AppMagic’s look back at the past decade shows how much the mobile market has changed since 2016, when Monster Strike led the gaming top 10 with $807 million and non-gaming apps made up just 14% of all in-app purchase (IAP) revenue. Apps gained ground steadily after that, with TikTok reaching number one in 2020 and holding the spot ever since, and by 2021 non-gaming apps were bringing in about one third of all mobile IAP revenue. In 2025, they passed games in yearly IAP revenue for the first time, and AI was part of that shift as ChatGPT’s IAP revenue rose 351% to $1.9 billion that year, moving the app to number three.

Apps gained ground had a busy decade too, with Hypercasual titles going mainstream in 2018 at 3.3 billion downloads, up 84% from the year before, and player spending growing 24% to $45.1 billion in 2020 as much of the world stayed home. Conditions then changed as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency made it more expensive to attract users and weakened ad earnings, and by the first quarter of 2022 player spending was down 6% from the year before, the market’s first recorded decline. Publishers moved toward Hybridcasual games, which pair easy-to-learn gameplay with deeper progression and stronger IAP earnings, while Microsoft’s $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard became the largest deal in gaming history.

Only two games from the 2016 gaming top 10 are still in the gaming top 10 today: Honor of Kings, which moved from number nine to number one with $1.1 billion earned from January to October 2026, and Candy Crush Saga, which went from number ten to number nine with $647 million. Games no longer fill every spot in the overall top 10 as they did in 2016, but they still make up the majority.

Several new hits pushed genres forward along the way, with PUBG MOBILE’s regional versions earning more than $9 billion since its 2018 arrival and Free Fire, which helped popularize Battle Royale on mobile in 2017, reaching $3.3 billion in lifetime IAP revenue. In the 4X genre, Whiteout Survival packaged complex strategy systems in a more approachable experience in 2023, and Last War became the top game by revenue in 2025 while Kingshot reached the gaming top 10 just a year after launch.

Among casual games, Royal Match passed Candy Crush Saga in monthly revenue in July 2023 and has reached $4.7 billion in lifetime revenue, while MONOPOLY GO! became 2024’s highest-grossing mobile game by moving the Coin Looter core from a slot machine setting to a board game and has earned $4.5 billion to date. Gossip Harbor, which built its Merge gameplay around an ongoing story, ranked seventh among games by revenue from January to October 2026, up 95% from a year earlier, and Block Blast! was the most downloaded game of 2025 with 350 million installs.

The 2026 gaming top 10 now includes MONOPOLY GO!, Royal Match, Whiteout Survival, Gossip Harbor, Last War and Kingshot alongside Honor of Kings and Candy Crush Saga, as established genres found new leaders, complex ones became easier to enter and simple mechanics opened new ways to earn at scale. AppMagic’s full report covers the decade year by year, with top revenue and download charts, standout releases, major deals and Steam data for 2025 and 2026.