By now, many of you will have read about how AI is resulting in great productivity gains. Epic’s Tim Sweeney famously tweeted, “This technology increases human productivity in some areas by integer multiples...”

Another data point comes from a16z, showing a great acceleration of new iOS apps since the release of agentic coding (though we somewhat disagree with their agentic coding release timeline).

The message is clear: AI is increasing productivity, and we are making more things. Is this true for games? Unlike a simple app you can create and publish via Replit in a weekend, games are typically much more complex. Games are an intersection of art, design, engineering, audio, and so much more. Have the advances in generative AI resulted in an onslaught of so-called AI slop games?

Let’s take a look at PC games, a community which has the most vocal anti-AI stance.

Here, we don’t see any obvious signs of AI-accelerated growth, as new game releases have been on a pretty linear trajectory since 2022. That’s not particularly surprising, given the vitriol that games like Arc Raiders, Battlefield 6, and Call of Duty have received after being released with AI-generated content. There are even curated Steam lists identifying AI-generated games for players to avoid, with one of them listing about 1,400 games.

According to the Steam AI tracking site AI Transparency Index, there are currently 14,449 titles that have disclosed AI usage as of writing, about 11.3% of all released titles. Gathering data from some of the earliest tracking of AI in games on Steam from the site Totally Human, we get the chart below, showing a CAGR of around +280% for games with disclosed AI content (for context, the total Steam library had a CAGR of 22% during the same period).

The takeaway is straightforward: For now, it seems to show that the current set of developers are adopting new tools rather than AI enabling a new cohort of game developers. Whether deterred by vocal AI-haters or other factors, there isn’t a deluge of PC games flooding Steam with quickly made AI-assisted games.

What about mobile? AI is already being heavily used in UA to create hundreds of creatives, and, as we’ve seen with the a16z chart above, it has already accelerated the release of iOS apps.

At first glance, the chart looks a bit too unbelievable, almost like a data ingestion issue. This led us to contact Sensor Tower; we explained our methodology and requested an investigation. Surely there had to be something wrong.

The answer was no. Sensor Tower’s API team confirmed that there were no technical issues with the data, and that it was accurate. The team attributed the huge spike to holiday season demand, overall growth, and emerging AI and entertainment apps. However, such a surge is completely atypical.

To make sense of this trend, it’s important to account for the significant drop in Android game releases towards the end of 2023. This wasn’t organic — it followed a series of measures introduced by Google to curb low-quality releases on the Play Store.

• In August 2023, Google started requiring new developers to have a DUNS number, a business verification ID.
• In November 2023, it required newly created personal accounts to run a closed test for their app with a minimum of 20 testers. This was reduced to 12 testers in December 2023.
• In August 2024, Google did a sweep of the Play Store to remove spam, “vapor apps”, and fake software. 

All this resulted in the number of games released halving by mid-2024. Then, at the end of 2024, we see game releases recover, coinciding with advancements in AI technology.

• Q1-Q3 2024: Advances in models like Anthropic’s Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o greatly increased the capability of developers to “vibe code” (though this term was only coined in February 2025 by Andrej Karpathy). 
• November 2024: Windsurf released the first agentic IDE, where AI is the actual coder. 
• February 2025: Anthropic’s agentic IDE, Claude Code, released.
• May 2025: OpenAI’s agentic IDE, Codex, released.
• October 2025: Cursor releases Composer 1, its agentic coding model. Cursor had already released “background agents” in May 2025.
• November 2025: Google’s agentic IDE, Antigravity, released.
• January 2026: Replit releases Mobile Apps. Developers can go from vibe coding to publishing on the App Store all in one platform.

The implication is clear: the steady evolution of generative coding tools finally reached a tipping point, enabling developers to create more games, faster.

This raises a key question: Who is creating these new games? Are they new developers, empowered by AI, creating their first game? Or are they grizzled veterans, given an AI-power up?

We performed an analysis comparing recurring publishers (those that had released at least one other game in the preceding 12 months) and new publishers.

It's clear that new publishers are entering the market in droves. Between March 2025 and February 2026:

• iOS: New publishers grew by +21% PoP, while recurring publishers contracted by -7%.
• Android: New publishers saw a +82% PoP explosion, compared to +17% for recurring publishers.

Where is the influx of publishers coming from? To find that out, we examined game releases by publisher country. The chart below shows the top 10 countries by game releases.

Despite some noise, the data shows clear spikes from publishers in China and India. To dig deeper, we focus on December 2025 to February 2026, when releases surged. If this was an AI-led spike, then comparing this with the previous three months would allow us to see which regions were more “all in” with AI. The results are interesting.

In this period, Chinese publishers had the second largest growth rate and the largest growth by volume of games released. Many have framed AI as the key to being able to compete with China, to stem what seems to be the inevitable outcome of Chinese publishers completely overtaking the global mobile F2P market. However, as we can see, the Chinese have embraced AI much more readily, and we are seeing the outcome of that adoption.

Besides China, the top three growth leaders are rounded out by Turkey, which secured the number one spot in growth rate, and Japan, which ranked second in absolute growth and third in growth rate.

