
The last time we looked at new mobile games in the top grossing charts, not much had changed. However, in the past two years, we’ve seen much more movement.
In a difficult market, over a dozen new titles have broken into the 100 highest grossing mobile games, as if developers are adjusting to our new post-ATT reality.
The following eight games have managed to build over $200M a year revenue run rates in the past two years — so let’s take a look at them to see if any patterns emerge from these recent success stories.
Revenue (net) and download data sourced from Sensor Tower. Numbers only cover Android's Google Play and iOS' App Store. PC versions and alternative mobile app stores are excluded. Twelve-month run rates are based on mobile net revenue from the past 12 weeks. We have only included games that are released and available in most Western and Eastern countries.
The Heavy Hitters

Monopoly Go!

- Released April 2023
- To date: 148M downloads, $2.43B revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $1.49B
On the surface, Monopoly Go! is a modern twist on the beloved board game designed specifically for mobile audiences. Underneath, it’s a casualized social casino game akin to Board Kings, Coin Master, and Dice Dreams.
Monopoly Go! is a major distribution unlock — social casino product metrics with casual cost-per-install metrics. It will go down in history as one of the most successful video games ever built.
Perhaps Scopely or its competitors will follow on by attempting to revive other classic board game IPs, although it will be hard to beat the brand match with Scopely’s flawless execution of the Coin Master formula. (We uncovered Monopoly’s KPIs back in March.)
Last War: Survival

- Released August 2023
- 69M downloads, $793M revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $1.32B
Any person with a mobile phone has probably seen Last War: Survival’s infamous ads: the ones with the lanes, multiplier gates and barrel-shooting. In terms of revenue, the game is a monster — the graph points aggresively upwards and to the right.
As another "distribution unlock", Last War: Survival is similar to Monopoly Go, but with 4X instead of social casino. The innovation here is in the bait-and-switch: a deep 4X experience is prefaced with onboarding ( and marketing), heavily inspired by hypercasual gameplay.
Whiteout Survival

- Released January 2023
- 72M downloads, $940M revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $1.10B
Whiteout Survival is the close runner-up in the modern 4X race. It utilizes exactly the same business model as Last War: Survival, but the gameplay hook is different. Instead of shooting barrels and evading minus signs, Whiteout Survival’s marketing and onboarding employ idle arcade gameplay that resembles games like My Perfect Hotel and Dreamdale. Add the mechanic to a mobile marketing staple — survival in harsh environments — and you’ve got a winner. (We wrote a deep dive about Whiteout Survival maker Century Games earlier this year.)
It would be easy to discount the success of Last War: Survival and Whiteout Survival as just marketing innovation, but these games build on a decade of gradual revolution in mobile 4X, while also reshaping the entire experience to appeal to a broader audience. You can call it bait-and-switch, or you can call it good game design.
Honkai: Star Rail

- Released April 2023
- 52M downloads, $1.15B revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $446M
MiHoYo is one of a kind when it comes to manufacturing blockbuster hits. Honkai: Star Rail is the sensible follow-up to Genshin Impact — it includes the characters, story, and gacha monetization that made Genshin huge, but replaces the action with arguably more accessible turn-based gameplay.
With more than a billion revenue, by all standard measures, Honkai: Star Rail is a huge success. However, it’s not entirely clear whether the game genuinely grew MiHoYo’s business or merely cannibalized spend from Genshin.
MiHoYo’s newest title, the action RPG Zenless Zone Zero, was released in July and it has already made its first $100M. However, it peaked significantly lower than Genshin and Honkai: Star Rail, and has also declined faster.
If Honkai: Star Rail was a step toward more accessible gameplay, Zenless Zone Zero arguably went the other direction with its fast paced action. $100M in the first four months is hardly a disappointment, until you factor in the cannibalization and MiHoYo’s sky-high expectations for its portfolio.
The Runner-ups
AFK Journey
- Released March 2024
- 12M downloads, $119M revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $318M
AFK Journey is a streamlined team battler, a spiritual successor to 2018’s AFK Arena.
Lilith’s business has been on a decline for many years with new launches such as 2022’s Dislyte which failed to achieve growth. AFK Journey has quickly become Lilith’s top-earning title, putting the publisher back on a growth track. Notably, recent numbers are somewhat inflated by the summer launch of AFK Journey in key Asian markets. (We wrote about Lilith earlier this year)
Love and Deepspace
- Released January 2024
- 14M downloads, $196M revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $313M
Considering how well 2022’s waifu collector Nikke has performed, it was only a matter of time before someone hit it big with a female-oriented (otome) game. InFold’s husbando collector Love and Deepspace succeeds with a surprising formula, blending romance and space exploration.
Legend of Mushroom
- Released February 2024
- 21M downloads, $320M revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $231M
Legend of Mushroom is a type of idle/slot hybrid, combining incremental growth of an idle game with constant gacha pulls that are very much in the front and center. It’s an obvious fast-follow to Legend of Slime in terms of theme and visuals, yet mechanically it’s more akin to games like Nobody’s Adventure Chop-Chop.
Match Factory!
- Released August 2023
- 22M downloads, $131M revenue
- Forward-looking 12-month run rate: $204M
Sometimes being the best is better than being the first. Zynga’s Match Factory wasn’t the first to take a crack at the tile connect genre. Competitors Zen Match, Triple Match 3D, and Tile Busters were all released well before Match Factory.
Even so, by April this year Match Factory had become the undisputed champion in the genre — and the game is still growing. We wrote about Match Factory back in February.
Wide appeal, deep monetization — and made in China
When Apple’s privacy changes brought about a significant loss in ad targeting capabilities, not many anticipated that 4X games would come out as winners. Yet here we are.
4X excels in deep monetization. In fact, every game we covered regardless of genre — perhaps with the exception of Match Factory — has remarkably high revenue per download. Monopoly Go and Legend of Mushroom both employ casual visual styles and one-button gameplay with no-fail state. Yet the monetization goes deep: there literally is no spend ceiling. One can argue that even games like Love and Deepspace (and Nikke, for that matter) cast a surprisingly wide net by tapping into the universal need for partnership.
The success of these titles shows how genres traditionally focused on niche audiences can be tailored to capture a broader player base, while maintaining depth of gameplay and monetization.
Finally, six out of these eight titles are from Chinese developers. Asian studios have always been ahead of the West in terms of deep systems and high potential spend. As Chinese developers continue to dominate with their expertise in system design, Western studios need to adapt faster to keep pace.
It’s no longer enough to create games that are just accessible or just deep — developers now need to master both.
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In Other News
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- MENA investments recovers after 63 startups raised $282M in September
- Magic Leap founder is back with $20M funding round for SynthBee
- Loot Labs raises $6M in Bitkraft-led seed round towards digital collectables platform
- UMX Studio secures $4.5M investment from Jetapult to expand portfolio
- Krafton leads investment round in India studio Deftouch to scale King and develop new games
📊 Business & Products:
- Against the Storm has sold 1.2M copies
- Shawn Layden: "AA is gone and that's a threat to the ecosystem going forward"
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 promises a detailed and dynamic soundscape
- NetEase partners with Bungie for Destiny: Rising mobile game
👾 Miscellaneous:
- Former Assassin's Creed director to lead FunPlus' new Portuguese studio, Studio Ellipsis
- From Idol Culture to Gacha Mechanics: A Deep Dive into Japan’s Mobile Gaming Market
- PlayVS partners with Omnic to help gamers play smarter with AI feedback
- Rare's Craig Duncan to become head of Xbox Game Studios as Alan Hartman retires
- How AI will shape the games industry
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