The last year mobile games led in-app purchase revenue was 2016. After that, non-gaming apps moved ahead and never gave the lead back, according to a decade of data from AppMagic detailed by GameDev.net. That single line on a chart quietly redraws the map of where the money in mobile entertainment actually sits — and it explains a lot about why the games industry keeps feeling squeezed.
The headline names on the non-game side tell the story in miniature. TikTok has been the top-grossing app every year since 2020, per the same AppMagic data, and ChatGPT was the most downloaded app globally in 2025. Games didn't just lose the revenue crown once. They lost it to a video app, and then watched an AI chatbot walk off with the download charts.
What does the 2016 turning point actually mean?
It means the assumption baked into a decade of mobile business plans — that games are the default way to make money on a phone — stopped being true in 2016 and has stayed false ever since. In-app purchases, the payments players and users make inside an app, were once a games-first economy. Non-gaming apps took the lead that year and held it, which per AppMagic's data makes this less a blip and more a structural shift. For anyone who built a career or a studio on the old assumption, the chart is the uncomfortable receipt.
Who still wins on the game side of the chart?
A very short list of very old games. The mobile game side of AppMagic's chart is still dominated by a few long-running hits, and the biggest of them is TiMi Studio Group's Honor of Kings, which has led game IAP revenue in multiple years since its 2017 debut — 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2026 by the AppMagic tally. It passed $1.1 billion in 2026 after earning $830 million in its launch year. That is nearly a decade at the top for a single title.
| Game | What the AppMagic data shows |
|---|---|
| Honor of Kings | Led game IAP revenue in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2026; $830 million launch year, over $1.1 billion in 2026 |
| Free Fire | 272 million installs in 2019, 225 million in 2021, 269 million in 2024, 221 million in 2026 |
| Among Us | 930 million downloads, $52 million in revenue |
| Umamusume | $1.6 billion from 19 million downloads |
Garena's Free Fire plays the opposite role: the standout download machine. It debuted with 272 million installs in 2019 and kept pulling enormous numbers — 225 million in 2021, 269 million in 2024, and another 221 million in 2026. One game owns the revenue crown, another owns the download crown, and everyone else fights for scraps in between.
Why do downloads and revenue disagree so violently?
Because on mobile, the two barely correlate. AppMagic's numbers put the gap in blunt terms: Among Us reached 930 million downloads but only $52 million in revenue, while Umamusume generated $1.6 billion from just 19 million downloads. Read those two together and the lesson is stark. A massive audience guarantees nothing, and a modest audience can out-earn a phenomenon if the monetization is built right. For developers, that reinforces how hard it is to break into the highest revenue tier without either massive scale, unusually strong retention, or a monetization model that can compete with non-game apps.
Is anything still growing in mobile games?
A little, at the very top. AppMagic points to a small set of games still growing meaningfully at the high end: Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story, Kingshot, and Honor of Kings. Three names on a growth list, out of an entire industry, is the real headline here. The broader pattern in the data is that mobile monetization is increasingly concentrated — the winners take more, and the middle of the market thins out.
That concentration is a community story as much as a business one. When a handful of decade-old titles absorb the spending, the games players gather around get older and harder to displace — a dynamic anyone who has watched communities rally around long-running competitive titles will recognize, and one we've followed in pieces on why older games stay competitive long after their sell-by date. The economics and the culture pull in the same direction: toward the games that already won. This connects to our earlier piece, Why older games stay competitive long after their sell-by date.
What happens next for mobile games?
The honest answer, on this evidence, is a fight for a smaller share of a pie that stopped being theirs in 2016. Non-game apps have the revenue lead, TikTok has had the top-grossing spot since 2020, and ChatGPT took the download crown in 2025. The games that thrive — Honor of Kings, Free Fire, the merge-and-story titles — do so by being either enormous, sticky, or ruthlessly well-monetized. What the data doesn't show is any broad recovery for the middle. Until a chart says otherwise, 2016 remains the year the money left the room.
For readers following the business behind the scenes, our culture section tracks these shifts as they land on players and communities, and the wider gaming news desk covers the industry numbers as they break. For related coverage, see Culture kings — Behind the scenes of gaming conventions: who builds the floor you walk on.
