The Top 30 US Game Makers of 2026

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• Baseball Hits 26
• Spellix: Strategic Word Play
• Heroes vs Hordes

Whether it’s a word game, sports title, or a roguelike RPG, Ares Interactive has shown a willingness to explore different genres rather than getting typecast to any single role.

Since 2024, its team of veterans have assembled to combine expertise across development, live ops and publishing, with Mike DeLaet taking up the president’s chair. Former Glu Mobile CEO Niccolo De Masi founded the company, which has since grown to around 50 members of staff, spread between US and German studios.

Ares Interactive raised $70m in a Series A round, aiming to make cross-platform free-to-play games for the masses. It’s taken on operational duties for Swift Games’ roguelike Heroes vs Hordes, which has reached beyond 10m installs. Meanwhile, sports title Baseball Hits 26 sees Ares leverage officially licensed MLB stars to provide an authentic sporting experience - in effect bringing Glu’s MLB Tap Sports Baseball back from the ashes.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

7th Inning

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• Spirit Crossing
• Cozy Grove: Camp Spirt
• Alphabear 2
• Triple Town

Seattle studio Spry Fox has built a reputation around puzzle and casual titles, often learning into the cozy game genre. Its catalogue includes games such as Alphabear and Triple Town.

The studio was acquired by Netflix back in 2022 before being sold back to its founders in 2025, returning it to independent ownership while maintaining a publishing partnership. Its current focus is Spirit Crossing, the largest project in its history, which has been in development for around five years with a team of roughly 50 developers.

Despite the challenges of regaining its independence, including leadership salary cuts to finance the buyback, Spry Fox is positioned for its next phase. With a cross-platform strategy and continued mobile presence, the studio has room to expand its audience while building on what it has already created.

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• Venue

Superbloom Games was co-founded in 2021 by Emily Yim and Ksusha Zito, whose combined credits include leadership positions at the likes of EA, Glu, Drest, Dots and The New York Times Games.

In 2022, the studio raised $3 million and is focused on building social lifestyle games. Its debut title is interior design game Venue. The title is described as a relaxing game experience and a creative sanctuary. Combined with eye-catching visuals, the title has steadily scaled.

In 2025, Venue is said to have reached more than four million players and achieved 10x revenue growth, all handled by a fully remote team around the globe - though headquartered in New York - of under 20 people. The interior design genre has had some major entrants in the past - perhaps Superbloom Games can recapture that magic in 2026.

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• NBA 2K Mobile
• WWE Champions
• Civilization VI

2K, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive has expanded its mobile presence by adapting established console and PC franchises and bringing them to mobile. Its flagship NBA 2K Mobile remains a core focus, using live events, seasonal content and gameplay familiar to that in the console series to keep players engaged.

Other mobile adaptations include big-name titles such as WWE Champions and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Mobile. These titles demonstrate 2K’s focus on extending recognised IPs. While revenue for these titles is generally below console performance it still remains steady thanks to in-game purchases and maintained player engagement.

With the backing of Take-Two, 2K maintains a consistent mobile presence in the market by leveraging familiar franchises to secure engagement while avoiding broader risks that come with developing new ideas for mobile.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Cat Daddy Games

Visual Concepts

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• Wordgrams
• Word Yatzy
• Farkle Dice Roll
• Dice Words
• Dice Yatzy

From the founders of Juicebox comes FunCraft, formed in 2019. The San Francisco-based studio believes “small teams can do great things” and since it was established has released dozens of titles on the mobile market. As the company says on its website: “We believe the best way to learn is by doing. We accelerate our learning by prioritising speed.”

That strategy appears to be working so far. Its top successes by player spending and downloads so far include titles like Wordgrams, Word Yatzy, Farkle Dice Roll, Dice Words and Dice Yatzy - though it’s worth noting its games generate ad revenue, too.

At a time when studios around the world are finding it challenging to launch new games, FunCraft has found a system to do it repeatedly and sustainably.

