Top Grossing Mobile Games Worldwide: May 2022

The mobile gaming industry experienced a contraction in May 2022, with global player spending across the Apple App Store and Google Play reaching $6.8 billion, an 8 percent decrease compared to the previous year. The United States remained the leading market for mobile game revenue, contributing $1.9 billion or 28 percent of the global total, followed by China at 20.4 percent and Japan at 17.8 percent. These findings are derived from the Store Intelligence platform, which tracks gross user spending across major app marketplaces, excluding third-party Android stores.

Tencent’s Honor of Kings maintained its position as the top-grossing mobile game worldwide, generating approximately $268 million in player spending, a 1.7 percent year-over-year increase. The majority of this revenue originated from China. PUBG Mobile, also published by Tencent, secured the second spot with $206.3 million in gross revenue. The remainder of the top five highest-earning titles included Candy Crush Saga, Genshin Impact, and Coin Master.

Specific performance trends were noted for Genshin Impact, which saw its second-lowest monthly revenue at $99.7 million, a 20.6 percent decline from the prior year. This downturn was largely attributed to regional COVID-19 lockdowns affecting development cycles and a lack of significant content updates for most of the month. However, the title experienced a notable surge in spending following the release of a major update on May 31, demonstrating the impact of content cadence on mobile game monetization.