The top grossing mobile games of 2025

• Honor of Kings was the world's top grossing mobile game in 2025.
• Three of the year's biggest breakout hits - Kingshot, Gossip Harbor and Delta Force - came from China.
• Clash Royale surged up the charts with its own Brawl Stars moment in 2025.
• Revenue is declining for top grossing stalwart PUBG Mobile and 2024 blockbuster Dungeon & Fighter Mobile.

We’ve already taken a look at this year's top new mobile game releases and biggest trends. Here, we analyse the top revenue generators and hot stories from 2025’s biggest mobile titles.

The estimates are taken from mobile intelligence platform AppMagic and include data for the App Store and Google Play. All estimates are from January 1st to December 21st, 2025. All figures are gross revenue.

It should be noted that numbers can be impacted by the rise of direct-to-consumer platforms, with the world's top publishers increasingly shifting spend to alternative payment methods.

Top Grossing Mobile Games for 2025

The number one grossing game of the year was once again Tencent’s Honor of Kings, picking up close to $2.4 billion. The figure marks a 2.9% decline from the same period in 2024. It’s worth noting that the majority of Honor of Kings’ revenue is generated in China, where it’s also available on Android stores.

According to AppMagic, Honor of Kings has been the world’s top grossing game for four years running. It was topped by another Tencent title, PUBG Mobile, in 2021 and 2020. In total, Honor of Kings has been the world’s top grossing game for a combined seven years to date.

In second place was FunFly’s (also known as FirstFun) 4X strategy game Last War: Survival, which took close to $2.2 billion, up 42.5% year-over-year. UGC platform Roblox, meanwhile, ranked third with $2 billion, rising 30.2% Y/Y.

Century Games’ Whiteout Survival and Dream Games Royal Match rounded out the top five with each title securing an estimated $1.9 billion.

Eight of the top 10 titles have surpassed $1 billion in player spending from the App Store and Google Play. Games to reach the milestone also include Scopely’s Monopoly Go, PUBG Mobile, and King’s Candy Crush Saga. There are 10 days remaining for DeNA’s Pokémon TCG Pocket and Moon Active’s Coin Master to hit the milestone, currently generating $952.6 million and $910m, respectively.

Overall, the mobile games market generated nearly $76.7bn from worldwide player spending across the App Store and Google Play between January 1st and December 21st, 2024, a rise of 0.1% Y/Y from 2024. That’s markedly slower growth than the 3.3% increase from 2023 to 2024 during the same period.

The Big Stories

China bags breakout hits with Kingshot, Gossip Harbor and Delta Force

The rise of China as a hub for building globally successful games has been a big topic of debate this year. We highlighted the top companies, from Tencent and NetEase to Microfun, Century Games and FunFly in our roundup of 2025’s top trends that shaped the market.

Meanwhile, one industry expert gave us a warning during RovioCon and Slush week - these companies will continue to grow and could kill the Western games industry over the next few years. They have more money, bigger teams and have fine-tuned the science behind mobile game design and user acquisition. 

Two of 2025’s biggest game releases were Century Games’ 4X strategy game Kingshot, which ranked 14thth in the world, and Tencent’s Delta Force, which took 21st place. Meanwhile, Microfun’s merge title Gossip Harbour rose to be the 11th highest-revenue generating game on the App Store and Google Play.

These were 2025’s breakout hits, each from China. These aren’t just one-off blockbusters, they are the latest signs of Chinese developers becoming leaders in the world’s most lucrative genres. And not just becoming leaders, but redefining what were previously considered mature markets.

Kingshot was the third top grossing 4X strategy game in 2025. In first was FunFly’s Last War: Survival, while Century Games’ Whiteout Survival took second and Florere’s Last Z: Survival took fourth.

Gossip Harbour was by far the world’s top performing merge game, beating second place Travel Town from Moon Active and Magmatic Games, which took close to $291m. Microfun also took third spot with Seaside Escape generating $249.3m, ranking above former leader Merge Mansion from Metacore.

