Tribo

Tribo (Tribo Games) was a Helsinki-based, remote-first games company founded by mobile games industry veterans. It launched in 2022 as a studio building casual free-to-play multiplayer games using Web3 technology, with the stated aim of creating player-owned economies powered by NFTs and of bringing Web3 multiplayer games to a mainstream, mid-core mobile audience. Its first and only title, Rumble Arcade, was a PvP squad battler and competitive arcade game built on the Beam blockchain and playable in the browser or as a progressive web app; players had access to an alpha from July 2023, and the game was never released through the app stores despite being made for mobile.

More recently the company repositioned as an "agentic distribution platform" for games. In that model, Tribo took proven mobile games that had plateaued on the app stores and moved them to the open web for instant, download-free play, while AI agents ran user acquisition, live operations, retention and monetization — personalizing onboarding, optimizing ad spend and tuning retention loops. The company promoted the absence of app store fees as a core economic advantage.

In July 2026, after nearly four years of operation, Tribo announced it was winding down Rumble Arcade and entering an official insolvency process. Development stopped immediately, the in-game shop was disabled, no further withdrawals, buybacks or compensations were to be processed, servers were set to close around the end of July, and the Discord, websites and social accounts for both Rumble Arcade and Tribo Games were to be wound down.

Founding story

CEO Mika (also reported as Miko) Kuusisto said he had been thinking about player-owned economies since spending thousands of hours in World of Warcraft and wanting, unsuccessfully, to sell his account. Tribo was his third game startup, following Kopla Games. The company's five founders had a combined 60 years of experience building mobile games, having worked on titles including Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies and Nonstop Knight at companies such as Rovio, King, Wooga, PopCap and Flaregames. Kuusisto framed the company as founded on the premise that "players deserve better."

Business model

In its studio phase, Tribo developed and operated its own free-to-play, NFT-based competitive game with on-chain rewards and an in-game shop, and opened its live-ops event framework to third parties who could host events and capture value from them ("Decentralized Live Ops"). In its later phase, Tribo positioned itself as a distribution and growth partner for external game studios, moving their existing mobile titles to the web and operating acquisition, live ops, retention and monetization with AI agents, offering deal terms it described as unavailable from traditional publishers.

Revenue in the Rumble Arcade phase came from in-game purchases and a pay-to-earn economy; the company stated that building and running the game cost many times more than it brought in, a gap sustained only by external funding. The later platform positioning centered on web monetization without app store fees, which the company said produced 36% better net sales.

Traction

An alpha of Rumble Arcade was available to players from July 2023 and the game ran for several years as a browser-based title, but it was never officially released on the app stores. The company reported that fundamental game features never reached the engagement levels required to perform, citing a disconnect between the combined traditional and Web3 audience the game needed and the audience reachable through organic traffic.

Latest developments

In July 2026 Tribo announced the immediate halt of development on Rumble Arcade, the shutdown of its servers around the end of July, and entry into an official insolvency process. Investors listed at closure included Play Ventures, Sisu and King co-founder Sebastian Knutsson.