Beyond Tencent and NetEase: How China's genre specialists took on the global charts
| Date | Type | Companies Involved | Key Datapoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 24, 2026 | chart | China's top mobile games |
- Six of the global top 10 are Chinese-published, rising to roughly four in 10 across the top 100 when offshore Chinese-founded studios are included.
- Tencent still leads with Honor of Kings, but almost all of that revenue is domestic. The clearest export story is Century Games, with three titles in the global top 30.
- China's export chart is led by survival/4X, merge and gacha/RPGs. At home, the top eight is more Tencent-heavy, led by a MOBA, shooters and established domestic franchises.
Over two years, Chinese mobile publishers have tightened their grip on global games revenue.
Last month, the clearest measure was the top of the chart: of the 10 highest-grossing mobile games worldwide per AppMagic estimates, six were Chinese-published. Tencent's Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile still draw most of their revenue from China, but the rest are largely powered by overseas players.
The result is a global revenue table that still opens with Tencent but no longer belongs to it. Beneath Honor of Kings sits an export economy built by survival, merge and RPG specialists who generate significant sums abroad.
Number one at home, number two abroad
Honor of Kings tops the worldwide chart at $230 million from gross player spending - but on AppMagic's China-only chart, around $227m of that is domestic, leaving Tencent's biggest earner reliant on home turf.
Century Games' Whiteout Survival is second worldwide at $156.5m, of which only about $45.6m comes from China's App Store - close to 71% earned overseas. Its stablemate Kingshot is eighth at $130.8m with $125.2m, around 96%, from abroad.
Add Tasty Travels at 29th ($35.3m) and Century Games has three titles in the global top 30 - one of the clearest examples of China's new export-led publishers. That's why we ranked the publisher number one in our Top 50 Mobile Gamer Makers 2025 list.
Where the dominance sits
Among the globally successful Chinese titles, three genre clusters stand out.
Survival and 4X strategy is the lead. Beyond Whiteout and Kingshot, the chart carries Last War (10th, $82m), Puzzles & Survival (40th), Top Heroes (70th), Last Asylum (75th) and Age of Origins (81st). It is now the default Chinese export format.
Merge is the quiet giant. Microfun alone places three - Gossip Harbor (4th, $99.6m), Seaside Escape (54th) and Flambé (66th) and Gossip Harbor earns roughly 99% of its money outside China, where it sits outside the domestic top 80. But Microfun is not the whole casual story: Tasty Travels, Merge Cooking, Matching Story and Heartopia show the same export logic the puzzle and cozy formats.
Gacha and RPG round it out: miHoYo’s Honkai: Star Rail (23rd) and Genshin Impact (28th), Kuro’s Wuthering Waves (30th), Hypergryph’s Arknights (67th) and Perfect World’s NTE (45th). Female-oriented Love and Deepspace (22nd, $28.5m) splits almost evenly - about 53% overseas, 47% at home.
A broader export layer sits around those clusters. Last Z, Evony: The King’s Return, Dark War: Survival, Three Kingdoms Tactics and Nobunaga’s Ambition: True War add more weight to the 4X and strategy picture, although Three Kingdoms Tactics still drew about 49% of its revenue from China over the last 30 days.
Identity V in horror, Knives Out in shooters, Mobile Legends in multiplayer online battle arena and Where Winds Meet in role-playing show the wider range, though some remain heavily China-weighted: Identity V drew about 59% of revenue from China over the last 30 days, and Where Winds Meet about 71%. They do not change the dominant pattern, but they do show how wide China’s export bench has become.
What China plays vs what it sells
China's App Store is led by top grossers Tencent's: Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile and Delta Force, with a MOBA and shooters dominating the top.
The worldwide chart is a different cast with a mix of survival, merge and romance-led specialists that earn most of their money overseas.
Four titles appear on both lists: Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, Delta Force and Whiteout Survival all rank top-eight at home and abroad. The other four worldwide earners, Gossip Harbor, Kingshot, Last War and Love and Deepspace, don't crack China's home top eight at all, despite sitting among the highest-grossing Chinese titles globally.
China’s export wave is moving beyond the giants
The old framing, China abroad equals Tencent and NetEase, has simply broadened. The duopoly still anchors the home market, but alongside it, a widening pack of genre specialists is now winning real audiences worldwide - and even outgrossing NetEase.
The interesting question is who joins that pack next and what Western studios can learn from China’s approach to building global mobile hits.
These are the studios, genres and numbers on the agenda at Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Shanghai on July 19th, where the teams behind this export wave meet the investors backing the next one.
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