What's Trending in Games

What you can even play — and pay in — is set by policy: India's IT Act 69A and its 2025 RMG ban reshaped the market, China is a closed ISBN-gated market holding 98% of Honor of Kings' revenue, and Australia's 2024 classification reform age-gates loot-box and casino-style titles.

1. 🇮🇳 In India the prior IT Act 69A bans still define the market: Krafton's compliance-led return pushed BGMI past 100M downloads in India alone, while Garena's official 'Free Fire India' app still has not shipped — making which titles rise a direct function of policy.[13]
2. 🇮🇳 The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act 2025 (in force Oct 1, 2025) fully bans real-money gaming; Dream11 ($8B valuation), MPL and My11Circle shut their money formats. As RMG was ~86% of India's gaming revenue, demand has been hollowed out and forced toward esports, casual and F2P — coinciding with STRIKE WORLD's entry.[20][21]
3. Global #1-tier Honor of Kings (Tencent) draws ~98% of monthly revenue from Chinese iOS — a closed, ISBN-gated market that manufactures the chart leader and skews global rankings around demand foreigners cannot access.[2]
4. 🇦🇺 Australia's Sept 22, 2024 classification reform rates games with paid loot boxes (chance-based spend) M (not for under-15s) and casino-style simulated gambling R18+. It applies to newly submitted or modified titles, putting the most direct policy pressure on the social-casino games atop the grossing charts.[19]

Coming soon

Top grossers are Honor of Kings ($1.68B-$2.4B in 2025, estimates differ), Last War ($1.57B-$2.1B), Roblox ($4.9B annual revenue), Whiteout Survival ($1.4B), Royal Match ($1.37B), Monopoly Go ($1.36B). Japan (~$11B) is led by Pokémon TCG Pocket; Monster Strike has $11.4B lifetime yet shrank to ~$570M/year. India is a $5B market but only ~$400M IAP, hit hard by the RMG ban.

1. 2025's top mobile grossers: Honor of Kings (Tencent) ~$1.68B-$2.4B, Last War (FunFly) $1.57B-$2.1B, Roblox, Whiteout Survival (Century) $1.4B, Royal Match (Dream) $1.37B, Monopoly Go (Scopely) $1.36B; rankings split by data source, with GamesIndustry-style figures putting Last War first at $2.12B. The market hit $6.75B for January 2026 alone.[3][1][31]
2. 🇺🇸 The US is the single largest mobile-spend market (~31% of global as of Jan 2026); its charts are led by casual heavyweights — Monopoly Go ($174.9M in Jan 2026, atop Google Play), Last War ($162.4M), Royal Match and Candy Crush (first $1B year in 2025) — whose social hooks and live events keep outpacing legacy titles.[3][2]
3. 🇺🇸 Roblox (Roblox Corp) anchors US demand as a UGC platform: FY2025 revenue $4.9B (+36%) and bookings $6.8B (+55%); Q1 2026 revenue $1.4B (+39%) with 132M DAU (+35%). North America is 28% of DAU, and the top 1,000 creators averaged $1.3M in 2025 — platform-shaped demand outscaling single titles.[25]
4. 🇯🇵 Japan (~$11B IAP in 2025, #2 in Asia) is led by Pokémon TCG Pocket: since its Oct 30, 2024 global launch it has earned ~$1.49B and 100M+ downloads, books a steady $30-50M/month and lifted DeNA's Oct-Dec 2024 gaming profit +8,126% YoY. In 2025 Japan grossing put Poké TCG #1, FGO #2, Monster Strike #4 and Dragon Quest Walk #5.[8][29]
5. 🇯🇵 Monster Strike has earned $11.4B gross ($8B net) over 11.5 years but 99% of that is from Japan; it peaked at $1.7B in 2016 and fell to $570.7M in 2024 — under a third of peak, making the core IP's maturity unmistakable and reallocation to overseas/new genres a board-level priority.[4]
6. 🇮🇳 India is a ~$5B gaming market in 2026 (8.45B downloads, ~488M players) but with low monetization — only ~$400M IAP. The 2025 RMG ban erased ~86% of the segment's revenue and pushed out Dream11 and peers, intensifying competition for legitimate F2P/pass/ad demand; BGMI's paying users rose +17% YoY in Q1.[22][23][20]
7. 🇦🇺 Australia's grossing charts are topped by social-casino/slots, with Lightning Link Casino Slots (Aristocrat's Product Madness) a local #1-tier title and Monopoly Go a fixture — a distinctly Australian tilt toward gambling-style casual demand. The 2024 classification reform is now putting a legal cap on that upside.[15][19]

Coming soon

Downloads are led by Block Blast, Free Fire and Roblox, with Arrows-style puzzles the new 2026 wave; the US plays Marvel Rivals (40M+)/ARC Raiders plus Roblox's Gen-Alpha base, India BGMI/Free Fire, Japan collection (Poké TCG) plus Monster Strike's New Year #1. Gacha revenue swings wildly on banner cycles.

