Despite the headwinds and challenges the mobile games industry faced in 2022, gaming apps continued making billions of dollars in revenue from their massive user base.
According to data presented by SafeBettingSites.com, the world’s two highest-grossing mobile games, Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile popular eSports games, raked in almost $4bn last year, or 5% more than in 2021.
Honor of Kings` Revenue Grew, while PUBG Mobile saw a Drop in Player Spending
In the world of mobile games, two titles stand out when it comes to player spending. Statista and AppMagic data showed that Tencent’s megahits, Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile, still gross way higher revenues than any other mobile game. In 2022, the two titles raked in a jaw-dropping $3.92bn, up from the $3.76bn reported a year before.
Still, while Honor of Kings` profits grew, PUBG Mobile saw a drop in player spending. As the world’s top-grossing mobile game, Honor of Kings made over $2.2bn in revenue last year, up from $1.76bn in 2021. The App Magic data also show the revenue of Tencent’s megahit has almost doubled since 2019 when the game grossed $1.1bn worldwide.
On the other hand, PUBG Mobile player spending dropped by nearly $300 million year-over-year, falling from more than $2bn in 2021 to $1.72bn last year. Still, the two mobile games grossed much higher revenue than any other gaming app. In fact, statistics show the two Tencent titles generated more revenue than Genshin Impact, Candy Crush Saga, and Roblox combined, the next three top-grossing titles in 2022.
PUBG Mobile Leads in Total Downloads
While Honor of Kings convincingly leads in revenue, the multiplayer game was not Tencent’s most-downloaded mobile game in 2022. That title went to PUBG Mobile, which was downloaded more than 100 million times worldwide.
Honor of Kings, Tencent’s second most-downloaded mobile game, hit four times less downloads than that, or close to 25 million. Far below, Battle of Spatula, League of Legends: Wild Rift, and Happy Landlord followed with 11.7 million, 9.5 million, and 8.4 million downloads, respectively. Together, the five Tencent mobile games hit more than 155 million downloads last year.