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• Sky: Children of the Light

You’ll no doubt have heard of Thatgamecompany, a team that strives to make impactful experiences you remember.

Over the years, those lofty ideals have seen it release games like Flow, Flower and Journey. In 2019, it released Sky: Children of the Light on iOS, a social MMO adventure game - the studio’s most ambitious game to date. The title is now available across platforms and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars around the world - including breaking out in China with partner NetEase.

More important than just money, the title has delighted players around the world, bringing together players for special events that focus on connection, rather than simply competition. Thatgamecompany is truly the creator of some of the most unique and memorable experiences in gaming.

Its also jumped on the transmedia train with animated fantasy The Two Embers, showing the IP can extend beyond just the boundaries of gaming.

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• Avatar: Realms Collide
• SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off
• Star Trek: Timelines
• Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest

Tilting Point has built a reputation as more of a publisher than a traditional internal developer, although it does frequently co-develop projects alongside its partner studios, particularly on licensed IPs.

The company has launched numerous titles supported by marketing, analytics and live ops experience, with games like SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off and Star Trek: Timelines demonstrating its ability to manage those high-profile brands effectively.

In 2025, Tilting Point expanded this model beyond games, launching a $150 million UA fund and committing $30 million annually to non-gaming apps. A move aligned with broader market trends, as user time and revenue continue to increase outside of games.

By positioning itself as a growth partner while maintaining a pipeline of recognisable IP projects, Titling Point occupies a unique space for a publisher with multiple avenues for further expansion.

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• The Tower - Idle Tower Defense
• Idle Planet Miner

There are a few companies in this list of the US Top Mobile Game Makers that have made their riches from the idle gaming space. Enter Tech Tree Games, which has launched a series of games to increasing success over the years, from Zen Idle and Idle Brick Breaker to Idle Planet Miner and The Tower - Idle Tower Defense.

The latter title has been particularly impressive, picking up an estimated $91 million from player spending, per AppMagic, a figure that doesn’t take into account its ad revenue. The Tower is described as the “ultimate upgrade game for strategy idle game lovers”, as players defend their tower and evolve it to one of the greatest in the galaxy.

The studio is no one-hit wonder, gradually refining its formula for success over the years, excelling at releasing new successful titles and keeping players around for the long-term.

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• Carnival Tycoon

For all the hype that some studios generate, others are happy quietly going about their business and even surpassing those that speak louder. Wild Candle Spin, based in Palo Alto, California, is one of those studios.

The developer started scaling Carnival Tycoon in 2024, a vibrant idle simulation game in which players are tasked with building a theme park, complete with roller coasters, ferris wheels and other rides and activities.

Without much fanfare, the US studio has picked up an estimated $88 million from player spending across the App Store and Google Play. The title also includes ads, further increasing its revenue potential. Meanwhile, it’s accumulated more than 30m downloads to date.

Finding these hidden gems is one of the joys of creating these lists of the Top Mobile Game Makers, highlighting just how vibrant the US games market really is.

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• Voidpet Dungeon
• Voidpet Garden

Sometimes games companies come along that aren’t just in it purely to make something fun - though that’s, of course, an admirable goal in itself. Enter Voidpet, a monster-collecting RPG, with creatures embodying your emotions. The aim is not just providing entertainment, it’s also to improve players’ emotional wellbeing and mental health.

The company has previously raised $800,000 and was backed by a16z’s Speedrun programme. Following the launch of Voidpet Garden: Mental Health on mobile in 2023, the team followed-up with Voidpet Dungeon in 2024. Since then, it’s been rising in popularity each month, generating an estimated $1.9m on the App Store and Google Play in January 2026.

It would be an injustice to say Voidpet Dungeon is flying under the radar - but if you haven’t heard of it, this is one title well worth checking out. You may start hearing more about it in the years ahead.

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• Episode
• Episode: Reality Stars
• War Dragons

Based in San Francisco, Pocket Gems has raised significant investment over the years to the tune of $155. That includes the backing of Chinese publishing giant Tencent. There are two titles that attracted such significant funds: strategy game War Dragons and interactive fiction platform Episode.

