The video game industry has been a multibillion-dollar business for a long time now, and the numbers just keep increasing, with the total annual revenue in 2020 being upwards of $150 billion. Unsurprisingly, the biggest contributor to the revenue stream was mobile gaming. Not just the biggest, but, at $85 billion, it was double that of PC gaming, and more than PC and consoles combined in the previous year.
Many factors have contributed to this, such as the boom in popularity of online multiplayer games and micro-transactions. People nowadays are much much more likely to make an in-game purchase than they were a few years ago. The following list takes a look at some games that have achieved the same level of revenue as rival blockbuster games from mega publishers.
10 Clash Royale - $3+ Billion
Finnish developer Supercell will probably never again reach the kind of height that it did with Clash of Clans, but that doesn't mean they haven't enjoyed any other big hits. Like all of their games after CoC, it is based on the characters from that game with many original creations, as well. The gameplay is fairly simplistic in nature, but the extremely fast pacing that demands players make quick and strategic decisions is what made it a truly fun game.
9 Garena Free Fire - $3.1+ Billion
There isn't much that distinguishes Free Fire from the other seemingly-endless battle royale games on mobile stores, but, as the most downloaded mobile game worldwide in 2019, it is certainly one of the most successful ones. The game had over 80 million daily active users globally as recently as the May of 2020 and receives regular updates from the developers.
Instead of the usual 100 player matches that are a staple of battle royale, Free Fire consists of a maximum of 50 players in a single match.
8 Fate/Grand Order - $4.3+ Billion
The Fate series is one of Japan's most popular and biggest media franchises that has spawned more video games, light novels, manga, anime shows, and movies than what the average consumer can keep track of. It began with the 2004 adult visual novel Fate/stay night, and it is still going strong to this day. Fate/Grand Order was the first Fate game to release on mobile and featured a turn-based combat system, quickly rising up the ranks to become one of the most successful gacha games of all time.
7 PUBG - $4.3+ Billion
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds isn't a new game by any means, but its popularity skyrocketed to space when the mobile version was released in 2018. The game has become so widespread that it is outright banned in many countries, key among them being India, which made up a big percentage of the global player base.
With a player count of over 800 million, it is the second most-played video game in the world after Crossfire, and the game was one of the biggest factors behind the popularization of the battle royale genre as a whole.
6 Candy Crush Saga - $5.8+ Billion
One of the oldest mobile games still around, Candy Crush Saga was one of the first to make proper use of the "freemium" system, which meant that players were more than welcome to play the game for free, but investing real money into it would deliver additional, attractive perks.
This is the monetization model which most mobile games employ today. The game's sheer simplicity is what made it easier for virtually anyone to play, and the more people played, the more they ended up spending on the game, which is how it has grossed more than $5.8 Billion.
5 Pokémon Go - $6.4+ Billion
Pok0233mon Go made the first half of 2016 an amusing time for both people who played the game and people who watched others stroll around the neighborhood looking for a pokémon. Adding the innovative technology of augmented reality to one of the most iconic video game franchises in the world produced something significantly unique than what had ever been done before. Although the hype surrounding it has certainly died down from the astronomical heights that it reached in its heyday, there are still millions of people who play it.
4 Clash of Clans - $7+ Billion
At a certain point in time, everybody and their friends were playing Clash of Clans, building their own clans while attacking others and simultaneously having to defend themselves from other players. The game became an industry cornerstone, and, although its revenue peaked in 2015, with $1.8 billion annually even today, it can easily be found in the top tens in both the Play Store and App Store. A single player spent more than $1 million on the game, which goes to show how crazy things can get sometimes.
3 Puzzle & Dragons - $7.8+ Billion
Puzzle & Dragons is a tile-matching game similar to Candy Crush that takes it a step further by introducing a combat mechanism where players don't just match tiles, but they battle enemies at the same time. Released in 2012, it became the first mobile game to generate more than $1 billion in sales just after one year of being released. The game's success has spawned an entire franchise, crossing the boundary from mobile to consoles with a spin-off game for Nintendo 3DS and even an anime series.
2 Monster Strike - $9.2+ Billion
A role-playing strategy game with obvious Pokémon inspirations, Monster Strike's gameplay is somewhat unique in the sense that the player battles enemies by hurling their monsters at the enemy instead of the usual turn-based or other types of combat. Despite the commercial success the game has enjoyed in its homeland of Japan, its name is relatively unknown on an international scale, and the English version was shut down in 2017 due to lack of popularity. Similar to many other Japanese video games, other related media were created such as an anime series and an entire anime film trilogy.
1 Arena of Valor - $9.5+ Billion
In the same way League of Legends dominates the MOBA genre on PC, Honor of Kings dominates it in the mobile sector. Backed by Chinese gaming giant Tencent, Arena of Valor is an international adaptation of Honor of Kings and is virtually the same game, albeit modified to a great extent to make it more suitable for the international market.
Like other MOBA games, players get to choose from a variety of different characters and game modes to play with, and, with a worldwide gross of over $2.45 billion, it was the highest-earning video game of 2020.
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