January is behind us, and after the upside-down it was for games, I'm very curious to see if the trend continues - if hyper casual games are back.
I ranked the most downloaded mobile games in the world in February and the answer is...
Yes! Hyper casual games continued to occupy the top charts after taking a looooong hiatus "thanks" in part to Apple's App Tracking Transparency which made advertising these extra expensive.
But just like January, one thing is constant - Subway Surfers remained the most downloaded mobile game in the world with 19M estimated downloads in February. A tad down from January but February was also a shorter month.
Royal Match also kept its second place bringing in 18M new downloads from the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates.
Block Blast and Roblox flipped with the former taking the lead, and rounding out the top 5 is a hyper casual that stars on both the App Store (2nd place) and Google Play (6th). It's been a long time since that happened.
Ludo King and Build A Queen join Wood Nuts & Bolts as hyper casuals of the month. It might seem low compared to pre-ATT days, but considering we barely saw any hyper casuals since, this is more than expected.
According to out estimates, the most downloaded mobile games in the world collected 136M new downloads from the App Store and Google Play. This is lower than January by about 3.5% but February was a shorter month so I'm not alarmed.
December saw a curious split: downloads dropped 2% while revenue sat at $1.3B. ChatGPT and TikTok dominated both charts as the mobile industry enters a new maturity phase.
Wall Street bet $2 billion on Polymarket, and downloads surged 1,172% in December. The prediction market banned in 2022 is now where Wall Street looks for signals.