Reflecting on a month of game updates, anniversaries and celebrations galore, GameRefinery’s latest report highlights some of September’s biggest games industry draws.
Among the bigger updates this month was the introduction of a new battle pass shop in League of Legends: Wild Rift, along with monetised gachas. Ultimately, the game saw a jump of almost 10 times its usual revenue in September.
Diablo Immortal had a large update too, leading to its download figures doubling. The update included changes to its gacha, with a new means of acquiring premium gacha tickets via free currency. The Activision Blizzard title generated $97 million in August.
An abundance of anniversaries
It has been many years since King’s hit Candy Crush Saga first made its way onto mobile devices. 10 years, in fact. So, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary, Candy Crush celebrated in September with a large-scale multi-week tournament. Earlier in 2022, King reported that Candy Crush had seen 20 per cent year-on-year growth.
State of Survival celebrated its third anniversary in September too, coinciding with its first anniversary in Japan, and another noteworthy title Genshin Impact, celebrated its second anniversary in September and surpassed $3.6 billion in revenue by this time.
Comparing markets
GameRefinery’s September report emphasises the successes of multiple games in different regions, such as One Punch Man: The Strongest making it to position 99 in September’s highest-grossing games, and the in the top 50 in China. Annulus, a grid-based RPG, also made it into the top 100 grossing games in China.
Japan and the US, by contrast, saw Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle top their charts on iOS after the introduction of a new campaign. Many Japanese games are currently themed around sports events as the next school sports season is on the horizon.
“We expect to see more mobile games introducing additional monetisation mechanics over the coming months in response to Apple increasing its App Store prices in Europe and select Asian markets,” said the GameRefinery team.
GameRefinery’s full Mobile Game Market Review September 2022 dives deeper into which mobile games have found the most success across different markets.