Both have made hundreds of millions of dollars throughout their lifetime, with Episode played by hundreds of millions of users. Pocket Gems, which also operates as Episode Interactive, has seen revenue decline for years as the buzz around the interactive fiction space died down. But that’s all stopped in recent months as Episode: Reality Stars kicked back to life in December and January with its best months ever. Even the original Episode has seen a small spike in player spend.

Has Pocket Gems rediscovered its hit-making formula?

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• Brain Test: Tricky Puzzles
• Woody Sort
• Wood Block Jam
• Screw Out Jam

Unico Studio has scaled itself into a significant force in the puzzle genre and hybridcasual space, surpassing 1.6 billion lifetime downloads, a rise from 500 million in April 2022.

That growth reflects Unico’s strategy of managing long-term live operations and franchise building rather than relying on releasing new single hits.

Its flagship Brain Test: Tricky Puzzles franchise remains at the company's core, built around retention-focused level design and while the puzzle genre is widely popular on mobile, Unico’s success comes from its scale rather than reaching for chart dominance.

Publishing has also become a meaningful asset for the company as it reports partnerships up more than 50% and over $10 million distributed back to collaborators. So while Unico has found success in the puzzle niche, it is also actively working on expanding beyond it.

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• Count Masters
• Twerk Race 3D
• Zombie Apocalypse
• Idle Ball Escape
• Stone Grass: Lawn Mower Game

FreePlay first formed in 2020 and surpassed 2bn lifetime installs just five years later.

The Florida-based mobile games publisher achieved this through the tried-and-tested hypercasual to hybridcasual pipeline. Hits like Count Masters, Twerk Race 3D and Zombie Apocalypse are among its biggest players on the global stage, with estimates indicating they make up half a billion installs alone. It’s not just a win for installs, either: this hybridcasual push has opened up new monetisation opportunities, too.

As FreePlay advances from milestone to milestone, the company has broadened its horizons from ad revenue to in-app purchases, diversifying financial streams and increasing some all-important metrics like average revenue per download. Now, the studio’s strategy is clear - stronger monetisation, longer life cycles, and games that reach plenty of players. The company has become another winner in the hybridcasual space over the past few years.

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• Wordscapes
• Wordscapes Search
• Bricks N Balls
• Wordscapes Solitaire

Dallas-based casual publisher PeopleFun, now owned by UK publisher Tripledot Studios, is best known for its Wordscapes brand, spanning word searches, crosswords and anagrams for any linguistics enthusiast. The series even has a solitaire spinoff aptly named Wordscapes Solitaire, tapping into a genre where many top publishers are casually making bank.

Other brainteasing word games include Word Stacks and Word Chums, meanwhile Blockscapes and Bricks N Balls deliver puzzles to those less partial to a thesaurus.

PeopleFun has been around for 15 years, formed by long-time friends Tony Goodman and John Boog-Scott. Having fun while making games remains core to this company’s philosophy - ever reflected in its very name - with an international team headquartered in Dallas. It appears that philosophy’s paid off, as estimates suggest Wordscapes has generated over half a billion dollars to date.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Tripledot Studios

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• Magic: The Gathering Arena
• D&D Beyond

Particularly for those in the games industry, Wizards of the Coast is likely a familiar name, with IPs like Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons on its roster. A subsidiary of Hasbro, the company has carefully licensed out its IP with titles like Larian Studios’ hit game Baldur’s Gate 3 and the 2023 movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

But the real question for this list is: how is the company doing on mobile? Its 2021 mobile adaptation of its CCG classic, Magic: The Gathering Arena, has accumulated an estimated $229m to date. And its release nearly five years ago, the game had its best year yet in 2025, picking up $56m as it continues to engage avid fans.

