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In June 2024, mobile game developer HOMA published “Clean It”, a casual game inspired by the #CleanTok TikTok trend – and the game became a viral hit.
The launch of the game, the result of a collaboration between HOMA and TikTok, is the latest example of TikTok’s deliberate effort to reach out to game publishers on its platform.
“Clean It” wasn’t the first TikTok-inspired game released by HOMA, whose most popular titles include mobile games like “Merge Master” and “Aquarium Land.” For years, the developer has been creating casual games by combining popular game genres with relevant TikTok trends.
“Trends like this happen naturally because TikTok is fundamentally driven by community participation. TikTok gamers aren’t a passive audience: they’re engaged co-creators who make a significant impact and keep the focus on the launch of new titles and IPs like “Clean It,” said Annie Arsane, TikTok’s head of business marketing for global games. “Our research shows that 41 percent of TikTok players agree that TikTok has inspired them to make their own videos about their favorite games.”
For “Clean It,” HOMA combined the #CleanTok trend, which highlights videos of creators cleaning and tidying up dirty spaces, with the popular “idle arcadegaming genre – and the combination seems to have caught on with both mobile gamers and TikTok users, racking up more than 2.5 million installs in its first six months.
“We have very different development curves in terms of the number of installs when the game is launched. Sometimes it’s really exponential,” said HOMA’s director of revenue Olivier Le Bas. “For ‘Clean It,’ it was really exponential, and it was one of our biggest successes with games coming from these TikTok trends.”
In addition to being inspired by the TikTok trend to create “Clean It,” HOMA is using the platform as a marketing tool to help drive #CleanTok fans to the game. The developer posted content on the platform promoting the game and also advertised the game directly on TikTok.
“Clean It” was not the result of a direct business partnership between TikTok and HOMA. However, the short video platform gave HOMA a lot of help in developing the game. Throughout the development process, HOMA representatives met with their TikTok representative weekly and received support for business functions such as product management and marketing.
“We have a Slack channel where we exchange information on campaigns, optimization, investments and best practices on a daily basis,” said Le Bas.
TikTok is celebrating the success of “Clean It” as a win — and sharing it as a case study on the company’s official website. The collaborative nature of the game’s launch reflects how TikTok is doubling down on ways to work more closely with game publishers, particularly those in the mobile space. In November 2024, the company posted a job opening for a program manager at publisher TikTok Gaming; the statement that is still livingstates that the role “will directly manage our high-profile global content programs, including content partnerships and growth initiatives.”
“TikTok provides hands-on support, offering strategic campaign reviews, custom creative packages and programs tailored for live operations and new launches,” said Arsane. “These initiatives ensure that campaigns remain engaging and effective, increasing performance while delivering competitive eCPM rates.”
As TikTok builds closer ties with game publishers, the potential platform ban in the United States on January 19 threatens to slow down the company’s momentum. HOMA and other publishers who have successfully used TikTok are still hoping for an eleventh-hour reprieve.
“Part of the reason we would be very sad to lose TikTok as a platform is because I think TikTok as a newer platform has an algorithm that I would consider more of a great equalizer,” said Linda Qin, chief product officer at game publisher Pahdo Labs that uses it personal account and Pahda’s official TikTok presence market the company’s games. “I would say YouTube is a lot older at this point; Instagram is very similar, where TikTok is more of a Wild West, where unknown game studios can reach a very large audience in the same way that big game studios have been able to.”
Currently, game publishers approach TikTok more as a tool for brand awareness than a way to directly drive users to install their titles. Reaching users using trends like #CleanTok remains more effective for game publishers than for non-endemic brands and marketers looking to reach gaming audiences, with TikTok users naturally understanding the connections between game properties like “Clean It” and trends. that inspire them.
When asked about the potential impact of the ban on TikTok’s relationships with game publishers, a company representative pointed to TikTok official statement to the point and refused to elaborate further. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision on the case, however, publishers who have used TikTok as a marketing tool believe they can apply the knowledge they’ve gained on the platform to other short-form video platforms if the ban actually comes to fruition.
“We’ve seen that things that are successful on TikTok are also successful on Instagram, so we’re interested in continuing a similar strategy,” Qin said. “I don’t think Instagram’s algorithm is a one-to-one match — there’s certain content Instagram likes more — but we think it has a lot of potential.”