What happened to hypercasual? The market’s evolution over the past year

• Hypercasual is not declining but evolving with growth driven largely by new entrants rather than expansion of the overall market.
• Downloads across mobile games continue to fall while revenue remains stable or grows.
• Many top-performing hypercasual titles now operate closer to hybridcasual.

Eugene Tatonkin is publishing and M&A lead at Azur Games.

Let’s start with publicly available Sensor Tower data for 2025 compared to 2024 (with changes shown as percentages).

At first glance, it may look like casual and midcore are losing ground. But in absolute numbers, they still represent around $22 billion and $31 billion, respectively, which are very solid figures.

Hypercasual and hybridcasual show stronger growth dynamics on average, and many analysts are optimistic about that. However, it’s important to remember that a large part of this growth comes from the low-base effect, since the original size of those markets is significantly smaller than casual or midcore.

Let’s compare the first quarters of this year and the previous one.

Q1 2026 and the percentage changes compared to Q1 2025

The overall trend of declining downloads alongside growing revenue continues.

A small disclaimer is also necessary here. Analytical tools often have inconsistencies in genre tagging and interpretation. For example, when people talk about the growth of hybridcasual puzzle games that now dominate both downloads and grossing charts, analytics services sometimes classify them as hypercasual titles. In some tools, the “hybrid-casual” tag does not exist at all.

Results in the hypercasual segment

Taking this into account and looking at the historical context, we get the following picture of hypercasual in-app revenue as of 2024.

By the end of 2025, however, the leading titles in the hypercasual segment were already generating three times higher monthly revenue compared to the previous year.

One interesting detail: Pocket Champs dropped to fifth place, yet its monthly revenue remained roughly the same as a year earlier, which is quite revealing.

If we again consider the high-base effect, we actually see a small decline in percentage terms while absolute revenue remains stable. The dynamics themselves have not changed much. 

Older titles continue to perform, but they are not opening new markets or generating breakthroughs. Pocket Champs is essentially where it was before. Mob Control, one of the earliest hybrid-casual titles, also remains at roughly the same revenue level.

At the same time, we see a large number of new entrants appearing in the segment. The lowest-performing product in the top 15 in terms of monthly IAP revenue - in 15th place - generates more than twice as much as the comparable position a year earlier.

Whether that particular title should technically be classified as hypercasual is not especially important. What matters is that under the hypercasual tag, we now see this kind of revenue profile. This is exactly why the raw market numbers show growth.

At the same time, the market remains relatively small. In total, it still represents less than half a billion dollars, compared to $31 billion for midcore and $22 billion for casual. This suggests that both revenue and downloads are present, but the scale remains very different.

Over the past year, many new titles appeared. Around 70% of the top chart consists of games that started scaling in 2025 or were launched in 2025. In other words, the growth we see comes largely from the arrival of new titles, while the broader structure of the market has not fundamentally changed.

The formula remains the same: successful experimentation and successful integration of in-app purchases into relatively simple mechanics.

Let’s compare hypercasual project revenues in Q1 this year with Q1 2025.

Q1 2025

Q1 2026

A year ago, we said that hypercasual was “more alive than dead,” despite predictions of its demise appearing every year. Now the picture looks even clearer: compared to the previous two years, the segment is not only alive - it is growing, provided that developers continue investing and experimenting.

What all successful hypercasual games of the past year have in common is a Day-30 retention target of at least 5%, and sometimes as high as 7.5%. The defining difference is that games with longer retention and hybrid monetisation models have reached the top of the charts.

Another important element is the monetisation logic borrowed from casual games. Roughly half of the top puzzle titles generate revenue through win streaks and live events, mechanics that we previously associated with larger casual projects like Royal Match. In practical terms, developers should pay close attention to how serious casual games structure their live ops.

Today’s top hypercasual games usually rely on a relatively simple core mechanic, but their scaling principles and monetisation strategies come directly from the casual segment: frequent introduction of new level mechanics every 10–15 levels, win streak systems, events, guilds, and similar systems. Combined with longer retention, this structure works. Those 5%+ of players who remain by Day 30 ultimately generate the majority of revenue.

Today it is simply impossible to build a profitable project without a solid R30 retention rate. That era is over. To reach that level of retention, a game needs at least 500 levels already at the soft launch stage. And not just 500 levels - but 500 levels supported by real live ops, rotating events, and at least the beginnings of meta progression.

Collections or gallery systems, for example, are particularly effective because they scale easily today thanks to AI-generated content. Studios can realistically release new collections every quarter, or even more frequently. In fact, 12 out of the 15 titles in the chart above are based on very simple core mechanics, but they scale according to the rules of the casual segment.

One could argue that many of these solutions are borrowed from Royal Match, and that observation would be fair. If you play through the top puzzle games up to around level 250, you will see the same principles both in events and in level mechanics: connected figures, frozen elements, new unlocking conditions, and a sequence of actions required to progress. These are the level mechanics that keep gameplay dynamic and engaging.

