On the midcore side, webstores are becoming increasingly central to monetization strategies, with several titles now shifting new currencies to become the default transaction option over real money. Meanwhile, Invincible: Guarding the Globe rode the wave of its TV show’s new season to a significant player and revenue spike, raising the question of how long the momentum will last.

We also saw notable launches such as Neverness to Everness and Dragon Quest Smash, plus a growing trend of arrow-based puzzle games evolving beyond pure hyper-casual models. You can find more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends from across the mobile market, by checking out our full Analyst Bulletin below.

April’s casual game updates

Monopoly GO! – The Monopoly Ever After season introduced a fairytale-inspired theme, refreshing the game’s visuals and adding new twists to the core gameplay and progression systems. For the first time, the season goes beyond reskins by introducing mechanics that directly affect how core features play out.

A key addition was the Enchanted Storybook, a Sticker Album feature that helps players progress through later sets. Each Storybook grants one missing sticker from a random late-game collection, with a one-time option to “turn the page” and switch to a different set before claiming the reward. Fairies were an additional mechanic that an enchanted storybook may reveal, and a fairy would then grant the player with extra rewards.

The season also introduced a set of temporary gameplay modifiers that added extra reward layers to some of the core mechanics:

• Ever After Chance Cards added a new outcome to the Chance tile. This could randomly send players into special boosted versions of Heist or Shut Down events.
• In Fairytale Heist, players could participate in an event where they uncovered hidden Gems to boost their rewards.
• If players attacked successfully in Fairytale Shut Down, they could’ve revealed 1–3 hidden Piggies, granting additional rewards like rolls or event points during the event.

Gossip Harbor introduced Norman’s Monster Hunt, a new hybrid PvE gameplay format that blends Match3-style puzzle interactions with merge-based progression. Players earned moves (the event’s currency) from the core gameplay, and then used them to combine items on a board, triggering cascades and dealing damage to enemies across multiple stages.

Progression was driven by earning medals from defeating enemies, which merged into higher tiers to increase players’ rank. Rewards that were gathered as loot drops could be merged and upgraded before being claimed. What makes this particularly interesting is how it combined merge and match3 gameplay, with multiple layers of merging across gameplay, progression, and rewards.

Hay Day’s April Fools’ Day celebration lasted for a week and focused on mischievous chicks taking over players’ farms. Similar to previous events that featured seasonal creatures, players completed event objectives by catching various types of chicks introduced each day, such as the explosive TNTillys.

The week’s main new feature was the Takeover event, where rewards were tied to milestones for catching the day’s featured chicks. Additionally, this event introduced the same interface used for the game’s first progressive reward offer.

Recent events show how Hay Day increasingly links new mechanics and rewarding progression systems, moving away from loosely connected events toward cohesive, engaging event collections. This approach, combined with new reward types, contributed to Hay Day’s record-high monthly revenue in April.

Additional casual gaming highlights and news

Dicero is a casual roguelite from HABBY, the studio behind the Archero series and Capybara Go. It’s built around a dice-rolling combat system where each battle plays out similarly to a Yahtzee-style roll. Players roll up to five dice, are able to reroll up to three times, and then try to score the best combination possible to maximize their damage output. Rolled values unlock and trigger skills, with synergies between dice outcomes, gear, and a weapon-specific build, which encourages light strategic thinking within an accessible format. Outside of runs, the game features an extensive meta progression suite spanning gear upgrades, a talent draw system, and permanent bonuses tied to specific dice outcomes.

Dicero is often compared to the indie hit Balatro due to their shared roguelite/card combo-building. However, similarities are mostly surface-level: the two differ in outside-run progression, monetization, and social features.

The game had a decent launch and is now in the top 150 grossing games.

Arrow-based puzzle games are currently a popular gameplay trend in the hyper- and hybrid-casual space. Arrows by Lessmore has been topping download charts for months now, and this new genre has attracted a wave of fast followers seeking similar success. Most of these entries lean heavily into a pure hyper-casual model, relying primarily on ad monetization (IAA) and offering highly similar gameplay experiences.

However, Arrow Out by Lion Studios stands out for its hybrid approach. In addition to IAA, it incorporates in-app purchases (IAP) and borrows elements from casual games, such as boosters and light live operations, signaling a shift toward deeper engagement and monetization within the category. The game ranked among the top 200 IAP-grossing games in April.

Block Out is a Grand Games’ casual puzzle game where players slide coloured blocks toward their matching-coloured gates to clear them from the board. The game monetizes primarily through IAP-driven convenience and session-length restriction bypasses, such as extra lives, purchasable Coins, boosters, and continues. Block Out also features a light Journey progression layer and a solid live event framework to support the core puzzle loop.

Its strongest competitor is Color Block Jam from Rollic Games. However, Block Out keeps scaling in both downloads and revenue, entering the top-grossing 50 in April. We’ll see if it can keep rivaling Color Block Jam in the coming months.

April’s midcore game updates

Webstores have become a must-have in midcore games, with many titles now adding additional in-app currencies that are primarily acquired through web stores. Some titles have even begun shifting this currency to become the “default” option for transactions, replacing “real money” purchases. This month, games such as Last Z (4X strategy) and MLB Perfect Inning (Sports) added these type of currencies into the in-app store. It’s a notable evolution in monetization strategy, steering players toward web storefronts while reframing how in-game spending feels at the point of purchase.

Invincible: Guarding the Globe scaled in both downloads and revenue in late March and into April due to new characters and event content. This coincided with the Invincible Season 4 release, which gave them a boost in numbers and pushed it into the top-grossing rank 50, peaking at 25.

Just like last year, a new season of the animated show on Prime brought in many players to try out the game – this year, even more so (see the graph below). Invincible: Guarding the Globe has taken full advantage of the new season by adding a lot of IAP offers to celebrate the show and the new characters we see on the show. Players could obtain some of these characters for free from limited-time events, including Thragg, the main villain of the season. In other events, players could re-live the fights from the show in the game.

Invincible VS, a new fighting game launched on PC, was also released at the end of April, which brought more eyes to the franchise from the community. Promotional activities in the US have also gone viral on social media, with people buying pizzas that they don’t want to eat just so they can get the code for exclusive skins on a promotional deal.

Invincible: Guarding the Globe is thriving in this uplift of players from the buzz of the show’s new season and the virality of the marketing campaigns of Invincible VS. This all correlates with the spike of players the game has been receiving, but looking at the bigger picture, how long will it be until the player count cools off again?

Additional midcore gaming highlights and news

Neverness to Everness (NtE) is a supernatural, urban open-world action RPG developed by Hotta Studio, a subsidiary of Perfect World Games.​ NtE is among the year’s most-awaited gacha RPGs within the community and one of several “anime GTA” titles launching in 2026, alongside Ananta.

What sets NtE apart from other gacha RPGs is the level of freedom players have in interacting with its world. Similar to GTA-style systems, players can engage in activities like stealing cars or attacking NPCs, which can trigger a “Wanted” level and result in consequences such as being arrested and sent to prison. Beyond that, players can purchase and own vehicles, manage their condition by visiting repair shops, and explore an open world filled with interactive elements and side activities that make the environment feel dynamic and alive.

Recent Gacha games have been experimenting with new ways of doing Gachas, and NtE is doing so by making their Gacha a board game, where players roll dice and are guaranteed to get the limited-time character after a certain number of pulls, meaning there is no common 50/50 system.

The game reached the top-grossing 100 during the launch days, but it will remain to be seen if it can keep it up. The RPG genre has been struggling to get any of the new games to stay in the top-grossing ranks, even if the game (like NtE) has miHoYo levels of production.

Fans of the Japanese RPG brand Dragon Quest were treated to a new light action RPG at the end of April. Dragon Quest Smash/Grow evolves the Archero-style roguelite gameplay with a 3-character party system, 4-player sync co-op possibility, and requiring players to stand still in order to attack. The game’s name comes from smashing the monsters with ultimate attacks as finishing blows, resulting in satisfying animations and lots of experience for players’ roguelite skills.

Replay value is added by having players revisit old stages, where they collect and merge memories of defeated enemies. These memories act as equipment items, which give both stat boosts and skills.

The characters in the game can be customized to players’ liking in terms of facial features and clothing. Each of the main pieces of equipment (weapon, shield, helmet, body armor, and leg armor) changes the stats of the character, but they also double up as cosmetic overrides, meaning players customize their look while also keeping their optimal stats.

The game also features a storyline to follow, both in the main progression and in the limited-time event featuring the story of the original Dragon Quest game.

While the game has flown under the radar in the West, in Japan, the game rose to the top spot in both downloads and grossing at launch. It’s maintained a top-10 grossing for the last 10 days of April, with no signs of slowing down for now.

Honor of Kings: World is an open-world ARPG/MMO released in the CN market in April. It’s a cross-platform game that’s available on both mobile (iOS/Android) and PC, and has shared progression across platforms. A global multi-platform release is also planned for the future.

Set in the Honor of Kings universe, the game combines PvE and PvP elements. Players take on the role of the “Flowborn (Yuan Liu Zhi Zi)” and explore a large, interconnected world while engaging in combat, progression, and competitive gameplay. The game is structured around three main components:

• Open-world exploration, including map traversal, resource gathering, and building and constructing systems.
• PvP modes, which take place in separate instances. These can be 1v1 duels, 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 matches.
• Casual and social content, which encompasses fishing, card games, co-op dungeons, and AI-assisted gameplay.

The Flowborn is central to both the narrative and combat systems, with the ability to switch between three distinctive roles before battle: Tank, Mage, and Marksman. Each role is tied to its own unique weapon system and skill set.