The company also operates the D&D Beyond app, a digital companion for the tabletop game that had its best month yet for downloads in January 2026.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Hasbro

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• Hearthstone
• Diablo Immortal
• Call of Duty: Mobile

Activision Blizzard king has a number of development studios across the US. King has a couple offices in New York and San Francisco, with some creative operations and ad teams. Activision, meanwhile, has worked with Tencent on the Timi-developed hit shooter Call of Duty: Mobile, as well as launching the now-cancelled Call of Duty Warzone: Mobile.

Blizzard is perhaps where the company has found most of its success on mobile. Though Warcraft Rumble came and went, evergreen CCG Hearthstone continues to pull in millions of dollars every month, pulling in well over $1 billion during the past 12 years on mobile alone.

The studio also worked with NetEase on dungeon crawler Diablo Immortal. Perhaps not always making the most of its IP in the mobile arena (outside of mobile powerhouse King, of course), its teams and collaborators have on occasion found surefire hits.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

King

Microsoft

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• MyVegas Bingo
• Tetris Block Party
• MyVegas Blackjack

Based in Las Vegas, PlayStudios is no stranger to slots and classic card games like solitaire or blackjack. There’s also MyVegas Bingo, MGM Slots Live and Pop Slots, too.

PlayStudios has also explored beyond this clear casino theme with various spins on Tetris, namely Tetris Blast and Tetris Block Party - the latter seeing players not only stack but steal, build and compete. The newest title in the company’s portfolio, Tetris Block Party has already accumulated an estimated two million downloads in 2026 alone.

And, the library gets experimental with published titles like ilu, a puzzle game about lighting up dark spaces. 2026 marks 15 years since the company formed - around long enough to have published games on Facebook before they came to mobile. These days, its teams span Nevada, Oregon, Tel Aviv and beyond.

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• Hexa Sort
• Coin Sort
• Arrow Out

Headquartered in San Francisco, publisher Lion Studios has global reach, with additional offices in Berlin, Beijing and Hanoi. Previously owned by AppLovin - the first company in its games division - it’s now part of UK outfit Tripledot Studios following the acquisition of the ad firm’s entire games portfolio.

Lion Studios has accumulated billions of downloads across its extensive portfolio. You might be familiar with some of its biggest titles: Happy Glass, Mr Bullet, Love Balls and Save The Girl, to name a few. At the height of the hypercasual boom, Lion Studios was right at the centre. These days, it’s still able to pick up millions of installs, with its most recent title Arrow Out looking particularly promising as it branches out into hybridcasual. Other successful releases over the years include Hexa Sort and Coin Sort, showing Lion Studios’ ability to adapt to industry challenges and come out swinging.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Tripledot Studios

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• Marvel Snap

Second Dinner is an award-winning indie studio with numerous Pocket Gamer accolades to its name. Whether it’s Top 50 lists or the Mobile Games Awards, this developer is no stranger to rankings like these.

As for the game driving its success, that would be Marvel Snap, the superhero-fuelled card game featuring every fan-favourite from Spider-Man to Wolverine. From multimedia tie-ins like a Deadpool battle pass in time for the latest movie, to a constant stream of new characters keeping players engaged, Second Dinner has endless avenues to explore with an IP like Marvel.

Between the App Store and Play Store, Marvel Snap is estimated to have surpassed $300m in gross player spending to date. And, considering its PC release and recent D2C expansion, that sum can only be bigger in reality.

It’s little wonder Second Dinner managed to raise $100m in its Series B funding round.

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• Double Down Casino Vegas Slots

Back in 2017, South Korean developer DoubleU Games acquired US social casino studio DoubledDown Interactive in an $825 million cash purchase. The company eventually launched an IPO in 2021 and today holds a market cap of $432 million.

The company is behind the aptly named Double Down Casino Vegas Slots, which has generated more than $2 billion in revenue across the App Store and Google Play since its 2012 release, according to AppMagic estimates. The company has released other titles like Slots DoubleDown Fort Knox and DoubleDown Classic Slots, but none have come close to its flagship, which picked up approximately $181m in 2025.

