This Looks Weird - The Most Downloaded Games in September

Ariel Ariel
10/15/22

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #135 - It's a Big Shuffle!. Check out the full article for more insights.


This week I rounded up the most downloaded games in the world in September and... There are a few weird things here.

But let's start up top.

Subway Surfers was the most downloaded mobile game in the world in September. The title collected 29 million new downloads from the App Store and from Google Play in September, according to our estimates.

Subway Surfers has been the #1 title in our ranks since April, but September's haul was the lowest to date.

BTW. This month I combined the Chinese version into the main version which leads to a higher total.

Stumble Guys earned the second spot with 21 million downloads. School Party Craft, Candy Crush, and Bridge Race round out the top 5, all three added 15 million new downloads, each, according to our estimates.

There are two things in this list that I want to point your attention to:

  1. Save the Doge, which earned the #10 position on Google Play with 10 million estimated downloads, has its privacy policy in a google doc - weird! That privacy policy says its games are only available for users in China, but since this game is on Google Play which isn't available in China I don't really believe it. I don't trust this game...
  2. 羊了个羊-超难的消除 小游戏, which translates to Sheep is a sheep - super difficult elimination games and made it to the 7th place on the App Store list, had 7 really big days of downloads in China and then was removed from the store. I don't know why, but that's suspicious...

This is the second month we're seeing apps from China rise up our top ranks. I expect this trend to continue.

Together, our App intelligence shows that the top 10 most downloaded games in the world added 157 million new users in September. That's a significant drop when compared to August's numbers. Like the drop we saw with apps, this is the result of summer ending.

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The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

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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.


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