Combat features a dual-character switching mechanic, where players control the Flowborn while resonating with a companion hero in battle (such as Kai, Garo, etc.). This allows for real-time switching between the different combat styles: melee, ranged, and support. The Flowborn’s progression and level is shared across all three roles, while heroes and weapons are mainly earned through gameplay. There are additional unlocks via direct/indirect IAP, and cosmetics are obtained through gachas.

The game maintained a stable top-10 rank in the free charts, while its top grossing rank declined from approximately top-30 to top-100 before showing a slight recovery in early May.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile game market review April 2026 appeared first on GameRefinery.

Drawing on GameRefinery’s and Liftoff’s expertise in game design, monetization, and UA trends, the conversation explores how Township has developed across multiple eras. The episode highlights how the game combines a tycoon-style front end with a match3 system, reflecting a shift in how different gameplay layers contribute to user acquisition and monetization.

The discussion also looks at Township’s UA strategy over the years, including how Playrix has adapted its creative approach, from hyper-casual-inspired concepts to more recent iterations, and how these shifts connect to the game’s broader development.

If you’re thinking about long-term game evolution, creative strategy, or the relationship between UA and monetization, this episode offers plenty to explore.

Listen to the full episode:

Looking for more insights like these? Get in touch with the GameRefinery team to learn how we can support your game strategy.

The post How Playrix turned Township into a $45M/month engine: A Two & a Half Gamers episode with GameRefinery appeared first on GameRefinery.

This issue also shows the still-growing strength of several Chinese publishers in the Western mobile games market. With Chinese publishers dominating the mid-core and 4X genres, we are now seeing games like Gossip Harbor capturing audience share in the Merge genre. 

Speaking of competition, Moon Active’s Coin Master – Board Adventure appears to be a strong new challenger to the juggernaut that is Scopely’s Monopoly Go!, with the game climbing the top-grossing charts in March from outside the top 200 to now being within the top 50. Will it climb even higher next month?

You can find more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends from across the mobile market, by checking out our latest Analyst Bulletin below.

March’s casual game updates

Merge Mansion’s latest update brings the game in line with the rest of the genre in terms of UI. The game, one of the original big hitters in the merge2 genre, once tucked its tasks behind a separate menu. However, nearly every title launched since has displayed tasks directly at the top of the merge board, and it looks like Merge Mansion has joined this trend, creating a UI that reflects the increasing competition coming from games like Gossip Harbor. We’ll see if this has any effect on the game’s performance over the coming months.

In light of the number of games we’ve seen adding multiple event layer expansions (i.e., games which have added additional progression layers directly on top of core loops – think a mini-game within a mini-game), we’ve highlighted several this month:

Gossip Harbor is the hugely popular game from publisher Micro Fun, where you help Quinn Castillo rebuild her restaurant on Brimwave Island after it was destroyed by saboteurs. This month, the game has incorporated an expanded progression loop that follows a fairly new minigame blueprint, called Reward Path: Jungle Journey. In this, players follow a task-based reward track that’s fully linked to the minigame’s core loop.

Players earn tokens by clearing (minigame) obstacles, progressing through milestone rewards that feed back into the minigame via additional energy, creating a closed-loop progression system.

Coin Master, from publisher Moon Active, this month expanded its well-established Wildland Adventure minigame by introducing two dedicated instances of existing event blueprints.

The first of these is Flash Pass: Wildland Adventure. This introduced a short-duration, event-targeted battle pass, aligning most rewards with the concurrent minigame. Players perform core gameplay tasks to earn tiered rewards. This was the first Flash Pass iteration targeted toward a concurrent event.​

The second is Wildland Race, which embeds a competitive race system directly into the minigame, with progression driven by collecting the core currency (Potions). Players compete in race rounds by accumulating Potions, with a limited number of qualification spots & additional rewards granted to the top 3 fastest qualifiers in each stage. Each successful qualification advances players along a level-based progression map, unlocking stage rewards.

This layer adds urgency to the minigame, encouraging players to actively return and engage, rather than passively accumulating Potions through core gameplay without immediate time pressure.

In Travel Town, from publisher Moon Active, two different blueprints were expanded:

The first is Card Crush 2.0, which has introduced Ice Missions, a task-based layer that adds structured objectives and milestone rewards on top of the merge loop, increasing progression clarity and reward density.

The task system consists of 3 stages, each with 4 event-specific tasks. Each task completed grants event points & progresses a milestone bar tied to stage-based rewards: colored hammers used to unlock additional Grand Prizes.

The second is Fantasy Island, the game’s decoration event blueprint. This has introduced a Bonus Stage reward shop, allowing players to spend overflow event points after completing the main progression. The game has previously tried different approaches for the use of overflow event points to add value (example), but this was the first installment directly embedded inside the event itself (not a separate live event)

We like the way this mechanic helps to extend the post-completion engagement and raises the overall reward value for participation.

​In Match Villains from Good Job Games, the event-within-an-event trend is especially visible through multiple monetized layer expansions across 3 different event types:

• The addition of a second (monetized) progression path to the Safe Crackers: St. Patrick’s event through Golden Safes. This is a parallel progression path with its own resources (Golden Tools), where players must both collect materials and make a purchase to unlock premium rewards. Each safe is progressively more demanding & more expensive to unlock, effectively layering monetization directly onto an existing event loop.​

• The Team Duel guild event was expanded with Team Boost, a dual-bundle offer that provides both individual and team-wide rewards.

• Lastly, the Bank Rob race event introduced Coin Exchange, a Piggy Bank-style system where core gameplay progression (Moneyball collection) simultaneously increases the value of a purchasable reward pool. This ties monetization directly to event participation, allowing players to use ongoing progress to earn additional rewards.

Royal Match from Dream Games is making its second attempt at introducing a trendy merge-style minigame with its new event, Merge Smith. Dream Games previously experimented with the merge minigame concept with the Wonder Festival event in November 2025, but that version followed a different design and ultimately remained a one-off. In contrast, Merge Smith has already reappeared multiple times, suggesting a more sustained rollout. It remains to be seen whether this iteration will prove more successful in the long run, as the title sees growing competition from newer games like Gossip Harbor.

Additional casual gaming highlights and news

Another game worth highlighting this month is Coin Master – Board Adventure, a competitor to Monopoly Go! From publisher Moon Active that moved from outside the top 200 grossing apps to one of the 50 top-grossing games in mid-March as its downloads surged. One differentiating factor against Monopoly GO is in the game’s social systems. The game features some more traditional “guild system” features, such as Teams / Team Chests.

March’s midcore game updates

A growing trend we’ve seen amongst midcore games is the introduction of Seasonal collectibles albums. This is a gameplay element that seems to have crossed over from Casual games,  but now we are seeing it used in an increasing number of major midcore titles – suggesting it’s here to stay.

Clash Royale introduced its first-ever seasonal collectibles album event: Album Event. Players had to complete nine different pictures with Snippets, which could be gained from daily wins, shop offers, events, and the webstore. If the player completed all nine pictures, they would get the grand prize: an Emote, a Tower Skin, and the Hero Magic Archer.

The globally popular battle royale game, PUBG Mobile, added its own version of Collectible Season Albums called the Card Collection. Players collect various themed cards through missions, draws, and exchanges. Completing card series grants players rewards, including cosmetic items and emotes. Duplicate cards can also be exchanged with others, but only for cards of the same rarity.

One of the more unusual additions in Dark War: Survival this month is the introduction of the Museum, a seasonal collectibles album system tied directly to the Origin Lands season.

This is the first time the game has introduced a seasonal collectibles album event and, unlike more typical collection features, this one is tied to a limited-time season where collected artifacts grant season-long buffs and milestone rewards. For example, a player who collects a particular artifact and takes it to the Museum will be rewarded with a buff that increases damage against enemy troops – and the buff stays active until the end of the season.

The feature stands out by turning the collection into a limited-time progression system, rather than a permanent feature, making it a more unique part of the season’s overall event structure.

Hero Wars has introduced a new mode, Realm, where players build and develop a base by constructing and upgrading buildings such as houses and barracks, researching technologies in the Research Center, training units (infantry, spearmen, and marksmen), and generating resources that can be used across all the other progression systems. Research provides additional perks that benefit both the Realm and the player’s heroes.

The mode effectively brings a 4X strategy layer into the game, representing a notable shift for a long-running top-grossing RPG. This move aligns with broader market trends, where 4X games have been outperforming traditional RPGs, while increasingly incorporating RPG mechanics into the 4X games themselves.

Realm also features a world map where players can engage in PvE activities using their standard five-hero teams, deploy troops to fight enemies, and gather resources. The update also introduced a new hero, Lionel, tied to the Realm.

In March, no live events were introduced specifically for the mode. However, new monetization options, such as the Progress Pack (offering Realm resources), were added, alongside updates to existing events through progressive tasks, e.g., Runic Millstone.

Additional midcore gaming highlights and news

The Division Resurgence, a mobile third-person shooter RPG/MMO-like spin-off of The Division series, finally got its long-awaited global launch on March 31. The game plays similarly to the original Division titles and is built around a cover-based third-person shooting mechanic, with the story based in an open-world take on New York. There’s a brand new storyline that follows the canon of the first two console/PC games, plus solo/co-op play, PvE, PvP, and Dark Zone extraction-style gameplay.

Compared to the top-grossing mobile shooters, it stands out clearly, as many of its core systems are closer to RPG/MMO-style games such as Diablo Immortal (and, of course, the other Division games). The Division series’ RPG-like power progression is fully present here, with Agent leveling, build tuning, and gear looting and upgrade loops at the center of the meta.

Both MMORPGs and power-progression shooters have historically struggled to break out on mobile in the West, so it remains to be seen whether this long-developed, content-rich, and true to the original title has what it takes to scale further and succeed over the long term. Most other shooter-based games on mobile (for example, Call of Duty) lean heavily on cosmetics as the main form of monetization, whereas RPG games tend to monetize more around character collection, so it will be interesting to see how the game develops.

