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 without the fluff.
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Q3’s top publishers by IAP revenue
Appmagic’s top 10 publishers by games IAP revenue list shows Tencent as the clear frontrunner in Q3.
It earned $1.5bn in Q3 – over 2.5× that of its closest competitor. Honor of Kings accounted for 29% of its portfolio revenue, followed by PUBG Mobile with 21%.
Fellow Chinese publisher Century Games took second place on the list with $598m. Whiteout Survival was responsible for 59% of its total revenue in Q3, ahead of Kingshot, which was responsible for 31%.
US-based Scopely placed third with $429m, with Monopoly Go generating 83% of its revenue in Q3.
That was enough to hold off close competition from Dream Games and Roblox, which rounded off the top five with $427m and $424m in revenue respectively.
New UK studio Iron Games raises $4m from Arcadia
Pocketgamer.biz reports that former Gram execs Eren Yanık and Remzi Senel have set up a new studio, Iron Games. It raised $4m from Akın Babayiğit’s Arcadia Gaming Partners. Yanık and Senel were previously part of the leadership team on Merge Dragons at Gram.
Squad Busters has earned $65m, says Appfigures
Supercell’s soon-to-be-closed Squad Busters has earned $65m in IAP revenue, according to Appfigures estimates. The game was released worldwide in May 2024 after a short soft launch and has been downloaded 34.7m times.
As we reported last week, Supercell is to close Squad Busters, with a final update coming in December before the game shuts down entirely in mid-2026. The decision comes amid a year-over-year revenue drop of 96% and a downloads decline of 88%, Appfigures says.
24% of Roblox players aged 10-65 play exclusively on mobile
Almost one quarter (24%) of Roblox players aged 10-65 play the game exclusively on mobile, according to data from research firm Newzoo and analytics tracker Gamefam.
Roblox’s latest annual report claimed the platform had 82.9m daily active users across all platforms in the year ended December 31, 2024. The company said 80% of daily active users accessed Roblox on mobile devices.
Revenue up 48% for Roblox in Q3
Games platform Roblox has reported $1.4bn in revenue for its Q3, which is up 48% year-over-year. Bookings, meanwhile, were up 70% year-over-year to $1.9bn. The company’s net losses increased 7% year-over-year to $257m, and adjusted EBITDA fell 16% to $46m.
Roblox’s average daily active users (DAU) increased 70% year-over-year to 151.5m, while average bookings per DAU were flat at $12.68. Average monthly unique payers in Q3 rose 87% year-over-year to 35.8m, with those users spending $17.88 on average, which was down 9%.
For hours engaged in Q3, Roblox reported an increase of 91% year-over-year to 39.6bn. The game was the most downloaded title worldwide for the third consecutive month in September, according to Appfigures data.
October’s top earners and fastest risers
Sensor Tower has revealed its top and fastest-rising earners for October, with LastWar and Honor of Kings on top of the respective charts, above.
The list is broadly similar to Appmagic’s listings, published yesterday, though Sensor Tower does not reveal earnings estimates. Also among the fastest risers are Pokémon TCG Pocket, SD Gundam G Generation, LastZ: Survival Shooter and Professional Baseball Spirits A.
Global consumer spending on mobile games across the App Store and Google Play reached $6.8bn in October, up 4.5% month-over-month, said Sensor Tower. The US led with 32% of total revenue, followed by China (iOS only) at 14.8% and Japan at 12%.
In the downloads chart above, Block Blast was top overall but Bingchuan’s X-Clash was the fastest rising download in October, which also placed fourth overall.
The Battle of Polytopia passes 25m mobile downloads
The Battle of Polytopia has topped 25m organic downloads on mobile, according to indie development studio Midjiwan. The figure is up from 20m mobile downloads reported in September 2023.
The 4X strategy title, which is also available on Switch and PC, originally launched as a Flash game in 2016. Elon Musk is also a big fan of the title, and it comes pre-installed in all Teslas – check out our interview with Midjiwan for more on that.
Sensor Tower lands investment from South Korean group Shinhan
Data firm Sensor Tower has secured investment from South Korean investment bank Shinhan Securities. The amount is undisclosed, but Sensor Tower said the cash will help the firm invest to “further accelerate product innovation on Web and Gen AI datasets.”
Capcom’s mobile sales were down 50% in H1 FY25
Capcom’s mobile games sub-segment achieved sales of 1bn yen ($6.5m) during its H1 FY25 (Apr-Sep), which was down 50% year-over-year.
Mobile accounted for 2% of the total revenue generated by the Resident Evil and Monster Hunter publisher’s wider games business, compared to 5% in H1 FY24. The Japanese firm’s games business saw sales rise 25% year-over-year to 49.9bn yen ($323.8m) for the six months ended in September.
