Mobile Mavens on the biggest games industry trends of 2025: Slow growth, AI experimentation, web shops, and more
The past year has brought with it plenty of disruption and opportunity to the games industry, with China's expanding global dominance, the continued direct-to-consumer shift and increasing emergence of AI tech in development some of the key trends defining 2025.
To highlight the developments that defined much of the year, we asked industry leaders to share their perspectives on 2025.
You can see more of our Mobile Mavens discuss trends and predictions here and here.
Learn more about the hottest mobile games industry trends in-person at Pocket Gamer Connects London on January 19th to 20th.
Alina Zlotnik
Mobile game growth clearly slowed down.
In 2024, the global mobile market was still growing at a decent pace: revenue was up 2.9% and downloads grew by 6.6%. In 2025, things cooled off noticeably. From January to November, IAP revenue grew by just 0.7% year-over-year, while downloads increased by 4.3%. Based on what we’re seeing now, it’s unlikely that December will dramatically change the picture.
Growth in 2025 became very uneven and highly regional.
Downloads are growing fastest in developing and “catch-up” markets like Eastern Europe, CIS countries, the Middle East, and Africa.
Revenue growth, on the other hand, is mostly coming from more mature and higher-paying regions: Latin America, MENA, and some countries in Western and Northern Europe. The US market is growing slowly, at around 2%, while China is showing slightly negative dynamics.
D2C and alternative payments are getting more attention.
In 2025, we saw around 40% growth in D2C and alternative payment revenue in the US. This was largely driven by Google’s policy update in late October, which allowed developers to offer alternative payment options and add external links in Google Play.
Since then, many casual and midcore games have started testing direct payment links in the US, and this is one of the reasons classic IAP revenue growth there has slowed down.
Games are moving toward deeper systems and more intense live ops.
This year, the hypercasual segment showed record revenue growth – up 76% Y/Y – even though downloads declined slightly.
At the same time, live ops schedules became noticeably denser across all genres: on average, games are running about 20% more events than last year.
Overall, this shows that the market increasingly expects stronger retention, deeper mechanics, and more thoughtful monetisation.
Gil Tov-Ly
First, AI. Obviously. 2025 was the year of “AI everything” – like game design, UA creatives, app store copy, community, in-game systems, you name it.
Most of it is still spaghetti on the wall, but the FOMO is doing its job and forcing everyone to experiment. Some of it is genuinely magical – if you’re into building things, these are ridiculously fun times to be in games.
Second, D2C exploded. I am biased, obviously – but the shift in Q3 and Q4 was hard to ignore. Studios that had been "researching" D2C for two years suddenly started moving with intent once the U.S. District Court basically split the market open and allowed app-to-web payment flows.
Recently, the Ninth Circuit weighed in, so the market might now shift again, but the genie is not going back in the bottle. D2C grew more in the last 12 months than it did in the two years before that, in both volume and seriousness.
Third, the fun came back. After a long stretch of pure survival mode, you could feel teams making bolder creative bets again. Cozy titles, social sandboxes, strange genre mashups, licensed IP that is actually handled with care, not just skinned slots.
Alisa Akifeva
One of the clearest business trends in 2025 was the rise of alternative payment solutions.
More developers began actively integrating alternative payments into their products, especially in markets where regulations and platform policies made this possible. What used to be edge cases is now a growing segment of the gaming business.
This created a new layer in the ecosystem around payments, infrastructure, and services built specifically for developers who want more control over transactions and player relationships.
As a result, developers gained more flexibility in how they monetise, and over time, this shift can free up resources that ultimately benefit players as well.
Diana Korkina
This year hammered home just how crucial marketing is in mobile gaming. Take Kingshot: it launched globally early in the year and is already pulling in over $3 million a day.
They cast the widest possible net upfront, then softly guide players into a deep 4X strategy with outstanding monetisation. Another example is Township, a game that’s been around for about 10 years yet grew roughly 30% in the last year alone, thanks to fresh marketing creatives.
If retention used to be the king metric, this year CPI moved right up alongside it for us. You have to figure out early whether a project is ready to scale and whether the market actually wants it.
We often pour tonnes of energy into new features, content, and art, pushing marketing to “when the game is finally ready”. The lesson is: don’t wait – test market receptiveness as early as possible, alongside that first player session.
It also became easier to publish games with the growth of UA funding companies. Developers can focus on building great games while having confidence that their marketing strategy is supported.
Vladimir Nikolsky
Two major trends stood out in 2025. The first was the ongoing debate around the use of AI in game development, where it truly adds value without compromising human creativity.
The second was the acceleration of gameplay. Games are becoming more dynamic and immediately engaging; players expect quick feedback, instant rewards, and shorter paths to fun.
People