Roco Kingdom: The World (洛克王国：世界) is a new Tencent game studio fantasy MMORPG based on a popular nostalgia IP for the Chinese audience. The game has a very similar setting to Pokémon, with the player’s avatar roaming the world, either alone or with a team, capturing creatures they encounter in battle.

Visually, it also shares a similar, cute, super colorful art style. It advertises that 400+ creatures are free to catch without gachas, so the player doesn’t need to use any money to collect the creatures! The game has quickly become a hit, hitting the top spot in the Download charts and the third highest in the top-grossing.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile game market review March 2026 appeared first on GameRefinery.

Elsewhere, Brawl Stars had its own unique take on Valentine’s, with its #Brawlentines event, a dating-sim where players got to have virtual dates with different Brawlers, with the community voting on the preferred outcome. Whatever happened to a simple bunch of roses?

Finally, for fans of first-person shooters, Ubisoft’s launch of Rainbow Six Mobile was a big event, and the game quickly hit the top spot on the US iOS store. As with the console and PC games based on this IP, the game is more demanding to play than similar titles, so it will be interesting to see how it holds up against its well-established mobile competitors.

February’s casual game updates

Solitaire Grand Harvest, from publisher Supertreat, added a new twist to the Pick One type IAP Bundle. (This is where players are presented with several different IAP Bundles for purchase, but can only pick one.) In the Solitaire Grand Harvest version of the event, players need to successfully complete a level of base gameplay before unlocking their chosen bundle for purchase, meaning the player needs to engage with the game more before getting the option to progress through an IAP.

Royal Kingdom introduced a fresh twist on the classic race format, called Gem Hunt, where players compete against each other to be the fastest to complete a set number of levels.

In this update, instead of racing toward a fixed finish line, players compete over a shared pool of resources. The more they contribute to completing the levels, the larger their share of the resource pool, and therefore the more event currency they earn to spend in a dedicated reward store.

This combination of competitive currency accumulation and a separate event store makes it a relatively unique approach within the casual puzzle market.

Additional casual gaming highlights and news

Sunday City: Life Simulator is one of the most unique genre hybrids we’ve seen in quite some time. The game combines a typical casino-style slots core with a tycoon-and-customization meta, all styled to resemble a more casual, GTA-inspired open-world experience.

The game originally launched in November 2025 and has steadily scaled in revenue since then, with revenue growth outpacing downloads and driving an upward trend in Rev/DLs even as new installs have cooled post-launch. In February, it entered the top 200 grossing games on the US iOS App Store, peaking at #176, and has so far remained within that range.

Yarn Loop: Knit Puzzle is a hybrid-casual puzzler from Combo Games that has gameplay which is similar to Pixel Flow and Color Blaze Shooter. The game combines Pixel Flow mechanics with the very on-trend yarn theme, creating a combination of two of the most popular hybrid casual puzzle types.

The title has been steadily scaling in both downloads and revenue since January, breaking into the 200 Top Grossing charts in early February, and continuing its upward trajectory, peaking at Download rank 48 and Top Grossing at 106 later that month.

February’s midcore game updates

In February, Clash of Clans saw a major Season Pass rework, centred around the addition of a brand new hero, Dragon Duke. This new aerial character was introduced during a pre-release community event, along with various other hero-related events running throughout the month.

Beyond the new hero, the game has undergone a full Season Pass overhaul. The old challenge-based system has been replaced by a daily Stamp Card format featuring always-available tasks that award stamps and Season Points, with bonus points for completing full cards. Cards stack daily, reducing FOMO and allowing players to catch up. The reward tracks introduce Choice Nodes (letting players pick between rewards), hero skin selection for Gold Pass users, Gacha Chests on the free track, and a new premium perk, the Prospector, who converts ores daily. The Season Bank is replaced by the Hoggy Bank, which scales with Town Hall level and grants a 5× payout bonus for Gold Pass players at season end.

The new character, Dragon Duke, is an aerial melee-range Hero unlocked at Town Hall 15 (Hero Hall level 9). He launched alongside a pre-release community event (Unleash the Duke) and various hero-related events, such as a PvE Hero Campaign (Dragon Escape), a boost event, a themed Dragon Escape Season Pass featuring his new skin, and limited-time IAP offers.

Unleash the Duke was a global event where players with Town Hall 7 or higher could participate by collecting Dark Elixir to meet daily goals and earn rewards. The rewards were hidden behind three doors: players could choose one to claim if the daily goal was met, then progress to the next one with a new set of doors, ultimately reaching the final door with the grand reward.

The month’s new Brawl Stars community event, #Brawlentines, doubled down on the dialogue mechanic introduced earlier in the game (December’s “Who peed the pool” event), and this time framed as a dating-sim style progression event.

The entire player base was able to participate in five sequential ‘dates’ with different Brawlers, with each ‘date’ structured into two phases:

1. A 24-hour community-wide gameplay goal, which, if and when it was completed, unlocked the second phase
2. In the second phase, players go through a short text chat with the featured Brawler and ultimately vote on the final response. The community’s choice determines the Brawler’s Love Meter, which decides the reward tier earned at the end of the date.

Summoners War began its two-month-long collaboration with The Lord Of The Rings. As we’ve seen before with this game, the collaboration consists of a huge variety of events, including periodical mission events, exclusive offers, and a special collaboration character summon boost. The main highlight of the collaboration is the uniquely tailored Gandalf’s Riddle -minigames and a weekly refreshed PvE mode with themed opponents and special rewards.

Dark War: Survival featured a co-op event called Fairytale Night: Romance Ride, where players form four-person teams and progress along a shared milestone track by adding to the points they earned from the main event. As squads accumulate points, they unlock shared rewards, which all count towards the squad’s progression.

From a LiveOps perspective, the event is interesting because it introduces the partner-event format (in this case, in the form of the four-person squads), currently one of the most popular social mechanics we are seeing in casual games. For example, it was recently used by Lily’s Garden with its Pet Day Care event, and the format is now spreading into midcore games and even into the 4X strategy genre, which traditionally relies on large guild or alliance systems for its social gameplay.

Additional midcore gaming highlights and news

Last Asylum: Plague is a new 4X strategy game that was released on Feb 11. The gameplay is typical of the genre, layering a base-building and territory-expansion loop with a strong RPG hero-collection meta. What makes it slightly different is the use of an interactive, idle arcade-style game mode as the onboarding gameplay, where players directly control a character inside a sanctuary to treat patients, gather materials, and complete task-driven objectives. This hands-on layer sits on top of the traditional 4X loop, smoothing early progression and engagement before the game fully opens into standard world map gameplay.

Post-launch, revenues and downloads both ramped up quickly in week one, pushing the game into the top-grossing 200 charts after ten days. After that, downloads flattened, while revenues kept climbing, peaking at number 123 in the top-grossing chart on March 1, indicating a stronger relative monetization performance.

Rainbow Six Mobile is a major mobile IP launch for Ubisoft, and the game has generated significant early traction, amassing strong download volumes and holding the #1 position in the US iOS free rankings, while also quickly settling outside of the 200 Top Grossing chart.

From a product perspective, the game stays very close to the console and PC Rainbow Six Siege experience, with high production values, detailed environments and familiar operators and gadgets. Its slower, highly tactical gameplay stands out in the mobile FPS space, where faster, more arcade-driven experiences dominate.

That differentiation can be a strength, though the relatively complex UI and layered mechanics (gadgets, grenades, operator abilities) may make onboarding more demanding for a broader mobile audience. We’ll see in the coming months how the game performs in a very competitive genre against several well-established games.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile game market review February 2026 appeared first on GameRefinery.

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This episode tackles the major challenges facing developers today, including the rise of web stores and the strategic use of live events, as well as how player motivations and audience understanding can lead to mobile success.

You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

If the YouTube video isn’t displaying, you can watch it by clicking here.

Topics we will cover in this episode:

1. Introduction
2. Why do all games look the same? Hybridization explained
3. Audience understanding and market timing
4. Direct-to-Consumer, web stores, and the future of monetization
5. Knowing your players: motivation, CRM, and evolving audiences
6. AI’s expanding role in creatives, UA, and LiveOps
7. Social currency, sharing, and cross-platform player behavior
8. LiveOps, regulation, and the complexity of modern game development
9. The power of audience insights, regional nuance, and IP activation
10. Closing thoughts and where to learn more

The post Episode 67: Relearning the Rules – Player Motivations and Understanding Audiences with Carlos Salvado appeared first on GameRefinery.

In casual gaming, new gameplay modes and hybrid mechanics took center stage. Design Home added a recurring Match-3 minigame for the first time, creating a fresh loop in the title. Pixel Flow and Solitaire Associations Journey offered novel spins on familiar genres, while Top Tycoon showcased how idle titles are now evolving monetization through deeper casual casino-style progression systems. Merge-2 mechanics also continued to expand outside their traditional genre boundaries, appearing as secondary modes in games like Coin Master and Royal Match.

Midcore titles saw impactful updates, too. Clash of Clans introduced Town Hall level 18 with a new Guardian mechanic and narrative-driven events, generating notable revenue gains. Meanwhile, MapleStory: Idle RPG maintained a strong top 50 grossing position thanks to its hybrid of idle automation and social MMORPG elements. In China, Abandoned Land offered a standout tower defense–RPG blend with a unique folk-horror aesthetic, while X-Clash: Survival Challenge continued to climb the charts by combining 4X systems with casual-friendly visuals and minigames.

From large-scale collaborations to meaningful tweaks in monetization and mechanics, November demonstrated how mobile game developers are using familiar systems in new ways to expand reach and retain player interest.

Read on for the full breakdown of this month’s market activity.

