Southeast Asia reports and market data
Documents
Vietnam’s Rise Is the most inspiring story in Gaming by Felix Braberg
Vietnam has emerged as a significant force in the global mobile gaming industry, characterized by a rapid expansion in both the number of active studios and their collective revenue generation.
- Vietnam has established itself as a global mobile gaming powerhouse, with OneSoft currently ranking as the third-largest publisher worldwide by download volume.
- The local ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with the number of Vietnamese studios achieving over one million monthly downloads increasing by 64%—from 44 to 72—in just five months.
- Vietnamese studios are successfully pivoting from ad-supported hypercasual models to more sustainable in-app purchase (IAP) revenue streams.
FPS Strike Ops: Modern Arena gameplay breakdown - PvP Offline Shooter FTW!
FPS Strike Ops: Modern Arena functions as a high-volume mobile shooter that captures a massive audience by prioritizing accessibility and performance on low-end hardware.
- FPS Strike generates $30,000 to $50,000 daily with over 4 million DAU, primarily through video and interstitial ads, despite having almost zero IAP revenue.
- The game’s ad stack is significantly under-optimized, missing key networks like AppLovin, Mintegral, Imobi, and Yandex, which could increase revenue by 30% to 100%.
- Growth is driven almost entirely by organic reach—including millions of TikTok and YouTube videos—rather than paid user acquisition or formal creative testing.
Southeast Asia: Mobile Game Market Insights 2025
Southeast Asia solidified its position as the world’s second-largest mobile gaming market by downloads in early 2025, reaching 1.93 billion installs.
- Southeast Asia is the world’s second-largest mobile gaming market by volume, recording 1.93 billion installs in early 2025, while ranking seventh globally in revenue at $625 million.
- Indonesia is the region's primary volume driver with 870 million installs, whereas Thailand leads in monetization, generating $162 million in consumer spending.
- Publishers based in Singapore and Vietnam have become a dominant global force, contributing over 5.8 billion installs to the international market through hypercasual and competitive titles.
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.
Let’s Play! 2024: The Esports Market in Southeast Asia
The report examines the esports market across Southeast Asia (SEA) for 2024, drawing on a summer-2024 consumer survey of 14,250 respondents representing the region’s online population aged 16–65.
- Southeast Asia is the world's largest esports market by reach at 75%, though regular viewership remains limited to 32% of the total audience.
- Mobile gaming drives 55% of all esports consumption in the region, fueling a shift toward digital-first platforms like YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming, and local streaming services.
- The audience is predominantly young, with 81% of viewers belonging to the Millennial or Gen Z generations, and features a 43% female viewership share.
Screwdom 3D Is PRINTING MONEY! 💸 Vietnam’s Game Devs Just Raised the Bar
Screwdom 3D represents a significant evolution in the hybrid-casual gaming landscape, demonstrating how Vietnamese developers are successfully scaling sophisticated puzzle titles.
- Screwdom 3D is a hybrid-casual title generating approximately $3.6 million in monthly revenue, split roughly 40% from in-app purchases (IAP) and 60% from ad revenue.
- The game utilizes a physics-based core mechanic where players must manipulate and 'wiggle' 3D objects to clear levels, drawing design inspiration from titles like Screw Jam and Pinout Master.
- Despite being in a scaling phase with limited penetration in the US market, the game is achieving significant traction in Tier 2, 3, and 4 countries, with daily IAP revenue reaching approximately $200,000.
Rise of Vietnam: Mobile Gaming Boom—Key Players, Winning Strategies & What’s Next
Vietnam has rapidly ascended to become a global mobile gaming powerhouse, with the domestic industry projected to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025.
- Vietnam’s mobile gaming industry is projected to exceed $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025, supported by a consistent 30 percent year-over-year growth rate.
- Local studios including iKame, Brave Stars, and ABI Games have become top global publishers by prioritizing high-scale, ad-monetized ultra-casual and super-casual titles.
- The industry’s success is driven by a collaborative ecosystem where developers share data and gameplay templates to maintain lean production models and high user retention.
Gaming Growth Unlocked: Insights on Distribution, Payments, and Regulations in Asia
The mobile gaming landscape in Asia is undergoing a fundamental transformation as publishers increasingly pivot toward out-of-app distribution and alternative payment solutions.
- Alternative distribution channels generated $6 billion in Asian mobile gaming revenue in 2024, representing one-third of the region's total market.
- Publishers are shifting to web-based stores and alternative payment solutions to bypass high app store fees and address low credit card penetration.
- Direct-to-consumer strategies are being adopted to improve conversion rates and reach demographic segments underserved by traditional app store ecosystems.
Interview with Yi Yuan, at Hiverlab: Southeast Asia
The interview underscores a shift in Southeast Asia’s convergent-content market from speculative metaverse enthusiasm to a pragmatic, ROI-driven landscape where augmented reality has become the primary vehicle for marketing and tourism initiatives.
- Southeast Asia’s convergent-content market has shifted from speculative metaverse projects to a pragmatic, ROI-driven focus on augmented reality for marketing and tourism.
- Success in the region is measured by quantitative metrics including dwell time, interaction density, and social-virality indicators rather than technological novelty.
- Large-scale AR deployments are currently anchored by government funding and mobile-first infrastructure, utilizing WebXR and 5G networks to ensure scalability.
Interview with Frank Kang, Associate Partner at Antler: Malaysia
Korean content and entertainment startups are being urged to treat Southeast Asia as a primary growth engine rather than a peripheral market.
- Korean entertainment and content startups must treat Southeast Asia as a primary growth engine rather than a peripheral market to achieve sustainable expansion.
- Success requires deep localisation through local 'co-pilots' to navigate fragmented linguistic, regulatory, and payment landscapes in key hubs like Jakarta, Manila, and Bangkok.
- Revenue models should shift toward mobile-wallet-driven micro-transactions, live-commerce, and hybrid free-plus-premium structures to align with local consumption habits.
Archero 2 Review: The Evolution of gaming & Habby template perfection
Archero 2 represents the latest iteration of Habby’s highly successful game design framework, effectively refining the mechanics that defined its predecessor and other hits like Survivor.io.
- Archero 2 features a more complex and fleshed-out core gameplay loop compared to its predecessor, incorporating expanded progression layers like a 10-slot rune system that allows players to modify skill abilities.
- The game is currently following an Asian-centric soft launch strategy, with significant traction in markets like South Korea, China, and Taiwan, generating approximately 100,000 downloads per day.
- Unlike the original Archero, which relied heavily on ad revenue, Archero 2 has significantly reduced ad placements, limiting users to roughly four rewarded ad opportunities per 24-hour cycle.
Insights into Marketing Trends in Southeast Asian Mobile Games in 2024
The Southeast Asian mobile gaming market in 2024 is characterized by high advertiser activity and a strategic shift toward video-centric marketing.
- Video-centric marketing is the dominant strategy in Southeast Asia, accounting for nearly 70% of all ad creatives across all mobile game genres.
- Indonesia is the region's largest market by advertiser volume with 12.3K monthly advertisers, while Thailand leads in content intensity with over 100 creatives per advertiser.
- The Southeast Asian mobile gaming market saw a 9.5% year-over-year increase in active advertisers, averaging over 20,000 per month between January and August 2024.