This is essentially the same philosophy that modern Match-3 games follow. Instead of designing a single core and generating thousands of levels in an editor, developers continuously introduce new layers of mechanics so the player never gets bored. Every 10–15 levels, players encounter new tasks within the familiar gameplay structure, not to mention the diversity of content available through the meta layer.

Hypercasual still contains far fewer mechanics and far less content than casual or midcore games. Yes, today it is “hypercasual on steroids,” but it remains hypercasual at its core: a very low barrier to entry for players, a single core mechanic that continues to scale even by level 500 - which is very different from the hypercasual games we saw in 2020.

Results in the casual segment

Now let’s look at the casual segment in 2024–2025.

At the top, we see Royal Match and Monopoly. At the bottom of the top-15 list sits a social casino title. In other words, the lowest title in the casual top-15 of 2024 still generates more IAP revenue than the top hypercasual title in 2025.

In 2025, the same titles largely remained in the rankings, alongside the addition of Royal Kingdom, Match Factory, and Seaside Escape. Compared to hypercasual, this segment offers fewer dramatic shifts worth discussing.

Revenue decline in percentage terms is relatively small. Looking closer, one could assume that some of the money simply moved into the hypercasual segment, while the number of paying players did not increase overall.

At the same time, it would be incorrect to say that players are abandoning successful long-running projects. Quite the opposite. However, if we continue the idea of money “flowing” into the hypercasual segment, that segment now has something new to offer.

A typical casual player might have spent years playing Candy Crush Saga, but by 2025, a new market of well-produced puzzle games with aggressive monetisation has emerged. In many cases, we also see competitors buying rewarded placements from each other.

This creates greater movement among relatively inexpensive paying audiences compared to the casual segment, where live ops, content delivery, and, most importantly, retention strategies are planned with horizons of 3, 6, or even 9 months.

Let’s circle back to Q1 2025 and Q1 2026 for comparison.

Q1 2025

Q1 2026

Downloads indeed declined, but revenue did not drop compared to the midcore segment overall. This suggests that studios simply acquired fewer new users.

There is no miracle here. Players only have a limited number of hours they can spend on their phones. By 2025, other entertainment formats began to dominate mobile screen time.

Alongside familiar short-form content formats such as YouTube Shorts, Reels, and TikTok, a new category called Short Drama has appeared, further competing for attention. These formats are taking screen time away from games, and UA teams are finding it harder to acquire users because players increasingly prioritise faster entertainment formats.

At the same time, ongoing development and LiveOps efforts help stabilise revenue, which is why revenue declines remain limited despite the drop in downloads. It is also important to remember that we are discussing in-app purchases only, while in the casual segment, advertising revenue can sometimes account for up to 20% of total earnings.

Future forecasts

When talking about the future, one of the key topics is deep player segmentation. Analysts working on segmentation and clustering studies often share interesting cases.

For example, imagine two players with the same LTV of $100. One made a single $100 purchase, while the other made ten purchases of $10 each. Formally, their value is identical, but from a product, operations, and design perspective, they are completely different types of players.

The market still does not work with these nuances properly. In practice, this level of analysis is usually only done “when life is good” - when there is enough time and resources. In reality, there rarely is.

Self-publishing a game is difficult but still possible. Building high-quality analytics, segmentation, and behavioural modelling, however, is almost impossible for a typical mid-sized studio.

Sometimes a single $100 purchase is actually better than ten $10 purchases. If the player makes a $100 purchase within a short period - say within one month - they may still continue watching rewarded ads and exploring content.

In the following month, they may spend another $100 or $50. By contrast, a player who spends $10 ten times in a month may consume content proportionally faster and churn earlier. In the second month, they might only spend $20 instead of another $100.

Of course, everything depends on the genre, the type of game, and the service model. Shooters, idle RPGs, and puzzle games all follow different economic logic. The same applies to advertising.

A classic dilemma: if a player has already made a purchase, should you still show them interstitial ads? Less experienced producers might say no - there is no point in irritating a paying player. But if a player has already purchased something, it also means they may be willing to purchase again. The question is not whether to show ads or not, but how often, when, and under what conditions.

This is why segmentation and behavioural analytics will become a major competitive advantage for publishers in the future. Publishers win through data scale, portfolio breadth, accumulated expertise, and a culture of A/B testing.

At the beginning, we said that the market itself is not growing significantly. Casual downloads fell by 18%, yet revenue dropped by only 0.2%. One of the reasons is exactly this type of audience segmentation and optimisation.

The hybridcasual segment still has to go through this process. Publishers will become competitive precisely because they can provide these capabilities after already building the necessary expertise and infrastructure. A typical mid-size studio cannot easily replicate this. It will eventually turn to third-party services, which will charge for these capabilities without guaranteeing results.

What is encouraging is that even small independent studios are starting to think about segmentation beyond the traditional categories of whales and dolphins. Developers are asking deeper questions: what is a good IAP conversion rate? What conversion rate should we expect after a special offer? What share of players should be paying at all?

The market is reacting. It is asking questions. It is moving toward a better understanding. But concrete actions in this direction are still relatively rare.