November’s Casual Game Updates

There was a big IP collaboration in November, in the form of June’s Journey: Wicked Mystery, timed to coincide with the global cinema release of Wicked: For Good, the second and final instalment of the hit Disney IP.

The collaboration is built around the storyline and characters from Wicked, and is running across multiple months with a whole host of timed in-game events and time-limited collectables, all with a link to the brand and the events in the movie.

In-game events that will be familiar to loyal June’s Journey players (Daily Mission Track, Club Mysteries, Sweep the Board, Secrets Event, Minigames) have been reworked with Wicked-themed decorations and Grand Prizes. There is also a Seasonal Collectables Album (Memoir event: Welcome to Oz) with famous Wicked scenes as collections, collectable stories with a Wicked theme, and  an Emerald City Beautification reward – this is one of several themed decoration awards dedicated players can achieve.

The whole look of the game has been given a Wicked theme, with reskins of UI elements including loading screens, island frames, and event windows. There’s even a Wicked makeover for the game soundtrack, with passages from the movie music added to the game, including the big theme song ‘Defying Gravity’ (a song with 38 million YouTube views and counting.

To bring the whole collaboration together, the social media channels for the game have been engaging the community with a whole host of promotions, information about all the events, and the special in-game decoration rewards.

It’s clear that Wooga, the developer and publisher of June’s Journey, has put considerable effort into the collaboration, which was always going to be one of the last big movie IPs of 2026. However, for a seasonal campaign of this scale, we feel that the LiveOps execution feels underwhelming. Although the whole Wicked theme has been supported with strong marketing support and visual treatment, the in-game experience has relied almost entirely on cosmetic reskins and themed decorations, without introducing new mechanics or meaningful system-level changes.

On a positive note, the Wicked collaboration felt like a strong thematic fit for June’s Journey, since both lean heavily on narrative, mystery, and character-driven storytelling. It will be interesting to see how successful the tie-in ends up being for Wooga and whether it will lead to similar big-IP collaborations for the game in the future.

Another game that caught our eye in November was EA’s Design Home, which introduced its first minigame, Match Event, a recurring match-3 mode with a dedicated reward track.

Adding a minigame offers something new to players, as historically the game has been dominated by IAP bundles, and new gameplay modes are rarely added.

The new Match Event is a weekly recurring two-day-long Match-3 game mode that carries progress over from iteration to iteration. The Reward Track is updated every week, giving players the incentive to return to each new iteration. To get the rewards, players need to collect green board pieces, obtained by playing matches. Gameplay-wise, it uses familiar match-3 mechanics, without anything new or innovative.

Rewards contain items both for the core game (furniture items and currency) and for this specific event (boosters and event currency). The mode also features its own energy and currency system, and both can be acquired through IAP or ads, as well as event currency through successfully clearing stages in the minigame. The energy recharges surprisingly slowly, giving players one life per two hours, capped at 3 lives. This pushes players to watch ads or spend money to keep playing once they have exhausted the initial lives they are given.

Additional Casual Gaming Highlights and News

Solitaire Associations Journey from Hitapps Games combines the classic mechanics of solitaire with word puzzles. The game launched in September 2025 and quickly found success, maintaining the #1 rank in the download charts for that month. By late November, it had achieved a high point on the revenue charts, peaking at #93 in the top-grossing chart.

The game design feels heavily focused around the core gameplay, and doesn’t show any signs of complex meta-layers that might keep players more engaged over the long term. Monetization is a combination of ads and basic IAPs. It seems that by combining the intuitive physics of solitaire with the mental satisfaction of word puzzles, the game has successfully created a “novelty within familiarity” hook.

Pixel Flow is a hybrid casual puzzle game that introduces a twist on existing gameplay ideas. Its revenues have been rising in tandem with downloads throughout October, and have continued this growth in November, peaking at #51 in the top-grossing games chart.

In the game, you place guns that are shaped as pigs onto a conveyor belt, in order for them to shoot at the central image. They can only shoot at the same colour of puzzle pieces that match the colour of the pig, and once the number (the amount of ammunition the gun has) on top of the pig gun goes to zero, the gun disappears. After circling the image, the pig gun goes into a reserve spot if there are shots left.  Players aim to clear the whole picture without running out of reserve spots.

Top Tycoon: Coin Theme Empire is an idle game from publisher BeHeFun that has similar gameplay to Carnival Tycoon. Since launch, the game has continued to grow, finally breaking into the top 100 grossing games, peaking at #88.

Previously, we’ve seen a pattern of success with games that combine low-CPI casual gameplay (to drive installs) with the depth and monetization frameworks of 4X games.

A similar design philosophy now appears to be emerging in the casual casino space: pairing low-CPI casual gameplay with the monetization and progression depth of casual casino titles. Carnival Tycoon is an early proof point—scaling into the top 60 by blending idler mechanics with casual casino monetization. Now, Top Tycoon is following the same principles and is rapidly climbing toward the top charts as well.

Merge-2 remains one of the hottest subgenres in the casual market, fueled by the massive growth of titles like Gossip Harbor and Seaside Escape from Microfun, as well as Century Games’ ongoing success with Tasty Travels.

Recently, merge-2 mechanics have begun to appear outside its traditional genre boundaries—showing up as a side minigame in casual titles with completely different core gameplay loops. This suggests developers are increasingly using Merge-2 as an auxiliary system to deepen retention and diversify progression.

In the past few months alone, we’ve seen Merge-2 modes appear in top casual titles such as:

• Coin Master (November)
• Royal Match (November)
• Project Makeover (October)
• Phase 10 (October)

November’s Midcore Game Updates

Clash of Clans has added a new Town Hall level 18, which introduced a unique new defence mechanic that has delivered a big revenue spike and its own co-op event.

​Clash of Clans closed out 2025 with the launch of Town Hall level 18, which brought an array of new content to the game. Highlights included Guardians, a switchable Town Hall 18 defence that can be set to Smasher or Longshot, along with new defences, a new troop, a new spell, and higher upgrade levels across the base. As with past Town Hall updates, the launch of level 18 drove a noticeable uptick in Clash of Clans’ daily revenue.

Before Town Hall level 18 went live, Clash of Clans also ran a community-driven The End of Clash event, and a unique narrative-focused Meteor Observer event presented through comic-style panels that unlocked over time. This LiveOps approach focused on building hype, momentum, storytelling, and community anticipation rather than maximizing the value of any single player’s task completion.

Mobile Legends Bang Bang, from SkyStone Games, introduced a new Undersea Restaurant, thanks to a collaboration with SpongeBob Squarepants. It is a restaurant-management minigame where players cook dishes, serve customers, and upgrade their restaurant.

What makes this event unique is its blend of restaurant management gameplay with the existing Mobile Legends branding, bringing familiar SpongeBob characters, dishes, and visuals into a casual, progression-based mini-event. Players aim to upgrade their restaurant, achieve milestones, and collect special collaboration cosmetics and bonuses.

Additional Midcore Gaming Highlights and News

MapleStory: Idle RPG is the latest RPG success story in the US. This Idle RPG x MMORPG hybrid game was released on November 5th, and after reaching #50 in the top-grossing chart on November 9th, it has remained in the top 50 since.

The theme of the game closely mirrors the original MapleStory IP, carrying over the nostalgic appeal of the original online game to mobile. The idle gameplay is automated by default, but players can take manual control during key gameplay moments such as progression stages, boss battles, and co-op Party Quests. With the core grinding automated, players are able to spend more time engaging in activities like world chat or browsing the in-game shop.

Early in-app purchase (IAP) offers provide high value at lower price points, which may encourage early payer conversion. One notable offer is the ability to remove all in-game ads for a full year for $5. A significant portion of the game’s upgrade systems are randomized, requiring players to rely on chance to obtain desired builds. Cosmetic monetization also includes a random element—such as hairstyles being drawn from a pool of six—meaning premium items aren’t simply acquired through direct purchase, which may appeal to players seeking a more balanced experience.

​For a more detailed breakdown of the game’s mechanics and performance, refer to the full analysis available through the GameRefinery service.

Abandoned Land (遗弃之地) is a new Tower Defense RPG game from Hortor, a publisher that has already had a couple of successful titles in Fat Goose Gym (肥鹅健身房), a merge-2 game,  and Idle Fish Kingdoms (咸鱼之王), an idle RPG.

As the company has already proven itself successful at creating casual RPG games, launching a Tower Defense RPG makes a lot of sense. The game has a distinctive art style and an unusual Chinese folk horror theme. The player fights against various enemies with the regular tower defense mechanic combined with skill cards. During gameplay, these skill cards need a cooling-off time before they are available for the player to attack enemies with. This kind of gameplay combination and the interesting theme make the game a unique entry for the Chinese market. The game has hit sustained download rank 3 and sustained grossing rank 99.  

X-Clash: Survival Challenge is a casual-style 4X game with minigames for UA and onboarding. It continues to scale its revenues despite a drop in downloads in November, when the game managed to break into the top 50 grossing chart for the first time.

This hybrid strategy game layers RPG-style hero collection and minigame modes on top of base building and 4X mechanics. It simplifies some traditional 4X systems whilst using cartoony visuals that can appeal to more casual audiences.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review November 2025 appeared first on GameRefinery.

The casual genre continues to see a significant evolution in LiveOps, with leading titles like Coin Master deploying fully interconnected event systems under a single thematic umbrella. This strategy, which utilizes shared currencies to create a circular economy of engagement, represents a new level of complexity for the casual gaming space. Alongside this, the successful scaling of titles centered around an intellectual property (IP), such as Disney Magic Match 3D and MONOPOLY: Bingo!, demonstrated how strong branding paired with polished and meta-heavy gameplay loops can be effective.

