China's Growing - The Most Downloaded Mobile Games in August
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - How Big Was the Summer for Apps and Games?. Check out the full article for more insights.
I crunched the numbers and ranked the top mobile games in the world by downloads for the month of August, and can you guess who's still in the lead?
Subway Surfers continues its mega run as the most downloaded mobile game in the world! Our estimates show it was downloaded 20M times in August. That's enough to rank it in both individual lists as well.
Royal Match came in second with 15M downloads, according to our estimates. Royal Match has been inching its way up the list over the last few months, moving from 4th place in June to 3rd in July and now 2nd in August. Let's see if it can maintain the spot.
Roblox dropped into third place with 15M downloads, but the real surprise this August is Candy Crush, which dropped all the way down to 9th place. Candy Crush ended August with 11M downloads.
The new sheriff of downloadtown, Monopoly Go, continued its amazing streak and came in 6th on the overall chart and 1st on the App Store chart. The game has been growing exceptionally fast and the trend doesn't look to be changing any time soon.
China's Dominance
Another trend that's important to watch is the number of China-only games making their way into the App Store list, which started in July with two titles which became 3 in August.
The last time we saw a China-only title on the list was back in December of 2022.
The reason I find this interesting is because these games are getting more downloads in China than other games get worldwide. And China understands its scale which is why it's closing its stores for non-Chinese developers now.
This isn't a newsletter about international policy, but seeing Temu's and TiTok's success in the US, I wonder if China's move to prevent non-Chinese companies from offering apps and games in its app stores is predatory or simply a negotiation tactic.
Together, the top 10 most downloaded mobile games in the world drew 134M new downloads in August, according to our estimates. While a bit lower than July's, this total is still higher than before the summer.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
