Monopoly Go's Downloads Dropped 70% Since its Peak - Revenue Didn't

Monopoly Go is a game you can't miss. Not necessarily because of its features but rather because it's everywhere.

Since its launch last year, the game has been at the top of the downloads and revenue charts consistently.

Lately, however, downloads have been on the decline and I was curious to see what's going on with the numbers and whether less downloads = less revenue.

Short answer - it doesn't.

Monopoly Go is one of the biggest advertisers on mobile, spending intelligently and clearly being able to convert well. In terms of downloads, our estimates show that means millions of downloads right out of the gates.

In April of last year, our estimates show the game made its way into 8.5M devices through the App Store and Google Play, globally. The trend mostly continued to rise until peaking in August with 13M estimated downloads - and this is a conservative estimate.

And like many before it, a peak meant downloads would trend down from there on out, and they did, only rising a bit during December, which is to be expected.

Monopoly Go ended May with 4M downloads, down 70%. That's a lot of downloads it's not getting. Naturally, you'd expect revenue to also tank but that doesn't seem to be the immediate case here.

Like downloads, Monopoly Go's revenue started off high. Our estimates show it earned $7.4M in net revenue (after store fees) in April of last year and hit the $100M mark within 5 months. It actually skipped $100M and went right to $115M in August, according to our estimates. But unlike downloads, it didn't stop there.

Although growth slowed a bunch, net revenue continued to rise peaking at $127M in March of this year. It's dropped since then, but not nearly as fast as the downloads - which is why I think this is all about balancing ROI, which I imagine is really fun at that scale.

In addition to advertising, I think an important component of Monopoly Go's success is the lack of competition. It's riding a well known IP that's soooo casual anyone can join. Not many games do it at that scale. Squad Busters, Supercell's latest release, might. We'll have to wait and see.