In the midcore segment, Genshin Impact expanded its ecosystem with a UGC toolset backed by a unique monetization stream. Meanwhile, Whiteout Survival drew inspiration from casual mechanics by introducing a permanent collectible album system. October also saw bold experiments come to play in some games’ economies, from Duet Night Abyss launching without a character gacha, to Palmon: Survival’s successful hybrid of 4X strategy and creature collection, signaling ongoing diversification within key genres.

Check out our latest analyst bulletin below for more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends in the mobile market.

October’s Casual Game Updates

Cementing its status as a major player in the casual space, MONOPOLY: Bingo! is continuing its impressive scaling journey from previous months to break into the US top 100 grossing ranks in late October. The game’s success is due to its clever fusion of proven mechanics integrated under the iconic Monopoly IP. At its core, the game resembles classic bingo titles, such as Bingo Blitz, where players complete matches to collect location cards. A key engagement driver is the ability to trade these cards with other players, creating a community-driven loop that facilitates the completion of collections.

The defining feature, however, is its faithful incorporation of the actual Monopoly board. Players progress along this board by rolling dice, which are earned both by playing bingo matches and through in-app purchases (IAPs) to gather valuable collectibles. This has created an effective dual-incentive system: the bingo gameplay gives players a sense of progression on the Monopoly board, and the rewards from the board enhance the bingo experience. This synergy of social collection and classic board game progression is proving to be a highly sustainable model for the title.

Interconnected event systems are typically associated with midcore games, but Coin Master has utilized this with the introduction of Cosmic Voyage, which is its first fully interconnected, space-themed overarching event. The system was cleverly woven together through three shared currencies: Cosmic Bits, Spaceships, and Alien Currency. Spaceships served as the main resource for the core Galactic Blitz gacha event, creating a circular economy: Bits were converted into Spaceships, which fueled Galactic Blitz spins that yielded Alien Currency and could then be traded back for more Spaceships. Supporting events like Daily Quests, Bits Payback, and Merchant Boost reinforced this gameplay loop, while the competitive Galactic Run phases rewarded players for fast and consistent spending.

Grouping a set of specific events under a single thematic umbrella is a complex strategy common in midcore titles. Still, its successful deployment in a top-tier casual game like Coin Master signals that the bar is being raised for player engagement.

Throwing it back to a classic IP, Rovio launched Angry Birds 2 Space in Angry Birds 2 on October 24. This month-long event reintroduces the fan-favorite space biome from the standalone Angry Birds Space title, completely reimagined for the Angry Birds 2 universe. The event features unique space-themed levels with special mechanics, which have also been integrated into the Golden Pig Challenge, Arena, and Mighty Eagle’s Bootcamp.

Angry Birds 2 Space was announced at Twitchcon with a drone show. Fans were disappointed when Angry Birds Space was delisted from app stores in 2019, but this temporary resurrection has sparked a lot of excitement and interest in the community, particularly in the West. This strategy of reviving and remixing beloved content from a franchise’s history is a powerful way to tap into player nostalgia and drive sustained engagement over several weeks.

Stumble Guys has undergone a significant currency overhaul, replacing Stumble Tokens with a new Stumble Coin variant. To support this, the game introduced the Stumble Coin Market, which is a new shop section that offers seasonally rotating cosmetics exclusively for the new currency.

The addition of Stumble Coins in October changed the reward structure of the game quite drastically. They are now easier to earn through various activities, including game mode reward tracks, the Stumble Pass, and a new daily threshold event, Banana Piñata, where players gather trophies from normal gameplay and get extra rewards.

Despite this comprehensive update designed to encourage daily play and spending, the Stumble Coin Market did not have a noticeable positive impact on the game’s declining monthly revenue, suggesting that a new storefront alone may not be enough to reverse a downward trend.

Additional Casual Gaming Highlights and News

October welcomed a notable new entrant to the 3D match subgenre, with the launch of Disney Magic Match 3D. It’s arguably becoming one of the best-performing new puzzle titles of the period, with its success heavily attributed to its use of the Disney IP, which goes beyond aesthetics. The game features “IP-cased trash sorting”, where familiar Disney and Pixar items help players intuitively identify and sort objects, leaning on their existing familiarity from the films. This strong IP fidelity is incorporated into a streamlined 3D matching experience, complemented by a collection meta built around “Magic Minis” and “Magic Items” that provokes players’ nostalgia for their Disney favorites.

Launched on October 8, the game quickly climbed to the top 4 downloads. Most notably, even after stopping user acquisition (UA) spending, it stabilized within the top 200 grossing ranks, indicating a strong and steady monetization from its captured audience, even after the initial download surge had cooled off. This performance suggests the title has found its product-market fit, and a return to UA in the future could see it scale even better.

October’s Midcore Game Updates

Following in the footsteps of Roblox and Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), which began UGC strategies in September, Genshin Impact has made a significant foray into the UGC space with the addition of Miliastra Wonderland. This in-game editor tool allows players to create and share custom games, effectively turning players into creators. Interestingly, this mode operates with its own ecosystem. Players are given generic “Avatar” characters to use, and can obtain outfits for them via the mode’s own Battle Pass and dedicated gachas. The limited-time gacha uses a new premium currency obtainable only through real-money purchases, creating a potentially lucrative monetization stream separate from the main game’s character gacha.

Century Games is demonstrating its keen eye for cross-genre inspiration by launching two major features in Whiteout Survival. Firstly, the Tundra Album is a permanent, casual-style collectible album system. Players can collect Scene Fragment Packs from tasks and events, assemble them in a quick jigsaw puzzle mode, and complete themed Albums for rewards that include permanent buffs to core 4X gameplay like resource production and troop stats. This indicates that Century Games is looking into the casual space for sticky meta-loops and turning it into a long-term progression system.

Secondly, the Deadshot gacha event introduced a unique, gamified mechanic. Built around a short “pick and open” board, it allows players to choose chests to boost both the quantity and quality of their final payout before cashing out. Similar to mechanics seen in Archero 2’s Rune Ruins, this design adds a layer of player agency and risk-versus-reward strategy to the traditional gacha pull.

Free Fire continues to build upon its strategy of adding player-driven systems on top of its core gameplay. In September, they released a successful “Blind Box” gacha, creating a unique player-to-player marketplace. Now in October, the game is exploring the fantasy esports trend with the introduction of FFWS Fantasy. Free Fire is also currently running its annual Free Fire World Series esports tournament, meaning the overarching Flame Arena event is promoting this in-game.

This new event is bringing in a new kind of engagement layer: players can collect card packs featuring professional players, set daily lineups based on real match performances, and compete with friends on leaderboards. This fusion of card collection and fantasy sports adds a compelling, real-world engagement layer that complements the core battle royale experience.

Additional Midcore Gaming Highlights and News

An intriguing new game launched on October 25. Duet Night Abyss is an anime-style open-world action RPG that comes with cross-play compatibility on PC. Hong Kong Spiral Rising Technology Co. made the bold decision to forgo character and weapon gachas entirely, and instead, new characters are obtained through daily tasks. Monetization is purely focused on cosmetic IAPs and limited-time outfit gachas.

While this is a commendable and player-friendly model, its early mobile traction looks limited. After hitting DL 8 and GR 157, both its downloads and revenue have tapered quickly, raising questions about the sustainability of this model in the competitive F2P RPG space.

Conversely, a recent midcore title that has a contrasting model is Palmon: Survival. Since its launch in June, it has been steadily climbing the charts, scaling in both growth and revenue, with the game finally breaking into the top 100 grossing in October. Its initial gameplay incorporates tycoon elements, having players focus on expanding territory, constructing buildings, and catching Palmon from the environment.

Palmon: Survival develops into a full 4X strategy game later on, and while gacha and direct purchases are available for character acquisition, players can still continue to capture Palmon directly from the overworld (arguably inspired by Niantic’s Pokémon GO), and breed them for better stats. Palmon: Survival’s blend of familiar 4X combat and guild features, combined with a more active collection loop and farming elements, appears to be resonating well with its playerbase.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review October 2025 appeared first on GameRefinery.

The past few months have been eventful for Roblox. By rolling out noteworthy features, including the “Moments” short-form video tool that’s proven powerful for discovery, and the Rewarded Ads feature that allows creators to have various rewarded ad placements in their games, Roblox is gaining major traction in the casual market. Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) is now allowing developers to receive the full revenue from their own in-app purchases (IAPs) for the next year, which is creating some rivalry between Roblox and UEFN in the UGC space.

The market has also seen many innovative engagement strategies materialize: a clever, limited-time gacha has driven a major revenue spike for Pokémon TCG Pocket, and Wild Rift and Free Fire saw significant success with exclusive skin gachas and a new blind box system, respectively. We also saw the merge2 genre being contested by several China-based publishers, with Century Games and Happibits achieving notable success. Quietly in the background, Nintendo shadow-dropped Fire Emblem Shadows, which is a unique mix of grid-based RPG battles and asymmetric survival gameplay. This notable yet arguably experimental entry into the mobile landscape has seen a soft performance, perhaps suggesting a proof-of-concept approach rather than a full-market release.

Check out our latest analyst bulletin below for more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends in the mobile market.

September’s Casual Game Updates

It is rare to see the Roblox platform getting new features or updates, but on September 5, their own in-platform short-form video tool, “Moments”, was launched. It is functionally similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels: players can capture, edit, and share clips directly from their gameplay in Roblox. However, the key differentiator here is the “Join” button, which allows players to hop into the experience where the clip was recorded. This feature has positioned “Moments” as a potent tool for organic game discovery, effectively turning UGC into a direct user-acquisition channel. Roblox has indicated that the underlying technology is built for future applications, hinting at further opportunities for “growth, monetization, and brand integrations”.

