Weekly Reports Recap: June 7 - June 11
Top Games by Downloads and Revenue; ATT and iOS 14.5 numbers; Finnish & UK game markets review & more.
It was a hot week with many insights & market data from various sources. In this recap:
AppMagic: Top games by Downloads and Revenue in May 2021
GameRefinery: Collection System in Games
IDC & LoopMe: 75% of pandemic-driven gamers will continue playing games
AppsFlyer: iOS 14 & ATT in gaming (June 8)
Sensor Tower: Top Grossing Mobile Games in May 2021
Tenjin: Publishers started to buy more Android traffic after iOS 14.5 release
Ofcom: 62% of adults in the UK have played games in 2020
Finnish Game Industry 2020 Report
SocialPeta: The number of mobile gaming advertisers in some regions is decreasing
Adjust: Hypercasual installs increased by 76% in Q1 2021
GlobalData: Mobile Gaming Market will reach $272 billion in 2030
Newzoo: 38% of Apex Legends PC players also playing CS: GO and Valorant
Sensor Tower: Top Mobile Games by Downloads in May 2021
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AppMagic: Top games by Downloads and Revenue in May 2021
Downloads
The most popular game of the month is Hair Challenge from Rollic Games. It had 37 million downloads in Google Play and 6 million in App Store in May.
Bounce and Collect from Voodoo reached 10.3 million downloads (5.1 million came from iOS).
Muscle Rush from SayGames managed to get 13.9 million downloads in Google Play.
Turkish company Alictus with their Rob Master 3D received 3.2 million downloads on iOS.
Revenue
The most successful game of May was PUBG Mobile. It had $148 million of revenue, $119.5 million of which came from iOS.
The top Google Play game by revenue was Garena Free Fire with $59 million. iOS platform generated $22 million of revenue for the developers.
Coin Master had $44 million Android revenue and $29 iOS revenue in May 2021.
Genshin Impact reached $94 million of revenue ($57 million - from iOS; $37 million - from Android). Important to mention, that Android game revenue increased by $13 million compared to the previous month.
GameRefinery: Collection System in Games
72% of top-100 US games by Revenue this year has the collectibles mechanics. In February 2017 there were only 21% of projects with such mechanics.
GameRefinery tells that collectible mechanics is a great way to increase user retention and monetize them more efficiently. Plus, many people just like to collect things, which changes the user experience with a game for the better.
In the full version you can find the best examples of collectible mechanics: sticker album from Board Kings; weapon gallery from Pixel Gun 3D; heroes collection from Marvel Strike Force and many more with a description of how the collectible mechanics implemented in very each project.
IDC & LoopMe: 75% of pandemic-driven gamers will continue playing games
The survey was made across 3,850 smartphone users in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Brazil, and Singapore.
75% is an approximate number. It’s based on respondents answers in the interview, where they were asked about how their gaming behavior will change after the pandemic.
38% of interviewed told that they will play a little or a lot less after the pandemic. 24% of respondents, in reverse, are planning to play more.
63% of all interviewed mentioned that they played more during the pandemic.
About 6% of current gamers haven’t played games before the pandemic.
The number of gamers in 2020 increased by 12% compared to 2019. It’s about 2.25 billion players.
AppsFlyer: iOS 14 & ATT in gaming (June 8)
Around 25% of all gaming apps have integrated the ATT framework. It’s an increase from 22% a week before.
As of 8 June, 27% of users have switched to iOS 14.5. A week before only 13% updated their system.
The best ATT framework penetration is showing hardcore and social casino games - 33%. Midcore titles are in between with 27% penetration. Casual and hypercasual titles have the smallest share of apps with ATT - 20%.
It’s interesting, that the ads spending in the hardcore segment increased since the IDFA.
The only segment, where ads spending share has changed is hypercasual. Publishers started to buy more traffic on Android.
Sensor Tower: Top Grossing Mobile Games in May 2021
Number one by revenue is Honor of Kings from Tencent with $264.5 million earned in May (+13% YoY growth). 95% of all money comes from China.
The second place belongs to PUBG Mobile from the very same Tencent with $258 million revenue (+5.2% YoY growth). In this case, China is accounted for 56.6% of all revenue, while has an 11% share.
Garena Free Fire had the very best month in history. The game revenue reached $107 million - it’s 29.4% more than this April and 19.4% more than this March.
Tenjin: Publishers started to buy more Android traffic after iOS 14.5 release
After the iOS 14.5 release, the iOS bought traffic share decreased from 52% to 48%. As for Android, contrary, it raised from 48% to 52%.
iOS 14.5 just speeded up the trend. In 2019 Android had the 36% of paid traffic share, in 2020 it had 40%.
