Lion Studios
CompanyUnited States · Founded 2018
Lion Studios is a game publishing studio with offices in San Francisco, Berlin and Shanghai. Since its launch they've published over 140 games, with over 25 reaching 1# in many mobile stores.
Connections
Each row is a game or company named alongside Lion Studios, each column a document, oldest first. A mark means that document names it. Select a row to see those documents.
About the company
- Founded
- 2018
- Country
- United States
- Links
- Official site
Company data from IGDB.com
Key figures from the reports
Tripledot has acquired AppLovin’s games business, adding 10 studios—including Lion Studios, Machine Zone, and PeopleFun—to its portfolio, creating a combined entity with 2,500 employees and an anticipated $2 billion in annual gross revenue.
PocketGamer.biz, 2025 · Week in Mobile Games E52: Tim Sweeney's epic App Store win & Tripledot's $800m AppLovin deal, p. 19
In the hyper-casual segment, Voodoo remained the download leader with 210 million U.S. installs, while AppLovin secured 125 million installs through its Lion Studios division.
Sensor Tower, 2020 · Merger Magic: How M&A Is Shaking Up Category Leaders in Mobile Games
Lion Studios' hyper-casual title 'Save the Girl' dominated April 2020 downloads, securing 41.8 million total installs and ranking 1st on both Google Play (32 million) and iOS (9.8 million).
Game World Observer, 2020 · Top Games by Downloads and Revenue: April 2020
Save The Girl by Lion Studios secured the second position globally with 30.2 million installs, showing a similar geographic concentration in India and Brazil.
Sensor Tower, 2020 · Top Mobile Games Worldwide for June 2020 by Downloads
Save The Girl by Lion Studios was the most downloaded mobile game worldwide in April 2020, recording 50.2 million installs.
Sensor Tower, 2020 · Top Mobile Games Worldwide for April 2020 by Downloads
Documents about Lion Studios
Mobile Game Market Review: April 2026
April 2026 in mobile gaming was shaped by smarter retention mechanics, more cohesive live-ops design, and monetization strategies that increasingly route spending through webstores.
- Casual and midcore titles are increasingly adopting hybrid gameplay models, such as Gossip Harbor’s integration of match-3 and merge progression and Dragon Quest Smash’s blend of roguelite and co-op elements.
- Midcore games like Last Z and MLB Perfect Inning are shifting monetization strategies by replacing direct real-money purchases with webstore-based currency systems.
- Event-driven retention strategies are yielding measurable success, exemplified by Hay Day’s April 2026 milestone-based event, which resulted in record monthly revenue.
Puzzle Monthly #2: Match-3 Is Broken, Pixel Flow Clones, and Royal Kingdom’s Rise
The mobile puzzle market is currently defined by a stagnation of core mechanical innovation, as developers increasingly prioritize polished execution of proven hybrid-casual models over risky gameplay experiments.
- Royal Kingdom has reached a top-four global position with over $300 million in annual revenue, driven by a high-profile, celebrity-led relaunch.
- The mobile puzzle market is characterized by a lack of mechanical innovation, as high user acquisition costs and incumbent dominance force developers to prioritize refining existing models over risky gameplay experiments.
- Royal Kingdom faces significant long-term viability concerns due to its heavy reliance on paid user acquisition, which contrasts with the organic traffic advantage held by established leaders like Candy Crush.
Supercell's Puzzling Gamble, Scopely’s War on Clones, and the Royal Kingdom Problem
Turkish puzzle talent, Supercell's return to Match-3, Scopely's clone enforcement, and Royal Kingdom's economics are the four threads in this April 2026 puzzle market roundup, drawn from a monthly puzzle review.
- Royal Kingdom reached over $300 million in revenue by 2025 and exceeded $30 million in monthly earnings by early 2026, yet its $12 revenue-per-download significantly trails the $45 per-download performance of its predecessor, Royal Match.
- Supercell is utilizing the Hay Day IP to mitigate high user acquisition costs in the Match-3 market, where customer acquisition costs currently exceed $30 per user.
- Venture capital investment is increasingly flowing into European puzzle developers, evidenced by recent seed and pre-seed rounds of $4 million for Vento Games and $4.5 million for Cheer Games.
How Tripledot Built a Scalable, Cross-Studio DTC Ecosystem with Appcharge
Tripledot, a mobile games publisher running 12 studios and more than 2,500 employees across 23 cities, details how it replaced a fragmented direct-to-consumer (DTC) monetization setup with a unified, multi-studio infrastructure built on Appcharge.
- Tripledot Studios, which manages 12 studios and 25 million daily active users, transitioned from a fragmented, inefficient DTC toolchain to a unified Appcharge infrastructure to centralize operations across its portfolio.
- The partnership enabled Tripledot to deploy over 10 direct-to-consumer (DTC) products across its various studios, replacing disparate store management with a centralized backend that allows for game-level granularity.
- Tripledot's primary objectives for the migration were to improve product margins by reducing platform fees, centralize cross-studio operations, and maintain consistent branding and UX across all game titles.
Week in Mobile Games E52: Tim Sweeney's epic App Store win & Tripledot's $800m AppLovin deal
The mobile gaming landscape is undergoing a structural transformation driven by legal challenges to platform monopolies and significant consolidation among major publishers.
- A US court ruling now mandates that Apple must allow developers to link directly to external payment systems on the App Store, a move expected to significantly impact mobile ecosystem revenue tracking and user acquisition strategies.
