China's Dominance Shatters in June - The Most Downloaded Games in the World

Ariel Ariel
Jul. 26

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


I crunched the numbers and ranked all mobile games by their downloads and unlike previous months, June was full of movements across all three charts.

Subway Surfers was, again, the most downloaded game in the world (and maybe the universe, but we don't have a model for that yet) in June. We estimate it saw 22M new downloads from the App Store and Google Play - mostly from Google Play - to cement its spot as the king of mobile games.

Subway Surfers' amazing stickiness is likely why there are more than 160 games with "surfers" in their name (according to data from Explorer).

Pizza Ready, a hyper casual title that rose to the top of our charts in May ended June in second place with 19M downloads, according to our estimates. A touch lower than May, but considering its an unknown name that just sprouted to the top, this is expected. Not many new hyper casuals stuck around for more than a single month so let's see if the trend continues for Pizza Ready.

Manage Supermarket, a new hyper casual title, rose into the third place in June with 19M estimated downloads from Google Play (because it's not available on the App Store).

Roblox and Free Fire Max round out the top 5 most downloaded games in June. Both saw more downloads in June than they did in May.

Here's what you won't see in June's chart - China-only titles Happy Fishing and DNF Mobile, which ranked well in May (on the App Store) but are completely gone in June. No China-only title made it to the top 10 on the App Store in June, something we last saw back in March.

Our estimates show that downloads of the top 10 games rose 7% to 163M in June across the App Store and Google Play. Historically it's July and August that see more downloads for games in the summer. Let's see if that trend continues this year.

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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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