We’re seeing the strong get even stronger, in terms of volume of games, anyway.

Next, what sort of games is this influx of new developers making? We looked at game releases by store categories:

On iOS, the top games by growth were Board games followed by Puzzle. On Android, they were Arcade games followed by the Casual category. Overall, new games were simpler titles, likely those that would be easier for an AI-assisted new developer to make and that tools like Replit can more easily handle.

Wouldn’t simpler games, by definition, always dominate regardless of any influx of new developers? Not necessarily. In fact, looking at 2025 year-over-year growth rates for Android, Casinoled the pack with a +255% increase.

For our final analysis, let’s look at success. Are all of these new titles getting downloads and making revenue?

Whether it’s good news or bad news, one thing that hasn’t changed is how difficult it is to succeed on mobile. The table below shows the games released during the three month period of December 2025 - February 2026 compared to the prior period. We then retrieved downloads and revenue data for March 2026 and bucketed them into different performance segments. So a 96.68% in the ≤1,000 bucket means that almost 97% of games released during that period got less than 1,000 downloads and so on.

Note that the buckets here are based on Sensor Tower’s own categorization when getting data through its API. Also, the calculation here is for each individual SKU rather than unified(i.e., The Android and iOS versions are considered separate apps).

As we can see, there hasn’t been a significant change in the ratio of successes. Games that essentially get no downloads or revenue make up the vast majority of games before and after the influx. So despite there being a 77% jump in game releases in the December 2025 - February 2026 period, successful games (defined as earning more than $20k in March 2026) only increased by 14%.

As a summary:

1. The era of AI slop games is truly here, at least on mobile.
2. Leading countries are strengthening their output advantage.
3. Increased output is not translating into increased success.

So what are we to make of this? It’s clear that AI is a great force multiplier, but it is not yet helping teams find product-market fit — if that’s what all the new creators are even trying to do (some may be just hobbyists finally enabled to create games, which is great!). For all the hype of a solo dev using AI agents to scour the internet 24/7 for trends and remixing them into game prototypes, we haven’t seen any significant success yet. I do believe it’s a matter of when and not if, but when that happens, those developers are unlikely to come from the West.

So what can Western developers do? You cannot out-execute China, even with AI, because they are already way ahead with adoption. Now, if you’re still wondering if you should begin exploring integration of AI in your workflow, the answer is yes. AI use now applies across the entire mobile development stack, from production, user acquisition, live ops, and more. 

It’s important to note that, while all of these tools can make you faster, they aren’t going to give you an instinct for “feel.” What emotions does the game elicit in players and what makes them want to keep coming back? In this age of AI-assisted execution, it’s even more important to become tastemakers.

The mobile game industry has been using the Proven-Better-New mantra for decades now, but it has been heavily weighted on Proven. When Clash Royale came on the scene, every other game started using chest slots as session control. When Royal Match burst into prominence, suddenly meta was out and live-ops was in. When most games are so similar in structure except maybe swapping out the core or meta, it’s not hard to understand why we have a 99% failure rate. 

But perhaps we had the blueprint for success all along. OG design great Sid Meier has a 33/33/33 rule of sequel design: 33% of the sequel should be what's already there, 33% improved, and 33% brand-new in terms of mechanics. This is exactly Mark Pincus’ Proven-Better-New, except with actual ratios. And with the power of AI tools, experimenting with 33% new is much less of a time sink and risk. When product managers, designers, and artists, and even executives can create and experiment with prototypes all by themselves, the sky is the limit.

If you found this article interesting, you can look forward to more of this type of discussion in our new AI x Gaming newsletter!

A Word from Our Sponsor: Neon

Take Control of Your Commerce

Neon is a global payments and e-commerce platform designed to help game publishers earn more revenue and gain independence from app stores. Our DTC platform handles everything from webshops and checkout to global payments, tax, and compliance – with full transparency and all-in pricing. No black boxes. No restrictions. No surprises. 

Built by payments, fintech, and gaming veterans, we work hands-on with publishers to optimize revenue and simplify operations. If you're serious about DTC, we're serious about helping you grow.

In Other News

💸Funding & M&A:

• Government pledges £28.5M for UK Games Fund to boost industry.
• US-based digital trading card platform Packz has raised $10.7M in total funding.
• Mission Control Games launches with $4M pre-seed to rethink casual puzzle design.
• Sweden-based gaming holding Enad Global 7 has entered into a non-binding letter of intent to acquire US-based games developer Cold Iron Studios for $3M.
• Dice Throne launches $100K Kickstarter for digital adaptation.

📊 Business & Products:

• UK games market hit record £8.8B in 2025.
• Roblox agrees to a $12.5M deal to enhance child safety.
• How Tilting Point and AN Games are taking on the 4X strategy space with Avatar: Realms Collide.
• Roblox unveils new subscription service Roblox Plus.
• Jagex to expand RuneScape: Dragonwilds into the Asia-Pacific region.

