“ Wild Rift has had a steady global rollout since October 2020, generating approximately 49 million downloads and about $80 million from player spending to date,” Chapple said. Further, last year the company launched Wild Rift, a mobile-only version of League of Legends that has quickly become a big player in the sector, according to Sensor Tower’s report. The mobile sector is certainly a focal point for Riot’s revamped business model, with Legends of Runeterra finding a sizable audience there. Riot has also licensed its League of Legends characters for an animated Netflix show titled Arcane.
However, recent years have seen the company branch out with a number of new titles including mega-hit Valorant and card battler Legends of Runeterra. In that time, the game has been successful enough that developer Riot Games has been able to run its business on the back of one title. To that end, live-service elements like the regular addition of new characters or seasonal events are key to retention.įor nearly 12 years, League of Legends has been a leader in the MOBA space on PCs. While the social and competitive aspects of MOBAs–and free-to-play titles in general–are a great hook to attract new players, keeping them interested in the long-term is a bit trickier. “Early retention is the result of a fun core gameplay experience, while retaining players from keeping the experience feeling fresh and new.” “This comes down to retaining players and keeping them engaged over the long-term, long after they have downloaded and started playing a game,” he explained. Chapped said that the reason for this comes down to one metric: player retention. One of the more interesting points of data in Sensor Tower’s report is the fact that, despite growing revenues, total downloads of MOBA games on mobile platforms have actually decreased by 10% in Q2 2021. Further, genre leaders Honor of Kings and Mobile Legends have not been afraid to utilize licensing in order to appeal to a larger audience. “These titles are generally also backed by huge publishers: Tencent, ByteDance, Supercell and Riot are key players in the market, with big budgets for user acquisition.”Īdditionally, these publishers also make heavy use of licensing Chapple explained that IP-based titles accounted for approximately 43% of US MOBA downloads during the first eight months of 2021. “A variety of factors make MOBAs popular: the genre itself attracts a wide audience for its gameplay, while the multiplayer aspect drives a social, competitive experience that brings people together,” Chapple told GameDaily. With its growth on mobile platforms, however, analysts are seeing the genre open up to more casual players.įor Craig Chapple, mobile insights strategist at Sensor Tower, it’s questionable if MOBAs would have found this level of success on mobile platforms without the backing of some of the industry’s biggest names.
It is also a notoriously unapproachable genre for casual players, with complex game mechanics and infamously toxic communities. MOBA is traditionally a PC-focused genre, with perennial hits like League of Legends and Dota 2 enjoying immense popularity, enormous audiences, and huge competitive prize pools, leading to cross-media productions. This is the sharpest rise in revenue the genre has experienced throughout the last year. Meanwhile, Supercell’s Brawl Stars and Moonton and ByteDance’s Mobile Legends have both generated more than $1 billion in lifetime player spending.Īs a genre, mobile MOBAs have been experiencing a sharp increase in revenue over the last two to three years, with Q2 2021 itself boasting 14% growth. Launched in 2015, Tencent’s Honor of Kings–known as Arena of Valor in western markets–is far and away the most profitable mobile MOBA of all time: Sensor Tower notes that the game has recently surpassed $10 billion in lifetime player spending, with 2021 accounting for more than $2 billion already. According to the findings, mobile MOBA games generate upwards of $300 million per month, with Honor of Kings, Brawl Stars, and Mobile Legends serving as leaders in the genre. Analytics provider Sensor Tower has released a report examining the state of the MOBA genre on mobile platforms, and the data shows substantial growth in the sector over the last several years.
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