Riot Games’ successful run on the mobile games market continues as League of Legends: Wild Rift surpasses the $500 million milestone across Google Play and App Store, per Sensor Tower’s data.
The mobile MOBA launched back in October 2020 and has been a massive success for Tencent-owned Riot Games since then. In fact, the only mobile MOBA that earned more than Wild Rift in the first half of 2022 is another Tencent title, Honor of Kings. However, the latter’s income almost exclusively comes from China, meanwhile, Wild Rift has a massive player base worldwide.
According to Sensor Tower’s data Honor of Kings earned $1.4 billion in the first six months of 2022, meanwhile LoL: Wild Rift generated about $218 million, followed by Supercell’s Brawl Stars with $149.5 million. Just like Riot Games, Supercell is also owned by Tencent, meaning the top three revenue-generating mobile MOBA’s all belong to the same company.
Riot Games nears $1 billion in revenue from mobile games
The Tencent powerhouse only has three mobile games and they’re all based on the highly popular PC MOBA League of Legends. In just 16 months, Riot Games earned $828 million to date through its mobile games. Teamfight Tactics earned the company $299 million and Legends of Runeterra earned nearly $25 million in its lifetime.
However, while League of Legends: Wild Rift is quite popular outside China, its revenue is also quite China-dependent. The game has picked up approximately $365 million in China, accounting for 72.2% of all the revenue it has generated so far. It’s not nearly one-country-dependent as Honor of Kings though. Sensor Tower’s top grossing mobile games for June 2022 report says about 95 percent of Honor of Kings’ revenue was from China.
Honor of Kings has a loyal player base in China, and one can easily see that just by skimming through the most downloaded mobile games for June 2022 report. Despite barely making it to the top 10 in App Store, and missing out on the overall downloads chart, Honor of Kings is still the number one money-maker in the mobile games market month after month.
Google Play isn’t available in China, meaning most of Wild Rift’s income comes from home. To be more accurate over 84% of the player spending comes from home grounds. Outside China, Google Play revenue accounts for 57%, while App Store makes up 43% of the total revenue of the game. Riot Games will surely hit the $1 billion cornerstone in no time at this pace.
Tencent has been having trouble at home, as the government is denying publishing licenses to the gaming giant, but overall the company seems to be on a good track with everything else.
