Mobile reports and market data
3,854 game industry reports, presentations and talks about mobile from writers such as PocketGamer.biz, Two & a Half Gamers and Deconstructor of Fun, newest from 2026. Every document has a summary and key insights with the page they come from, and 21,905 charts and tables are extracted as data.
Key figures
The Southeast Asian mobile gaming market saw a 19.7% year-over-year increase in active advertisers in 2026, signaling a rapidly maturing ecosystem.
SocialPeta, 2026 · 2026 Southeast Asia Mobile Game Marketing Report, p. 7
The sector reaches 46 percent of online consumers aged 13 to 55 on a monthly basis, driven by a low-friction, mobile-first, free-to-play model.
Newzoo, 2026 · How to Win with H5 Gamers, p. 10
The genre appeals to a broad demographic, with 60% of mobile gamers having played a top farming title, including 73% of RPG players and 65% of console gamers.
Bryter, 2026 · Farming Sims: Cultivating Long-term Engagement, p. 4
In 2025, the global video games industry generated €167.26 billion, with mobile games accounting for over half of that total at €91.25 billion.
King, 2026 · Mobile Matters: The Impact of Mobile Games for Europe, p. 5
Vietnam's mobile IAP revenue grew by 3.13% MoM in May 2026, driven by strong monetization in long-lifecycle genres like Battle Royale, MOBA, and Sim Sports rather than new user acquisition.
Gamota, 2026 · Vietnam Game Industry Monthly Report: May 2026, p. 5
Documents
🚜 Bulldozer Master: ~$70K a Day & Looks like a weekend prototype
Bulldozer Master, a simple idle-friendly mining game from Supercent, is presented as a case study in how a game can scale rapidly without high production values.
- Bulldozer Master, a simple idle mining game from Supercent, reportedly reached about 200K downloads and 600K daily active users per day after launching in August, with US DAU near 50K and most traffic from India, Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia.
- The game reportedly generates about $70K per day, of which roughly $58K (about 80%) comes from rewarded ads and about $10K from in-app purchases, making advertising the dominant revenue driver.
- Ad creatives are identified as the core growth lever, with reusable visual themes such as rotating rings or arrows and gameplay designed around what performs well in ads, suggesting visual polish is not required for strong ad performance.
The Top 50 Mobile Game Makers of 2026 and Pokémon Unite ends service | Week in Mobile Games podcast
PocketGamer.biz's annual Top 50 Mobile Game Makers list for 2026 places Scopely at the top, driven by the continued success of Monopoly Go, a summer resurgence for Pokémon Go, and an expansion into casual games through Loom Games.
- Scopely tops PocketGamer.biz's 2026 Top 50 Mobile Game Makers list, driven by Monopoly Go's continued success, a summer resurgence for Pokémon Go, and expansion into casual games via Loom Games.
- Roughly 37 of the 50 companies on the list have ties to Turkey, China or other Eastern markets through ownership, bases or partnerships, including most of the top ten.
- An estimated 30 percent of mobile game revenue is reportedly shifting toward direct-to-consumer channels, which is harder to measure.
TWIG #407: Roblox’s Steal Economy, Tim Sweeney Goes All In on AI and Xbox Loses Its COO
Roblox's "steal" games dominate much of the current discussion around the platform's revenue and stock outlook.
- Phil Black claims Roblox's 'steal' games such as Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot generated roughly half of Roblox's 2025 revenue, a figure the hosts push back on due to limited revenue visibility, and several top games have seen daily users fall by more than 90%, so these hits are seen as volatile compared with Roblox's evergreen titles.
- Steam's AI disclosure data shows the share of releases disclosing AI use rising from about 10% in 2024 to roughly 34% year to date in 2026, with art as the most common application at around 80% of disclosures.
- The hosts argue AI is advancing faster in engineering than in art, and that AI-assisted creation is already inevitable, with Tim Sweeney taking a clearly pro-AI position.
Those ‘decompiling’ videos, iPhone Duo games, Bing Gordon talks EA, Zynga and AI plus plenty more
This episode of the mobilegamer.biz podcast offers a weekly digest of mobile games industry news, delivered by founder and editor Neil Long.
- Viral videos from data scientist Ayo Awotona claim to reverse-engineer Block Blast, Candy Crush Saga, and Subway Surfers to show how they profile players and tune difficulty and ad timing for monetisation; industry insiders may find the techniques unsurprising, but the videos may reinforce perceptions of mobile games as manipulative, and the named companies had not responded at recording time.
- Tencent's Pokémon-like title Roco Kingdom, reportedly with around 300 million players in China, is heading to a Western closed beta with a full release planned for 2027.
- Tencent's TiMi is closing Pokémon Unite after an estimated $75 million in lifetime revenue.
🚙 30 Rewarded Ads, No Daily Cap: How Hill Climb Racing 2 Monetizes 2.5 Billion Downloads
Hill Climb Racing 2 is presented as a case study in rewarded-video-led monetization, with the game's physics-based arcade driving and layered power progression supporting a revenue mix of roughly 70 percent in-app purchases and 30 percent advertising.
- Hill Climb Racing 2 reportedly earns about 70% of revenue from in-app purchases and about 30% from advertising, with a parts gacha system driving most purchases.