At the same time, Rewarded Ads are finally gaining traction on the platform. While Rewarded Ads were announced in April and then implemented in July, popular games like RIVALS, Driving Empire, and Natural Disaster Survival have now begun implementing them on a larger scale. This is a good step forward for Roblox, and while they have previously utilized immersive ad tools (though with little success), adopting in-app advertising (IAA) monetization is now proving to be a better strategic move to monetize their audience.

With Roblox announcing and implementing these new features, UEFN has decided to enable developers to monetize their own games in response. This is a decision that will stoke the fire in the UGC war, but it is also a massive win for indie developers who work with the platform. UEFN developers used to earn money by just a revenue share of cosmetics sold in the store – Epic would share the specific revenue with the creator community, distributed by engagement and retention on each of the creators’ games. Now that developers can add their own IAPs and receive a full revenue share from them the first year (2026), it suggests that Epic are trying to win over as much of the market share from Roblox as possible and persuade people to move over to their ecosystem.

This movement between platforms is interesting to see, especially now that UGC games have been pulling significant numbers lately – a 2025 UGC Study reports that games with UGC support show a 31% revenue advantage over other titles from 5 years after release. Some of the most-played standalone titles, such as Counter-Strike 2 (which averages approximately 1 million concurrent users (CCUs) on Steam), are seeing competition from notable Roblox titles that are averaging over 1 million CCUs: 99 Nights in the Forest, Steal a Brainrot, and Grow a Garden. These three titles at their highest peak had over 10 million CCUs, and the impact of UGC here is undeniable. Steal the Brainrot, Fortnite’s copy of Roblox’s Steal a Brainrot, has quickly become a popular fan-made experience that rivals even the standard battle royal mode. The CCU is still far behind Roblox, though Epic may be able to start closing the gap now that they are incentivizing developers to build on their platform instead.

Additional Casual Gaming Highlights and News

A new update to Solitaire Grand Harvest has introduced Mystery Crates. These will be available in a “pop-up” style bundle, which builds on one of their previously proven monetization tactics. The contents of the bundle will be split into seven Mystery Crates, maintaining the mystery element while revealing the total potential value. The smart dual-purchase option, which allows players to buy crates individually or secure the entire bundle at a discounted price, caters to both impulse and value-seeking spenders.

This mechanic blends gacha-like engagement with bundle value, which is a trend we’re seeing in top-grossing casual games. Features like Mystery Crates are designed to boost conversion rates and increase average revenue per user, establishing them as a steadfast tool in modern freemium games.

Microfun has updated Gossip Harbor’s 7-day task event with a 2.0 version, which now includes a new long-term “Star progression” mechanic. Restaurant Goals 2.0 will still see players finishing their daily tasks over seven days to earn event points and milestone rewards, but fully completing all weekly tasks will now also grant Stars. These Stars contribute toward a separate, cumulative Grand Prize track, rewarding a player’s continual participation. However, failing to finish a week can result in lost Stars, adding a strategic consistency challenge to this popular recurring event. This layer of progression is a clever move designed to sustain a player’s investment and engagement by incentivizing weekly completion. It has created a great retention loop that is sure to benefit both a player’s progression and the game’s overall health metrics.

Gossip Harbor launched back in July 2022, and since then, Microfun has scaled it to become the leader of the merge2 market. However, other China-based publishers are now vying for that top spot in the genre, and some of these publishers’ titles even reached their all-time high revenues in September.

Century Games, the studio behind successful 4X strategy titles Whiteout Survival and Kingshot, is branching out into casual genres. The release of Tasty Travels, a merge2 game, follows their match3 title, Truck Star, highlighting their deliberate strategy to create a highly genre-diversified portfolio. Similarly, Merge Cooking is Happibits’ first major scalable success, and has shown reliable monthly growth since the beginning of the year.

September’s Midcore Game Updates

PUBG Mobile has covered almost every event type possible, and the game currently has multiple live modes that are like minigames themselves. However, in September, PUBG Mobile received the 4.0 update, which included the announcement of the new mode: Unfail. This 1v4 mode heavily draws inspiration from Dead by Daylight, which is based on a pursuit and escape dynamic. Players will assume the role of either the lone, formidable predator, or one of four survivors cooperating to secure their escape. The predators’ goal is to hunt down the survivors, while the survivors must avoid being captured and complete their objectives.

The Unfail mode has been perfectly introduced before Halloween, and while seasonal events are common for mobile games, Unfail is joining PUBG Mobile as a permanent mode, which is creating much more hype than your typical Halloween event.

For the first time ever, Pokémon TCG Pocket has launched a limited-time gacha with their Deluxe Pack. This will mainly consist of already existing cards, as well as Parallel Foil versions of them, and each pack will contain four cards (this is down from the usual five or six cards in previous packs). You may be asking why players would be interested in packs that contain older and fewer cards than before, but the catch is that each pack is guaranteed to include at least one exclusive card. Rare cards would previously only be found in a few standard packs, so particularly for newer players or those missing a few exclusive cards, this is incentivizing purchases to help complete collections.

Combining this with the limited-time element, the game has seen its highest daily revenue spike since April 30 in the US and also a noteworthy performance in its most successful market, Japan. Due to this success, we’ll likely see this being utilized again as a key strategy for Pokémon TCG Pocket, as it will help steer away from the inevitable problem of players running out of the current +1000 Pokémon with the game’s current pack release pace.

Wild Rift has seen its largest single revenue spike to date with its Dual Calligraphia Collection event series. The event celebrates the release of the new 2025 Calligraphia skins while incorporating them with the popular 2024 lineup through a specialized two-part gacha system, meaning players can draw from both new and existing skin collections.

Two key components also helped to amplify player engagement: the “Calligraphia Milestone Rewards,” which incentivized participation with free and premium tracks based on bundles opened, and the “Calligraphia Membership Rewards,” which offered additional tokens and items via themed missions. This interesting but strategic combination of new content with nostalgic favorites has been a commercial success for Wild Rift.

Free Fire is also seeing significant success with its new type of limited-time gacha: Blind Box. Unlike traditional systems, this limited-time event allows players to open Blind Boxes containing exclusive, non-repeating emotes, guaranteeing a set of six unique rewards upon clearing the pool.

The defining feature, however, is the ultra-rare “Flutter Dash” emote. This reward isn’t a guaranteed drop and is rare to receive, but it is a tradable asset available with premium currency, which has created a unique and player-driven marketplace. Obtaining this grand prize blends a curated gacha with player-to-player trading, which has created a dynamic economic layer within Free Fire’s event structure.

Additional Midcore Gaming Highlights and News

We don’t often see new MOBAs being released into the mobile market, and those we do see tend not to perform well or fail entirely. In September, Bandai Namco dropped DRAGON BALL GEKISHIN SQUADRA. This is Dragon Ball’s first team-oriented F2P game, a 4v4 battle with cross-platform compatibility, meaning mobile and PC players can play together. It simplifies the typical MOBA mechanics in an attempt to appeal to a broader audience: items cannot be purchased in a match, and the 4v4 structure eliminates the jungle or mid-lane position from the usual 5v5. While this does simplify the gameplay and team dynamics, it arguably minimizes character build variations, and finding a fight with a player advantage may be harder.

Despite this, DRAGON BALL GEKISHIN SQUADRA is currently in the top 20 downloads. It was initially released to DL 1, peaked at GR 129 soon after, and has so far seen a relatively stable performance. Perhaps this is due to the popular Dragon Ball IP? Mechanically, the game is very similar to typical mobile MOBAs, such as Pokémon Unite, and monetization seems very focused on cosmetics. Characters can be unlocked for free with shards that players receive through gameplay, but since these shards are randomized, finding specific characters can take a long time. Because of this, they can also be unlocked with premium currency purchases.

Unfortunately, since launching on mobile, the game has experienced many connectivity issues, with some players reporting that they’re unable to rejoin their matches after losing connection. The developer claims to have solved this with a maintenance update, though time will soon tell. We’ll keep a close eye on this MOBA to see if it can survive and what features it utilizes to retain player engagement.

Nintendo has shadow-dropped a new mobile game, Fire Emblem Shadows, using the major Fire Emblem console IP. There’s very little monetization in the game: there are no gachas, characters are obtained by playing the game, and premium cosmetics are only available for purchase with the premium currency through player-to-player marketplace trading.

The core of the game is a hybrid of grid-based RPG gameplay that Fire Emblem is known for, and Asymmetric Survival deduction seen in Among Us. It’s a pretty compact package – a small and straightforward game with very little to distract players from the core gameplay. The meta elements of Fire Emblem Shadows are quite basic, and as a result, the initial release has felt more like a soft launch or a proof of concept. The game has quickly dropped out of the charts, even in Japan, where Nintendo usually performs better. In the US, Fire Emblem Shadows didn’t even break into the top-grossing 200. This poses the question of why Nintendo has been so quiet in the mobile space, and why they decided to drop Fire Emblem Shadows now and with this IP. Are they perhaps testing the market for something bigger?

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review September 2025 appeared first on GameRefinery.

One of the hottest trends off the back of Summer BBQs is ingredient gathering/formula events, which are surging in popularity as major names like Coin Master and Disney Solitaire implement these new events to create a larger event framework that incentivizes players to participate in as many events as possible. While most people might associate ingredients with cooking, the formula-based nature of ingredient gathering means this event type can be repurposed for different themes, which is exactly what Match Villains did by building this event type around a safe-cracking event. 

Outside of trending events, the last couple of months have seen some notable mobile launches for AAA PC and console franchises, namely Riot Games’ Valorant in China and Sony/Bungie’s Destiny. Both games are off to a strong start, but can they sustain this in an increasingly competitive mobile market? In addition to these AAA mainstays, you’ll find plenty of exciting new releases you should be keeping an eye on in this month’s bulletin. 

