Every Wednesday we break down the latest data, research and financial results into digestible chunks.
Read on for the numbers you need to know about minus the fluff.
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Minecraft mobile revenue rises in wake of hit movie
Appmagic estimates suggest the success of A Minecraft Movie have caused a modest rise in mobile revenue for Minecraft maker Mojang.
As above, revenue for the $6.99 premium game, which also has IAPs, has seen a decent but unspectacular rise given the success of the movie, which launched on April 4.
Single day revenue typically peaks on Saturday and Sunday, hitting $370-380k, but the last two weekends have seen Mojang’s sandbox game hit around $600k and then nearly $680k in daily revenue, peaking on April 12.
Q1 2025: Scopely drives M&A, mobile firm shares fall, Bitkraft leads investments
M&A advisory firm Aream has teamed up with InvestGame for a new series of quarterly reports. The first estimates that total game industry dealmaking came to $6.6bn in Q125, as as depicted above, driven mostly by that $3.5bn Scopely-Niantic deal.
Later in the report there’s a grim slide (above) showing across-the-board share price decline for mobile-first company share prices, though Tencent, NetEase, Zynga owner Take-Two, Krafton and MTG managed to defy the drop.
Finally, there’s a league table of investors, showing Bitkraft as the most prolific dealmaker and biggest spender in the last twelve months.
Black Mirror: Thronglets hits UK top spot, 300k downloads
Netflix is pushing the first proper Black Mirror game pretty hard, and it seems to be working. At the time of writing, it’s the number one iPhone download in the UK, and sits at 16th in the US chart.
Appmagic says it has racked up over 300k installs since launch last week, which was coordinated with the launch of the new TV series.
There’s plenty more about Black Mirror: Thronglets in last week’s report here.
DC Dark Legion hits 4m downloads
DC Dark Legion has reached 4m downloads, according to FunPlus. The licensed strategy game, which is inspired by the Dark Nights: Metal comic series, reached the milestone in one month, having launched worldwide on March 14 for iOS, Android and PC.
Roblox’s The Hunt receives 180m ‘visits’
Roblox’s first platform-wide event of 2025 was reportedly its most popular to date, attracting over 180m visits, according to GameRefinery.
Titled The Hunt: Mega Edition, it ran from March 13-24 and featured 25 games with quests designed to complement its treasure hunt theme. The top 10 competitors were invited to compete in a live tournament final at Roblox’s California headquarters, with the winner taking home a $1m grand prize.
According to Roblox’s own figures, The Hunt: Mega Edition attracted tens of millions of players to the event hub. Approximately 31% of the audience came from EMEA, 26% was from APAC, and 21% came from the Americas.
iOS generates 55% of global IAP revenue, payers jump 14%
iOS has overtaken Android in both the number of paying users and revenue contribution, according to a new IAP trends report from Moloco.
Citing data from 100 leading mobile gaming advertisers, it claims that iOS generated 55% of D7 IAP revenue globally last year.
It found that in 2024, the number of D7 paying users on iOS increased by 14% YoY, helping D7 revenue rise by 10%. In contrast, the number of D7 payers on Android rose by just 0.3% YoY, contributing to a 2% decline in revenue.
On iOS, 29% of D7 IAP revenue came from the US, 14% from Tier 1 markets, 10% from the rest of the world, and 0.9% from emerging markets. On Android, 18% of D7 IAP revenue came from the US, 17% from Tier 1 markets, 10% from the rest of the world, and 2% from emerging markets.
iOS saw YoY D7 IAP revenue growth in all tracked markets. Revenue grew by 8% in the US, 4% in Tier 1, 24% in the rest of the world, and 31% in emerging markets. Android D7 IAP revenue grew by 1% YoY in Tier 1, but it declined by 2% in the US, by 5% in the rest of the world, and by 17% in emerging markets.
Elsewhere, Moloco found that the top 5% of paying users accounted for 48% of total D7 IAP revenue in 2024. The top 10% of players contributed 64% of overall revenue, and the top 25% generated 77%.
In the US, the top 5% of payers contributed 47% of revenue in 2024, which was flat year-over-year. The top 5% of payers generated 50% (-1% YoY) of revenue in Tier 1, 50% (+5%) in the rest of the world, and 29% (+12%) in emerging markets.
The report also highlighted that a small number of high-value users are driving a disproportionate portion of overall IAP revenue.
US iOS payers with a D7 spend of $100+ accounted for just 0.02% of global installs, yet they contributed 20% of total worldwide revenue.
And advertisers paid increasingly large sums to capture these high spenders on iOS as 2024 progressed. In the US, winning bid prices at the 95th and 99th percentile increased by 83–137% during the 12 months ended in December.
In Tier 1, winning bid prices at the same percentiles jumped by 39–100%. In the rest of the world they rose by 25–51%, and in emerging markets they increased by 1–35%.
While median winning bid prices on iOS remained relatively stable throughout 2024, they increased significantly on Android.
Last year, median winning bid prices on Android jumped by 35% in the US, 32% in Tier 1, 47% in the rest of the world, and 46% in emerging markets.
