Game Revenue is Still Growing, But Slower - The Highest Earning Games in the World

Ariel Ariel
Jun. 14

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Sherlocked!. Check out the full article for more insights.


I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning games across the App Store and Google Play by net revenue - what the publishers get to keep after Apple and Google deduct their fees.

The first thing you'll notice when looking at May's charts is that China is in the lead!

King of Glory, a China-only title, was the highest-earning game in the world in May with $131M from the App Store, according to our estimates. China's ability to drive revenue continues to amaze me. King of Glory was also the highest-earning game in the App Store, obviously, and isn't the only China-only title that made the charts in May - 4 games did!

Monopoly Go was the second-highest earner in May with a healthy haul of $116M in net revenue, according to our estimates. In case you were wondering, Apple and Google, though mostly Apple, earned about $50M from Monopoly Go in May.

Royal Match, Peace Elite, and Candy Crush round out the top 5 highest earners in May. And if you're comparing this list to April's you'll notice the ranks are identical but the revenue isn't - the top 4 earned more and Candy Crush dropped a bit.

Supercell's Brawl Stars ranked across all three lists in May, earning the most ever in the game's history. Looking at the trend, which is really pretty, I'd say it's on track to do the same in June.

And one more thing I noticed is that there are four China-only titles on the App Store's top 10 list in May. That not exactly new, we've seen it happen more often earlier in the year, but it hasn't happened since February. I think it's safe to say this trend is here to stay.

Our App Intelligence shows that the top 10 highest-earning games across the App Store and Google Play earned $791M of net revenue in May, about 2% higher than April which isn't bad because the summer is right around the corner.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

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.

Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.

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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