2026's top games so far, Raid's new rival plus nuggets from Google, Ubisoft, Stillfront and more

Hello and welcome to the mobilegamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's going on in the mobile games industry. Here we go. I finally got around to publishing these top 10 lists of the year so far. Courtesy of AppMagic, of course, top 10 grossing and top 10 downloads for January to June of 2026. Let's start with top grossing because people like reading about money. Honor of Kings 1 billion in in-app purchase revenue so far this year, according to these estimates. That is a lot of money and nearly 300 million dollars ahead of the number two contender, Whiteout Survival, on 723 million. A little way after that is Last War: Survival. So, the top three, all Chinese-made games. One MOBA, two 4X strategy games. In the

sort of analysis that I've done alongside these charts, I do note that Honor of Kings had an insane January, 194 million, but it has declined a little bit since then. Whiteout Survival, pretty steady, but about 110 million a month for that one for the first half of 2026. But Last War is declining pretty rapidly. Had a big January and February, but has been in decline since then. Only 71 million in in-app purchase revenue in June, according to AppMagic. Not really sure why this is happening. Maybe they're pushing people into web shops. Maybe there's just been a decline in live ops and other support for that game. Email in if you do know what's going on there, but in fourth, Dream Games' Royal Match, $680 million so far

for January to June. That is really steady, about 100 million a month for that one. PUBG Mobile, very spiky game, earned a whopping 133 million in February, but has fallen away considerably each month after that. Gossip Harbor ahead of a Roblox for the first half of 2026. This Micro Fun Merge Puzzle is doing really well. Another made in China production. Roblox pretty muted, I say in the article. First half of 2026 for that one. There's no mega hit like Royal Garden or still a brain rot in Roblox happening. So, it's actually down on 2025. Scopely's in-app purchase revenue from Monopoly Go suddenly dropped very quickly in February this year and has continued at the same sort of level. You receive that is web shop shenanigans there. King's Candy Crush Saga, couple of blips in January and June, but

generally earns about 95 million per month according to these numbers. And then rounding out the top 10, King Shot, Century Games' second game in the top 10 grossing charts for the first half of 2026. Really steady growth and huge spend on user acquisition ads, if my TikTok feed is anything to go by. Further numbers and analysis in the article. Have a look. Let's rattle through downloads as well quickly. Free Fire Max, top download for the first half of 2026 according to these App Magic estimates, 148 million downloads. Ahead of what I assumed would be number one, Block Blast. Some interesting context around this one. Free Fire obviously was the big maven mobile battle royale that was already a success before Fortnite was pulled from the stores, but
[snorts]
really took off after it as well

alongside PUBG mobile and a couple of other Battle Royale games, but Free Fire Max, which is higher end in terms of graphics and tech, that was introduced as a accompanying version of Free Fire that is now getting downloaded way, way more than the original Free Fire. So, seems like tech has finally caught up with Free Fire Max and Garena is pushing people into that game rather than Free Fire. Block Blast, the game I and probably many others assumed would be number one here, that has been dipping pretty drastically since February-March time, but as I note in the piece, that same thing happened in spring-summer time of 2025. So, maybe Hungry Studio saves up all of its UA dollars for the start and end of each year. Roblox

is in third, 124 million downloads for the year-to-date, noticeably down compared to the same period for 2025, but as I note in the analysis here, maybe the biggest story in terms of downloads for the first half of the year is these Arrows games. Miniclip {slash} Less More's Arrows Puzzle Escape, 108 million downloads for the first half of 2026, and then Learnings {slash} Okeda Games is Arrows Go, now known as Amaze Go, 75 million downloads for the first half of 2026. So, both of these titles duking it out in that new category of puzzler, I'm told that the Less More Miniclip game was the originator of this and learnings kind of followed on pretty quickly after that. But yeah, both of these games doing really big numbers, particularly in

India, not so much in more developed Western markets, US, Europe, etc. I kind of skipped over Subway Surfers, Ludo King, Vita Mahjong and Pizza Ready who are in the five to eight spots because there's not much to say about these games. They're incredibly consistent and there's no real ups and downs to note there. But I do put in a special word for Voodoo. paper.io 2 has been on a decent run since the end of 2025 and now pulls in 10 to 12 million downloads per month. So that sneaks in at number 10 with 68 million downloads for the first half of 2026. All the numbers and further analysis in the article. Have a look. This has been a popular story. The headline is a Raid: Shadow Legends super fan is

taking on Plarium with his own squad RPG. This is about Simon Lockerbie. He set up a YouTube channel and website which was mainly a sort of fan site for Raid: Shadow Legends. It's called HellHades and as things developed, he started adding game tips and tricks and strategy pointers for super engaged Raid players. And the thing took on a life of its own. It became his full-time job. And Lockerbie told me that after a while his community said, "Why don't you make a game a bit like Raid: Shadow Legends?" So they did. He set up a studio called Fateless with his business partner Dan Francis and Hisham Saleh, who is the former CEO of indie studio Skeleton Hand. He is the development brains behind the operation. Simon is the face of it.

