Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft Rumble finally saw its global launch last week, bringing the new tower defence mobile game to players everywhere on November 3. The long wait has paid off, as this IP iteration has generated almost $4 million already, and that’s without a release in China.
Like a breeze
Blizzard had originally intended a simultaneous release as of BlizzCon on November 4 2023, but ended up releasing the game a day early in most of the world. Now a few days on, Gamelook’s figures show the US accounts for the biggest proportion of Rumble’s revenue thus far: 47% of its revenue and 23% of downloads. Comparatively, Canada and Germany tie for second place so far while contributing only 6% of total revenues each and less than 10% of the downloads.
It’s been over a year since Blizzard first announced Warcraft Rumble, and the game proceeded to release in early access at the start of 2023. With the Version 2.0 update, Rumble has finally released in full and daily income has peaked at approximately $1 million. Current estimates project revenues approaching $14 million within Rumble’s first month.
Only half the story
The lack of a Chinese release is surely a blow to overall figures given the Warcraft franchise’s huge popularity in the region, but as of right now a local publisher for the game has not been selected. Given China’s stringent rules and unpredictable decisions around mobile games and their licences, such a delay may not be unprecedented, but it is unfortunate for Chinese Warcraft fans, who are unlikely to have access to Rumble until 2024 at best.
Of the regions where Rumble has launched, it topped the iOS free games charts in 31 of them and entered the top 10 in 61 places, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan among them.
Warcraft Rumble’s early success can be partially attributed to its loyalty to its source material, pleasing fans with an iteration on talent trees and anecdotes down to the minutia like the bark beasts’ idle animations.
On launch day, we spoke with Warcraft Rumble’s Carin Huurnink and Brendan Farrell, the senior animator and senior game designer respectively, about developing a Warcraft IP and the advantages of doing so for mobile.
"It allows players to enter the universe in a new way because not everybody has a computer at home. I just think it’s great that I can play it on the go wherever I’m travelling," said Huurnink.