Tenjin experts don’t see any reason for this trend to stop. By their assumptions, it will lead to a CPI increase on Android.
Ofcom: 62% of adults in the UK have played games in 2020
In the age of 16 to 24, the vast majority - 92% - played games. Almost half of all gamers told that it helped them to deal with lockdown troubles.
The smartphone is the most popular gaming device, it is used by 39% of adult gamers. PC & consoles are more preferred by younger generations.
Men and women are playing games in more or less similar proportions. But women more likely to play on smartphones (43% of respondents), while men are more likely to prefer consoles (32% of respondents) or PC (29% of respondents).
Half of UK gamers play only F2P games.
1/3 of all respondents have paid for a game, in-app, or subscription for the last 30 days.
PS Plus is the most popular subscription in the UK with a 3M userbase. Xbox Live Gold has 1.9 million subscribers, Xbox Game Pass - 1.7 million, Nintendo Switch Online - 1.3 million.
46% of all online games revenue comes from mobile devices. 32% comes from consoles and 22% from PC.
3/4 of adolescents between the age of 5 to 15 have played online games in 2020.
70% of gamers age 8 to 11 used online chat. 48% of this segment were experienced harassment actions.
Finnish Game Industry 2020 Report
Finnish gaming industry turnover reached €2.4 billion in 2020. It’s 9% growth compared to 2019.
There are more than 200 studios working in Finland. 46 of them have more than €1 million in revenue (it’s +35% compared to 2018).
More than 3,600 employees are currently working in the Finnish gaming industry. 28% of them are working remotely from other countries. 22% are women. In 2021 companies plans to hire 400-1,000 people more.
Link to the full 152 pages report.
SocialPeta: The number of mobile gaming advertisers in some regions is decreasing
SocialPeta tracked numbers for the first 5 months of 2021.
The number of advertisers decreased in Europe, Southeast Asia, CIS, South America, Japan & South Korea, and the Middle East.
As for North America and Oceania, the number of advertisers increased. Which made the global rating growing.
But all the graphics telling the same story - when Apple released iOS 14.5, the number of advertisers started to fall down.
Adjust: Hypercasual installs increased by 76% in Q1 2021
Session numbers in hypercasual from Q4 2020 to Q1 2021 increased by 32%.
In Russia hypercasual installs have increased by 64% in Q1 2021 compared to Q4 2020 with sessions growth of 13%.
As for all gaming genres, installs grew by 27%, sessions - by 7%. It’s fair to assume that hypercasual titles drove the growth globally.
Russia is within the installs growth rate - it had +24% in Q1 2021 compared to Q4 2020. But Russian players are playing more than twice more often compared to global trends. Sessions number increased by 18%.
GlobalData: Mobile Gaming Market will reach $272 billion in 2030
The compound annual growth rate is projected to be 11%.
Last year mobile games were accountable for 57% of all revenue of the gaming market.
GlobalData analytics names 5G, cybersport increasing popularity, and increasing mobile platforms technical power (to be able to launch complicated games) as the main growth drivers.
Newzoo: 38% of Apex Legends PC players also playing CS: GO and Valorant
Newzoo is explaining by numbers, why Respawn Entertainment decided to add a new “Arena” mode with fast 3vs3 battles on small maps.
The reason is that 38% of Apex Legends PC audience also playing CS: GO and Valorant. Developers decided that they might want to see the mode which is similar to those games.
37% of the new Apex Legends audience, that is playing CS: GO and Valorant, came to the game only after the mode release.
Apex Legends had 22.6M MAU in May 2021 - 12.8M on consoles and 9.78 million on PC.
15% of Valorant PC audience churned to Apex Legends in May 2021. With the CS: GO 10.4% of the audience churned to Apex Legends.
Around half of Apex Legends players are male under the age of 35.
Sensor Tower: Top Mobile Games by Downloads in May 2021
Hair Challenge from Rollic Games (Zynga) was the most downloaded game with 36.5 million downloads. 22.4% of this number came from India, 7.5% - from Brazil.
Bridge Race from Supersonic Studios with 32.3 million downloads was second. India generated 18.5% of downloads, Brazil - 8%.
Fashion genre popularity is increasing. This month 3 games (High Heels, Makeover Run & Hair Challenge) were in the top-10 overall ranking. Cumulatively, they generated 65 million downloads. Plus, Project Makeover was number 4 on App Store downloads charts with 4 million.
There were 3 non-hypercasual games in the overall ranking this month - Garena Free Fire, Subway Surfers, and Candy Crush Saga.