The 2022 numbers are in: here are last year’s top publishers worldwide, ranked by total downloads. All data has been pulled from Appmagic.
The top ten, plus commentary, is below; we’ve also got the 11-20 rankings and a few more tidbits after that.
There’s further reading here:
Surprise! Azur Games is the top publisher of 2022 by downloads, according to Appmagic.
And it has beaten the likes of Supersonic, SayGames and CrazyLabs through the sheer volume of hit hypercasual games that gained traction in 2022.
Azur’s most downloaded game of last year, Worms Zone .io, hit 67.8m installs. Its second most popular game, Stack Ball, got over 57m, and five other titles got over 30m downloads (Bottle Jump 3D, Perfect Cream, Hair Tattoo, Cooker Carver, Flow Legends).
11 more Azur games were in the 20-30m range, and another 26 got between 10-20m downloads. There are a ton more in the 1-10m download range, too.
Runner-up Supersonic’s portfolio is more top-heavy and doesn’t have Azur’s sheer volume. Two titles passed 100m downloads: Bridge Race (133m) and Going Balls (102m).
The third most popular Supersonic game Tall Man Run got over 92m installs in 2022, and six more titles got between 50-65m downloads. Eight further games were in the 20m-50m range, 12 were between 10-20m and there were a load more beneath that.
Bronze medallist SayGames’ portfolio is heavily stacked towards top title Race Master 3D’s 136m downloads during 2022. The firm’s second biggest game, DOP 4: Draw One Part, got 96.6m, and DOP 2 was a lot further back with just over 50m. 13 more SayGames titles reached between 20-40m in 2022, and another 13 were in the 10-20m range. There were plenty more between 1-10m installs as well.
CrazyLabs’ two top downloads in 2022 were Phone Case DIY (72m) and Dessert DIY (65m). Sculpt People (51.5m) and Frozen Honey (44m) were the only two other games to pass 40m. Five CrazyLabs games were in the 30-40m range, four between 20-30m and 16 between 10-20m, with a lot more below that.
Voodoo’s top downloads were aquapark.io (52m) and Hole.io (43m). The French publisher saw five games reaching between 30-40m downloads in 2022, with five more in the 20-30m range and 14 between 10-20m.
Outfit7’s portfolio is naturally much smaller than the hypercasual specialists here, but its hit games are much bigger. Two Outfit7 games got over 100m downloads in 2022: My Talking Tom 2 (116m) and My Talking Tom Friends (104m).
My Talking Angela 2 (87m), My Talking Tom (77m) and Talking Tom Gold Run (77m) complete the top five at Outfit7. Four other ‘Talking’ games got between 45-65m downloads, then there’s another 11 games in its portfolio that attracted between 8-21m installs.
Vietnam publisher ABI Global does good business out of top-down retro shooters. Its biggest download 1945 Air Force hit 76m downloads in 2022, and it had three other notable games in the same style: Space Shooter (25.5m), Galaxy Attack (35m) and Galaxiga Arcade Shooting (27m).
Sandwiched in between those shooters in ABI’s rankings were spicy hypercasual game Brain Story (37m) and Super Mario clone Super Bino Go (36m). If, like us, you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of ABI before, the company’s top two markets are India and Brazil, with the US in third and Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey also kety markets.
Same deal with BabyBus, whose top five markets are Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Brazil and Thailand. All of its games are Panda-themed and five of those got over 20m downloads in 2022, led by biggest hit Baby Panda’s Supermarket, which got over 44m installs. 20 more Panda-related games got between 10-20m downloads last year, and over 50 further BabyBus titles were installed between a million and 10m times.
You might assume that the mighty Wordle would be leading the pack in Applovin-owned Lion Studios’ catalogue, but you’d be wrong; it was actually the third most-downloaded game in its portfolio.
Papers Grade Please (45.5m) took top spot in 2022, followed by Army Commander (34m). Wordle got 32m downloads in 2022 ahead of six other hypercasual games that got between 20-30m installs. 18 more games got 10-20m, and a load more were under 10m.
Zynga-owned Rollic completes the top ten publishers by downloads in 2022. Its biggest hit of last year by some distance was Fill The Fridge with 83.5m downloads.
That was followed by Hair Challenge (46m), Office Fever (45m), Money Rush (40m) and They Are Coming (33m). Three more Rollic games got 30m downloads in 2022, with four in the 20-30m range and seven between 10-20m.
2022’s top publishers by downloads: 11-20
There are some huge names outside the top ten, so here are the Appmagic rankings from 11-20, with each company’s most-installed game of 2022 in brackets:
11. Zero Global Publishing (Car Games 3D): 509m
12. Homa (Merge Master): 505m
13. EA (FIFA Mobile) 432m
14. Miniclip (8 Ball Pool): 424m
15. Garena Intl (Garena Free Fire): 359m
16. Good Job Games (Paper Fold): 331m
17. Tapnation (Thief Puzzle): 294m
18. Gameloft (Asphalt 8): 290m
19. King (Candy Crush Saga): 289m
20. Yso Corp (Stretch Guy): 288m
Honourable mentions:
- Merge Master’s 104m downloads made it Homa’s biggest hit in 2022 by far – its second title was Get Lucky got 25m installs
- Sybo was the 22nd biggest publisher of 2022 effectively from Subway Surfers’ 284m downloads alone. Its second-biggest title was Blades of Brim (2.2m installs).
- Some other big names in the 20-30th bracket: Wildlife AKA Fun Games For Free was 23rd with 284m downloads; Playrix was 24th with 283m, Tencent was 26th from 257m installs
- Kitka Games was the 31st biggest publisher of the year from Stumble Guys alone
- Other notable names in 30th and below: Roblox in 37th (188m); Supercell in 38th (187m); Zynga in 40th (179m)
