Last year, residents of the Middle East and North Africa spent $1.6 billion in mobile games, analysts found data.ai . The most generous were gamers from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel. They left $546 million, $176 million and $162 million in games, respectively.
The top five highest-grossing games in the region included PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, Yalla Ludo, Top War and Rise of Kingdoms.
During the year, mobile games were downloaded 4.9 billion times in the region. Hyper-casual projects, simulators and action games were the most popular — they accounted for 33%, 17% and 11% of downloads.
Almost half of all downloads were collected by Bridge Race, Hair Challenge and Count Masters. Despite their success, Free Fire managed to take first place in the number of installations in Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and Oman.