The M&A boom continues in the gaming industry. Sensor Tower found out how the positions of mobile publishers in the United States have changed over the past eight months due to purchases by other companies, and named the largest publishers. Analysts looked at the situation in four mobile categories: puzzles, lifestyle, sports and hyper-casual.
Puzzles
- 69% of revenue in this category went to just three companies: King (31%), Playrix (22%) and Zynga (16%). Analysts did not compare the data with last year, but in 2020 they conducted a similar study. Then it covered the first nine, not eight months of the year. At that time, King, Playrix and Zynga were responsible for 75% of revenue in the puzzle category.
- From January 1 to August 31, 2021, King earned $873 million in the United States. Not least due to the success of the flagship game Candy Crush Saga, which, according to Sensor Tower, had the best start to the year ever.
- Playrix’s revenues totaled $625 million.
- During the year, AppLovin significantly increased its market share, which last time was not included in the list of the largest publishers in this category. In the first eight months of 2021, American users spent $394 million in the company’s games, which put AppLovin in fourth place with a share of 14%. Most of the revenue came from Project Makeover and Matchington Mansion from Magic Tavern studio — the company bought it in 2019.
Lifestyle
- Electronic Arts became the leader in the box office in the category of lifestyle games, earning $123 million in the States. This happened thanks to the purchase of Glu Mobile, the owner of such titles as Design Home, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Covet Fashion.
- In second place is Toca Boca with 14% of the total market revenue.
- The third place went to Playtika, which received $53 million in eight months. She would not have been able to do this if not for the takeover of Reworks at the end of August. The Redecor game from the Finnish studio is the only Playtika title in the lifestyle category.
- Stillfront Group also showed good results, taking the seventh place as a result of the purchase of Nanobit, the developer of Hollywood Story: Fashion Star. The company’s revenue in the segment amounted to $18 million.
Sport
- As in lifestyle, the first place in the category was taken by Electronic Arts, in whose sports games American gamers spent $ 176 million. Although the publisher had previously made good money thanks to mobile FIFA and Madden NFL, his income in the segment increased after a deal with Playdemic, the author of Golf Clash.
- In second place with revenue of $ 77 million was Miniclip, which strengthened its position with the help of Head Ball 2 from Masomo.
- Analysts have separately noted two more major transactions in the segment recently. The purchase of StarLark by Zynga and the takeover of Nordeus by the publisher Take-Two.
Hyper – casual games
- The leader in the category continues to be Voodoo, whose games have collected 139 million downloads in the American market.
- The second line went to AppLovin and its internal studio Lion Studios — their projects were downloaded 96 million times.
- Zynga has grown well over the year and took the third place. For this, we should thank Rollic Games, which Zynga bought last year.
- Embracer Group got on the fifth line after it acquired CrazyLabs in August.