Last year, the company expanded its operations with the acquisition of Azerion’s German studio Whow Games worth up to €65 million. With reach around the world, DoubleDown is yet another large social casino operator in the US bringing in the big bucks on mobile.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

DoubleU Games

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• Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery
• Disney Emoji Blitz
• Cookie Jam

Jam City has a history of building its own hit games and working with top IPs. Its portfolio includes Cookie Jam, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, Panda Pop, Disney Emoji Blitz, Bingo Pop, Cookie Jam and more.

Its most successful titles continue to be Hogwarts Mystery, now in its eighth year and Disney Emoji Blitz, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The games are bringing in millions of dollars a month, on top of the hundreds of millions they’ve already made, highlighting the company’s competencies in storytelling and live ops across genres.

More recently, Jam City has launched a new IP-based puzzle game in Disney Magic Match 3D - the latest big publisher to tackle the match 3D market. If there’s one thing Jam City has a history off, its partnerships with globally recognised licences, such as with Disney and Warner Bros., and translating those worlds to the mobile gaming space.

Of course, Jam City has had its own challenges, much like the rest of the industry. It bought Montreal studio Ludia, the team behind Jurassic World: The Game and Jurassic World Alive, for $165m in 2021. However, the team split off from Jam City in 2025 following a deal with a consortium of Canadian institutional investors.

Jam City still remains a big player in the US mobile games ecosystem - it ranked 48th in PocketGamer.biz’s Top 50 Mobile Game Makers 2025 list. But the publisher will surely hope it can find a fresh hit - perhaps in Disney Magic Match 3D - while continuing to maintain the rest of its diverse portfolio, as it has for years, to recapture the magic that saw it chasing an IPO.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

TinyCo

Netmarble

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• Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes
• EA Sports FC Mobile

Where to rank EA on this list isn’t a simple decision. The publisher has the chops and the hits to be on this list of the top mobile game makers in the US. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund certainly thinks the overall business is worth splashing $55 billion, along with a consortium that includesAffinity Partners and Silver Lake.

But EA’s also been shutting down a number of mobile games in recent years - including numerous titles from its $2.1 billion acquisition of fellow US developer Glu Mobile.

Let’s start with why it’s in the top 10, then. Sacramento studio Capital Games, acquired back in 2011 as KlickNation before being rebranded, launched squad RPG Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes back in 2015. To this day, it remains the publisher’s most successful mobile title with more than $1.5bn in revenue to date, according to AppMagic estimates, attracting 150m players over its lifetime. The title continues to bring in millions each month, and continues to get fresh updates, such as the latest Andor expansion, based on the Star Wars TV series.

Its biggest success right now though is football game EA Sports FC Mobile, Developed with the Vancouver studio, which has grown into a powerhouse for the publisher over the last few years. Other titles still bringing in the cash, supported by global studios, include The Sims FreePlay, SimCity BuildIt and Madden NFL 26 Mobile.

It’s not all rosy though, of course. Mobile games on the chopping block have included EA Sports FC Tactical, EA Sports FC Empires, MLB Tap Sports Baseball, F1 Mobile Racing, EA Sports UFC Mobile 2, Kim Kardashian Hollywood, and The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-Earth. It’s also underway on a major overhaul for Plants Vs. Zombies 3.

So while it has some revenue generators under its belt, EA’s future on mobile looks dicey. Perhaps PIF might have different plans for the company.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Capital Games

Maxis

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• League of Legends: Wild Rift
• Teamfight Tactics
• Valorant Mobile

Riot Games is one of the most successful game developers to ever come out of the US. Its MOBA League of Legends has been a surefire global sensation since it was first released in 2009 on PC and Mac.

Fast-forward years later, and an acquisition by Chinese publishing giant Tencent, Riot Games finally brought the IP to mobile in 2020 in the shape of Wild Rift. While nowhere near the heights of its PC counterpart, the mobile title has still generated hundreds of millions of dollars globally. In 2025, it picked up $100 million in gross revenue across the App Store and Google Play, per AppMagic data.

Auto Chess battler Teamfight Tactics is another title that’s picked up hundreds of millions of dollars. CCG Legends of Runeterra is another title in its mobile portfolio, though that has since faded.

