The December gaming numbers from Appfigures Intelligence have been crunched like the snow and ice under so many feet.
While a couple games received gifts in the way of considerable revenue bumps, the topmost representatives of the category saw their after-fees earnings slip on the ice. Still, although the top 10 lost their footing overall, the data shows that this didn't snowball into games lower on the ranking (especially in the long-tail of more modestly performing titles) seeing similar declines.
Last War was once again the supreme title where gamer spending was concerned, and its player base spent big on it in December to the tune of netting an estimated $136M — $17M more than in November. Publisher Funfly gave players plenty of festive ways to engage and spend more in the title with a number of special events and several holidays-themed mini-games, which clearly delivered as intended.
Monopoly Go had a great December, rising to #2 overall with $121M and earning an estimated $9M over its November total in the process. It also made a big move on iOS, sliding up three places to be the #1 game by revenue on the platform in December. Like Last War, Monopoly Go benefitted from a sleigh-full of live ops events and mini-games deployed, including a special New Year’s Blocks mini-game and rolling bonus opportunities.
Royal Match ($103M), Whiteout Survival ($101M), and Candy Crush Saga ($76M) filled out the remainder of the top five. Whiteout Survival effectively swapped places with Monopoly Go, losing an estimated $14M from its November number in the process.
Altogether, December’s 10 biggest earners across both app stores combined to net an estimated total of $865M worldwide, which works out to about $32M or roughly 3.5% less than November. The entire games category earned about 0.6% less month-over-month, so the overall decline wasn’t as pronounced outside of the top apps. Still, we usually expect December to deliver gains for the category, but that’s not always the case as this data proves.
Setting aside the overall downloads top 10 for a moment, there was a very important launch on iOS last month for a couple of reasons, and the game in question came in at #3 on that ranking, Red Dead Redemption. It’s noteworthy not only because it reached such a high spot on the chart with an estimated 5M first-month downloads, but also because why that was possible.
The game, formerly on consoles and PC, debuted both as a free title for Netflix subscribers and a $39.99 paid title for non-subscribers. Given the Rockstar-developed game’s astonishing pedigree and console-quality content, it’s no wonder Netflix subscribers tapped download in droves to secure a copy.
Back in the top 10 across both platforms, Block Blast didn’t move from #1 — but it did move more installs to hit an estimated 30.4M, 7.3M more than in November. We can imagine what was probably a rather large number of new device owners signing in to the app stores during the holidays, seeing the title atop the free game rankings, and giving it a download for that reason alone.
Roblox, like Block Blast, saw its rank (#2) unchanged from November, and given the game’s almost mythic popularity at this point, we wouldn’t really expect anything less than that — although we would have easily seen it being #1 during the holidays with new devices in new players’ hands. That said, it didn’t gain as much over November as Block Blast, adding just 1.3M to its total from November's figure, for a total of 20.4M, according to our estimates.
Pizza Ready, Subway Surfers, and Vita Mahjong were top downloaded titles #3 to #5, with the first two switching places from November’s ranking and the third stating put. While Subway Surfers (15.5M) and Vita Mahjong (12.7M) didn’t grow their December totals notably over November, Pizza Ready served an estimated 16.5M downloads, which was 2.3M (or 16%) more than a month earlier, per our models.
Adding the rest of the top 10 into the mix, their downloads totaled an estimated 150M, which was 16M more than November’s sum of 134M. That’s an increase of roughly 12% month-over-month and is exactly the kind of sequential growth we expect out of the final month of each year.
It’s been a turbulent few years for the mobile games industry: first the pandemic-driven highs of 2020–2021, then the lows brought on by the deprecation of IDFA, followed by a return to “normal”, only for generative AI to arrive, potentially causing more disruption than tangible benefits.
The dust from that latest disruption has begun to settle. While gen AI will likely lead to an increase in lower-performing titles in terms of downloads in 2026, it should also drive a faster overall release cadence across the category.
With noise increasing and downloads already declining in general, gen AI’s most valuable use cases are likely to emerge in optimizing the user acquisition pipeline, particularly when it comes to producing and testing creative assets. Those who deploy it effectively will have a meaningful advantage in keeping CPI down while maximizing retention and, ultimately, lifetime value on fewer installs.
Looking ahead, the winners in 2026 are unlikely to be defined by any single mechanic or technology, but by how well teams balance diversification and focus. Monetization will continue to fragment across IAP, subscriptions, ads, and hybrids, forcing developers to be intentional rather than opportunistic, while community building increasingly shifts from a marketing afterthought to a core retention strategy.
At the same time, the gradual expansion of paid search placements on iOS is poised to put new pressure on organic discovery, raising the bar for ASO and making visibility more expensive for everyone, especially smaller studios without deep acquisition budgets. That dynamic may also accelerate the push toward live ops and IP-driven crossovers, which until now have largely been the domain of the biggest titles, but could begin trickling down as mid-scale games look for ways to stay culturally relevant and sticky over longer lifecycles.
In a market defined by fewer downloads and more noise, sustainable growth will hinge less on chasing scale and more on building resilient systems that keep players engaged, monetized, and connected over time.
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