Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: January 5 - January 9 (2026)
Souls-like games market insights by VGI; top Mobile games of December, 2025; Roblox digital fashion insights & more.
Reports of the week:
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in December 2025
Roblox: Some Q3’25 Metrics and Digital Fashion Insights
Ampere Analysis: Most players still prefer single-player games
VG Insights: Souls-like games on PC and Consoles
GameDiscoverCo: Counter-Strike has been downloaded by more than 318 million people
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in December 2025
AppMagic provides revenue data net of store fees and taxes. Revenue from Android stores in China is not included.
Revenue
Last War: Survival was the clear leader in December revenue by a wide margin. The game generated $140.6 million.
Roblox ranked second with $118.5 million, followed by MONOPOLY GO! in third place with $108.6 million.
The long-time leader of recent years, Honor of Kings, saw an even sharper revenue decline. Its figures are at their lowest levels since 2019. This may be related to sales and giveaways held in October to celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary, or to growing D2C revenue. Alternatively, this could simply reflect organic decline, with the audience moving to other games.
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Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story continues to scale confidently. The game earned $72 million in December, setting a new record.
Love and Deepspace also had a strong month, with players spending $37.4 million in December. This marks one of the best months in the project’s history.
Downloads
The downloads ranking remains stable. Block Blast! (38.3 million installs), Roblox (24 million installs) and Garena Free Fire (22.2 million installs) remain the leaders.
Arrows - Puzzle Escape, a new title from Miniclip, jumped 88 positions to reach 11th place. The arrow-based puzzle game was downloaded 10.8 million times in December.
Last War: Survival also posted outstanding download results in December, reaching 10.1 million installs. This was the most successful month in the project’s history by downloads.
Roblox: Some Q3’25 Metrics and Digital Fashion Insights
Q3’25 Results
Roblox-related content on YouTube reached 1 trillion views. Every fifth video on TikTok worldwide is about Roblox.
From January 1 to September 30, 2025, users spent more than 88.7 billion hours in Roblox.
Roblox has 151 million players. In Q3’25, the average user spent 2.8 hours per day in the game.
The platform’s all-time peak concurrent users reached 45 million people. Grow a Garden entered the Guinness World Records as the game with the highest CCU at 21.6 million users. Shortly after that, Steal a Brainrot broke the record, with its CCU exceeding 25 million users.
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Digital Fashion in Roblox
The study was prepared by the Roblox team in collaboration with Ipsos. The companies surveyed 1,600 Roblox players in two survey waves (800 respondents each) in May and August 2025. Respondents were aged 13 to 28.
Gen Z players in Roblox update their avatars to show creativity (47%), express their identity (38%), stand out (38%), and reflect their mood (37%).
Daily, users update their avatars 274 million times. Searches for new avatar items are performed 50 million times per day.
84% of respondents said that their Roblox avatar style influences their real-life style.
87% said that self-expression in virtual spaces helps them feel more comfortable in real life.
Gen Z Roblox users are 6.3 times more likely to prefer expressing themselves through Roblox avatars than through social networks.
88% “try on” digital items before purchasing them in real life.
For 64% of respondents, brand loyalty in real life increases significantly after interacting with a brand in a digital environment.
For 76% of respondents, experimenting with style using virtual avatars is an important part of life.
70% of surveyed users have worn branded clothing in Roblox. For 60%, it is important that their digital avatars wear branded apparel.
73% of surveyed Roblox users from Gen Z purchase emotes for their avatars. For them, it is important to be able to convey a full range of emotions.
54% do this for fun and aesthetics, 49% consider it important to show how they feel in the virtual world, 48% want to entertain others, and 43% use emotes to communicate with other players.
In the first half of 2025, the Roblox marketplace was visited by 18.8 million users daily (+17% YoY).
Ampere Analysis: Most players still prefer single-player games
The company surveyed 34,000 players across 22 countries in Q2’25.
56% of players prefer single-player games over multiplayer ones.
Over the past four years, this share has increased by 4%.
55% of men and 58% of women said they prefer single-player games.
49% of players aged 16 to 24 prefer single-player games. In the 25 to 34 age group, this share rises to 56%.
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In the US, 65% of players prefer single-player games. In China, this figure is 47%. In the Netherlands, it is 50%, and in Sweden, 49%.
24% of respondents said they buy or download a game if their friends are playing it.
One quarter of respondents also noted that they consider a game’s visual style when making a purchase decision. For one third, the soundtrack is an important factor.
VG Insights: Souls-like games on PC and Consoles
The report is based on VGI data starting from January 2015. All figures are estimates. The report was published in October 2025.