And Fateless did the rounds with angel investors and its community, raised quite a bit of money. 14 million in funding to date. They've now got 70 staff and they are making this game God Forge, which is their spin on Raid Shadow Legends. Deeper character customization. More modes and options for those who do not want to pay money, but as Lockerbie says, they already have a massive community of Raid players who actually spend a ton of money in that game. So, when they do launch, he says user acquisition will be a lot easier for them compared to lots of other new titles. And they sound pretty confident that they can take games like Raid and Etheria Restart and Summoners War and do that for their own community. So, yeah. God Forge still in development. I don't think there's a firm release date on it just yet, but

that one is coming soon and could be one to take on the mighty Plarium and Raid Shadow Legends.
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This week's slice of Google-related news is a $1 billion fine from the EU for Play Store and search shenanigans, as we've put it in the headline. So, the European Commission has fined Google 890 million euros, which works out about a billion dollars,

for antitrust practices, including making it difficult for developers to steer consumers towards web stores. Half of that fine is also to do with prioritizing its own search across its suite of search products. Google has been ordered to allow app developers to, quote, freely communicate, promote offers, and conclude contracts with the users not only within, but also outside the Google Play app store. Google has 60 days to comply, or it will get further fines and penalties, which is a percentage of its annual turnover, which is, obviously, a huge amount of money. So, Google, after tweaking its app store fees and loosening the rules on third-party app stores, this week's story is that the EU is not happy with its practices, and it's got a $1 billion fine. So, tune in next week for more Google shenanigans.
Ubisoft's Invincible: Guarding the Globe game is doing pretty well. Its growth

has pushed up mobile game revenue to 19% of its overall revenue. That is up from 10% in the prior year for the same quarter. No mention of the Division or Rainbow Six mobile games that came out a few months back. I haven't looked at the numbers for those games, but I've got a feeling they may not last too much longer. But, yeah. Invincible: Guarding of on the other hand doing the business for Ubisoft in mobile. Another one from financials season, Stillfront is still looking for a new CEO. Alexis Bonte is stepping down as announced last quarter. They have not announced a new CEO yet. The Stockholm-listed mobile game group posted Q2 net revenue over $136 million.

Adjusted EBITDA, aka profitability, climbed to about $40 million for the quarter, up a little bit from $38.6 million the prior year. In the earnings press release, Stillfront was very keen to point out that its key franchises grew 10% organically, a second straight quarter of double-digit growth. But its legacy games are dragging the average down. Smaller games fell 24%. Empire grew 2%. Empire Titans and Dragons is in development. Albion Online grew 10%. Jawaker, up 11%, and the company also confirmed that the strategic review announced a few months back is still ongoing. So, there may be further closures and studio sales there. And they still don't have a CEO. Another kind of surprisingly popular story, Devolver re-releasing former Netflix

exclusive Poinpy for free. This is a really good mobile game from the maker of Downwell, a Japanese indie developer called Ojiro Fumoto. This game was originally revealed by Geoff Keighley himself during Netflix's Geek Week in 2022. This was a Netflix exclusive, did really well critically, but as we know in the outcome, no one really downloaded it. And now that exclusivity contract has expired, it seems that Formoto decided to just release the game for free. No in-app purchases, no ads, but you can tip the developer if you really like the game. So, Point P, a real banger, completely free and out now on iOS and Android. Another quick one on Monopoly Go, the new season for the Scopely mega-hit is going to be based on Looney Tunes

characters. So, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, et cetera, will be taking over from the big Simpsons takeover that's been running since June. Maybe a little bit of a step down in terms of IP, but we shall see. New season for Monopoly Go is based on Looney Tunes. That runs from now until September. Let's rattle through data digest, shall we? Papaya has been ordered to pay Skills $719 million in damages. So, these are two sort of rival competitive gaming firms. Skills, which is now a subsidiary of a company called Skillz, they took Papaya Gaming to court and won the case. Initially, they were set to get about $420 million after a ruling in April, but that has now gone up to a whopping $719 million. I thought this was quite good fun.

The triumphant quote from Skillz CEO and founder Andrew Paradise read, "Papaya could not beat us fairly, so it used bots to fake the competition we invented. This judgment sets the record straight."
[laughter]
So, yeah. An appropriately fiery quote from the CEO. The court found that roughly $4.7 billion of the payouts advertised by Papaya between 2021 and 2024 were paid out to the firm's own bots and not to players. So, that's the crux of that court case. Elsewhere in data digest, more at magic numbers, match three dominates the casual category for the first half of 2026. Match three is 22% of revenue in the casual category. Full top 10 casual games in that list to look at there. Capcom's mobile net sales up 20% year-on-year. Candy Crush got a World Cup final boost

according to some figures from King. Ludus Merge Arena, 50 million in net revenue since launch 2 years ago. Palo Alto Networks has snapped up Embrace, the maker of real user monitoring software. There's stats from June, courtesy of Sensor Tower. And you've got Neon, the direct-to-consumer web shop platform. They raised $13 million in a series A funding round. PUBG publisher Krafton was a strategic investor. More stats and figures and detail in the article. Have a look. The last few regulars this week, new game digest, there was Don't Starve, DCK, Toca Boca, Point P, Gangstar. There's also the soft launches from Tencent, Take-Two owned Popcore and Super Cent in last Friday's new game round up. That is always on the site every Friday if you want to keep abreast of what's going

out and hitting soft launch. And in the jobs digest, we have moves and promotions at Scopely, Lil Snack, Playdemic, SciPlay Games, Quacks, and Nordeus. That one runs every other Monday. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.