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Mobile growth picks up the slack from PC decline in Changyou’s games business

Number of paying mobile players up by 700,000

Mobile growth picks up the slack from PC decline in Changyou’s games business

Chinese online games publisher Changyou (NASDAQ:CYOU) suffered a year-on-year decline in revenues of 28% during the first financial quarter ending September 30th.

The company reported total revenues of $136 million for Q3. While down year-on-year this was up by 5% compared to the previous quarter and was $1 million more than forecasted.

The firm’s online games business suffered as revenues tumbled 35% year-on-year to $99 million. This was also a dip of 1% from the previous quarter.

Mobile grows as PC declines

The publisher’s PC business is in a period of decline, while its mobile business is on the up.

Monthly active users for Changyou’s PC games decreased by 34% year-on-year and 7% from the last quarter to 2.7 million. It claimed this represented natural declining life cycles for the company’s older PC games like TLBB and TLBB 3D – which it relies on for the majority of its revenues and has yet to effectively replace.

The number of paying users was also down by 23% to one million on PC.

MAUs for its mobile games meanwhile grew 17% year-on-year and quarter-over-quarter to 2.8 million. Paying players grew by 700,000, again up 17% year-on-year and from the prior quarter.

It put down the growth of its mobile games business to the launch of new games Da Da Da Luan Dou and Hortesia Saga during Q3 2016.

Revenues for Changyou’s online advertising business meanwhile decreased 36% from the same period last year to $12 million.

The publisher said the drop in revenue was down to fewr PC games marketed through its 17173 website.


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Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.