- Tripledot has acquired AppLovin’s games business, adding 10 studios—including Lion Studios, Machine Zone, and PeopleFun—to its portfolio, creating a combined entity with 2,500 employees and an anticipated $2 billion in annual gross revenue.
- The Tripledot acquisition doubles the company's daily active users to 25 million and expands its footprint to 23 cities, with the firm maintaining a 20% stake in the new venture alongside AppLovin.
AppLovin: The Apex Predator
AppLovin achieved dominance in mobile ad tech by strategically acquiring and integrating key infrastructure, thereby rewriting the industry's platform playbook.
- AppLovin has achieved market dominance by transitioning from a traditional ad network to a vertically integrated infrastructure provider that controls both the mediation layer and the supply-side auction.
- The 2021 acquisition of MoPub was the pivotal strategic move that consolidated AppLovin’s market share and established it as the primary auctioneer for mobile game impressions.
- By integrating its MAX mediation platform with internal user acquisition services, AppLovin has created a structural lock-in that incentivizes developers to use its network to maintain adROAS performance.
Ad Monetization Secrets: Top Mobile Games Printing $$$ in 2025
The mobile gaming landscape in 2025 is defined by a shift toward high-volume ad monetization, where studios prioritize rapid iteration and aggressive ad placement to capture global market share.
- Vietnamese studios like ABI Games are achieving high-scale monetization by utilizing template-based development, where proven game mechanics are rapidly reskinned to target low-CPI markets before expanding to Tier 1 geographies.
- Top-performing titles in the current market, such as 'Dreamy Rooms,' can generate up to $78,000 per day in combined ad and in-app purchase (IAP) revenue by leveraging decorative trends and ultra-casual engagement loops.
- Hyper-casual and hybrid-casual games are increasingly shifting away from misleading 'fake' gameplay ads toward real engagement loops that prioritize high-frequency interstitial ads, sometimes reaching 10 ads per daily active user.
Casual Games Report 2024: Following the 5 Routes to Success
The casual mobile games market in Tier-1 Western countries experienced substantial growth in 2024, with in-app purchase (IAP) revenue increasing by 11.7% year-over-year to $15.2 billion.
- The casual mobile gaming market in Tier-1 Western nations grew revenue by 11.7% in 2024, despite rising user acquisition costs necessitating a shift toward complex meta-layers and data-driven LiveOps.
- The Merge-2 with Meta segment is the fastest-growing category, recording a 106% surge in growth as competition among top-tier titles intensifies.
- The Casual Casino sector is highly consolidated, with three dominant titles capturing approximately 80% of total revenue and high barriers to entry limiting new releases.
U.S. Mobile Puzzle Game Spending: Year-Over-Year Analysis
U.S. mobile Puzzle game player spending grew 4.2 percent year-over-year to roughly $5 billion for the April 2021 to March 2022 period, according to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates.
- U.S. mobile puzzle game spending increased by 4.2% year-over-year to $5 billion between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, making it the No. 1 revenue-generating genre in the U.S. during this period.
- Classic Match 3 games, including Candy Crush Saga and Candy Crush Soda Saga, generated $1.6 billion, representing a 12.3% year-over-year increase, and led all 11 Puzzle subcategories in revenue.
- Candy Crush Saga was the top-grossing Puzzle game in the U.S. during the last year, generating $845.5 million.
Store Intelligence Data Digest: Q1 2022
Sensor Tower's Q1 2022 digest charts global mobile app and game performance across the App Store and Google Play, with regional views for the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia.
- Global app downloads reached 36.9 billion in Q1 2022, a 1.4% year-over-year increase, with mobile gaming accounting for 14.34 billion of those installs.
- The U.S. video streaming market has significantly fragmented, with the top three apps' market share dropping from 80% in 2019 to 37% in Q1 2022 due to the rise of competitors like Disney+ and HBO Max.
- TikTok surpassed 3.5 billion all-time downloads to become the top global app, while Meta reclaimed its position as the leading global publisher for the first time in two years.
Top Mobile Games Worldwide for February 2021 by Downloads
Hyper-casual titles dominated worldwide mobile game downloads in February 2021, according to Sensor Tower's Store Intelligence estimates.
- Join Clash 3D from Supersonic Studios was the most downloaded mobile game worldwide in February 2021 with approximately 27 million installs, marking a 170-fold increase compared to February 2020.
- Zynga achieved its best month ever for mobile game downloads with 80.5 million global installs, driven by the success of its hyper-casual titles High Heels (24.4 million downloads) and Blob Runner 3D (14.2 million downloads).
- High Heels was the second most installed game globally, with India and the United States accounting for 23.3 percent and 20.3 percent of its total downloads, respectively.
What Genres Were Booming in 2020
Mobile game genre shifts in 2020 are analyzed using AppMagic's classification of more than 250,000 tagged titles, in the fourth edition of this annual research.
- The mobile gaming market in 2020 remained highly sensitive to blockbuster releases, exemplified by Genshin Impact generating $520 million in its first four months and PUBG Mobile reaching $3 billion in lifetime revenue.
- Among Us experienced viral growth in 2020, recording a 735% surge in monthly downloads by September.
- Tier-1 Eastern markets saw sharp revenue spikes in the Battler subgenre, while Third-Person Shooters maintained dominance through established titles like PUBG Mobile.