Chapter 03 · ~30 min
Goodgame Deep Dive
The company you're interviewing with: how a Hamburg browser-game startup built Germany's most successful game ever, what Empire: Four Kingdoms actually is under the hood, and where Goodgame sits inside Stillfront in 2026.
The company story
- Founded June 2009 in Hamburg by brothers Dr. Kai and Dr. Christian Wawrzinek with Fabian Ritter (legal entity: Altigi GmbH). First titles were browser portal games — Goodgame Poker (2009), Goodgame Mafia/Gangster (2010).
- Goodgame Empire launched in browser beta in August 2011; Empire: Four Kingdoms (E4K), its mobile version, followed in January 2013 — months before Game of War defined the mobile 4X boom. Goodgame Big Farm (2012) became the second pillar franchise.
- Boom: peak of 1,200+ employees and €202M revenue in 2014 — at the time one of Europe's biggest gaming employers.
- Correction: 2016–2017 brought heavy layoffs (several hundred across two rounds) and a hard refocus on the core brands — Empire and Big Farm — plus a multi-million HTML5 investment to future-proof the browser games.
- Stillfront: acquisition announced December 2017 at €270M (mostly in shares — Goodgame's owners took ~36.5% of Stillfront), completed January 2018. Weeks before the deal, Goodgame announced $1B lifetime company revenue — earned in eight years.
- Today: ~270 employees (2024), offices in Hamburg, Tokyo and Seoul, games in 26 languages, CEO Oleg Rößger. Company-wide 500M+ registered players (2020 milestone).
The franchise milestones
Goodgame Empire + E4K passed $800M lifetime in August 2017 — billed as
"Germany's most successful game of all time". The Empire brand crossed
€1 billion lifetime in December 2022 (across Goodgame Empire, E4K, Age of
Knights and World War III) with 220M+ registered Empire-universe players.
E4K is called the highest-grossing app ever produced by a German company (50M+ Google Play
installs). Goodgame Empire alone: 120M registered players, 26 languages.
Empire: Four Kingdoms — the actual game
You should be able to describe E4K like someone who has played it. The essentials:
Structure: four kingdoms (plus one)
Players build a castle in The Great Empire, then unlock additional castles in three climate kingdoms, each with a special resource: Everwinter Glacier (level 25, coal), Burning Sands (level 35, oil), and Fire Peaks (level 50, glass). Storm Islands was added in 2015 as a recurring event area. Add capturable outposts and resource villages, and a veteran account is a small empire of holdings — multi-castle management is E4K's flavor of "expand".
Economy
Wood and stone drive construction; food gates army size (produce more food → keep more soldiers); coins come from taxes. Rubies are the premium currency: instant-finishing timers, premium buildings/units/tools, extra offer slots.
Combat: asynchronous, and tools decide it
- Attacks resolve server-side with no real-time control — Goodgame has cited 6+ billion simulated battles and ~1.2 trillion fallen troops.
- The attacker splits troops across left flank / front / right flank in up to four sequential waves; survivors proceed to the courtyard.
- The signature system: siege tools counter defender bonuses — mantlets cut ranged-defense, scaling ladders and siege towers cut the wall bonus, rams cut the gate bonus. The attacker's skill is reading a scout report and packing exactly enough tools to zero the defender's bonuses. It's chess-by-mail, not an action game.
- Commanders (attack) and castellans (defense) each carry six gear slots across six rarities up to Relic (level 70+), with set bonuses — specialized loadouts (Nomad-farming commanders, PvP castellans) are the elder-game buildcraft. This equipment system is E4K's long-term chase content — note: gear, not gacha heroes.
The event treadmill
Empire's calendar has been dense since long before "LiveOps" was a job title (250+ content updates by 2017). The recurring cast, with names you should recognize:
- Nomad Invasion and Samurai Invasion — rotating PvE camp events; strong Nomad scores can earn a Castle Passage token into Outer Realms.
- Berimond Invasion and The Battle for Berimond — the latter a temporary war kingdom players enter to fight for a separate leaderboard.
- Outer Realms — a temporary reset server: everyone restarts at ~level 11, races for event rankings, and the server is wiped at the end — rewards (and purchased rubies) transfer back to the main account. Also exists as a cross-play version bridging browser and mobile.
- Long-Term Point Events (LTPEs / Grand Events) — month-long point competitions chained back-to-back, tied to the Kingdom's League ranking system, paying out currency for an event shop.