You can find more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends from across the mobile market, by checking out our latest Analyst Bulletin below.

July & August casual game updates

Cash Tornado Slots added a full achievement system in August, something not often seen at this scale in social casino games. Players earn badges across categories such as Missions, Slots, Merge, Friends, and Teams, which feed into a central trophy that upgrades through multiple tiers. This new achievement system is tied to a cosmetic reward track, while a leaderboard tracks which players are collecting the most points. 

Achievement systems such as this are a proven way to incentivize engagement, as they set long-term goals for players to work towards. Coupling this achievement system with a leaderboard is a clever move, as the leaderboard element taps into players who are motivated by social recognition. The cosmetic reward track further incentivizes engagement as it provides players with a way to show off their mastery of the game. 

Stumble Guys expanded its social systems at the end of July with Clubs / Clubs Goals, a community tournament event that turned task completion into a team effort. Running for about four weeks, the event drives retention through shared objectives and milestone-based rewards.

Players could join or create Clubs to complete rotating daily and weekly goals, earning points toward a shared reward track. Progressing through the Club reward track unlocks exclusive cosmetics, incentivizing long-term participation and teamwork.

It’s been a busy couple of months for Moon Active’s Coin Master, which spent the Summer experimenting with a variety of completely new event types. Coin Cafe launched at the beginning of August, a simplified ingredient-gathering event where players could earn dishes (bronze, silver, gold) and collect ingredients from around the game and core spins. Dishes open instantly when unlocked to provide ingredients, which are collected and used to complete orders in the event window. 

Serving orders in turn grants tickets for a progression bar with threshold rewards and a grand prize at the end.

Disney Solitaire also launched an ingredient-gathering event called Chef’s Kitchen, perfectly themed around its animated movie Ratatouille. In the event, players collected ingredients from baskets, which were used to cook dishes and win rewards. The baskets are randomly awarded as rewards from other in-game events and offers, creating a larger event framework that incentivizes players to participate in as many events as possible. 

Top-performing games have been introducing and utilizing umbrella events to connect different event types together, with seasonal collectible albums and mission list events being some of the most popular choices. Ingredient gathering and formula events are now one of the latest trends. They’re similar to seasonal albums, as you have to collect items from a variety of events, but instead of collecting these items to make a photo album, you combine them to create a formula, with ingredients for a cooking recipe being the most popular.

Disney Solitaire, Coin Master, and Match Villains are just some of the top-performing games that have introduced ingredient gathering events in the last two months. While the mechanics of Match Villain’s event are almost the same, the event has you gathering tools that are used to crack open safes. This is a better match for the game’s villain theme and shows how this event type can be tailored to fit a specific narrative or gameplay theme. 

Another unique event is Boss Fight, a special minigame event where players use an event currency, Boss Gold, to spin an event-specific wheel and fight through 12 boss stages. This event might feel familiar to fans of boss rush modes in adventure games, but combat mechanics are completely new to Coin Master and highlight the game’s strengths with event hybridization. 

Players spin a wheel to deal damage, block incoming attacks, heal themselves and even trigger special attacks with lightning strikes. Bosses attack at timed intervals with pop-up warnings shown in the main gameplay beforehand. 

Boss Gold can be earned from core spins, offers, or purchases, with the cost of a spin scaling with multiplayers (x1–x10). The main goal of the event is to beat all 12 bosses and reach the end, picking up stage rewards after every boss defeat and a Grand Prize for making it to the end.

Outside of major events, Coin Master has been experimenting with new monetization models. Progressive Bundle: Video Value is a new ad-monetized progressive offer where players solely watch ads to claim rewards, up to a maximum of three rewards. This offer was also supplemented with a new gacha-based reward type, Scratch Time. The reward plays a scratch card animation upon revealing the randomized reward. 

Epic’s victory over Apple and Google earlier this year has had a major impact on the mobile market as more game studios try to dodge App Store fees by encouraging players to visit external web stores to purchase items. These web stores often have better prices than in-game purchases, and Coin Master has introduced several Web Value Offers in the last couple of months. These offers are advertised in-game, but direct players to a new pop-up browser to complete the purchase when interacted with. 

• Web Value Offer: Choose Your Bundle: A side-by-side offer from which players can choose to either buy the in-app offer or the webstore offer with an added value
• Web Value Offer: Flying Time: Basic bundle offer, indicating up to 20% off for the webstore purchase of these rewards
• Web Value Offer: Forest Charms: Basic bundle offer, indicating up to 20% off for the webstore purchase of these rewards
• Web Value Offer: Token Power Pack: A Webstore value offer version of the already familiar Token Power Pack that offers tokens for the Thor’s Wheel event.

Match Factory added a new permanent Super Ball win streak system. The system requires players to complete 10 main progression levels in any order to activate the Super Ball. The benefit remains active as long as the player doesn’t fail a level. 

Similar win streak systems have been implemented in many top puzzle games for some time now. We covered these in greater detail in the GameRefinery October Analyst Bulletin, but some pioneering examples can be found below: 

• Super Lightball in Royal Match
• Magic Disco in Toon Blast
• Super Rainbow Ball in Homescapes

• In Match3 puzzle games, the benefits of win streak systems are the same, which doubles the benefit of the rainbow bomb booster to clear two colors at once. However, 3D Match titles have a minor tweak to the win streak system’s benefit to fit their core gameplay, such as Meteorite Strike in Triple Match 3D, Extra Slot in Match Manor, and Super Ball in Match Factory.

Additional casual gaming highlights and other news

Acecraft: Sky Hero is a new vertical shoot-’em-up from Moonton Games (Mobile Legends) with roguelite mechanics, featuring the rubber-hose animation style (Cuphead-like) of the ‘30s. The meta/progression systems will feel familiar to anyone who has played HABBY’s games. The game launched with a Tom & Jerry crossover, giving it a major boost at launch as it peaked at DL #2 and GR #134.

Villain-themed Match3 game Match Villains started to scale heavily at the beginning of July, jumping from #GR 150 to grossing #GR 84 (as of September 8) in the US iOS chart. Contributing factors are a noticeable UA push and the constant introductions of new overarching event features to strengthen and connect the game’s framework together, including ingredient gathering events, battle passes, seasonal collectible album, and more. Of course, all of this comes with a price, but development studio Good Job Games recently raised $60m to scale the game even further.

Wittle Defender: Habby’s hybrid casual-midcore game that blends tower defence, roguelike, and auto-battle RPG elements, released in June. It broke into the top-grossing 200 chart (US iOS) in July and remained there throughout August, peaking at GR #139, but this still fell short of the launch success experienced by some of their recent hits, such as Archero 2 and Capybara GO. 

Flambé: Merge and Cook, a Merge2 game from developer Microfun was released in May, reaching the top-grossing 200 (iOS US) and peaking at #GR168. It features a familiar restaurant renovation meta, food theme, and innovation with a recipe mechanic supplementing the core gameplay. 

July and August midcore game updates

Free Fire and Naruto Shippuden teamed up again for a major collaboration event following the success of their first collaboration event back in January. The Free Fire X Naruto Shippuden: Ninja War event introduced new gameplay elements in Battle Royale and Clash Squad modes, along with original bundles, cosmetics, a unique social top-up event, and more.

Players could participate in BR-Ranked matches with Naruto Shippuden-themed challenges and alterations to the map, which featured Tsukuyomi areas where players could find Akatsuki keepsakes and Jutsus from Naruto to unlock special ninja abilities such as the Deidara Kepsake move, which launches a controllable clay bird that explodes in midair.

The highlight of the collaboration was the introduction of Squad Treasure, a first-of-its-kind social top-up event that encouraged players to join forces with friends to purchase premium currency, unlocking rewards for the entire squad rather than just individuals.

Whiteout Survival launched new permanent exploration game modes, Tundra Trek and Frontier Trek, with highly randomized encounters and narrative-driven elements. These game modes lightly resemble the proven casual exploration formula in Habby’s Capybara GO!.

These game modes are tightly connected to the new non-combat Expert character system, offering permanent buffs to core 4X gameplay through relationship progression. Players can unlock and increase their relationship with Expert characters by playing exploration game modes, with the new character system creating a mid to long-term growth layer targeting whales and endgame players in mature servers facing power bottlenecks. 

It isn’t just the casual market embracing recipe-collecting and cooking-themed events. Dark War: Survival launched a festive cooking-themed event called Yummy Carnival. In this event, players gather ingredients across sub-events to cook dishes in a timing-based mini-game, unlocking milestone and leaderboard rewards.

Players earned ingredients in sub-events like Grub Hub and Yum Puzzle to use in the Art of Cooking mini-game to score points for personal and alliance rewards. This is an interesting iteration of the trending ingredient gathering event loop, wrapped into one of the 4X genre’s signature overarching formats: tying together multiple sub-events to create a flexible structure for layering in progression systems, monetization hooks, and player engagement across the full event window.

Clash Royale is currently experiencing a massive comeback following its controversial April update, which removed chest timers and overhauled the game’s seasonal event system. Revenue started to scale slowly in April as a result of these changes, but the launch of Merge Tactics in July, an autochess-style mode where players fight against four other players, had a significant impact on DAUs.

The matches for Merge Tactics are completed in phases, and the mode also has its own League system to incentivize engagement. Matches follow the structure below: 

• In the Deploy Phase, players purchase/upgrade Troops
• In each Battle Phase, the Troops automatically fight against one another’s Troops.
• The player who loses the Battle loses HP. If your HP runs out, you are out of the Match.
• Based on the Battle Phase results, each player earns currency to make new moves in the Deploy Phase

Your card collection provides boosts to your available troops in Merge Tactics, incentivizing engagement with the game’s meta gameplay systems. It also introduces an entirely new card type, Rulers, to collect/upgrade and purchase, with each ruler having a unique skill that changes playstyle.

