.
The 13-year run outlasted three Despicable Me sequels and three spin-off films, tying the game's lifecycle directly to Illumination's theatrical release calendar.
02
Revenue math shows a licensed IP running on thin margins
$45.7m in lifetime IAP revenue divided by AppMagic's near-500m download estimate works out to about $0.09 monetized per install across 13 years.
Averaged over the full run, that is roughly $3.5m in annual IAP revenue, a thin base for a title carrying an active license from Universal and Illumination.
Gameloft's own historical claim of 1.2bn installs, cited when the game moved to Unity, runs more than double AppMagic's current download estimate, underlining how measurement of the game's true scale shifted over its lifetime.
No new content updates arrived in the months before the shutdown was announced, indicating Gameloft had already stopped reinvesting in the title.
03
Structural costs typical of aging licensed runners went unstated
Licensing deals with major IP holders commonly carry royalties tied to gross revenue or guaranteed minimums, cost lines that do not shrink as a decade-old game's IAP revenue tapers toward low single-digit millions a year.
Real-time servers for leaderboards and live events carry fixed hosting costs regardless of a shrinking player base, a burden that becomes harder to justify once daily active users fall below a certain threshold.
Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework, in place since 2021, raised acquisition costs across casual mobile genres, squeezing the long-tail user-acquisition funnel a 13-year-old runner depends on to stay profitable.
Gameloft's FAQ cites only a changing mobile landscape as the reason, leaving the specific break-even trigger behind the shutdown undisclosed.
What this means
For Publishers & Developers: Negotiate licensed-IP minimum guarantees that step down once the film release cycle ends.
For Investors & VC: Value legacy mobile catalogs on third-party revenue estimates over publisher-reported install counts.
For Service Vendors: Pitch offline-mode conversion and server decommissioning to holders of decade-old licensed mobile titles.
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