What is Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra built with?
How Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra is built, what technologies it uses, and a short overview of its history.
Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra (Mob Wars: LCN) is a "mafia" themed RPG browser game that was first launched in 2009 as a successor to the earlier 2008 release of the Facebook original Mob Wars (by the same creator).
Who owns/operates it?
Mob Wars: LCN is owned by the Canadian-based Kano Applications Inc (Kano) which employs over 30 people and operates a handful of browser games and a large number of mobile games.
How much money does it make?
Kano is a privately owned company and does not publicly report its revenue and profit numbers.
However, an early lawsuit against Zynga where it was accused of copyright infringement with their Mob Wars cloned Mafia Wars on Facebook had resulted in the case being settled for between 7,000,000-9,000,000 USD.
This high payout is likely a result of significant revenues for Mob Wars in that initial period, very possibly reaching into the low the millions per year, if not more.
While these figures relate to Mob Wars: LCN's predecessor during the prime of browser games (as a result of Facebook making them easily accessible), the high staff count would suggest that Mob Wars: LCN and their other browser games are still generating significant revenues.
What engine does it use?
As Mob Wars: LCN began its life as the successor to the Mob Wars facebook game, this time period and platform would have seen it as a bespoke project with no engine so to speak.
Since then, it is likely to have remained as a proprietary codebase shared among other Kano games.
What languages does it use?
It uses HTML, CSS, and Javascript for the frontend and is likely to use PHP and MySQL for the backend.
While unable to definitively confirm the backend stack, Kano has previously posted open positions for roles that ask for PHP1, 2 and MySQL2 experience; both of which were the most common options at the time the game was first launched.
Where does it get graphics from?
Kano has an in-house art team responsible for creating its artwork.
How do they advertise?
Mob Wars: LCN runs ads via Meta with over 130 ad variations since August 2024 and approximately 30 ad variations currently active at the time of writing.
Through Meta, the ads are targeting Facebook and the Audience Network and are primarily 1:1 ratio images with in-game screenshots making up the for majority of the images used.
Kano additionally runs direct ads on sites, organized by an in-house Product Marketing Manager.