The King of Game Revenue Lost Its Crown (Again) - The Highest Earning Games in the World

It's not all that often that we see this much movement at the pinnacle of the top earning mobile games, so let's get into what our estimates showed for the second month of 2025. Hint: there's a new #1 in town.

There was a time when Honor of Kings, the highest earning mobile game ever, sat atop the charts, utterly unchallenged for its throne month after month. As more mobile gamers have entered the market bringing with them new tastes, and a greater volume of spending has started flowing from Western markets, it's not uncommon to see Tencent's hyper-successful MOBA drop from #1 every now and then. It's less common to see it drop nearly out of the top five, but it did so last month, having just reclaimed the crown in January.

In its place was Last War: Survival, a combination base builder and zombie shooter that has leveraged its compelling mix of gameplay into increasing popularity. In fact, it did well enough to climb from #5 in January to #1 last month.

Moving down the ranking, the #2 slot remained occupied by Scopely's remarkably successful Monopoly Go. The title has really leveled up (sorry, couldn't resist the pun) the publisher's fortunes, to the point where it was recently able to land the rights to Pokémon Go from Niantic. With its acumen for anticipating what players want and promotional prowess, we look forward to seeing if Scopely can bring the location-based monster-catching title back into the revenue top 10 where it historically spent so much time.

January's #3 earning game Royal Match was also dethroned, with survival strategy title Whiteout Survival moving into its spot. Royal Match slid (presumably on ice) down to #5 in February's ranking, right below where Honor of Kings ended up at #4.

Having crossed $1B in gross player spending for the first time in January, the top 10 earning games saw their revenue continue to climb in February to almost $1.1B before the app stores took their cuts.

Weekly News & Insights to Help Your App Win

Join 45,000+ developers, marketers, investors, and entrepreneurs who get smarter every week.


Related Resources

Insights
ChatGPT Earned WHAT? - The Highest-Earning Apps in October

I ranked the highest earning apps in the world in October and I'm happy to share, app revenue rose in October. Yes, Tik...

Insights
ChatGPT's 10-Month Reign Continues - The Most Downloaded Apps in October

I crunched the numbers and rounded up the most downloaded apps in the world for October and the trend that started back ...