AppMagic Report: Non-Gaming Apps Overtake Mobile Games in IAP Revenue Since 2016

Mobile games have not led the in-app purchase revenue charts since 2016, according to a decade-spanning report from AppMagic released to mark the analytics firm's 10th anniversary. Non-gaming platforms such as TikTok and AI chatbots have outperformed the gaming sector in IAP revenue since 2016. For players and industry watchers, the shift underscores how entertainment spending on mobile has migrated toward social video and generative AI tools, leaving even the biggest game hits fighting for a smaller slice of the pie.

The report draws on ten years of global App Store and Google Play data to map the changing hierarchy of mobile monetisation. TikTok has claimed the top-grossing app spot every year since 2020, while ChatGPT became the most downloaded app worldwide in 2025. The data arrives as mobile game user acquisition costs climb and retention windows shrink, making the revenue gap harder to close.

Honor of Kings Leads a Shrinking Field

Despite the sector-wide decline, TiMi Studio Group's Honor of Kings remains the undisputed champion of mobile game IAP revenue. The MOBA has topped the annual charts in six of the last ten years — 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2026 — since its debut in 2017. It earned $830 million in its launch year and surpassed $1.1 billion in 2026, a figure that would place it among the highest-grossing entertainment products in any medium.

Garena's Free Fire tells a different story: dominance through reach rather than per-user spend. The battle royale debuted in 2019 with 272 million installs and posted download numbers above 220 million in 2019, 2021, 2024, and 2026, hitting 269 million in 2024 and 221 million in 2026. AppMagic notes that Free Fire generated no revenue at launch but has since accumulated $3.3 billion lifetime. That trajectory — zero to billions — reflects a free-to-play model optimised for massive audience acquisition first, monetisation depth second.

Extremes of Efficiency and Waste

The report highlights stark contrasts in revenue efficiency across the market. Among Us amassed 930 million downloads but generated only $52 million in IAP revenue — a conversion rate that underscores the difficulty of monetising social deduction gameplay without pay-to-win mechanics. At the opposite extreme, Umamusume: Pretty Derby earned $1.6 billion from just 19 million downloads, illustrating how a deeply engaged, niche audience can outspend a casual mass market many times over.

AppMagic also identified a handful of titles still growing revenue year-on-year. Micro Fun's Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story posted a 95% increase from January to October this year, while Century Games' Kingshot surged 126% in the same window. Honor of Kings itself grew 5% year-on-year during that period, a notable feat for a seven-year-old title. For players, these growers signal where fresh content pipelines and genre hybrids — merge mechanics meets narrative, strategy meets shooter — are finding traction in a saturated market.

What This Means for Players

The revenue leadership shift toward TikTok and ChatGPT is not just a boardroom statistic — it shapes what gets greenlit, updated, or sunset. Studios chasing the next Honor of Kings now compete for capital against AI startups and social platforms with fundamentally different cost structures and retention loops. That pressure trickles down to players as more aggressive battle passes, tighter gacha pity timers, and a flood of derivative "merge-and-story" clones chasing Gossip Harbor's 95% growth. The games that survive will be those that respect player time as fiercely as they pursue player spend.

Looking ahead, the next AppMagic anniversary report will test whether any mobile game can reclaim the overall IAP crown — or whether the 2016 peak was the sector's high-water mark. Honor of Kings' 5% growth at age seven suggests evergreen live ops can still defy gravity, but the bar rises every quarter. Players should watch the 2025 download charts closely: if ChatGPT or a successor holds the top spot again, the message to publishers is clear. The battleground for mobile attention has moved beyond the app store's games tab.