Market overview of Souls-like games
The popularity of Souls-like games on Steam steadily increased until 2024. In 2024, 371 projects (+41% YoY) with the souls-like tag were released on Steam. Over the first 10 months of 2025, 207 games with the same tag were released on Steam, roughly in line with 2022-2023 levels.
Black Myth: Wukong (20.3 million copies on Steam), Elden Ring (15.6 million copies), and Monster Hunter: World (13 million copies) are the top three projects with the souls-like tag on Steam. Whether Monster Hunter: World should be classified as a Souls-like game remains an open question.
VG Insights notes that interest from AA and AAA publishers in the genre has remained roughly stable over the past five years. Growth in the number of Souls-like projects is primarily driven by indie developers.
By 2024, AAA developers accounted for roughly 75% of total Souls-like revenue on Steam. However, the year-to-year picture is not stable, as successful AA and indie releases can significantly shift revenue distribution within a given year.
At this point, Souls-like games appear to have gone through a rapid growth phase (2015-2018), reached a peak (2019), experienced a downturn (2020-2021), and have since become a mainstream genre (from 2022 onward).
Currently, around 4-5% of all games released on Steam are Souls-like games, or at least carry the corresponding tag.
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Best-selling Souls-like projects
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is the best-selling game in the genre according to VG Insights. Total sales since launch are estimated at 41.3 million copies.
The “copies sold” figure also includes distribution via subscription services.
Elden Ring ranks second with 40.6 million copies sold, followed by Monster Hunter: World in third place with 35 million copies.
The list also includes Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Cuphead. In my view, both have a weak connection to the Souls-like genre.
39% of Elden Ring sales came from Steam, 40% from PlayStation, and 21% from Xbox.
China is the largest regional market for the game, accounting for 25% of all purchases. The US ranks second with 23%, and Germany third with 5%.
The average playtime per user in Elden Ring is 121.8 hours, which is an extremely high number. The share of positive user reviews stands at 92.9%.
46% of all copies of the project were sold on Steam, 40% on Xbox (most likely via Game Pass), and 14% on PlayStation.
China accounts for 72% of all copies sold. The launch was, to put it mildly, not very successful, with only 49.5% positive reviews. That said, average playtime remains fairly high at 28.8 hours.
72% of Hollow Knight: Silksong sales at the time of writing came from Steam, 9% from PlayStation, and 19% from Xbox (again, most likely due to Xbox Game Pass).
China (24% of the audience), the US (18%), and Russia (7%) are the key regions for the project.
As of writing, 7.8 million players have downloaded the game. Average playtime is 25.5 hours, and the share of positive reviews is 81.4%.
Souls-like games by region
As of 2025, APAC is the key region for the genre. Developers from this region released 80% of all projects and account for 97% of total revenue.
US developers performed well in 2022-2023, but Asian developers quickly reclaimed leadership.
Japanese developers are the most successful among Souls-like developers. The leading companies are Bandai Namco and Capcom.
On PlayStation, the ranking includes God of War (2018) and Ghost of Tsushima. In my view, neither project should be classified as Souls-like.
Xbox shows the most diverse lineup of Souls-like projects. This is largely due to Game Pass, as users can try new projects within the subscription.
Chinese players are the core audience for Souls-like projects.
Looking at the audience of the top 20 Souls-like projects on Steam, 47% of players are from China. The US ranks second with 23%. Germany (5%) and Russia (5%) share third place.
Pricing strategy for Souls-like games
Most AAA projects in the genre launched on Steam at prices between $39.99 and $69.99.
GameDiscoverCo: Counter-Strike has been downloaded by more than 318 million people
The information comes from a GameDiscoverCo study on the Steam Deck audience. It is an interesting piece of research that I wrote about a couple of months ago. The data is valid as of October 2025.
Counter-Strike 2 is owned by 318 million Steam users. It is the most popular game on the platform by a wide margin, but you should remember that Counter-Strike 2 replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Dota 2 ranks second with 222.6 million users, PUBG is third with 169.6 million, Team Fortress 2 is fourth with 100.5 million users, and Apex Legends is fifth with 70 million users.
PAYDAY 2 is the highest-ranking paid game on the list (9th place). Interestingly, the project surpassed even the combined Call of Duty distribution on Steam in terms of copies sold (10th place). However, the data was collected before the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, so the positions have most likely changed since then.
The spreadsheet with detailed information is available via the link.
Really solid recap of the gaming market data. The Roblox digital fashion stat where 84% say their avatar style influences real-life choices is wild. That genre crossover happening is dunno if it's genius marketing or just Gen Z being Gen Z, but the 6.3x preferance for Roblox self-expression over social media really shows where community building is headed.