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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Zynga sells off Chartboost for undisclosed fee
As had been rumoured for months, Zynga has sold off its adtech subsidiary Chartboost. The buyer, for an undisclosed fee, is LoopMe, which describes itself as the “leading AI-powered brand advertising and performance platform”.
Infinity Nikki tops 10m downloads, but only 3.7m on mobile
Infinity Nikki surpassed 10m downloads in its first four days of availability, according to publisher Infold Games. The open-world gacha game is available for iOS, Android, PC and PS5, and Appmagic estimates that around 3.7m of that 10m total were on mobile.
75% of the revenue tracked by Appmagic (which is not quite the full picture, but useful) comes from players in China, with a total of $3.76m earned by publisher Paper Games on mobile since launch on December 5.
Capybara Go has already earned Habby $28m
Habby’s Capybara Go has earned $28m since its release in late October, according to Appmagic data. In terms of top roguelike games by lifetime revenue, it’s already just $7m shy of fifth-placed Soul Knight. Capybara Go has been downloaded 11m times, with its biggest markets being South Korea, Taiwan and Japan respectively.
Netflix is the UK’s top mobile gaming subscription
Netflix Games is the most widely used mobile gaming subscription service in the UK among players aged 16+. That’s according to the 2024 edition of Online Nation, an annual report from UK communications industries regulator Ofcom, which was spotted by Joost van Dreunen.
Research carried out between January and April found that Netflix’s games service was used by 5% of the 4,000 survey respondents (or someone else in their household) during the previous three months. That included 9% of participants aged 25-34 and 8% of those aged 16-24.
Apple Arcade, which was used by 4% of total survey respondents, was more popular with older players. 6% of participants aged 35-44, and 6% of those aged 45-54, said they’d used the iPhone maker’s subscription service.
Google Play Pass was used by 3% of total survey respondents, including 4% of those in both the 25-34 and 35-44 age brackets.
Elsewhere in the report, citing Ipsos data from a sample of 10,700 adults, Ofcom said Candy Crush Saga was the mobile game with the highest audience for the month of May for the third consecutive year. The game reached 2.23m adults in May 2024, down from 2.54m a year earlier. The average amount of time users spent playing daily fell from 24m to 16m, and women made up 70% of players.
Second placed Roblox attracted 1.9m adults in May 2024, which was up from 1.63m a year earlier, when it ranked fourth. The average time spent playing the game daily increased from 15m to 21m, and women accounted for 58% of players.
Royal Match slipped one place to number three in the rankings, with its audience dropping from 1.98m a year earlier to 1.88m. However, average time spent per day using the app increased from 10m to 12m. Women made up 65% of the game’s players.
Rush Royale hits $370m on its fourth birthday
Tower defence hit Rush Royale has surpassed 90m downloads and generated over $370m in revenue, according to numbers from Data.ai, which were shared by publisher My.Games. The stats were released to coincide with the fourth anniversary of Rush Royale, which is currently running a special birthday event.
Appsflyer on IAP, IAA and hybrid monetisation
Appsflyer has released a new report digging into the effectiveness of different monetisation strategies in high income markets across North America and Western Europe during Q3.
It found that for midcore titles on Android, the hybrid monetisation model yielded a 146% return on ad spend (ROAS) by day 90, compared with 93% for IAP and 58% for in-app advertising. For iOS midcore games, IAP models delivered a 215% ROAS, versus 73% with hybrid and 54% using IAA.
On Android, ARPU in hypercasual games with a hybrid revenue stream reached $0.60 after 90 days, which was 28% higher than the $0.47 achieved by IAA only games. On iOS, hypercasual titles with hybrid models hit $0.82 after 90 days, up 15% on the $0.71 achieved by IAA only games. “These results confirm the positive impact of diversification for a genre in relative difficulty, in a low-margin environment,” Appsflyer noted.
Midcore iOS games with hybrid models yielded the highest day 90 ARPU ($9.69), followed by midcore games with IAP models on iOS ($7.31) and Android ($3.11). In terms of average revenue per paying user (ARPPU), iOS captured around 60% of revenue in both midcore and casual games.
AppsFlyer also said that paid traffic drove 73% of revenue in casual games. For midcore games, supported by name recognition, brand awareness and user loyalty, there was a more even split between paid/organic IAP revenue.
Top App Games raises $10m
Ludus: Merge Arena maker Top App Games has secured $10m in funding. It plans to use the investment to improve and promote the strategy RPG, which has topped $2m in monthly revenue and 3m installs since its release in October 2023, as well as to develop new games, with several projects said to be at the internal testing or prototyping stages.