So far, so okay - depending on your expectations. But take a quick look over in China, and its titles, developed in collaboration with Tencent’s local powerhouse teams, and a much stronger picture emerges.

The Chinese versions of League of Legends: Wild Rift and Teamfight Tactics have both smashed past $1bn on the App Store alone. Meanwhile, Valorant Mobile, launched in August 2025, was described by Tencent as the most successful launch of any mobile game in China in 2025. Not bad in a competitive mobile and shooter market.

Of course, credit goes to Tencent’s teams for that success - but Riot’s collaboration and work in building these IPs is worthy of recognition. These mobile games have generally - not always - seen staying power, whether that’s with blockbuster success or keeping things ticking over.

Riot has shown it can build games and IPs that work globally and across platforms, a rare feat for even the world’s most successful publishers. Tencent must be thinking its acquisition of a majority stake in the studio back in 2011 was a bargain.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Tencent

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• Chess.com

If you’ve not heard of chess, I don’t know what to tell you. A quick internet search estimates it’s been going for 1,500 years. It’s an all-time classic.

And anyone with a computer will have had access to myriad versions of the game over the past couple of decades. But, somehow, one title has come to dominate the board game in the digital space: Chess.com. According to the website, it has 230 million members, with millions actively playing every day.

It’s the same classic game with various ways to play - including various time limits depending on your play style - daily puzzles, tutorials and even provides a platform to watch others play. You can even create a friends list and enter tournaments.

For a game that you can find free from various developers across platforms, Chess.com is also picking up decent revenue, too. According to AppMagic estimates, the Chess mobile app picked up a record $7.6m in January 2026 across the App Store and Google Play. That followed a record-breaking 2025, too, when it generated some $73.7m.

While Chess.com, available on the web and mobile, is clearly the breadwinner, Chess.com has had forays into other apps. That includes Chess for Kids, a beginner-friendly game that teaches users the basic rules of the game and advanced strategies. Much like Chess.com, the app’s popularity has been on the rise, with downloads growing each month, though it’s nowhere near as popular as the mothership.

Chess.com’s position is such that it’s hard to see it being overthrown as the king/queen of the classic board game. Not just a success in its own right, it’s helped propel chess to a wider, new global audience. We talk a lot about forever games in the mobile space - good luck beating 1,500 years.

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• Jackpot Party Casino Slots
• Quick Hit Casino Slots
• Gold Fish Casino Slot Games

SciPlay is one of the world’s leaders in the social casino games space. Its achievements saw it rank 21st in our global Top 50 Mobile Game Makers 2025 list - a marked increase from rank 37 in 2024.

The company’s portfolio includes titles like Quick Hit Casino Slots, Gold Fish Casino Slot Games, 88 Fortunes Casino Slot Games and more. Its most successful title by far - in a portfolio that has multiple titles that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars - is Jackpot Party Casino Slots, which has accumulated revenue in the billions, according to AppMagic estimates. The title has also picked up 100 million downloads to boot, too.

As well as success in the social casino arena, SciPlay is also known for its live ops, keeping revenue steady, and even rising, after more than a decade on the market.

Last year, the company invested $4m to expand its studio in Cedar Falls, Iowa - which operates Jackpot Party - renovating its 27,000 square foot collaborative development hub which houses 145 local team members.

SciPlay’s Austin studio, meanwhile, supports titles like Gold Fish Casino and Bingo Showdown, as well as being home to multiple central teams. The company has even been a major sponsor for Austin FC. Locally, the developer has accolades including the Best Company Culture award at the Greater Austin Business Awards in November 2025, while Built In Austin named SciPlay a Winning Workplace for the fifth year.

As the wider mobile games industry faces challenges launching successful new games, SciPlay is an example of how to build teams for long-term success, providing a foundation to whether current market challenges and potentially strike it lucky again down the road. And it’s looking to do just that with an expansion into new genres like casual, taking those lessons and applying them to new categories.