Speaking of auto-chess updates, Zenless Zone Zero launched “En-Nah” Chess Legend in July, an auto-chess minigame mode with story-focused PvE challenges and a separate PvP mode with support for up to six players. This is the first time an auto-chess mode has featured in Zenless Zone Zero, but miHoYo has launched similar modes in other games, such as Heated Battle Mode: Automatic Artistry and Battle of Imagined Arrays in Genshin Impact. This could be miHoYo warming players up for the launch of their upcoming game, Honkai: Nexus Anime, which will feature PvE autochess in its core gameplay. 

This game mode operates in a similar way to bigger auto-chess games, such as Team Fight Tactics, featuring similar synergies and power-ups. Players can choose a character from the given choices at the start of the game, each with different kinds of powers (similar to Hearthstone Battlegrounds).

Additional midcore gaming highlights and other news

Valorant Mobile made its debut in the Chinese market in August. It’s a classic FPS/TPS co-created by Riot Games and Tencent’s Photon Studio, and is essentially a mobile-friendly version of Valorant with some minor changes to monetization with the addition of mobile-exclusive weapon skin bundles. Since its initial release, the game has consistently ranked among the top 10 grossing titles, while downloads have remained in the top two—underscoring its strong and sustained market performance.

Destiny: Rising is a mobile version of the Bungie and Sony’s PC/Console sci-fi RPG shooter. The game made its debut at the top of the download charts and at #54 in the top-grossing chart, quickly jumping to #GR 20 after three days.

Similar to Valorant’s approach, this game brings the same gameplay format and mechanics from the PC/console version of the game to mobile, although there are some major changes to monetization. On PC and console, the monetization is built around mainly gating content such as DLC expansions and cosmetic purchases behind paywalls, whereas Destiny Rising uses gachas for character collection.

HAIKYU!! FLY HIGH is a volleyball sports game with RPG mechanics based on the popular anime series, Haikyu!!. The matches are spiced up with special attack cutscenes from the Haikyu!! anime. The game was released on July 30 and quickly broke into the top-grossing chart, peaking at GR #74 while hitting the top spot for downloads. 

The selection of sports that appear on mobile game charts tends to be limited to soccer, baseball, basketball, golf, and 8-ball pool, so it’s refreshing to see volleyball appear as a new sport with top-grossing potential.

DC Worlds Collide, a hero collector Idle RPG with an auto-battle core, celebrated its global release in July, peaking at DL #5 and GR #77. This is ok debut, but downloads and revenue quickly started to decline after launch, raising massive suspicions about the game’s staying power. 

In the game, players form teams of five made of superheroes and villains from the DC universe. The launch of DC Worlds Collide comes at a time when the market is overcrowded with superhero-themed gacha games, including the character collector RPG DC Dark Legion. That said, the game has fared much better than other hero-based gacha games due to its unique 4X strategy-influenced design choices, helping it stand out in the market.

Dream League Soccer 2025 (launched 2020) hit an all-time high in daily revenue in July 2025, entering the top-grossing 50 charts for the first time (iOS US). This revenue surge is likely driven by a major update introducing new top star characters from peak seasons. The FIFA Club World Cup also coincided with this period, boosting the performance of several soccer games in the market.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review July & August 2025 appeared first on GameRefinery.

If you want to know what the biggest monetization trends are right now, look no further than episode 62 of Liftoff’s Mobile Games Playbook. In the episode, host Jon Jordan speaks to experts Andrew Seow, formerly Director of Monetization at Tripledot Studios, and Ravid Sela, Ad Monetization Lead at Playstudios.

In this blog post, we summarize some of their insights, including thoughts about the move towards header bidding and its impact on the industry, the rise of hybrid monetization models, and potential future innovation in mobile app monetization.

The rise of header bidding in mobile app monetization

In 2024, the rise of Header Bidding was a standout monetization trend in mobile gaming, headlined by Google Ads, with other networks like Moloco following suit and making that transition as well.

Header bidding is a process where mobile app publishers offer their ad inventory to multiple advertising networks simultaneously, allowing them to bid on it simultaneously. This creates more competition for each ad impression, increasing revenue for the app publisher by ensuring they receive the best possible price.

Seow describes header bidding as similar to a single-slot auction house, where bidders offer their bids side-by-side instead of offering competing bids, one after the other. 

Header bidding differs from the alternative ‘waterfall model’, a programmatic approach in which ad requests are sent sequentially to ad networks in order of their historical performance until one fills the ad slot.

Pros and cons of header bidding

The shift towards header bidding has changed the pricing dynamic from publisher-led to more partner or network-led. This change has pros and cons when compared to the waterfall model.

Header bidding cuts out much of the work involved in methods like the waterfall model, giving the mediator more power. Due to the process’s concealed algorithm, more agency is given to the bidders, and publishers may lose access to the information they would gain from seeing which rates are not succeeding in the bidding process and the eCPMs of losing bids.

While workflow is improving, valuable intel can be lost in the process. Another disadvantage is that not everyone can benefit from such a streamlined, large-scale system.

Seow says: “We need to remember that on the other side of the chain are individual advertisers who want to buy inventory on our apps, and they can only do that if they have the technical ability to read the signals they are sending, interpret them, and price them. Changing bidding has streamlined a lot of infrastructure, but it isn’t necessarily accessible to all advertisers.”

Monetization trends and challenges in 2024

It is widely accepted that 2024 was not a strong year across the monetization industry. Two key reasons for weaker performance were greater control for networks and mediation partners, and the increased user acquisition costs. Strategies have had to evolve, so publishers have found new tactics to adapt to a shifting ecosystem.

Hybrid monetization models

In 2024, hybrid monetization models became increasingly popular among mobile game publishers. These models combine in-app advertising and in-app purchases to maximize overall revenue streams and user engagement. Games can cater to a broader audience, engaging players who prefer not to spend upfront through rewarded video ads while also offering opportunities for paying users to enhance their experience. 

Hybrid monetization is effective because it can attract a wider user base through accessible ad-supported options while simultaneously benefiting from higher eCPMs driven by paying users within the app, creating a self-reinforcing cycle for revenue generation.

The most challenging part of the transition to a hybrid monetization model is that tailoring a game for in-app purchases can be very different from building one that’s primarily ad-supported. This means that apps will have to adapt their engagement mechanics to ensure that both monetization methods work seamlessly.

“Games that tend to use a hybrid build don’t rely on friction to get users to pay but on higher value for users,” Sela explains. “So seasonal passes, for instance, are a very trendy item right now. This is something that can help convert a user into a paying user, and in return, they get more enjoyment from the game without friction. It helps users progress in a way that isn’t exactly a pay-to-win format, but it enhances the fun.”

User spending habits in mobile games

While in-app purchases are an essential part of game monetization, only a small percentage of users make them. A 2024 report from Unity found that only 1.83% of mobile gamers spend money on in-app purchases, and of these, only 28.81% are likely to spend again after the initial payment.

Seow states that, with the exception of games like Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail, where an entire meta is built around in-app purchases and their value, for most games, it’s a small minority of users that are making consistent in-app purchases.

For the majority of mobile gamers, their relationship with the industry is very casual, used as a way to entertain themselves and relieve boredom. This means that most players don’t feel inclined to spend money.

This is widely accepted by publishers who rely on in-app purchases as their main revenue model. Their focus is, therefore, more on increasing the amount of money this super minority pays, with converting users into paying users as a secondary goal.

The future of direct-to-consumer monetization

While the number of people willing to spend money on mobile games is very low now, the percentage of people willing to make in-app purchases may increase in the future. Younger generations are currently willing to spend money on games like Fortnite and Roblox, where cosmetic items and battle passes are commonplace.

This could be aided by the rise of monetization methods such as direct-to-consumer stores, which sell in-app purchases to consumers from outside of the app—such as through the developer or publisher’s website. Such stores are already well established in some parts of the world, particularly in non-gaming apps, and are also becoming increasingly common in the mobile games industry.

These external stores are a win-win scenario. Consumers are usually offered much better deals when making purchases for their favorite apps this way, as the developer avoids the hefty commission fees levied on sales made directly through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

However, that does pose an infrastructural question—if apps can generate revenue outside the confines of app stores, where does that leave Apple and Google? That issue has led to a number of fights over payments, stores, and commission fees throughout the last few years.

The most notable was the widely documented legal battle between Apple and Fortnite developer Epic Games. In 2021, Epic Games had its game removed from the App Store after it gave users a direct payment option. The disagreement was only settled in May this year, with the court ruling that Epic Games is permitted to include links to alternative payment methods.

The role of AI in monetization strategies

The AI boom will certainly impact monetization strategies in the future. However, generative AI has yet to make a real impact on them for now. 

Sela says, “It still needs to be proven that we can rely on it. Right now, we’re using it more for ideation and areas of creativity rather than leaning on it technically or analytically.”

Seow agrees, adding that while it is used commonly for user acquisition work, with data science or analytical work, publishers don’t want to share their data at this stage. Therefore, until there is a data-safe, privacy-safe, and confidential way to share data with gen AI platforms, it remains unlikely that its use will drive monetization strategies in the near future.

Ultimately, despite near-term negative impacts, the shift towards header bidding could benefit monetization teams, as they would have more time to think creatively about new ways to monetize games.

2025 is likely to be a year of innovation for mobile game monetization, with publishers embracing new concepts and innovations to adapt to changes in the market. We anticipate that new products and technologies will continue to emerge, shaping and disrupting existing revenue models.

If you’d like to listen to the full interview with Seow and Sela, make sure to listen to Episode 62 of Mobile Games Playbook →

The post Top Monetization Trends in the Mobile Games Market appeared first on GameRefinery.