- The developers run nearly thirty rewarded ad placements, many without daily caps, based on the view that paying users also watch ads heavily.
- Interstitial testing showed little retention impact even when frequency was delayed or reduced, while a 180-second cooldown after rewarded views reportedly lifted earnings by encouraging higher-eCPM rewarded impressions.
The Games Market Is Growing. Or Is It?
The global games market is experiencing a period of stagnation when adjusted for inflation, with real-term growth estimated at approximately 2% annually.
- The global games market is experiencing stagnation, with real-term growth adjusted for inflation at only 2% annually despite higher nominal figures.
- Market revenue is highly concentrated, with just five companies responsible for nearly all recent industry gains.
- Consumer spending on PC and console platforms is heavily risk-averse, with 93% of revenue directed toward existing titles rather than new intellectual property.
Rewarded Ads Pay Back in 30 Days for Small Studios
In this interview, Tatem Games CEO and founder Igor Karev discusses how his studio, active in mobile games since 2009 and running rewarded advertising for roughly eight years, treats rewarded as a profitable user acquisition channel.
- Rewarded advertising can reach payback within about 30 days, which is especially valuable for smaller studios that cannot sustain the longer paybacks typical of conventional performance campaigns, though results depend on the game, funnel and network.
- Rewarded users behave differently from standard players, so products, data infrastructure and onboarding must be adapted to fit them rather than reusing standard player assumptions.
- Players in Japan engage with rewarded placements far more deeply and for longer than in Western markets, which Tatem links to cultural familiarity with reward-based systems, so campaigns are optimized by geography and by network.
Why Friends Keep Players Longer Than Features Do I Jules Shumaker, CRO of Discord
Discord functions as a critical growth engine for the gaming industry by transforming social connectivity into a primary driver of player retention and discovery.
- Integrating social SDKs increases day-28 player retention by 31% and adds an average of 1.5 play days per month for connected users.
- Discord serves as a primary discovery channel for the gaming industry, with one-third of its 90 million daily active users finding new titles through their social circles.
- The platform’s advertising model, including rewarded experiences, maintains high conversion rates across both free and paying user segments.
🦆 Duck Survival: The Legend of Mushroom Team Plays a 4X Game Without the 4X Map
The discussion centers on Duck Survival, a mobile game that the hosts describe as a 4X-style title lacking a traditional 4X map but built on a roguelite tower-defense core borrowed heavily from Kingshot.
- Duck Survival, a 4X-style mobile game built on a roguelite tower-defense core borrowed heavily from Kingshot, reportedly launched with about 270,000 daily downloads and is now the publisher's largest Western title, though the hosts cannot verify revenue by store.
- The game layers the full Legend of Mushroom monetization framework (capture mechanics, gacha, and account-age gating) over an early honeymoon phase of abundant resources and rewarded ads that gives way to grinding or spending once progression walls appear.
- Revenue growth came from expansion out of Taiwan and South Korea into Japan, a market driven largely by iOS, while the United States contributes roughly 20 percent of revenue and ad income is estimated at around 50,000 per day, likely with a large share from Russia.
EA shuts down BioWare and Supercell buys Metacore | Week in Mobile Games
The mobile gaming industry is currently navigating a period of significant structural change, characterized by studio closures, strategic acquisitions, and a shift in how developers approach user acquisition and market viability.
- Electronic Arts is closing BioWare and laying off approximately 400 employees to prioritize established live-service franchises like Apex Legends and Battlefield over high-budget single-player projects.
- Supercell has fully acquired Metacore, the developer of Merge Mansion, to bring the title under direct management following a long-standing financial partnership.
- Mika Games has launched a $10 million funding initiative specifically designed to support mobile studios during the soft-launch phase by financing user acquisition testing.
🧩 Zero Logic, 2.5M DAU: Brain Puzzle 2 Makes $83K/Day With the Dumbest Ad Setup We’ve Ever Seen
Brain Puzzle 2: Logic Twist demonstrates the commercial viability of high-volume, low-complexity mobile gaming by achieving 2.5 million daily active users and generating approximately $83,000 in daily ad revenue.
- Brain Puzzle 2 generates $83,000 in daily ad revenue from 2.5 million daily active users by prioritizing high-volume acquisition over long-term player retention.
- The game achieves profitability in under 30 days by targeting tier-3 markets like Brazil, India, and Indonesia, where cost-per-install metrics remain low at $0.10 to $0.20.
- The studio maintains a relentless creative pipeline by deploying 4,000 unique advertisements every month to drive continuous user influx.
Apple app review woes, EA job cuts, Supercell, Monopoly Go and more
The mobile gaming industry is currently navigating significant operational shifts, ranging from platform-level bottlenecks to major corporate restructuring.
- Apple’s App Store review times have extended from 24–48 hours to several weeks due to a surge in AI-generated submissions, disrupting developer roadmaps while Google Play remains unaffected.
- Scopely emerged as the top-earning U.S. publisher in Q3 with $507 million in revenue, bolstered by Monopoly Go, which generated $41 million in Q3 licensing earnings for Hasbro.
- Electronic Arts is cutting 400 jobs, representing 3% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring plan following its transition to private ownership.