Our data digest column breaks 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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Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile report digested
There’s a wealth of data in Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2024 report, released yesterday. But looking specifically at the games category, Sensor Tower reports a total of $80.9bn in IAP revenue for 2024, up 4% YoY. Downloads were down 6% YoY to 49.6bn.
Turkey led the growth markets with a 28% increase in spend YoY, followed by Mexico (21%), India (17%), Thailand (16%) and Saudi Arabia (14%). Mature markets like the the US and EMEAR “saw steady growth”, while Japan saw a 7% decline due to economic and currency challenges. Most markets saw downloads decline, though Indonesia and Saudi Arabia bucked the trend.
By genre, strategy games dominated in terms of global consumer spend, capturing just under 10% of the market, driven by Last War: Survival.
Royal Match helped Match Swap Puzzle take 8.67% of 2024’s total spend, followed by Squad RPGs (6.14%), MMORPGs (5.59%), Casino Slots (5.37%), Coin Looters (5.14%) and Battle Royale games (3.05%), led by PUBG Mobile / Game for Peace.
The report also noted the four games that joined the ‘Billion dollar club’: Dungeon & Fighter, Whiteout Survival, LastWar and Brawl Stars. That means each of these titles passed $1bn in global gross IAP revenue for 2024, according to Sensor Tower data.
UA funding platform PvX Partners gets $3.8m
App scaling financing platform PvX Partners has raised $3.8m in seed funding to expand its operations. The round was co-led by Play Ventures and General Catalyst, with participation from angel investors including Deconstructor of Fun founder Michail Katkoff and Two & a Half Gamers founder Matej Lancaric.
Singapore-based PvX provides UA capital to apps and games, and has previously worked with Merge Arena maker Top App Games and Friends & Dragons studio Playsome.
Puzzle games lead player loyalty rankings
A new report from rewards platform Mistplay and marketing and analytics firm AppsFlyer evaluates player loyalty across different game genres. It surveyed 4,500 mobile gamers on Android and iOS and determined its loyalty rankings using four key metrics – D30 retention, ASPU, D30 spenders, and time to first purchase.
Puzzle led in player loyalty and monetisation with a loyalty rating of 85, while RPG came in second both overall and in terms of monetisation with a 75 rating. Strategy took third place with a loyalty rating of 71, while Match and Casino were tied in fourth with 69.
Puzzle was the top genre for share of D30 spenders across devices, with a 7.82% share on iOS and a 7% share on Android. The genre also saw the most year-over-year growth in share of D30 spenders between 2023 and 2024, at 253% on iOS and 89% on Android.
On iOS, other leading genres for share of D30 spenders included Casino (6.7%) and Tabletop (5.63%). On Android, Tabletop (6.07%) and RPG (4.91%) placed second and third.
Match games topped the rankings when it came to engagement, achieving the highest D30 average retention (6.6%) across devices. On average, iOS games across genres had an average D30 retention of 5% compared to Android’s 3%.
The top genres for D30 retention on iOS were Match (8.36%), Tabletop (8.13%) and Puzzle (6.69%). On Android, Tabletop (5.08%) led the way ahead of Match (4.87%) and Puzzle (4.14%).
49% of respondents said they’d been playing their favourite game for over one year, 38% for less than a year, 10% for under a month, and 3% for less than a week. 67% said they desired tangible rewards, 57% chose extra in-game resources, and 50% said they wanted exclusive in-game items.
The factors that contributed most to post-purchase regret among IAP spenders included a product’s limited utility or impact in the game (46%), misaligned advertising around value (34%) and unexpectedly high cost (42%). A fifth (20%) of players said they hadn’t regretted making an IAP.
Felicity Games secures $3m
Indian publisher Felicity Games has raised $3m in seed funding. The round was led by 3one4 Capital, with participation from T-accelerate Capital and Mixi Global Investments, alongside existing investors DeVC and Visceral Capital.
Anurag Choudhary, who founded Bangalore-based Felicity in 2023, said it plans to use the funding to “build a casual game publishing juggernaut from India for the world”. The company crossed $100k in monthly revenue in February, driven by leading titles Nova Solitaire and Scavenger Hunt.
Lobah Game Studio receives $12m
Saudi Arabia’s Lobah Game Studio has secured a $12m investment to accelerate development of its upcoming games, PocketGamer.biz reports. The funding came from the country’s Social Development Bank, which aims to strengthen the national economy and position Saudi Arabia as a regional hub for gaming and technology.
Lobah is led by co-founder and CEO Eisa Atawi, who previously founded MAU Games. Since its establishment last year, it has released fruit merge game Habhab and launched a social gaming platform called Lobah Play.