👾 Miscellaneous:

• Games for Change and Tencent expand Raising Good Gamers initiative to support families.
• Xbox boss reportedly says Game Pass "has become too expensive for players".
• Epic Games is working on an Arc Raiders-like Disney extraction shooter slated to release by the end of the year.
• ESL FACEIT Group teams up with KICK for esports streams.
• CookieRun: Kingdom launches KPop Demon Hunters crossover with limited-time event.

A Word from Our Sponsor: Medal

15M Players Use Medal to Share Gaming Moments and Discover New Games

Medal is the fastest way to clip, save, and share gameplay on PC with 15M+ MAUs to date. With 3M+ players sharing clips weekly, Medal is the world’s best place to reach high-quality gamers. Medal’s network isn’t just uniquely gamer, but also uniquely primed to amplify those games. Players come to Medal to discover new gaming content, and they clip, post, and share, turning your game’s moments into word-of-mouth at internet scale. Every week, millions of clips get shared, and they are quietly driving your game’s discovery across all genres and studio sizes, from micro indie to AAA. These moments last forever and are sincere, scalable, and shareable. 

Medal is a team of fast and scrappy gamers tackling one of the biggest problems in the industry — discovery. If you are ambitious, love games, and want to help define how the next generation of players find and share the games they love, Medal is hiring.

Content Worth Consuming

Follow a Game's Rules, not Its Story: Exit 8 Director Genki Kawamura on the Secret to a Successful Movie Adaptation (gamesindustry.biz): “Exit 8 hit cinemas last weekend, a new movie based on the cult 2023 indie game from Kotake Create. Flying in the face of the convention set by many video game to film adaptations of the past, it's actually rather good, currently sitting at a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. GamesIndustry.biz sat down with director Genki Kawamura to find out the secret to a successful film adaptation, how he aimed to blur the lines between the mediums of cinema and video games, and how the current crop of indie titles offer much more fertile grounds for films than games of the past.”

Roblox (Gamecraft): “Mitch & Blake discuss one of their favorite companies in games, Roblox. They start by outlining Roblox's core competitive advantages, and how they are unique in providing creation, consumption, aggregation, and monetization in a single platform. They also discuss how unusual it is for a company to get to Roblox's scale with a pure platform strategy and no first-party games. They then discuss the history of the company, and what it was doing for the decade before it appeared on the radar screens of most game industry observers. Mitch talks about hearing the pitch from CEO Dave Baszucki back in 2007. They discuss the period of inflection when they simultaneously launched on mobile platforms and significantly invested in upgrading graphics and the overall experience.”

NYT Games Wordle & Crossword: The Most Premium Audience in Gaming (two & a half gamers): “We break down one of the biggest and most misunderstood “games” in the world — NYT Games Wordle & crossword. With over 8.5 million DAU, this app sits among the largest mobile games globally. But here’s the twist: It barely monetizes like a game; It relies mostly on subscriptions; It avoids aggressive ad strategies completely.”

The Sounds of ARC Raiders with Audio Director Bence Pajor (The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook): “Austin Wintory chats with Bence Pajor, the Audio Director behind Embark Studios’ smash hit extraction shooter, Arc Raiders. Together they discuss his early career in music and how he transitioned to audio design; his work at DICE on the Battlefield series; the moral implications when designing realistic audio experiences for combat simulations; balancing music to not break player immersion; and creating modern synth music with retro aesthetics.”

The Blood of the Dawnwalker Developer: Everyone We Spoke to Wanted to Invest (The Game Business): “We speak to Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the CEO and creative lead at Rebel Wolves, who is best known for directing The Witcher 3 at CD Projekt Red. At his new studio, Tomaszkiewicz is creating the upcoming open world vampire RPG The Blood of the Dawnwalker. In this interview he shares the story of the game (and the studio) so far, and why he said goodbye to CD Projekt.”

Supercell President:"If We Want to Be One of the Very Best Mobile Game Companies in the World, Great Live Ops Isn't Enough" (pocketgamer.biz): “Over the last few years, Finnish studio Supercell has reshaped how it operates behind the scenes. That continued in 2025 when divisions for game tech, business operations, marketing and more were unified under a single umbrella, the live games unit, led by Sara Bach, who was appointed promoted to the role of president. Meanwhile, the new games business effectively operates separately through the Spark program, AI Innovation Labs and Supercell Investments.”

More About Naavik

Naavik's team of experts has helped over 300 companies — publishers, studios, tech companies, and investors — better succeed across the video game industry. We'd love to work with you too! Here's what we offer, spanning all platforms, genres, and regions:

• Strategy Consulting: Projects covering market research, corporate strategy, game & economy design, gamification, live ops strategy, AI strategy, product management, brand & performance marketing, and more.
• M&A and Investment Advisory: Expert commercial due diligence for buyers, fundraising support for sellers, and fractional CFO/CSO services.
• Fractional Talent: The one-stop shop for top-tier fractional talent covering dozens of game industry roles (analytics, design, marketing, art, QA, and more).

Check out the links above for more details. And if you'd like to chat about how Naavik can serve your team, click the box below or send us a note at [email protected].