- Plus Foreign Lords, Shapeshifters, Storm Islands (monthly), and seasonal events — a near wall-to-wall rotation.
Key concept — Outer Realms is secretly brilliant
A temporary fresh-start server where progress resets but rewards flow back to the main
account is: (1) the genre's "reset the map, never the account" season law, implemented in
2019-era Goodgame; (2) a pressure valve giving veterans the new-server thrill without
migration; and (3) a potential sandbox for experiments — new rules can be
trialed there without touching the sacred main-world balance. If you want one
Goodgame-specific product insight in your interview, build on Outer Realms.
Monetization shape
- Direct ruby IAP with escalating bonus tiers — e.g. a $99.99 pack at a +52% bonus (~130k rubies), with stacking limited-time "loyalty" offers on top (+100%). Rotating bundles, premium units and tools, VIP-style perks. No ads.
- No gacha core, no hero collection — spend converts to rubies, rubies convert to time, tools, and gear progression. This is the biggest structural difference from the modern market (Chapter 5).
- Event-driven whale spend: Empire's events reward being ahead in the first hours — community lore includes players dropping $100+ in an event's first day. The LTPE treadmill keeps competitive spenders on a permanent leaderboard chase.
Why a 13-year-old game still prints money
- Event density — the treadmill above; there is always a leaderboard running.
- Alliance lock-in — nearly 4 million alliances founded; the social fabric of a 13-year-old war community is irreplaceable by any competitor.
- Elder-game depth — relic gear, buildcraft, multi-castle optimization give veterans a decade of chase content.
- The HTML5 bet paid off — Goodgame migrated the browser game off Flash (beta December 2018, switch through 2019–2020, done before Flash's end-of-life). The browser platform is a moat: no store fees, older affluent players, and almost zero competition — nobody launches browser 4X anymore.
- Cross-play event servers (Outer Realms) bridge browser and mobile populations.
- D2C DNA: Goodgame always ran its own portal and payments. Stillfront group D2C rose from 30% to ~44% of bookings by 2026 — and Goodgame's own-platform model anchors that strategy. In a post-DMA world where everyone is scrambling to build direct-to-consumer channels, Goodgame has run one since 2009.
Goodgame inside Stillfront, 2026
This is the context your interviewers live in — know it cold:
- Stillfront has had a rough stretch: FY2024 organic revenue -5%; a strategic review in 2025; a large impairment and portfolio pruning in Q4 2025; group CEO churn (founder Jörgen Larsson out in 2024; Alexis Bonte in, with a succession process announced in 2026).
- From Q1 2026 Stillfront consolidated into a single group structure around key franchises: Supremacy, Big, Empire, Albion, Board, Jawaker, BitLife. Both Goodgame franchises — Empire and Big — made the keep list.
- The tension: Empire brand revenue is declining, while the Big franchise grew +78% YoY in Q1 2026 ($19.2M) on the back of Big Farm: Homestead (global launch November 2025) — called Stillfront's most successful launch of all time.
- Group Q1 2026 net revenue: $143.9M (-14% YoY), with key franchises +12% organic and D2C at 44% of bookings.
Interview tip — read the room
A Product/LiveOps hire at Goodgame in 2026 almost certainly means one of two mandates:
(a) slow or reverse Empire's decline — modern LiveOps, offer architecture
and funnel work on an evergreen with a conservative whale base — or (b) scale the
Big/Homestead momentum. Prepare a point of view on both, and frame your experience
as exactly this: operating mature titles for maximum healthy LTV while respecting a
veteran community. The phrase "evergreen operations" will resonate.
Key takeaways
- Hamburg, 2009, browser DNA; Empire browser 2011, E4K January 2013 — 4X before the mobile 4X boom; €270M Stillfront acquisition (Dec 2017).
- Milestones to cite: $800M franchise (2017), €1B Empire brand (Dec 2022), 220M+ Empire players, highest-grossing German-made app.
- E4K = four kingdoms, async tool-based siege combat, commander/castellan gear up to Relic tier — equipment chase, no gacha; rubies as the single currency of spend.
- Event treadmill (Nomads, Samurai, Berimond, LTPEs) + Outer Realms reset-server — pioneering LiveOps density, and a ready-made experimentation sandbox.
- Moats: alliance lock-in, browser/D2C platform (44% D2C at group level), HTML5 migration, cross-play.
- 2026 reality: Empire declining but a protected key franchise; Big Farm: Homestead is the growth story; Stillfront wants operators who can run evergreens.