1. The demand funnel is hyper-casual/puzzle: Jan 2026 top downloads were Block Blast (Hungry Studio) 28.1M, then Free Fire 25.8M and Roblox 22.6M; by April, Arrows: Puzzle Escape (Miniclip) surged to 20.9M installs, turning 'arrow puzzles' into a fresh genre.[1][2]
2. 🇺🇸 US/EU play centers on hero and extraction shooters: NetEase's Marvel Rivals (a Marvel collab) topped 40M players and was still actively played in June 2026 (reportedly 400K+ daily), and Embark/Nexon's ARC Raiders became a phenomenon as a brand-new IP — PvP cores paired with IP own younger demand.[28][16][11]
3. 🇺🇸 Roblox is the hub of Gen-Alpha demand: among age-checked users, 35% are under 13 and 38% are 13-17. Q1 2026 logged 132M DAU and 31B hours engaged — platform-style 'playground' demand is expanding, and US attention concentrates in UGC social spaces over single games.[25]
4. 🇮🇳 India's taste is battle-royale-dominant: BGMI (Krafton) cleared 100M India downloads post-return and Free Fire (Garena) ranked among the world's most-downloaded in Feb 2026 even under its ban, with low-spec-friendly Free Fire MAX owning everyday demand; after the RMG ban, BR/esports anchor the surviving demand.[13][14]
5. 🇯🇵 Japan's demand is governed by collection/gacha culture: Pokémon TCG Pocket's digital pack-opening draws new players, while Monster Strike was Japan's #1 grosser over New Year 2026 (Jan 1-2), and — alongside FGO — is sustained by an event-driven, high-ARPU core.[17][8]
6. Gacha demand is banner-bound and volatile: Genshin Impact led with $66M in Jan 2026 and $54.3M in Feb (barely topping Wuthering Waves at $46M), but Wuthering crashed ~$34M to $11.4M in March; Honkai: Star Rail and ZZZ (HoYoverse) rebounded on new banners — demand clusters at extremes.[26][7][6]
7. 🇦🇺 Australian players skew to social-casino/slots, where Lightning Link-style reel spectacle and daily bonuses anchor retention — Aristocrat's slot heritage shapes mobile demand too, unlike the casual-puzzle center of gravity in the US.[15]

Coming soon

Winning mechanics are 4X-survival (Last War/Whiteout/Kingshot), merge (Gossip Harbor), and extraction shooters (ARC Raiders); premium single-player (Clair Obscur/Silksong) is reviving, and STRIKE WORLD rebuilds for global with ads+pass billing to escape gacha dependence.

1. The mechanic that owns spend is 4X/survival strategy: Last War and Whiteout Survival (from $936M in 2024 to $1.4B+ in 2025) top the charts, and Century Games' Kingshot launched Feb 2025 to ~$812M in its first year, ranking a top-10 grosser of 2025 — the lite-RTS x collection x PvP 'war 4X' template is now in mass-production.[3]
2. Extraction shooters and premium single-player rose together: Embark's ARC Raiders cleared 16M units (an estimated $500M+) in ~six months and drove Nexon to a record Q1 2026 (North America/Europe revenue up ~310% YoY, total revenue +34% to ~$953M), while Sandfall's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hit 8M units and won GOTY in a year, absorbing live-service fatigue.[11][24][12]
3. 🇯🇵 MIXI re-engineered tech and monetization in STRIKE WORLD (global Monster Strike): India soft-launch Feb 19, 2026, then full ops (Season 1) Apr 16. It keeps the core pull-and-fling hunt but localizes UI, progression and onboarding, and diversifies revenue with character/item passes, offer-based products and in-app ads atop gacha, plus rolling India anime IP collabs; the original has 65M downloads and $10B+ lifetime.[5][30]
4. The merge mechanic has settled in as a high-LTV genre: Microfun's Gossip Harbor is the world's most lucrative merge game, hitting a record 8.9M installs in Jan 2026 and $93.1M (global #2 by revenue) in April — a high-ARPPU design driving copycats.[1][2]

Coming soon

Gacha/loot boxes — the dominant monetization — and the social-casino titles atop Australia's charts sit on the front line of gambling-style regulation; India's 2025 RMG ban, Australia's 2024 classification reform and rising probability-disclosure demands are starting to select which titles and tactics can rise.

1. 🇮🇳 India's Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act 2025 fully bans real-money gaming, with fines up to ₹1 crore (~$120,000) and possible imprisonment, enforced by the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI); esports and social/casual are promoted. India's RMG-dependent unicorns vanished, a legal inflection point redirecting demand toward F2P.[20][21]
2. 🇦🇺 Australia's Sept 2024 classification reform rates loot-box games M and casino-style simulated gambling R18+. The social-casino titles topping the charts — Lightning Link Casino Slots and peers — sit closest to age-rating and gambling-disclosure rules, with further calls for probability disclosure and bringing some titles under the gambling regime; strong demand, but a legal cap on upside.[19][15]
3. Gacha is still the top-earning mechanic, but the ~$34M monthly crash of Wuthering Waves shows banner-driven instability, and regulatory pressure on chance-based spend adds a second risk — STRIKE WORLD's shift to passes/ads is partly a regulatory hedge.[6][5]
4. Loot-box probability disclosure and predatory-monetization rules are a global, not just Australian, trend; as classification, age-gating and odds disclosure standardize, chance-dependent gacha/loot-box design loses headroom and a structural shift toward pass/offer/ad models accelerates.[19]

Coming soon