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• Zynga Poker
• Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells
• Game of Thrones: Legends

Zynga (and parent company Take-Two) was a front-runner to top our global Top 50 Game Makers list, thanks to the strong performance of its forever franchises and the launch of successful new titles like Peak Games’ Match Factory and Rollic’s Color Block Jam.

While owned by a US company, those games, of course, were built on the bustling Türkiye games hub. Peak and Rollic, along with the likes of Gram Games and Small Giant Games, were part of a successful M&A strategy that saw Zynga finally adapt - perhaps through brute force - to the mobile landscape. The moves also attracted the eventual overtures of US publishing giant Take-Two in 2022, which acquired the company for $12.7bn.

While billion-dollar hits like CSR Racing 2, Toy Blast, Toon Blast and Empires & Puzzles may take the headlines, Zynga has some successes built closer to its HQ, too. Those include the wildly popular Words With Friends, played by millions the world over.

Meanwhile, the publisher maintains a highly successful social casino portfolio, with titles like Zynga Poker, Game of Thrones Slots Casino, Wizard of Oz: Slots and Hit it Rich! continuing to bring in millions of dollars each month. Other titles launched over the years include match-3 title Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells and puzzle RPG Game of Thrones: Legends, ensuring the company’s teams are kept busy.

To get an idea of how important Zynga has become to Take-Two’s overall operations - ahead of the mega blockbuster launch of GTA VI, of course - the mobile publisher is expected to account for roughly 46% of net bookings by the end of the fiscal year in March.

Overall net bookings for Take-Two’s mobile division reached $860.9m in Q3, a rise of approximately 21% year-over-year.

There may have been doubts about Zynga’s early performance post-acquisition, but those are now surely left in the dust.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Take-Two

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Crossplay
• Wordle
• Pips
• Connections

There was a time when you wouldn’t have expected to see the name of a newspaper on one of these lists, let alone right near the summit. But The New York Times has knocked it out of the park with its gaming ambitions, becoming part of the daily routine for people around the world that are hooked on its word puzzles to more than earn its place in the Top 30 US Mobile Game Makers.

Back in 2022, the New York Times acquired popular online word game Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum. The company has since been able to leverage that popularity for the NYT Games app, which houses titles including Connections, Spelling Bee, The Mini, Pips and Strands, as well as the likes of Sudoku and The Crossword.

Access to the portfolio is neatly wrapped up in a subscription package and the growth has been nothing short of impressive. According to AppMagic estimates, the NYT Games app pulled in $67.8 million in 2025, a rise of around 22% year-over-year. Monthly revenue, meanwhile, hit an all time high of $8.3m in December.

The New York Times is getting more aggressive in its gaming expansion, too. It has launched NYT Crossplay, a Scrabble-like multiplayer word game that puts it in direct competition with Zynga’s Words With Friends and Scopely’s Scrabble Go. Launched in mid-January, the title has picked up close to 3m downloads in under a month.

In a wider context, building on games to generate revenue is an astute move for the newspaper in a media landscape that has been hit hard over the years. The execution so far has been on point and with a growing player base, revenue and portfolio of engaging games that refresh daily, it looks like NYT Games will continue on the up in 2026.

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• Fortnite
• Blitz Royale

You might have heard of a little game called Fortnite, which, after integrating a free-to-play battle royale mode, became a global sensation that reached a level of mainstream virality rarely seen in any sector.

Epic Games has spent years building on that. The company had already experienced major success with games like the Gears of War series and Unreal Engine, but as with the number one game maker on this list, Fortnite raised the bar.

Fortnite has become one of the two major UGC platforms, with UEFN providing the tools for content creators to build experiences within the title. According to Epic’s 2025 Year in Review, the Epic Games Store accounts rose to 972m last year, up from 898m in 2024. While the number of mobile users was not specifically broken down, 317m were said to be on PC.

Though Fortnite continues to be successful on PC and console, last year it made its long-awaited return to mobile. That was thanks to years of court battles by the company against Apple and Google, challenging their platform fees and sparking a wave of legal and regulatory changes around the world - from which all developers can benefit (pending the outcome of that Google Play deal).

