Puzzle app Royal Match, developed by a small team in Istanbul, has overtaken Microsoft-owned Candy Crush Saga as the most lucrative mobile game in the world, outshining other smartphone titles during a lacklustre 12 months for the industry.
Royal Match became the biggest mobile game by monthly revenue globally in July and has held the top spot since then, according to Data.ai, which tracks consumer spending on Apple and Android app stores. Launched in 2021, it is the debut title from Dream Games, a Turkish start-up valued at $2.75bn early last year.
For more than a decade, King’s Candy Crush Saga has been one of the world’s most consistently popular games on any platform, hitting $20bn in cumulative revenue this year. Now part of Microsoft after its $75bn buyout of Activision Blizzard, Candy Crush has spent only six months outside the top 10 highest-revenue mobile games since it was released in late 2012, according to Data.ai.
Consumer spending on Royal Match more than doubled in the year to October, increasing the game’s annual gross revenue run rate (before paying out app store fees) to $2bn, said Soner Aydemir, Dream Games co-founder and chief executive.
Royal Match grew so much in what has been another challenging year for mobile games, its creators and investors say, thanks to a focus on quality and mass-market appeal, in a sector that often sees short-term money-spinners launched into Apple’s and Google’s app stores by a few developers on a low budget.
“We strongly believe quality is the best business plan,” Aydemir said.
Data.ai is forecasting the mobile games market will decline about 3 per cent this year globally, including in China, making Royal Match — alongside Scopely’s Monopoly Go! — a scarce new hit. “They have had a very impressive year,” said Lexi Sydow, head of insights at Data.ai.
Royal Match is a “match-three” puzzle game, which would typically involve lining up tiles or icons to clear a grid. These have become the most popular casual gaming genre since they were popularised by Bejeweled in the early 2000s.
While it spawned many imitators, Candy Crush Saga came to dominate the match-three market, ranking number one by consumer spend on mobile app stores for nearly 127 consecutive months, according to Data.ai.
At least, until this summer.
Aydemir said his players are more loyal and willing to spend more on in-game items than in other puzzle apps. More than 90 per cent of Royal Match users who have played the game for a year go on to play it for a second year, he added.
Part of Royal Match’s success is its mass-market appeal, with an easy-to-learn puzzle element and bright and breezy storyline that draws a wider audience than the fantasy battlers or casino games that typically dominate the revenue charts, Sydow said.
With about 55mn monthly active users, it has succeeded in persuading players to spend more on average than Candy Crush’s much larger audience of approximately 160mn does, according to Data.ai.
Dream Games’ investors are hoping that it can outlast other pretenders to Candy Crush’s throne, such as Playrix’s Gardenscapes and Homescapes, which briefly outsold King’s hit for a few months in 2020.
“So many mobile games are a bit glitchy or the graphics aren’t that good but Royal Match is a luxury experience,” said Rob Moffat, an early investor in Dream Games with Balderton Capital, the London-based venture capital firm. “Nothing ever breaks, it’s a really clear clean art style. They think about every detail.”
Dream has also invested heavily in advertising to bring in new players and lure back lapsed ones, at a time when many mobile games developers have struggled to navigate Apple’s privacy changes, which have impeded ad targeting of “whales” or big spenders in the past few years.
“There’s this idea that in a climate where it’s more difficult to find your whales, it might be smarter to go broader,” said Sydow.
Next year, Dream Games plans to capitalise on its success by launching a follow-up, Royal Kingdom, that Aydemir hopes will “extend the story and the universe” of Match’s lead character, King Robert. Royal Kingdom, which introduces Robert’s brother Richard, is being tested in the UK and other select markets.
“What we are focusing on is a little bit different to our competitors,” said Aydemir. “We are focusing on building an [intellectual property] and characters and a universe, with a well-crafted product to create a high-quality game with long-term and mass appeal.”
Dream Games wants to avoid being a “one-hit wonder”, said Danny Rimer, a partner at investor Index Ventures, who sits on its board. “They have higher expectations for themselves.”
The start-up was founded in 2019 by former executives at Peak Games, another Turkish mobile developer that was acquired in 2020 by US rival Zynga. Dream Games, which now employs 200 people and is profitable, recently brought on Ed Catmull, co-founder of digital animation pioneer Pixar, as a strategic adviser.
“When I first started playing Royal Match, I was struck by the unusual attention to the quality of the game’s visuals,” said Catmull, who has passed 5,000 levels on the game, according to Aydemir.
Aydemir is an admirer of Pixar and its parent, Walt Disney, for both their output and their organising principles, and has watched The Lion King musical five times and the Frozen stage show twice.
Dream Games has a 35-seat cinema in its Istanbul office where all staff, including software engineers, regularly watch movies — then spend hours afterwards analysing what makes them good or bad.
“It builds a creative culture in the company,” Aydemir said. “We also play very bad games to understand why they are not good enough.”