Mobile gaming entrepreneurs who read this blog regularly have probably noticed that I have not written for a while about Facebook Messenger’s Instant Games platform (FBIG). The lapse is not due to my lack of enthusiasm about mobile gaming as an investment. On the contrary, we have recently added another gaming project to the portfolio which will be announced soon.

Rather, the waning of my enthusiasm pertained specifically to Facebook Messenger over the last several months, mainly due to the discoverability challenges of games on its platform

Over a year ago, Facebook Messenger dropped all efforts of curation and opened the gates to game publishers of any ilk and quality. As a consequence, FBIG became cluttered with an excessive number of junk games. Overall traffic and engagement suffered, and many in the games publishing industry complained. Meanwhile, other messaging platforms gained ground during Facebook’s floundering with their own respective instant game offerings.

The good news is that after substantial lobbying efforts and consumer advocacy, Facebook finally made an about-face. In April they began cleaning up the platform, expunging practically 70% of the low quality games. The following graphs from our friends over at InstantIntel illustrate the effect pretty well. Perhaps this spring cleaning exercise will lay a foundation for more durable player engagement on FB Messenger.