As part of its return to mobile, a mobile-first Blitz Royale mode was released last year. Showing the power of Fortnite’s return, it hit a peak of 443,000 players.

Epic has made significant updates for developers in 2025, including the rollout of in-island transactions for Fortnite Creative and the ability for Unity developers to bring their games to Fortnite in 2026.

It looks like 2026 could be another banner year for the rapidly-rising UGC space, with Epic Games at the forefront alongside Roblox. Now that Fortnite is back on mobile (at least in certain parts of the world), we’ll see if it can capitalise on access to the world’s largest audience base and find some user-generated hits to boot.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Psyonix

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• Roblox
• Grow a Garden
• Steal a Brainrot

In the world of UGC, there are really two lead platforms, and the current king among them is Roblox. Technically, it’s a platform and not a developer itself, but it has enabled content creators around the world to develop games within its virtual world, some of which have gone on to enormous success.

Chief among those are Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot. The former smashed past 21 million concurrent users in June, while the latter Brainrot has surpassed 25m. Even singer Bruno Mars is getting involved, with a virtual performance in Steal a Brainrot attracting 12.8m concurrent users.

This level of players is unthinkable for other titles - let alone new IPs. It speaks to the power of Roblox as a games platform and the engaged audience it holds.

In its recent financials, Roblox reported 36.7m monthly average unique payers in Q4, a rise of 94% year-over-year, while it had 144m daily active users. In August, the platform hit some 45 million concurrent users overall.

Revenue rose by 36% Y/Y in 2025 to nearly $4.9bn, with North America accounting for the largest share of consumer spend.

Roblox is not without its controversies, of course. The issue of child safety has led to bans in countries like Egypt, Kuwait and Russia. Meanwhile, Australia’s government also recently raised concerns and has called for an urgent meeting with the company. The firm has tried to alleviate concerns with a Parent Council to promote safety and positivity on the platform, as well as launching various safety tools over the past year.

In the face of these challenges, Roblox continues to grow. But to truly reach the next stage, Roblox needs to create a safer platform to alleviate those very real safety concerns. Combined with real incentives for content creators to keep building experiences, and if its dreams of AI-assisted development for users come true, the sky is the limit.

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Monopoly Go

There is perhaps little surprise that we’ve ranked Scopely as the number one US Mobile Game Maker for our debut Top 30 list.

The company spent years raising serious capital and steadily releasing hit after hit, collaborating with what often seemed to be the perfect partner. After all that scaling, the ceiling for what’s possible was raised with the launch of Monopoly Go in 2023.

After seven long years in development, the title made a series of innovations to adapt the Monopoly IP to mobile and build on the coin looter space trailblazed by Coin Master. The result is that, in a time when publishers have said it’s tougher than ever to launch a game, Monopoly Go has surpassed $6 billion in player spending across the App Store and Google Play in record time - just 1,275 days, to be precise.

For context: it took Mixi’s Monster Strike 1,673 days and Tencent’s Honor of Kings 1,762, per Sensor Tower estimates. It's worth noting that, if taking into account the game’s official launch date, it took just over 1,000 days for Monopoly Go to reach the $6bn milestone. It’s a truly unique feat, built on solid foundations years in the making.

Around that time, Scopely was acquired by Savvy Games Group for $4.9 billion, providing more capital to continue growing its operations. Scopely splashed the cash on another major US studio, Pokémon Go developer Niantic, in a $3.5bn deal in 2025, bringing another multi-billion dollar hit into the company’s portfolio.

Scopely’s reach extends out from the US, too, of course. Just recently it acquired a majority stake in Istanbul-based developer Loom Games, behind the hit puzzle title Pixel Flow, in a deal that values the business in excess of $1bn.

Scopely has built itself into a giant of the global mobile games industry and a face of the US sector. It topped our worldwide Top 50 Mobile Game Makers list in 2024, and the company has only grown further since.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Niantic

Savvy Games Group