In the shooter market, Tencent already dominates with PUBG Mobile, while Garena’s Free Fire sits in second place. Another Tencent shooter, Delta Force, has surged to third spot with $492.5m in revenue, above Tencent’s CrossFire: Legends and Activision’s Call of Duty: Mobile (also developed with Tencent).

Chinese publishers are dominating some of the top categories - and they are growing some of these markets at the same time.

Clash Royale’s Brawl Stars moment

When Brawl Stars was making headlines for its dramatic surge to record high player spending, Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen labelled the rise as “historic” and that he’d “never seen” a title years into its lifecycle spark new growth like it.

Flash-forward to 2025 and the Finnish developer has done it again. Nine years after it was first released, revenue surged close to its 2016 and 2017 highs. So far this year, it has generated an estimated $627.5 million, a rise of 147% Y/Y. The title just missed out on the top 10, ranking as the world’s 13th top grossing mobile game.

We wrote back in August about the game’s sharp growth back in the upper echelons of the charts.

Product and game design consultant Jakub Remiar wrote in November that the title had just had its third best month ever in its nine-year history. 

He put the changes down to the introduction of Card Evolutions, Lucky Drops (later dropped themselves), and the removal of the game’s signature timed chests feature. Meanwhile, Clash Royale’s shift to a platform of games saw Merge Tactics introduced to the title on June 30th, a streamlined version of the cancelled auto chess game Clash Mini.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Revenue for both Brawl Stars and Clash Royale has fallen again. Can Supercell repeat the magic for a third time in 2026? Or will the pressure to find a new global success pile on?

The fall of PUBG Mobile and Dungeon & Fighter

In 2024, PUBG Mobile ranked as the sixth highest grossing mobile game with close $1.6bn in revenue, while Nexon’s Dungeon & Fighter (published by Tencent in China), ranked ninth as the biggest new game launch of the year with just under $1.1bn.

Flash-forward to December 21st, 2026, the story of these two giant IPs looks very different. PUBG Mobile has actually already performed better than in the entirety of 2024 with $1.6bn so far. But the figure hides a dramatic recent decline for the title.

We highlighted the drop in our October 2025 mobile game charts analysis, which you can see here:

We asked Niko Partners director of research and insights Daniel Ahmad for some expert insights into the game's decline in China, where it's known as Peacekeeper Elite.

At the time, he said the decline in iOS App Store revenue in China may not be completely representative of its performance, as Apple devices account for a quarter of all mobile devices used in China. He also highlighted Android's large market share and growing presence of HarmonyOS in the premium segment.

However, Ahmad did note strong competition from other shooter games like Delta Force and Valorant Mobile - the latter of which Tencent claimed was the most successful new game launch in China this year with 50m MAUs.

"Peacekeeper Elite, as with most mobile games, often sees its revenue vary on a weekly basis, with spikes primarily driven by in-game updates and events. We believe the main reason for declining iOS revenue is increased competition at this point, and note there was a similar revenue decline followed by recovery in December 2024.”

Dungeon & Fighter Mobile, meanwhile, generated substantial revenue when it launched last year. In July 2024 alone, it picked up $231.8m. In 2025 to date, the title has accumulated $489.8m on China’s App Store.

It still ranked as the 22nd top grossing mobile game in the world - not accounting for Android store revenue - but it’s a substantial decline for a highly popular IP. The fall in revenue was also mentioned in Nexon's recent financial report.

The other notable games

There were other notable stories this year. Pokémon TCG Pocket made its way into the top 10 at ninth place. Dream Games’ Royal Match follow-up, backed by a mega celebrity marketing campaign, hit 35th.

Meanwhile, Florere saw two titles, Last Z: Survival and Dark War: Survival, hit 34th and 39th in the global top grossing rankings, respectively. 

You can check out the hottest new releases of 2025 right here. Read about the Top 50 Mobile Game Makers of the year here.

Learn about the latest mobile games industry trends at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026 on January 19th and 20th.